… And destined never to be a human being, on delicious anyway. I failed delicious’s CAPTCHA test twice this morning! (The term stands for Completely Automated Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart – so where does does the P come in? Wikipedia, as at 10 December 2008, is more enlightening on this than the Carnegie Mellon official page – the term, apparently, stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. But I digress.)

According to the people who invented the CAPTCHA, “A CAPTCHA is a program that can generate and grade tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read distorted text… current computer programs can’t”. So, not only am I a human being posing as spam, I am also a current computer program. It reminds me of the man who thought he was a stamp…

You might remember that Iris is the Goddess of the rainbow in Greek mythology, as well as being a beautiful flower.

Can you shorten Iris, or make of it a nickname? I would have thought not, but my two and a half year old nephew started calling Iris “Irie” a while back. We thought it rather cute, and various members of the family now call her Irie.

So I googled Irie, as is my wont, and learned that it has a lovely meaning too. Irie, in Rastafarian vocabulary, “refers to positive emotions or feelings, or anything that is good. Specifically it refers to high emotions and peaceful vibrations.” (Source: Wikipedia)

What a perfectly delightful nickname for Iris, who is eleven months old today.

Jack Evans Porpoise Pool 1972
Originally uploaded by brettm8.

My use of the photo sharing website Flickr has changed a little over the more than two years I have been using it, and will no doubt change again. Currently the Incomparable Iris is the main subject of my photography efforts (maternity leave does that to you)

What hasn’t changed is my attitude to metadata – that is, data about data – I’m all for it, and here’s why. People find your photos if you title, describe and tag them appropriately. As an archivist, researcher and bod who generally cares about history, I’m happy about that.

Since the advent of Flickr stats, I know that it is photographs such as the sea of flowers outside Kensington Palace after the death of Diana in 1997, and photographs of the Berlin Wall before and just after it came down in 1989, that people want to see – moments in history. Mauritius as a subject, contemporary and historical, is another favourite with visitors to my photostream.

But there are other moments, on a smaller scale – social, familial – which Flickr can bring forth from boxes of old family photographs and negatives. Here is one of them:

Many years ago I told my friend Jo about photographs of myself with a porpoise and a seal, and she had some too. I put them on Flickr in January 2006, which drew forth similar shots from a friend in Canberra and voila – the Porpoise Pool group was born! I knew nothing about the subject, except that the photographs were taken on holiday in Queensland when I was about four (1970). My Canberra friend remembered that they were taken at the Jack Evans Porpoise Pool, Tweed Heads (later moving to Coolangatta) in Queensland. So we titled, tagged and described appropriately, and two years later we finally have a fourth member in our little group, Brett, who writes:

I was browsing around on Flickr and found a group devoted to photos of kids feeding the seal at the Porpoise Pool at Coolangatta. And I thought “I’ve got one of those!”

I found this a couple of years ago in a shoebox of old negatives my Mum gave me. I believe it was taken in December 1972, which would have been only a matter of weeks before the pool closed. I was 6 years old. I have clear memories of being called out of the crowd and wearing a bright red souvenir T-shirt from the pool afterwards, but I don’t remember actually feeding the seal.