Lost Cameras and Orphan Photos
Jan. 18th, 2026 12:07 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
post_secret_feedTelling a secret can be transformative; it can change our relationship with people we know, and even those we will never meet. More than once, I have watched strangers inspired by a shared secret self-organize into purposeful communities of kindness.
One of those stories began years ago when I pulled a postcard from my mailbox made from a photograph of smiling friends. The words taped to the photo read, “I found your camera at Lollapalooza this summer. I finally got the pictures developed, and I’d love to give them to you”.
I shared the secret on the PostSecret Blog, hoping someone would recognize one of the young people at the table and we could return all the photos to the group. Messages poured in that week from the PostSecret Community, but no one was able to identify anyone in the picture. However, one of the messages came from a Canadian student, Mathew Preprost, who was inspired to do more.
Believing that everyday people can sometimes have a worldwide impact on the web with a good idea and determination, Mathew designed and built a website that would serve as a lost-and-found for cameras. He called it, “I Found Your Camera,” and when I helped him spread the word, we were both surprised by how many lost cameras there were in the world and how many people wanted to help return them.
A 21-year-old vacationing student lost his camera at Union Station in Chicago. He thought it was long gone when a friend of his girlfriend saw the couple smiling together on the “I Found Your Camera” website. “She went crazy when she randomly stumbled upon our picture at Wrigley Field.” He said.
Dozens, then hundreds of cameras were mailed to Mathew’s Winnipeg address. When they arrived, he would post some of the photographs from each camera on his website, and millions of people would visit virtually to see if they could identify anyone in the pictures so they could be contacted. “It was exciting for me to see strangers helping strangers return lost cameras to the people who were sometimes desperately searching for them,” Mathew told me.
The owner of this camera (in yellow) left it behind in Santa Cruz (not far from the background pictured) on a long bike ride . A month later, she was surprised and relieved to find herself on “I Found Your Camera”. She contacted Mathew and in two weeks she had all the photos from her California journey.
Mathew was being interviewed by USA Today, the CBC, and other national news services. One of the stories he liked telling was about the journey of George Metz’s camera. To get George’s Mardi Gras pictures back to him in Pennsylvania, Mathew coordinated an international effort involving good Samaritans in four cities across three countries and two continents. As the success stories spread, more and more cameras began arriving in his mailbox.
Wedding pictures, photos from family reunions, parties, and graduations all found their way back to those who had lost them – over 1,000 in all – and the thankful emails Mathew received revealed heartfelt gratitude.
“Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, my son’s birth was on that camera and he turns 4 next week.”
I have traveled to Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, Canada, England, Australia and throughout the US sharing the heartening story of how a single secret sparked the imagination of one student who united people around the world to help others they will never meet.
Every time I told the story, I shared the original picture of happy people sitting around a table that started it all, always hoping that one day I would be able to complete the story. Finally, it happened.
Here is a picture of the young woman from the table whose lost camera inspired so many other stories of kindness before returning home itself. She asked me to pass along her thanks to the community for her lost, then found collection of “slightly out-of-focus memories of a lifetime”.
And here is a picture of Mathew along with a quote he told a USA Today reporter.
The post Lost Cameras and Orphan Photos appeared first on PostSecret.
celebrity20in20 Round 19
Jan. 16th, 2026 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reeby10 posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_community_promo
Link: Round 19 Sign Ups | Round 19 Themes
Description:
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
celebrity20in20 is a 20in20 community dedicated to making icons of actors and actresses. You have 20 days to make 20 icons about a celebrity of your choice, based on a set of themes for the round.
Schedule: Round 19 sign ups are open NOW. Icons are due February 5, 2026.
When I was a kid I read a Sleator book
Jan. 16th, 2026 04:42 pmconulyin which two teens independently fall into a toxic mud puddle and develop mind-reading abilities. Spoilers, they're not the only ones!
They're at a family reunion, and one person mentions that there have been a few breakins, how odd, because all the broken-in houses had security systems. And as they mention that, everybody in range automatically thinks their PINs. This, of course, is how the (telepathic!) thief had broken into the houses in the first place.
Ever since then, every time I've had to enter a PIN or a password anywhere, I've carefully also thought some other random letters or numbers. It's a silly habit, which I only developed long after I outgrew poking around closets for Narnia and had nearly outgrown poking around closets for secret passageways, and it wouldn't really deter a mind-reading thief for very long, but I still do it. If there ever is a telepathic malefactor in close proximity to me, at least they'll have to to try a few different codes to use my bank card!
******************
( Read more... )
They're at a family reunion, and one person mentions that there have been a few breakins, how odd, because all the broken-in houses had security systems. And as they mention that, everybody in range automatically thinks their PINs. This, of course, is how the (telepathic!) thief had broken into the houses in the first place.
Ever since then, every time I've had to enter a PIN or a password anywhere, I've carefully also thought some other random letters or numbers. It's a silly habit, which I only developed long after I outgrew poking around closets for Narnia and had nearly outgrown poking around closets for secret passageways, and it wouldn't really deter a mind-reading thief for very long, but I still do it. If there ever is a telepathic malefactor in close proximity to me, at least they'll have to to try a few different codes to use my bank card!
( Read more... )
HTTP RateLimit headers
Jan. 14th, 2026 03:02 amfanfhttps://dotat.at/@/2026-01-13-http-ratelimit.html
There is an IETF draft that aims to standardize RateLimit header
fields for HTTP. A RateLimit header in a successful response
can inform a client when it might expect to be throttled, so it can
avoid 429 Too Many Requests errors. Servers can also send
RateLimit headers in 429 errors to make the response more
informative.
The draft is in reasonably good shape. However as written it seems to require (or at least it assumes) that the server uses bad quota-reset rate limit algorithms. Quota-reset algorithms encourage clients into cyclic burst-pause behaviour; the draft has several paragraphs discussing this problem.
However, if we consider that RateLimit headers are supposed to tell
the client what acceptable behaviour looks like, they can be used with
any rate limit algorithm. (And it isn't too hard to rephrase the draft
so that it is written in terms of client behaviour instead of server
behaviour.)
When a client has more work to do than will fit in a single window's
quota, linear rate limit algorithms such as GCRA encourage the client
to smooth out its requests nicely. In this article I'll describe how a
server can use a linear rate limit algorithm with HTTP RateLimit
headers.
( Read more... )
hybrid quota-linear rate limiter
Jan. 13th, 2026 12:13 amfanfhttps://dotat.at/@/2026-01-12-hqlr.html
A while back I wrote about the linear rate limit algorithms leaky bucket and GCRA. Since then I have been vexed by how common it is to implement rate limiting using complicated and wasteful algorithms (for example).
But linear (and exponential) rate limiters have a disadvantage: they can be slow to throttle clients whose request rate is above the limit but not super fast. And I just realised that this disadvantage can be unacceptable in some situations, when it's imperative that no more than some quota of requests is accepted within a window of time.
In this article I'll explore a way to enforce rate limit quotas more precisely, without undue storage costs, and without encouraging clients to oscillate between bursts and pauses. However I'm not sure it's a good idea.
( Read more... )
I guess I had this tab open two weeks and forgot about it
Jan. 14th, 2026 04:12 amconulyWell, I meant to post it then, and I guess I'll belatedly post it now - a New Year's Friend Meme!
Click the banner to join us and make some new friends!
Click the banner to join us and make some new friends!
Sigh.
Jan. 15th, 2026 03:32 amconulyI got a set of cute little penguin pens. They're very cute. So cute.
I didn't realize that each pen has a little motto on it, or I might've not bought them. You see, one continuing annoyance since childhood is that writing on pens is always upside down if you're left-handed. Oh, you can get pens where the writing is oriented correctly, that is, for lefties, but for some reason all that writing inevitably is left-handed themed! I don't want my right side up pen motto to say something like "Only lefties are in their right mind!", I want it to say something like "Hope you are happy every day", which is the upside down motto on this purple penguin.
It's the same with left-handed rulers, incidentally. I just want the numbers to go in a sensible direction, I don't need my ruler to affirm how wonderful it is that I'm drawing lines with my left hand.
On a related note, I'm seriously considering buying another pair of lefty kitchen shears for work. I don't really have to spend much time in the kitchen, but if I am in the kitchen and using kitchen shears (almost inevitably to cut up the next day's lunch sandwiches but sometimes to cut up breakfast pancakes and sausages) I'd rather use mine than theirs, because cutting with the wrong scissors is painful and messy. But if I bring my sole pair - which is amazing, I love it, best Christmas present ever! - back and forth with me then sometimes I use it at home, forget to put it back in my bag, and then am irritated for three days until I finally remember again. I could ask them to supply shears for me and keep them in the kitchen drawer, it's a legitimate (and small!) expense, but honestly, I know from experience that righties are terrible and when they accidentally use left-handed scissors they get very confused and irritated. Amusing for me, but undoubtedly an exercise in frustration for a workplace. It's really better all around to bring my own.
****************
( Read more... )
I didn't realize that each pen has a little motto on it, or I might've not bought them. You see, one continuing annoyance since childhood is that writing on pens is always upside down if you're left-handed. Oh, you can get pens where the writing is oriented correctly, that is, for lefties, but for some reason all that writing inevitably is left-handed themed! I don't want my right side up pen motto to say something like "Only lefties are in their right mind!", I want it to say something like "Hope you are happy every day", which is the upside down motto on this purple penguin.
It's the same with left-handed rulers, incidentally. I just want the numbers to go in a sensible direction, I don't need my ruler to affirm how wonderful it is that I'm drawing lines with my left hand.
On a related note, I'm seriously considering buying another pair of lefty kitchen shears for work. I don't really have to spend much time in the kitchen, but if I am in the kitchen and using kitchen shears (almost inevitably to cut up the next day's lunch sandwiches but sometimes to cut up breakfast pancakes and sausages) I'd rather use mine than theirs, because cutting with the wrong scissors is painful and messy. But if I bring my sole pair - which is amazing, I love it, best Christmas present ever! - back and forth with me then sometimes I use it at home, forget to put it back in my bag, and then am irritated for three days until I finally remember again. I could ask them to supply shears for me and keep them in the kitchen drawer, it's a legitimate (and small!) expense, but honestly, I know from experience that righties are terrible and when they accidentally use left-handed scissors they get very confused and irritated. Amusing for me, but undoubtedly an exercise in frustration for a workplace. It's really better all around to bring my own.
( Read more... )
Winter Moon by Langston Hughes
Jan. 13th, 2026 02:20 amconulyHow thin and sharp is the moon tonight!
How thin and sharp and ghostly white
Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight!
*********
In fact, the moon is kinda orange just now, but I'm sure it'll grow pale once it clears the bridge.
How thin and sharp and ghostly white
Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight!
In fact, the moon is kinda orange just now, but I'm sure it'll grow pale once it clears the bridge.
Gosh, isn't it great
Jan. 12th, 2026 07:57 pmconulywhen you finally confess your love to the guy you've been pining after for half your life, and it turns out that you have a perfectly aligned and complementary set of kinks? Nobody has to compromise and agree to sometimes do the thing they're not that into or, conversely, never do the thing they're totally into. Nobody's turned off by the mere thought of any of it, every conversation is an ongoing saga of "yes, and".
I guess that's one more advantage of being fictional!
***********
( Read more... )
I guess that's one more advantage of being fictional!
( Read more... )
PostSecret TED Talk
Jan. 8th, 2026 12:02 ampost_secret_feedThe post PostSecret TED Talk appeared first on PostSecret.
Kathy Easter Egg
Jan. 11th, 2026 12:03 ampost_secret_feedThere are Easter Eggs hidden in the PostSecret Digital Museum of Secrets. One of them is a long article from PostSecret’s original mailcarrier – Kathy. If you have not discovered it already, go here and click on the mailbox. You can read Kathy’s story, and her secret. Here is the beginning. . .
As a mail carrier, I got used to seeing unusual things come through the mail. I have delivered ashes of deceased pets and humans to teary-eyed customers, tons of certified letters sent by bill collectors to equally teary-eyed customers, valuables in registered mail, live baby chicks, ducklings, worms, crickets, car tires and wheels, steamer trunks, and even packages that are broken and oozing with unknown materials. I have even been known to pick up a dog or two on my route, who had broken out of their yards and returned them to their owners. You’d think I’d be immune to odd things. But nothing prepared me for PostSecret!
In 2004, a customer of mine, Frank Warren, began receiving a few post cards in his daily mail. They were preprinted with his address and looked like a card that a dentist office would send reminding you of an upcoming appointment. It was just something I subconsciously noticed. There were only a few every day, and they all looked the same. I never turned them over to look on the other side. So, for a while I didn’t pay much attention. We deal with thousands upon thousands of letters during our mornings of casing our mail and don’t look to see who a letter is from or what it is. One day that all changed for me.
While handling one of Frank’s post cards, one fell out of my hands and landed upside down on the floor. I gasped when I read in huge bold letters, I LIKE TO HAVE SEX WITH STRANGERS. You can imagine my shock. That’s all it said. It had bold, bright coloring as a background. I’ll never forget it. I immediately showed some of my friends what I had found in the mail. One guy was so shocked he said, “Did a girl write it?” I was like, “how the heck do I know, who cares?” I then turned it over and looked on the address side of the card. I read the preprinted instructions next to Frank’s address. It invited you to participate in a group art project by writing a secret (that no one else knows) on the other side of this postcard and mail it anonymously to the printed address. I don’t have to tell you that I pulled the few postcards that were in his address slot that day and began reading them immediately! From that day forward, me, (and a few friends at work), began reading all the cards daily. I still didn’t really know what was going on, but I was intrigued. . . (continue)
Dear Kathy – I sent in a secret saying that I was going to kill myself in the next couple of days after writing it. Then a day or 2 after mailing it, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that a mail carrier would read my postcard and not want me to die, even though they didn’t know me.
Maybe it was you – after reading your post I can see that you’re a special person. So thank you – I’m working things out.
The post Kathy Easter Egg appeared first on PostSecret.
Vid rec: Around the Bend by danegen
Jan. 10th, 2026 08:15 pmcesyhttps://fanlore.org/wiki/Around_the_Bend
I love this vid, I remember it well, I saved it and rewatched it when I needed a mood boost, I even saved the song after hearing it for the first time from this vid.
And I'm posting here to have the memory published and quotable for Fanlore. Did any of you see it when it first came out?
I love this vid, I remember it well, I saved it and rewatched it when I needed a mood boost, I even saved the song after hearing it for the first time from this vid.
And I'm posting here to have the memory published and quotable for Fanlore. Did any of you see it when it first came out?
I had the weirdest dream the other day
Jan. 10th, 2026 05:12 pmconulyYou'll laugh, it was that weird.
I dreamed that I was going to sleep. I had found a bed - not my actual bed, just a bed! - and snuggled down to sleep. And then I woke up a little (really woke up, not dream woke up) in my own bed, snuggled up nice and cozy, and drifted between the two beds, real and dream, for a little bit before falling back asleep for real.
****************
( Read more... )
I dreamed that I was going to sleep. I had found a bed - not my actual bed, just a bed! - and snuggled down to sleep. And then I woke up a little (really woke up, not dream woke up) in my own bed, snuggled up nice and cozy, and drifted between the two beds, real and dream, for a little bit before falling back asleep for real.
( Read more... )
A Handful of Communities!
Jan. 10th, 2026 01:59 amkalloway posting in dw_community_promovideogamefanworks Community Description:
videogamefanworks is the place to post the following, for any video game or visual novel:Fanfiction, Fanart, Icons, Meta, Recs for Fanworks, Etc.
mobilegames Community Description: A Dreamwidth community for mobile & gacha gaming. Basically, if it's available on Android and/or iOS, it's welcome here. We have a mostly-weekly general post and any news, info, etc. can be posted whenever.
smallweb Community Description: A community for all things smallweb, including personal websites, the fediverse, and more.
octobercest Community Description: A fest for incest in fiction running all year! Normally, posting is open every October but for 2026 we're going all year!
makezines Community Description: We want to make zines, and we want to encourage others to make zines!
Snowflake challenge #5 (the birthday girl edition)
Jan. 9th, 2026 09:09 pmfalenaI'm not really taking part in Snowflake challenge this year, I don't have the bandwidth right now, but dolorosa_12 reposted it as her Friday open thread and I thought that tomorrow it's my birthday, maybe the universe is telling me I can ask for things?
Challenge #5
In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts.
(dolorosa_12 wisely specified:"I assume the intent is to ask for things on a small-scale personal fannish or material level, not to express wishes relating to the myriad large, overwhelming global crises or things of that nature.")
( Read more... )