Skydiving School

Well, I shuffled off my latest postcard, and it's already generated a few hits on the site (at least, the timing is right for all the extra hits). Always exciting to see. I'm calling the illustration "Skydiving School" for (I hope) obvious reasons.

The image is over there, on the left, and here's the page I put together for the people who want to go green and see it electronically: http://www.nora-thompson.com/postcard.html.

My love letter to Spammers

I seem to be attracting spammers with the update of my website, so I've gone through it page by page and separated all my email references from the mailto links that made them so convenient.

Every. Single. Page.

Spammers suck. And, they think I'm stupid.

So, to try to avoid further junk clogging my inbox, I've changed every email address from @ to (at) and . to (dot) in the hopes that my future contacts will be living, breathing human beings rather than the internet freeloaders I seem to be attracting. It's unfortunate, because the people I want on my site won't have the convenience of messaging me with a simple click of an email link anymore.

My love letter to my most faithful spammers:

Dear Lovely Spammer You,

I'm not interested in your services. If I were, I would have looked you up already. Sorry.

I'm not interested in your selling my email address to your friends as viable and working, and I refuse to open your email alerting you that it is, enticing as the subject line may be. (As an aside, maybe you should find new friends. They're dragging you down.)

I'm also not interested in waking the virus that you've painstakingly taken the time to write and spread. I just don't have a block of time big enough where I can pencil that in. Sorry you did all that for nothing.

I work for a living. Maybe you should look into it.

Love,
Nora

New site design

I just uploaded a completely new website for The Rots (http://www.the-rots.com), and I'm planning on using the same styles and layout for my kid's illustration site when I get there. I'll be changing the colors to go with the branding I've already designed, but the fonts and layout of the new site will be very similar to The Rots'. I'll have some other changes too, just because I won't be creating pages for the same things, but there will be enough similarities that I'll be able to use the general idea.

I spent a long time getting these pages together and working. My original site was built completely in Flash (http://www.the-rots.com/old), but that was years before Steve Jobs decided the iPads he wanted to sell in the future wouldn't include the ability to view Flash. And I, like so many others, really need to listen to Steve. The portfolio parts on my kid's site are still in Flash, so I need to get those little guys up to speed.

I also had to build separate style sheets for tablets and other mobile devices, because those also weren't much of a factor when I built the original site. But it's finished, and I'll tweak if necessary, and the next step will be optimizing images for www.nora-thompson.com.

Unfortunately, that's probably going to take a while. I'll post here when it's up and running.

Website Listing Service scam

I don't like getting junk snail mail. It's annoying and not very earth friendly. But I got a piece of junk mail the other day that's a little worse than annoying. First, here's the front and back:

It looks like a legitimate bill, doesn't it? Except for that print in the middle of the front page that says "THIS IS NOT A BILL," it would be hard to tell that it wasn't. They've even perforated the bottom of the page to send with your "remittance." This page and a return envelope were the only things in the mailing, which makes it look even more like a bill.

A few things:

1. You people suck. If you want to get business, how about doing a great job at what you do.
2. Do you really think I would patronize a business that's trying to con me into using their business? Those aren't the kind of people I want to deal with.
3. The name of the company is Web Listings Inc. Their email address is info@web-listings.net. I'm not saying you should spam them or anything. Just know who they are when you're the one they contact.