Another Facebook Rant

I've been travelling, so I've been logging into sites like Facebook from unusual places, so it's reasonable that it might want to verify I am who I say I am.

Facebook have come up with a verification method that sounds like a good idea in principle, but in reality is rather ill-conceived.

It asks you to identify people in photographs. This would perhaps work if people always used the site the way they are supposed to, but people do silly things like posting up pictures of them as babies and (correctly) identifying as them, or posting their cat and (wrongly) tagging it as them. I've also seen quite a few people put up a christmassy image and tag all their friends somewhere in it. Another person I know because she had my font tattooed onto her, posted the tattoo and tagged it as me (flattering, but a little confusing).

To make matters worse, I went through a phase where random people would friend me and I'd friend them back. This was okay for a while, though when my friend list got over 300 people I realised it was time to be more selective.

Also, I have plenty of Facebook friends that I haven't seen in the flesh since we were at school together over twenty years ago. Some still look more or less the same, but some bear no resemblance, and the chance of me identifying from a recent photo is slim.

You don't have to get all the images right, but even allowing mistages, the chances of me identifying enough friends when you rule out baby photos, pet photos, people I don't really know, and photos that are just wrong, are at best hit and miss.

Anything wrong with trusting me to pick a secure password in the first place?

Gah!

Te Papa Museum, Wellington

Originally published at James's GUFF Trip. Please leave any comments there.

Te Papa Tongarewa, The Museum of New Zealand, to give it its proper name, is a huge concrete building on the waterfront in central Wellington.

Entering, I find the cloak room who kindly look after my coat, and don't even charge for the privilege.

At the information desk the helpful assistant suggests the best way to see the museum is to take the lift to the top floor and work my way down.

So starting on the sixth floor, which has an exhibition of pottery by Peter Stichbury, an artist from Auckland. I can't say pottery is my thing (though I did a little in art class at school) but I did find it interesting.

Moving down to the fifth floor (the sixth had a relatively small exhibition area), artworks from many New Zealand artists, from both Maori and European traditions were on display. It's quite interesting to see how both have added influence from the other into their works over the years.

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Aussiecon Four Programme

Originally published at James's GUFF Trip. Please leave any comments there.

The Aussiecon Four Programme is now online, and I have to admit there are some excellent items on it. I'm looking forward to quite a few items, though I already know I won't be able to get to everything I want to. The programme can be found here.

I'm on a total of seven items, which are:

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Anyone Free in Wellington tonight (Wednesday)?

Originally published at James's GUFF Trip. Please leave any comments there.

Apologies for short notice, but we're having dinner tonight at Big Thumb on Allen St. This is just off Courtenay Place.

See location here.

Meeting there at about 6:30. All welcome.