Chatteren

Stephen Colbert interviewing Maurice Sendak:

(Yes, I'm rewatching SG-1 lately. Hush.)

I'm checking out the websites of the authors attending COSine this weekend, so I have some idea of who they are, what they write, and how much they need my help, and wow, seriously. 1995-era GeoCities just called and wants its websites back. Yikes!

I mock because I love^†, but seriously, folks: the whole point of an author's site is to get readers to read what you've written, so give them that information. Most readers don't care about your cat, your past lives, or your obsession with Cheez-Its; we're visiting your site because we read something by you that we enjoyed and now we just want to read more of your stories.

More on this topic later. (I'm working on a presentation about it right now, as a matter of fact.)

^† I'm not just saying that: I really do love helping authors reach out to readers, and I hate seeing it done badly. It causes me physical pain every time I visit an author's site that looks like it was thrown together by the neighbor's kid or That Guy you know from work who knows web design. *rolls eyes* You get what you pay for, folks!

Here's what I ended up putting in an .htaccess file for each of the various sites I run/own/manage to participate in the SOPA/PIPA protest today:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} >0459
RewriteCond %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} <1701
RewriteCond %{TIME_YEAR}%{TIME_MON}%{TIME_DAY} =20120118
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://sopastrike.com/strike/ [R=307,NC,L]

Learn something new every day. *g*

This forwarded each site to the protest page for a certain time frame (the length of the protest, adjusted for the server's time). You could use something like that to put a site in maintenance mode, for example. Just be sure to add a RewriteCond that checks for your IP so you can get to the site to test it. ;)

I haven't checked
your Facebook status
or followed
your Twitter

on which
you were probably
announcing
big things

rather than
telling your friends
directly
in person
via email
or on the phone

Forgive me
I haven't
the time or
the attention span
to sort the dreck
from the
important stuff

—Annie Mullin
2011

(With apologies to William Carlos Williams *g*, whose original is one of my absolute favorite poems.)

If you haven't done so already, please be sure to contact your representatives and senators today and tell them to vote against SOPA/PIPA.

More information:

EFF: Stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation

Stop American Censorship

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet

Don't Censor the Net!