The Last Candle

While recently browsing the much-neglected T*LC gallery, I found the following comment under a picture titled “Eat Yam!”, taken during Christmas 2003:

From: ryan_dickson2@[domain] (Fri Oct 28 19:13:40 2005)
Hi, I am working on an educational installation for the new Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco (www.moadsf.org). We are interested in possible using your photo titled “Eat yam!”, if possible. Please contact me at ryan_dickson2@[domain] for further information. Thanks!

Huh. Needless to say, I didn’t receive an e-mail from this commenter, so I’m assuming either he didn’t find the image through the front page or the blog, both which do (or did, in the case of the top level of the domain) have my e-mail address, or that the comment was left by a hungry web crawler.

Mr. Ryan_Dickson2 has, according to Google, attempted on at least one other occassion (see the comments at the bottom) to contact photographers regarding the Museum’s web page. The entreaties to borrow photographs are very similar to the one that showed up in my gallery — the only difference are the titles, of course.

The evidence there leads me to believe that this was the work of some sort of bot or spider — maybe I should check my domain stats for instances of the YamCatcher crawler. Having the commenter represented by a bot would explain the request to borrow the photo: no meatspace-based organism in their right mind would use a goofy, poorly-shot photo like “Eat Yam!” for such a solemn topic and web site.

Finally — and I had to look this up — but the “African Diaspora” are those with African ancestry who have, in short, taken to nest in other parts of the world, with most of the diaspora consisting of their anecstors arriving by slavery. (Wikipedia has “the long” of it.) Not much to shed light on the yam issue, but there’s the word of the day: diaspora.

Several days ago I noted on this very blog the severe inadequacy of Chelsea State Bank’s — my local bank’s — web site. (Easter egg: right-click and “View Image” on the main image, or save it separately off the page. Boom! Large and in charge! Jeez.)

The front page of the bank’s site had said since early this month that a new design would be introduced sometime in Januray, along with a new online banking service (for the record, the current one is adequate) and some new security stuffs. Fine and dandy, but January’s gettin’ old pretty quick, and the page still is lookin’ the same old shade of ugly and unusable.

The only reason I currently keep a local bank is to deposit paper checks. A safety deposit box is in my future sometime, however, for which the bank would be a helpful utility (can anywhere else store safety deposit boxes?). But for the past six months, I just need a place to grudingly cashier a few old school monetary paper chits that’re slipped my way every few months.

USAA, my other, non-local (i.e., Texas-based) bank, offers to have checks mailed to them, but I’d prefer to have the cash stored away locally rather than waiting several days for my money to be ponied across several state borders. UPS offers an overnight deposit service, but I keep losing the darn UPS-particular envelopes. If only there was an easier way using the facilities I already have…

‘Lo, there a beautiful tech blooms: USAA now allows check deposits by scanning the check and sending in the image. Literally scanning, as in using a ole’ home computer scanner, and then firing the resultant image using the grand ole’ Internets. Wow.

The service is summarized in the NetBanker 2.0 blog:

[In December] USAA, which serves many of its 5.6 million members remotely, announced the availability of its Deposit@home remote deposit capture service. It’s the first major remote deposit capture service geared towards consumers. There are no fees for the service.

Previous services have been targeted to businesses who could justify the $300 to $700+ cost of a dedicated on-location paper-check scanner (see prior coverage here). USAA’s service USAA remote deposit in action works with any 200 dpi or better scanner hooked to a Windows 2000/XP computer, so households with a dedicated scanner or multi-function printer will not be required to add hardware.

This aptly-named Deposit@Home has been gradually rolled out since November, so I’m a little behind the online banking curve (give me a break — I’m new at bank blogging), but this service is awesome. Besides blowing away the sole use I had for Chelsea State Bank, the new service sounds like a terrifically functional, useful and graceful remedy to that long-standing pain of dealing with checks without a third party. Plus it’s a nice bit of tech, even it doesn’t use any outstanding advances, although that arguably makes it even better.

Now I just need a digital solution for a safety deposit box. And to get someone to write me a check.

For future (very near-future) reference, examine this, the metal DVD case for the excellent TV miniseries Band of Brothers:

Band of Brothers was released several years ago. The special edition of the Korean film Oldboy was released much more recently — either a month ago or a couple weeks, when it was released or when I first saw it, respectively — but it captures on its front cover — also a metallic DVD tin — a vaguely familiar scene:

Very nice. The scene portrayed on the Oldboy cover is the famous “Corridor” fight, a single-shot four-minute scene where the protagonist, armed with only a claw hammer and his appendages, fights against about thirty thugs who are constantly bonking him with planks of wood and, in one case, literally stabbing him in the back.

And thanks to the copyright-infringing beauty that is YouTube, here’s the clip of Oldboy’s Corridor scene. (Note: the clip isn’t gory, but it’s very violent.)

It’s here, it’s here!

I have to finish Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin first (which is a fine piece of work itself), but the new Phoenix Wright game is here! HUZZAH!

A zested lemon (zestless? dezested?) looks cute and a little sad at the same time.

Peals of derision from the lemon’s nearby clothed brethren casade down upon his cold new nakedness. Oh, the shame must be unpearable!

Even though the de-rinding spectacle would have made the seedy and squeamish turn their pulpy heads, the poor lemon’s ex-vestments were applied towards a very good cause in the end.

As Martha said, to make a batch of damn good scones, you’ve gotta zest a lemon or two. Or something like that.