I was having a real problem there for a while with foreign people snagging my tweety, but it seems to have ended now.

I posted some time ago about Twitter, and how much I like it and that you'd like it too if you'd only give in and use it.  I thought a picture of the cartoon character "Tweety Bird" would be appropriate, so I did the honorable thing.. I did a Google image search and stole it.  I say it's honorable because I actually SAVED IT from whatever website it was on, before uploading it to my blog host and using it in the body of the post.

Someone out there, in some foreign country, and with a VERY POPULAR website or blog, who uses funny looking letters to write, is lazier than I am.. they just hotlink their images, and they did that to my Tweety Bird.

Suddenly I was getting like 3 or 4 hits PER MINUTE just to that image.. meaning that whatever website or blog it was on was calling for it to display.  I use StatCounter to keep track of these things, but I couldn't pinpoint the site using the image because the info just wasn't there.  But the various ISPs that called for it all had funny letters below them that looked like this - Görsel küçültülmüş olabilir ve telif hakkı korunuyor olabili - so they all came from someplace where people keep goats tied up out front, or possibly even in their huts.. but I doubt they let them lie on the sofa.  I guess people in those goat countries are really fascinated by little yellow cartoon birds because, I'm serious, the hits rolled in at about 2 to 3 per minute, 24 hours a day.  I mentioned to coffeesister that I wished I was getting that many actual hits to my blog from real blog readers, to which she responded, "No you don't, because your head would explode."  Yeah, she's got a point.

I solicited some advice from twittererrresrs on my twitter thingy, and most of them suggested what I'd thought of already.. "replace the Tweety Bird Pic with something really raunchy and give it the same name."  So I Googled "goat with huge erection" and actually got back several images to use, but my stupid host won't allow me to do that because when I upload a graphic it amends an additional number set to it, so that tweetybird.jpg becomes 003464tweetybird.jpg.  I ended up just changing the name of the pic altogether, from tweetybird.jpg to tb2.jpg or something, and they came back and snagged it again, so I had to take it off completely.

But the hits just kept on rolling.. for DAYS.. and it messed up my stats, rendering them completely useless.  Goat people were after the Tweety Bird en masse, but not getting it.. it'd return a "no image found".. but it didn't stop until precisely 6:32PM PST yesterday, which must have been the moment someone took it off whatever site that was, or Google did something about it.

Why on earth would someone just hotlink a pic anyway?  If the hosting site changes it to a "goat with huge erection" because they don't host with a STUPID HOST that prevents such things, and you have an aroused goat showing up where the cartoon pic for your kiddie website is supposed to be, you could be in trouble.  You might get lawsuits and angry parents.  You might get kicked off YOUR hosting service and end up on the street begging for a host from just anyone.  No, it's much better to just steal images outright by SAVING THEM and then UPLOADING THEM to your own host.. that way you're guaranteed to not have any unexpected porn goats and you have greater control of your content, to which I can only add..

..Görsel küçültülmüş olabilir ve telif hakkı korunuyor olabili!