Yeah, so, you may have noticed that I've exceeded the bandwidth limit on my free Photobucket image hosting account, resulting in literally every single image on this site being suddenly unavailable. I'm a little annoyed, because I was not actually aware that I had a 10-gigabyte-per-month limit, but also kind of impressed, because I've hit the ceiling on my 10gb-a-month limit. So, um, thanks? Anyway, the monthly counter resets on the 21st, but hopefully I'll have a solution to this problem in place before then, so just hang in there.
UPDATE #1: So I've done a little bit of research and discovered the cause of the traffic max-out: some clueless idiot of a blogger linked directly to one of my images, which caused such an insane spike in traffic that it killed the remainder of my monthly bandwidth. Seriously... just look at this spike. I went from a couple hundred daily views of various images to 12,682 views of a single image (the Tintin in R'lyeh one, if you're curious) in the span of about two days.
Not to go off on a rant or anything here, but the first rule of not being a total jag on the internet is that you don't directly link to other people's images. I have always gone out of my way to host images myself, specifically because I didn't want to put someone else in the position that I now find myself in. The fact that this has never happened before is a pretty clear indication that the vast majority of people out there understand the basics of internet etiquette, but it only takes one inconsiderate person to wreck things for everyone else. With a blog like Apocalypse POW!, which showcases the work of other artists and creators that I think deserve more attention and applause, I don't have any rights to these images themselves, but I definitely think I have certain rights as far as the hosting of those images are concerned. So if you like something that you see here and you want to reblog it, upload it to your own host and link to that.
UPDATE #2: I've now upgraded to a Pro account on Photobucket, which is something I probably should have done a while ago, and images are back now. In the long run it'll probably be for the best, but I can't deny that I kind of resent having my hand forced like this. I've always resolutely resisted placing ads and such on my blog, partly because I'm not doing this for money and it seems a bit crass and mercenary to try and target my visitors like that, but also because I think they're just plain ugly - they break up the aesthetic of an otherwise consistent website. Having said that, as of today Apocalypse POW! is now running at a deficit, and it's all thanks to one unthinking jerk.
