Insult to injury - another Blog uses some of my posts and gets way more hits than I do

A few things to blog about have cropped up just recently, although I am struggling to fit them in. Once again Patch Tuesday came by last week. An event I don’t look forward to as it frequently leads to problems.  I maintain three computers, my Desktop computer and a couple of laptops. Generally the laptops aren’t too much trouble. The machine I have problems with is my aging Dell. Of course “aging” is a relative term and it is only od in terms of computers. Having said that I have upgraded it to Windows 7 and also installed a 2Gb RAID disk system. (Which is actually 2 x 2Gb drives where one drive mirrors the other so that in the event of a disk crash I can recover.

Over the last three Tuesdays I have had BSOD problems twice, on the Wednesday when I actually perform the updates.  The last one was OK though, so I let this update happen in one go (14 plus one optional). Every thing seemed ok, the machine had to be re-booted, but that also happened worked. A couple of hours later the machine just stopped – the display seemed to freeze and although I could move the cursor around it wouldn’t do anything. I then had to manually power-down and then on re-boot the computer has to check the two RAID drives for consistency. This turns the machine from a fairly responsive computer into porridge. You can use it, you just end up fighting for access to the disk because the two component disks are being checked.

Two days later – the same problem occurred, although on re-boot it didn’t re-check the disks. Normally I leave the machine to it when that happens. It is just too frustrating.

What I did find myself doing was idly looking through some of my store of pictures on Picasaweb. This is where the pictures in my Posts are stored. I have long gone over the free limit and pay Google for 80Gb of space. Currently I have used up around   30Gb of space and with the average picture at about 5Mb it implies I have around 6,000 pictures stored. So it is a pleasant trip down memory lane. 

If you’ve ever used Picasaweb you will know that it gives you a count of the number of times a picture has been viewed. The numbers vary and although this Blog is read regularly I haven’t quite made the Top 50 Cycling Blogs. Typically I get something like 5,000-10,000 page views a month according to the Blogger tools. So each picture probably gets viewed 50 to 100 times. There are exceptions, anything dealing with the CGB (Cambridgeshire Guided Busway) gets more.

This one got a couple of hundred views.

Flooding on the Cycle Way on the CGB 2012

And this one has gotten just under 6,000 views

The CGB in Use: a bus and some cyclists

A very popular picture is this one with over 12,000 views

Cycling through Wicken Fen on the NCN 51

Cycle parking at the Cambridge Station is also quite popular, this one has over 500 views:

Crap Cycle Parking Cambridge Railway Station

So imagine my surprise when I saw this one.

Daffodils near Upware

It has had over 130,000 views (and climbing by 100s a day), which is way out of my league in terms of hits. So I used Google Image search, where you give Google Image a picture to search from rather than text. Surprise, surprise, my picture had been ripped off. (Now there are occasions when other Bloggers will use a picture and acknowledge that use – which I don’t mind – providing it is not a commercial use.). Well in this case there is another “Blog” that is not just using the occasional picture. No they are ripping off complete posts, I presume to make money. They rip of the text/pictures but stick their own sidebars with ads.  So a random Blog sticks my stuff in and gets way more hits than I do – that is adding insult to injury. What is worse the post has “automotive” in the title.

I will have to investigate what I need to do – the Blog is another Google Blogspot blog so I guess I need to report it to Google.