site update

i hope you don't mind me taking this opportunity to draw attention to some of the changes that have been made to the site in the last little while. it's not a frequent occurrence so please bear with me.

Social Networking
there is now a facebook page for this site, and a google plus page as well.

at first i was just sharing links to this site and letting the respective social network grab whatever little thumbnail was appropriate for the post in question. however, i never really liked the idea of forcing people to actually come to this site in order to view the content when it came to the RSS feed (which is why i try to make sure the content is directly viewable in things like google reader), so i made the decision instead to share the pictures (or videos when i get around to making more) directly and simply link back. that way you can enjoy the content where ever you happen to be seeing it instead of having to open a new page. animated gifs seem to be a special case (because facebook doesn't seem to like them) but for static images or youtube videos that's the process i'll be trying to follow going forward.

i haven't worked out a way to post content automatically yet (and i may not find one since i'm doing more than just sharing a link) so there will often be a pretty wide window of opportunity for people share secmeme posts themselves before i've put the content on the official pages. please feel free to keep doing so. don't wait for me, the moment may be lost by the time i get the content mirrored on FB or G+.

Merchandise
the most minor thing is that one of you asked that the "may not prevent malware" store category include stickers so i added them. it's really easy for me to add stuff like that for existing designs so feel free to make a request if i didn't include something you'd like to see.

i've also opened up a second store, this time with zazzle. i got tired of spending hours on a design only to be told by cafepress that it's not acceptable (frequently after i've already posted about it here) for some generally intellectual property related reason. not that my designs violate IP law, mind you, but since cafepress pulls shenanigans like selling your designs for their price and giving you what they think you deserve back as compensation it seems likely they can't use the DMCA's safe harbor provision to protect themselves and thus have decided to be much more restrictive about what's allowed. i'm not planning to switch over completely to zazzle at this time since zazzle doesn't have all the same things cafepress has, and zazzle doesn't let me set the mark-up to 0 (which seems bizarre to me, but maybe 0 mark-up seems bizarre to others). zazzle does seem to have some customization options for buyers that cafepress doesn't, but the opposite also seems true.

Graphics
if you do visit this site, or the facebook or google plus pages, or either of the stores you might notice i've finally come up with some actual dedicated secmeme graphics. i'm no graphic designer by any stretch of the imagination, but i am gradually becoming more comfortable with creating images from scratch rather than simply modifying existing stuff. i hope they're legible/understandable.

wow, that's a lot of words for an entry on this site. good thing i don't do it very often.