Cabin Cove

There are a few folks who were trying to access Cabin Cove yesterday and were running into a problem with connecting. My apologies for that. Over the years there have been a few changes to the site, including the location of this here blog. So, if I can ask you to take a moment and check you bookmarks, favorites and blogfeeds. The main site is at http://CabinCove.com . That’s the main place to be. At one time, it was located at /_secrets  or /journal or any number of locations. Take a moment to update that. And, if you use a blogreader, use the main feed at
http://cabincove.com/?feed=rss2 . You may have to unsubscribe to any other feeds you have in there.

The problems here stem from my moving things around from time to time, but I promise you, where this blog is now on Cabin Cove is where it will stay.

One of the problems with having a website, and a blog in particular, is that you never really know who’s reading and viewing what you’ve got to say. With an average of about 20 comments a day, it would seem that Cabin Cove is a pretty quiet place with not a whole lot going on. The flip side to that is some sophisticated back end reporting. There are an average of 1400 readers a day passing through. There are a number of regular readers who come here because they know of the site. And a large number of people also come by way of searches such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. Many of those searches are for anything from Cabin Cove vacations to hand painting fiber, spinning yarns and spinning wheel reviews, sock machine interests, etc. Then, there are also people who are looking for content to copy/steal/pirate/whatever.

It’s the content and bandwidth thieves I have the problems with. There are those who take text content and post it on their sites, and pass it off as their own. There are also those who come and take photos to use as their own as well. That’s why I’ve learned to slap that copyright onto each photo I post. And, then there are the bandwidth thieves. They are the ones who will take your content in the form of links, and let YOU pay the bill for their using YOUR images. Yeah, those are the ones I seek out with a vengeance. Heh, we all need a hobby.

So, picture it, I was scrolling through the site stats last week, and I notice a large number of hits, 643 to be exact, coming from a site called Wrong Planet.net. Come to find out, someone had taken/linked to one of my images of the armadillo purse I saw at an antique store a few months back, in this post. And, yes, I know it’s not a great photo by any stretch of the imagination. It’s being linked to and each time that page loads on their site, *I* get the bill.

When I finally tracked down the site, and located the owner of the site, I sent of a rather politically correct email, asking that he please remove the linked image from his site. His response was: "Sorry but we run an Internet forum. If you don’t want people hot linking your images, you should should probably not put them on the Internet." Hmmm….that’s like saying if you don’t want your car stolen don’t park it in the parking lot.

Fine.

I replaced the image in question with this image:

And, for me, this is rather tame. Almost mellow. Dave Daniels = mellow. Don’t laugh. It could happen. Just not today.

The next step was to try and contact the person who had made the post. This involved having to register in order to contact this person. Once done, I sent the poster this message:

Again, I was faced with no response. After a few more days and mounting hits registered to my account, I took one more step and replaced the previous tame image with something much more graphic and offensive. It’s naughty and offensive, but blurred. Click only if you aren’t easily offended. Otherwise, read on.

A couple of more days of silence and still no word and the images were still there. Then, out of the blue, I saw this instead of my images:

Yay for little victories.

And, then there are the other victories, the people who take post after post, photo after photo, and change nothing. They even leave my name all over the post and images. But they post it on their site. These are the people I really enjoy when this happens:

Click to enlarge.

And this poor guy wrote me after his account was shut down: "Dude, what’s your prob? I didn’t do anything wrong. I left your stuff as it was. I could have changed the photo and taken out your name, but I didn’t. It was all on the up and up. You’re just a #^&@%#!*."

Yeah. I am. But it’s my stuff. And I happily post it HERE on MY site for MY readers.

Thanks for following along on this long post. If you notice anything funky like missing images, broken links, etc, just send me an email to my daveknits at comcast.net address.

You’ll also notice this little line tagged onto my posts going forward: ©2008 David Taylar Daniels & Cabin Cove - All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce photographs or text without written permission

This is on the wheel now, Amethyst Mist:

©2008 David Taylar Daniels & Cabin Cove - All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce photographs or text without written permission

There are few things in life as enticing as the aroma of fresh baked bread. It brings back memories from my childhood…

In my childhood hometown we had a bread factory up near the lake, and the smell of fresh bread was always in the air all year ’round. I still remember playing kick the can on the quiet and narrow tree-lined one way street in the neighborhood with the other kids. The warm summer breezes carried the fragrant aroma of baking yeast and flour to our noses. We’d stop playing and just sniff at the air, taking in the rich bouquet of that heavenly baking bread. Imagine, more than a dozen screaming children suddenly stop making a raucous, and all turn their noses into the swirling breeze with the rich aroma of freshly baking bread.

On occasion, mom would call out to us, telling us to get in the car, we had to go to the bakery. My brother, sister and I would pile into the car all excited for the short drive over. As the car approached the bakery/factory, the aroma became stronger and stronger. Once inside, we’d take our pick of the fresh breads, all steamy inside their plastic bags. And, if we were extra-good, we each could get a fresh plain donut to take home where mom would let us powder them in powdered sugar and devour them with a tall glass of ice cold milk. Heavenly stuff.

Now, I get to make my own bread with loads of fresh herbs and spices to enjoy. And it’s still exciting to anticipate the baking of the bread as the aroma fills the house…

©2008 David Taylar Daniels & Cabin Cove - All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce photographs or text without written permission

Ah, the beauty of the Cicada.

Luckily, I didn’t step on it. I thought it was goose poop, but knew it was too pretty. Those wings really are beautiful. They have such an iridescence to them in the sunlight. Sure, they’re creepy, but they still have their beauty. As I said to a woman at work who shrieked when she saw a print of this come off the printer, “Hey, if it was shellacked and had a backing to it, some lady on Beacon Hill would wear it as a brooch to work or a soiree at the Museum of Fine Arts!” Really, She would.

©2008 David Taylar Daniels & Cabin Cove - All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce photographs or text without written permission