eViting Terror into Your Inbox

People know I have intensely disliked eVite (no, they, like MySpace, are not link worthy) from Day One. Most people just chalk it up to me being crazy and a pure Internetist, but it is much more than that.

Thankfully, LW e-mailed me a NYT article that kind of lays out the reasons why “eVite sucks”. Some selected quotes from the article:

I want to be grateful for an invitation, but I feel harassed. Unlike the sweet, promising envelopes that sometimes arrive with the real mail, tulips in the weeds of fliers for gym memberships, Evites mix the forced cheer of advertising with the stern bullying of debt-collecting. It’s a party! First notice. Second notice. Where’s your R.S.V.P.?! We’d love to see you! Late fee.

and

Let’s take stock of where Diller has left the partying world. Evite commodifies hospitality. It co-opts the benevolence of hosts by using them to drive traffic to an ad platform. It makes would-be guests seem boorish if they’re reluctant to conduct their social lives on the Web. And it turns every party into one of those shell-game publicity “events” where Star X has to believe that Star Y is coming in order to show up herself.

Thankfully, I have at least one friend (SD) who spares me the horror of eVites and sends me a personalized e-mail with the relevant information. To the others, I always include an “eVite sucks” conclusion to my note.

Starting now, though, I also plan to include a TinyURL link to this NYT article, and I encourage you to do the same:

http://tinyurl.com/4z73o8

Orange You Tired of Bad Oranges?

When was the last time you had a good orange? Go ahead, comment.

Out of my most recent bunch, one of the five were good (but not great), and that is better than usual. I have not had an excellent orange in years.

Is something happening to our orange supply? Am I choosing the wrong type of oranges (usually Naval, but not always)?

Today, someone recommended I try Blood Oranges, because “they’re the best oranges!” Coincidentally, KL encouraged me to buy a Blood Orange tree, so we could trade citrus (my research on the matter is still pending).

During the last few months I have also been disappointed in apples. On the flip side, Ecuadorian organic bananas have been incredible but difficult to time due to their short window of proper ripeness.

Character Problems with Zenphoto

I am currently fiddling with an install of zenphoto, mainly to replace the incredibly slow, bloated, and annoying Gallery2 install I have for my photos (yes, my friends may stop clapping now). During the aforementioned fiddling, I received an error when trying to save Edits to a specific album. The error is this:

Error: The albums director () cannot be found.

A Google search on the matter did not help, as most people had problems with their database location. For that reason, I wanted to post for future users that my problems was a result of the “+” character in an album name. Once I removed the plus characters, everything worked fine.

If I help even one person…