To Be [Creepy] or Not To Be [Creepy]

One interesting thing that happened during my recent vacation made me question my definition of being creepy. I'll explain what happened first, and then what I did about it. The latter is what I'm wondering if is creepy. Story time:

During the airplane ride to Venice, I sat several seats away from girl who I'd never seen before. This isn't really significant because the entire plane was filled with guys and girls I'd never seen before. We both got off the plane and if I'd never seen her again then she would have been just another random person. But I did. The next day, in fact, as I was boarding the ship. I pointed her out to my wife and said, 'Hey look, she was on the airplane with us!'. Interesting coincidence, I wonder if we'll see her a third time.

Well, we did. Then a fourth. Then a fifth. Then a sixth. Seemed like every day we'd see airplane girl somewhere around the ship, or around town in the ports we visited. Which was kind of amazing because we were talking private tours with a private tour guide, not the ship-booked tours. Couple days before the end of the cruise, we had sighting 14. My wife and I were taking great amusement in watching this number grow, and I felt kind of odd that this person I'd never met, never talked to, and would never see again, had become such a major part of each day. Where will we see airplane girl today? So I decided to let her in on the game.

I walked up and said (paraphrasing) .... Hello! We've never met, but you were on the same airplane as me coming over. My wife and I keep seeing you around, over and over ... 14 times in fact. It's kind of become a game, where will we see airplane girl today. I felt kind of weird though, talking about you, with you having no idea, so I figured, what the heck, I'll never see you again, the cruise is almost over, I'll say hi. So hello!

She actually took it quite well. She seemed surprised, but laughed and we talked for a few minutes about where we were from, and how much fun the cruise had been, etc. And then I took my leave. I did see her one more time, bring the total airplane girl sightings up to 15, but she didn't notice me (despite passing within 2ft), and so I know nothing more about her than that she too is from the USA.

So my question is, would it have been more creepy to continue to keep track of how many times we saw her, without telling her? Or was it more creepy to go up and talk to a random stranger and say, hi, I've been watching you. I'm not sure. But it doesn't really matter I guess, because I'm the type of person that will go up and say hi, 99% of the time. Also if by some cosmic coincidence you happen to read this, airplane girl, I'm sorry if I creeped you out, but thank you for making my vacation more enjoyable.

Image Sharing Online

How do you share your images with friends and family? If someone asked me years ago, I'd have said Photobucket. I was the only person I knew who used it, but that didn't bother me. Problem is that Photobucket got increasing slow/laggy. Way too much scripting and fancy animations, and the design wasn't anything special either. Plus it cost money to get the full capabilities. So where else to turn .... Flickr? Picasa? Truth is, I stopped using photo sharing sites entirely. Facebook happened. I can share images there, much more easily. I don't have to worry about who will see the images, and I can sort into albums. So that is where I ended up for a while.

As time has gone on though, I've become somewhat disillusioned with Facebook. The interface for viewing could be nicer, and I can't sort into sub-albums. Google+ Photos has a spectacular interface, and there's a program to bulk upload. But again, no sub-albums. However, there's a new (or shall I say reborn) player in town. Flickr.

I used to hate Flickr. The design, frankly, sucked. However, it got a complete makeover recently (thank you Marissa Mayer!):



More importantly, I can organize photos into albums AND sub-albums. This means that I can create a 2014 Cruise album, with photos organized into albums inside based on the day/location. One for Rome, one for Athens, one for Istanbul, etc etc.

No I'm Not Dead

Yeah it's been almost three weeks, but don't worry, I'm still around. Life has just gotten really busy (Work, getting ready for school, a new g/f). But it's been fun. Catstache is on it's way, we're halfway through designing and building our first website. (Which I'll talk about more later).

The main topic of this post is about online presence. My own specifically. My full name is Andrew Z Mercer. So how do I go about starting a personal website about myself? I could choose andrewzmercer.com. That's a bit long. andrewmercer.com, andymercer.com, azmercer, amercer.com. So many to choose from. Plus, several are already taken.

The best bet is to wait until there's a good deal on cheap domain names, and then grab them all, and have 'em auto forward to the one I want to use primarily. So I'd pick andrewmercer.com. Then if someone goes to andymercer.com, they land on my website at andrewmercer.com.

The biggest problem is as mentioned above, the best ones are already taken. But hardly used well. AndyMercer.com for example is a single page in dedication to another Andy Mercer, who died in '08. AndrewMercer.com is a blank white page. The latter especially, isn't really being used. The key then, is just grab what is available now, and then over the next few years be watchful and when something pops up, grab it too. URLs are pretty cheap to maintain.