Internet Troll Strikes Again

Well, they did it again. That whoever-with-too-much-time-needs-a-day-job troll who swiped my original blogspot sub domain has added more content. And, as before, the content is mine, taken from the ever useful internet archive. Shown here:

I love the Wayback Machine!

Seriously, that hair.

That's me, when I first started blogging all those eons ago. I had only three children then, and short hair! I remember designing the key graphic from photos I found on Flickr (Creative Commons, of course) and spending hours and hours and hours staring at lines of code, deciphering it like an archeologist studying a stone tablet. I was so proud of that little blog. And it served me well. I got my first editorial contact through it (hi Mick!) and developed a following - in a genre I no longer write in, but that's beside the point. It seems my old, defunct posts have been resurrected by this, this *spit* hacker.

One post stolen still lives on my current blog: this one. Who knows, maybe I'll bring back the others just for kicks.

The thing I don't understand is why? A few posts link to weird little websites, and the same weird websites (from the same IP address, interestingly) are linked in the sidebar. I'd assumed the thief was using my content to drive traffic to real businesses, that actually sell something, thus earning, like, you know, real money? Because hello, trolling the internet archive for posts from 2006 on some random mother-of-now-five's old blog and copy/pasting them to one's own hijacked site is really time consuming. And if you're not making money from it, then why do it? To troll me? Because s/he is bored? Incapable of writing his/her own posts? Mentally ill? All of the above?

Maybe I should be flattered. I mean I know I'm a Totally Awesome writer and everything, but maybe I'm awesomer than I thought. Maybe I'm so amazingly brilliant this Ukranian-Panamanian-MN-dweller just couldn't help himself from, uh, helping himself to my words. That must be it. Right? I mean, I'd steal this. Totally.

Click to enlarge and read the posts. Or, maybe not.

Because I know between nursing the baby and searching for another child's lost wallet, and responding to emails from my editors and driving my teenager to orientation and trying to get my toddler to please god just poop already, I really have time to be emailing my lawyer friend. So to this emorphous Whoever (Whomever?): take my intellectual property off your site. Please.

On the upside, the nostalgia of browsing the Wayback Machine is just. So. Amazing. Like this:

Did I mention I love the Wayback Machine?

An Update of Paprika, Pepperplate and other Cookbook-Recipe Apps

Once upon a time I was trying to find a recipe I knew my grandmother had sent me in an email. I thought I'd saved it in a Pages doc somewhere, or maybe it was still in Gmail, or on an archive disk. Or maybe ... As I dug through my computer files, I realized I had at least a dozen folders of bookmarks with Must Try or Recommended recipes, eats I never remembered when I was doing my bi-monthly meal planning. I needed a way to keep my cyber-recipes organized and all in one place. Obviously my Pages doc wasn't working for me anymore. So off to Google I went, in search of anything that could help me organize this culinary mess.

One of my new favorites: Cauliflower Pizza Crust!

About the same time I got my first tablet, a little Android thing for Mother's Day that broke in the first few weeks. But I discovered Pepperplate had an app as well as online recipe box. I set it up, and continued to use it with my inherited-from-my-son first gen iPad, and then with my current iPad Mini. I had to do most of my organizing via my MacBook Pro, however, for the simple reason that Pepperplate's app doesn't allow you to add recipes. An annoyance I could work around, although it slowly grew more and more annoying. If only they'd make a few changes to the app! But Pepperplate hadn't had an update for their app in a long time, if ever, and the service is free. Would it disappear from cyberspace, taking all my recipes with it? What other options did I have? So I did what any OCD pregnant lady would do, and started looking.

Some of the main players I discovered are Yummly, Allrecipes, Evernote Food (or something like that - I'm not into the whole Evernote world), BigOven, Pepperplate and Paprika. I have specific needs and wants for a recipe organizer, so while I downloaded Allrecipes and Yummly, I didn't really play with them very much. They don't meet the minimum requirements of: Must be able to add my own recipes/edit the recipes I keep, Must have a meal-planning feature, Must be available offline because, believe it or not, I'm not always connected to the internet. I actually really liked Yummly and Allrecipes for finding new meals, so I'll probably keep them around, but they won't be my go-to apps for cooking or meal planning (and I could just as easily browse their websites so when my iPad is full, they'll go bye-bye).

I posted earlier, my initial thoughts. Now my update: I am still using Paprika, have not looked at Pepeprplate once and deleted the rest off my devices! Paprika wins!