And now all the Pinterest images I’ve embedded on all of my blogs are toast. Taken down for copyright violations, no doubt (Not by me — well, not directly. People aren’t supposed to Pin images unless they own copyright or it’s public domain). I’m not angry — how can I get angry with a service that I haven’t paid to use? Angry, no. Annoyed… Oh yes.

You see, I got lazy for a couple of months with my various blogs I was running. Pinterest seemed quicker for for finding cool shots and its embed script was just as easy to use as Flickr HTML embed code (though I could have done without the DIV tags). I would embed an image, throw in a witty line and publish. Bam! My readers knew I was phoning it in (as proven by my declining subscriber numbers), but I figured it was better than nothing.

Not better than nothing, actually. No, dozens of blog posts with witty images and no image to reference just look like a bunch of ugly non-sequiturs. My laziness had consequences after all. If it was a few images affected, no problem! But now they’re ALL down. Bleah.

Now, the same problem can happen with Flickr — in theory. But it doesn’t. In all the years I’ve used Flickr, I’ve only seen this kind of thing happen twice — and both times, it was because I’d temporarily made some of my own photo sets hosting those images Private (Now all of my photos are public by default).

I’m pleased to see that reports of Flickr‘s death (by Yahoo’s criminal negligence) are premature. It will once again be my only go-to site for grabbing photos for blog posts.

Sure, Instagram is my fave app for taking shots from my phone — but I still send them to Flickr to organize them. When I take photos from my digital camera, I upload the bunch to Flickr. It’s still a great service for organizing, tagging and viewing photos — which I just wouldn’t get by storing them on Dropbox.

So long, Pinterest. Flickr, may your relaunch be awesome.

One thing I think I forgot to mention: I’ve been writing new fiction with my friend, Rob, over at The Island of Misfit Stories. I’m pretty happy with what I’ve been writing and Rob’s stories are great, too. We choose a different theme every week; read the stories and see if you can guess what it is!

Some of my latest stories:

• A Kiss in the Garden. Actually a poem. It’s probably the sweetest thing I’ve ever written, which isn’t saying much. I don’t usually do sweet.
• Banana Republic. A vaguely Lovecraftian tale of scary stuff in the jungle.
• Ghost Clown. Scooby Doo meets Elmore Leonard.

Meanwhile, over at The Propagandist:

• Cops Intimidate Jews for Talking About Islamic Violence Against Jews. In Canada. Seriously.

I recently moved into a shared office space downtown. It’s awesome. Just getting used to office building etiquette.

Seriously, people. There’s an open-door button right there. It’s not hard to find…

Northern Voice, like winter, is coming. Earlier, though. Get your tickets!

And get ‘em fast! Discounted Early Bird tickets for Northern Voice, Canada’s first (and arguably, best) weblogging social media conference are still available until end of day — after that, you’re paying full price (though really, even at full price they’re a steal).

Every year since 2005, the organizers have created an event that was inexpensive, informal, and accessible to techies and newbies alike. The goal of Northern Voice is to offer a friendly environment which is open to all who love technology. (That’s you, right?) We emphasize the personal nature of the conference by encouraging people to find their voice and share their experiences online.

Buy your tickets today! Check us out at www.northernvoice.ca, on Facebook, Twitter, or on Google+.

Stan Lee answering a fan’s question about how DC comics influenced Marvel comics. “They influenced us a lot! We would read their comics and then do the opposite.”

In a later digression, he talked about the Marvel name. “I loved advertising and I understood the importance of a great brand name. We were originally Atlas comics, but once we had some success with our titles, I said we should change the name to Marvel. It’s such a great word from advertising. You can make great calls to action from it. ‘Make mine marvel!’ ‘Marvel’s mightiest heroes.’ ‘Welcome the Marvel age of comics.’ Shortly after we changed our name, our biggest competition, National Allied Publications, decided to change their name too — to D.C.” — he said with obvious relish.

Michael Rooker from the Walking Dead answering a fan’s question about whether he’d read the comic books before he starred in the TV show as the loveable redneck Merle Dixon. (I wasn’t taking notes, but this is the answer I recall): “Yeah, I read it. And then I called up my agent and told him, ‘this cat ain’t even in the comic books! What are we doing all this for?”

Cosplay awesomeness. Some of my favorite costumes (and you know who you are) — Ash from Army of Darkness, complete with chainsaw hand, Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time, the Phoenix/Jean Grey twins, the Black Cat, the Black Widow, Thor, Captain America, the C3PO droid wearing the “Ladies, this is the droid you’re looking for” sign and of course, my best bud, the Storm Trooper.

* One note about photos. I’d anticipated taking about 400 photos from this event and blasting Flickr, but decided against it. First, I’ve learned that it’s impossible to “live in the moment” while taking tons of photos and I really did want to experience this event. Second, because Fan Expo Vancouver was so popular and crowded, people would almost invariably walk in front of whatever picture I was taking (I hate taking posed photos and prefer to get spontaneous shots — really too difficult in this case). Finally, I was sort of counting on other attendees to get the shots I wanted and post them on social media sites like Flickr and Facebook. While I did take a few shots at Fan Expo, all of the photos soon to be embedded in this post were shared by my fellow geeks.

The answer to the first question is “way the fuck over on the other side of the planet” — and the USA has fuck-all to do with that piddly little Russian would-be breakaway territory.

The second question could be answered thus: “The terrorists in Boston who hail from Chechny did not kill Americans because of some murderous ideology based on Chechyan nationalism. In all probability, they murdered Americans because of a murderous religious ideology — namely Islam.”

From my latest feature in The Propagandist:

From the impression you got from the “Please don’t let it be a Muslim” crowd, you might think that they’d actually be gloating if the bombers were Midwestern white supremacists rather than the Chechnyan Muslims they’ve turned out to be.

It’s almost like they were counting on this case to nullify the memory of hundreds of other jihadist operations already rolled up inside the USA — not to mention the tens of thousands of Islam-inspired suicide bombings, assassinations and murderous mob riots around the globe just since 9/11. “If this one case of terrorism wasn’t committed by Muslims, then we can wipe the slate clean — we can finally ignore the jihad threat and focus on the real threat: neo-Nazism or Che Guevara-ism or Templar Knight-ism! Phew! That’s a relief!”

Now I don’t.

At first, I thought I was getting lazy. I realized I’m just getting better at communicating in fewer words.

• United Nations Ignores Slavery
• George Galloway Walks Out Of Debate Because Opponent Is Israeli
• Jihadists Launch 50 Attacks in Thailand
• Reexamining the Scene of an Act of Terrorism
• Who Should the Next Pope Be?

Confusion to our enemies!