Category Archives: social media

the catnip connection

15 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in animals & pets, cats, sevilla, social media, spain, tapas, travel, trips, work

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One of the many things I love about doing the Sevilla Tapas Tours is that little “click” that sometimes happens when you meet people. And although I just met Katrina and her family in person today that “click” actually happened a few days ago when she sent me an email saying she was counting the days until her trip to Sevilla and sent me a photo of her four cats chowing down – she had found her way over to casa az and it turns out her family knew all about my cat family! And she even brought them prezzies! A whole whack of catnip toys.  🙂

And as I have promised Bianca pics of my cats playing with their new toys, here they are. Sorry that Azar is missing, but at his age he can be excused (for just about anything). Anyhow, in the middle photo you can see – typically! – that Luna and Loki are far more interested in the packaging than the toys themselves. But later they played around with them on my chair and after that on my bed, and I am sure that hours and hours of fun lie ahead for them.

Thank you Katrina, Val and Bianca for such a great gift, and also for a lovely afternoon.

connecting…

05 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in friends, social media, twitter, work

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A couple of days ago on Twitter someone I’ve known there for a couple of years recommended that someone else get in touch with me as they were coming to Sevilla this week. And so they did.

This afternoon Peter and I met with Sarah Jane Evans and her husband Richard for a bit of a tapeo and we had a great time going to a couple of my favourite spots. And just before we finished up Sarah Jane gave me this book she’d written about Seville, which was published in 1992. Very cool.

Made me think about all the great connections – and friends – I’ve made on Twitter over the years. In fact, it turned out that Sarah Jane and I have a lot of the same Twitter pals in common, probably not so surprising as they are all mostly food and wine people. Good ol’ social media!

How do you meet new people?

copyright confusion & facebook faux pas

31 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in internet, social media, websites

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Yesterday I found myself tagged on my Sevilla Tapas Facebook account in about ten photos, which then showed up in my timeline, and after that my notifications became cluttered with comments on these “photos of me” by people I don’t know. And they weren’t even photos of me, but of tapas from a local bar. So I spent about 15 minutes tracking down all the photos, removing the tags, and then wrote to the women who posted them, asking her to please not do that again. And I also wrote an entry on my Facebook timeline that said: “Please stop tagging me in photos I am not in just to promote your business. Thank you.”

I mean, it’s bad enough when people leave links on my timeline to stuff that is clearly just blatant self-promotion, and not to something that is being shared because someone thinks I’d be interested in it. But tagging people in photos like this is actually an abuse of the Facebook tagging system. It’s meant to be used to let someone know you’ve posted a photo of them on your FB page, not as an attention-seeking cheap trick to get people to look at your stuff.

Anyhoodle, my friend Del (aka WeeRascal) replied to this – probably because he doesn’t like me dissing Facebook  😉 – by referring to the collages I did of those wonderful old photos of Semana Santa in Sevilla the other day, one of which I also posted here on casa az, which have my ©azahar-sevilla.com watermark on them. He questioned the ethics of putting my copyright on other people’s photos, and at first I thought I’d done something terribly wrong. But then I realised that they were actually collages of photos I’d taken at the exhibit – a public place – and not of copyrighted images I’d found online. And well, since I wasn’t around in 1885, I reckoned it was pretty clear that I wasn’t trying to take credit for the photos. But it does seem like a bit of a grey area. What do you think? Both about the annoying Facebook tagging issue and the copyright confusion.

You can see the Facebook conversation below (click to enlarge) or click here to be taken to the Facebook post.
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awful afflelou

28 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in rants, sevilla, shopping, social media, spain, wtf?

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Exactly a week ago today I came home with my new glasses, something I was quite pleased about because I’d finally found a pair of lightweight frames that were cute and suited me. It’s always difficult finding frames to fit my wide face, mostly these days because shops only tend to stock glasses in “average sizes”. Used to be I could try on a frame and, if I liked it, ask to try it in a larger size. But I digress…

I’d gone out shopping with my friend Fourat because I wanted to get another opinion that I felt I could trust, and our second stop that morning was the Alain Afflelou store near my house. I honestly wish we’d kept going now. Before ordering the lenses for the new glasses I told the salesclerk that the frames were too tight on the right side and he said – no problem! – and that when the glasses came back with the prescription lenses they would do the final adjustments then.

Well, as you know, when I picked up the glasses and got the final adjustments done, I noticed after I got home that the lenses were no longer aligned with the frames. In fact, they were quite wonky. So the next day I went back and was surprised to be told that those particular frames couldn’t be adjusted without warping the frame. Well, not MY problem, right? And so, although I was disappointed that I’d have to keep on looking for glasses I reckoned what the heck and asked for a refund. And that’s when it ALL WENT TO HELL…

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