Saturday 27 September 2014

Another possibility

As I described in the previous blog people happily nick things from the internet, and I am the last one to say I never did it. Let he who is without sin… But there are other ways as wel.

Saint-Vincent 2011 - Saint-Ythaire
An American sent me in May 2014 the following email:
I'm working on a documentary film called American Wine Story (http://thewinemovie.com), and I was wondering if we might be able to use one of your photos (with credit) in our film project. It's a photo of a group of people carrying a St. Vincent statue, and it would illustrate one of the interviews.
Of course I consented, and I even had to sign a form saying I was agreeing to let them use my pictures.
Around the same time I received a similar question concerning a picture I took of the interior of a church. I had taken several pictures just before major renovation works started. They had found my pictures on the internet; they were going to be used to illustrate a booklet about Romanesque churches around Buxy. And also this time I consented. My name is mentioned on the last page of the book, together with the other people who contributed. Which proves that you can use other’s work without stealing it!

Saint-Martin-du-Tartre
Information about Saint-Vincent and Romanesque churches can also be found on the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle.

Saturday 13 September 2014

You only have yourself to blame

wordprocessor
I have always been an advocate for using software for what it was built for. Do you want to write a letter? Use a word processor. Do you have some calculations to make? Spreadsheets are built to that purpose. Would you like to catalogue your books? A database program is an excellent tool for that! I always frowned on those creating lists in Word or Excel, or cataloguing data in Excel (one hardly sees anybody making calculations in Access!).
One should not try to be more Catholic than the Pope, hence using blog software only to write blogs is a bit over the top.


Spreadsheet
One does not create a new website every time one wants to publish something on the internet? Or does one? Talking of opportunism or hypocrisy!
The funny thing is that blogs are more or less outlawed. When I see a blog that I find interesting, I link to it from my own blog pages without blinking an eye. In the same way I sometimes find a link to my own blogs (like this one); no offence taken!
However, I have also used blog software to write “blogs” (I call them “descriptive” blogs) which do not really have a general character, but are more meant as an extension of our own website. Little stories about restaurants, tourist attractions around here, descriptions of the touristic infrastructure in the area would make our website even heavier than it already is.
Database
And blog software is a very handy tool for writing and updating articles for those who have hardly any knowledge of html codes, Java script, etc.
Still, linking through to one of those “descriptive” blogs without batting an eyelid comes across as different to linking to a “normal” blog. That is no doubt caused by the fact that I did quite some research for the“descriptive” blogs, as opposed to the “narrative” blogs, which have a far more informal character.
To give an example: I spent a lot of energy on my “descriptive” blog about tourism around Cormatin; everything I wrote about I have seen and/or investigated with my own eyes. The same goes for descriptions of restaurants, and cycle and walking tracks around here.

link 3, 6 (no source) & 7
When I accidentally found links to 2 of those chapters on somebody else’s “website” (built with blog software!), even without mentioning the source, and one link to the proper tourist page of our own website, was my first thought :”Are they too bloody lazy to do some investigation by themselves?”. But again, blogs are more or less outlawed, hence complaining is not really an option.
Having said that, just asking for permission beforehand, or at least mentioning where the information came from afterwards is obviously not something that comes naturally with some people.
A blog I can link to without batting an eyelid is this one (click here).