Gabriella T.

*I'm not a member of the Nexus mods community anymore, because a self entitled modder (let's name her Karen) reported me and I rather deleted my account.
First world problem one could say, but it turned out that on Nexus mods - I've heard DeviantArt is no different - authors abusing their power is a real problem, existing since years, nobody does anything to solve it and often the admins/moderators take the side of the ranting author against a ten a penny "not productive member" of the community (who doesn't create content).
I didn't give much thought about it, until I met "mine". Now, I found a lot of people - many of them were paying users - complaining about this outright cyberharassment and the "script" is always the same: it's enough if an author doesn't like you, enough a "wrong" question and you might end up like me and the others, namely the author bashes you harshly in public, then "go after" you on any possible ways (as I read those complaints I felt like I was reading my own story word by word).
I remember a girl from DeviantArt (author herself) complained about an other author made her leave the site by bashing her and had their fans follow and harass her, even on an other website she chose to "flee" to. I didn't want to wait for it to happen to me, I rather gave it up.
Disclaimer: I'm fully aware that there are many decent authors who are being insulted for various reasons and I do feel for them. But there's no point in denying the type made me decide to leave does exist! (The kind that use expressions directed to me like "as f***".)
I did voice my question to Karen - or anyone who could help me solving the problem - on a respectful manner, as I always did it before, countless times with many authors/caretakers, in majority with a positive communication and I learnt from them. Well, I learnt something from Karen too. I met only one grumpy author, but I saw that there are must be much more Karens, because here and there I was shocked how users and authors insult and slander each other.
A normal answer would be (I got this when I asked an other author about whether their mod can cause a certain problem) "[...]Shouldn't have anything to do with the mod. The only thing relating to the mod that I can think of would be some sort of...".
But Karen didn't answer my question, just gave me the standard "it's somewhere below in the previous comments, read!" response - it was not, that's why I asked and I pointed it out - the first link of the chain of events that made me decide it doesn't worth the headache.
She took it as an offense that I asked whether her mod can cause a specific conflict - even after I endorsed, thanked and praised her work. So she accepts only positive response.
She pinned a cynical comment, like a badge of shame (on me) which basically "my mod cannot cause problems, if you ask about problems you offend my hard work and that means anyway you are lazy to read back" - which she later modified, like 10 times, vilifying me, while herself appeared at the end of the story as agreeable and supportive, with little hearts and all.
I was baffled and felt bitter and anxious about it, but I believe in talking about problems, misunderstandings, so I explained myself, to be more clear what I wanted to say and that I meant no offense, even confirmed that 3rd time that I'm grateful for her work which is excellent. (We didn't have a lenghthy argument, I wrote two short comments which she responded with two shorter novels.)
That was a mistake. I shouldn't have talk to her again, that was just oil on the fire. She went full ballistic. She claimed that I stated that her mod causes problems and diminish her work, which was not true, it is common to talk about possible conflicting files. She called me rude, passive-agressive, oversensitive, she did everything for me (nope!) but I'm still demanding, taking advantage on her for free stuff, complained about her tremendous amount of private issues (like she has a killer toothache - that's in her profile too, because everyone needs to know it), how mean and ungrateful are the mod users to her in general (which somehow was my fault), I'm taking away her motivation and joy, and I was the 100th person who insulted her, also the last one, because now she will act on it. And she kept going on and on with this hostile, blaming, manipulative behaviour. All because people are "mean" to her and she has personal problems. (Who doesn't?) It appears that not I'm the passive-agressive one of the two of us.
She didn't stop at hiding/deleting my comment she had problem with or block me from her page, as was her right, she was so upset as a punishment she reported me to completely remove me from the site. Out of spite.
Why everyone wanted to hurt poor, vulnerable victim Karen? Probably because she's not interested in actual helping (she admitted it while throwing the tantrum - "you can ask, but I already answered every question in the comment section (like 6 comments or so), I have no time for new ones, you think you are the only one and you're special?"), or what is more likely: like any other narcissist, she takes criticism as an ad hominem attack. Doesn't matter now, does it?
I say this based on the fact that so far in the majority of the cases when I mentioned a problem either the creators or experienced modders really did help. They used to thank when someone brings up a problem that might related to their mod (not just for me, for any users in general). Sometimes they take a look at it and take the time to figure it out. One of them made little videos for me, an other one fixed their mod and I even credited in the description for the idea of creating a specific mod.
Other: I know little about the ME community, but I do not like it. Commenters and creators insult and slander each other very inappropriately. The only mod I downloaded had a misleading and pretty incomplete description, so it doesn't work for me. I also saw a "don't bother with posting, because I don't give a frig and if you need to ask you're an idiot anyway and you should not use mods" type of description.

*ABOUT Goldcar MALLORCA AIRPORT - I can't speak about the mainland or any other service.
The 3* is only because of the great quality of the cars, othervise it would be 1*!
From their page:
"Book now with Goldcar and forget about availability problems on your holiday." - Nope!
"We have 24/7 roadside assistance available in several languages." - Nope!
We're at home now, still waiting for the other shoe to drop, though, because they didn't pay back us all the money they promised and didn't gave us a reason why.
Our plane was an hour and a half late, so they did not give us the car we booked, but an other SUV, that part is fine (if your plane arrives too late they give you a similar car that you booked).
The car was superb, clean, etc. EXCEPT: no replacement wheel in the car, only an automatic pump-something.
The mistake we made was that we did not check that in the city we stayed for the holiday whether the company have an office there - it was our first time to rent a car, we were oblivious about how it works. They have only one - in Palma de Mallorca. Lesson learnt - on the hard way.
On our very first day, in the late afternoon hours we had a flat tire when we visited a popular tourist attraction in a mountainous area - the farthest on the island from Palma, the middle of nowhere, literally, far away from our hotel. No public lighting, no reception, nothing, but moblie phones running on low battery beacause of the all day long photographing - the car was only able to charge one at a time, quite slowly and the cold didn't help either.
A nice tourist family tried to help us, but the autopump whatever was a worth nothing, the damage was extensive, so we needed assistance.
The family took my husband trying to find a place where there is reception, meanwhile me and my 8 yo were alone, the sun was getting low, getting dark, strong winds, cold, etc.
After more than half an hour the family brought back my husband, he was able to talk to the Goldcar office, using the phone number they gave us.
My husband explained to them what happened and exactly where. The operator asked whether we're on the main road or the Northern road. (facepalm) Man, it's the freaking northernmost lighthouse on the island we're talking about, there's only one road, The road.
When it seemed they finally understood, they said okay, they going to send assistance and we'll get an other car, stay still. Okay.
One hour later my husband had to walk up several hundred metres on the mountain road (in pretty bad condition) in pitch black and freezing cold wind - the nice family and all the other tourists went home by then. He was able to call the office again, but they kept waiting him and tried to find an operator who actually speaks English!
The long day and the cold did their job: in mid-call our last able-bodied mobile turned off.
We were alone several kms from the next town or any human really, in the a*se-end of nowhere in a foreign country, completely helpless, with a small child and ill person - me, running out of water and food in the dark.
We had no choice, but try to reach the next what- or whomever where we could call help.
With a flat tire, in the dark, on a dangerously bad quality serpentine road, on crazy steep mountains/slopes.
We were able to go around 3-4 km, stop from time to time to cool down what's left of the tire (it was ragged), when burnt tire smell filled the car.
The vehicle was useless, we didn't know where we were and the hotel was still 20 km away. We tried to charge a mobile, but it was fruitless.
A security guard on night patrol found us and he called us a taxi. He told us that - it was Sunday - no matter what the Goldcar office said nobody will help us, because no one who could help works on Sunday evenings!
The taxi came quickly, but it was 22.00, when we got back to the hotel.
Next morning the company questioned us, why we left the car where we left it. Wtf?! So, we were supposed to spend the night in the mountain forest with a knackered child, without food, water and facilities?
They argued, but they eventually agreed to pay back the costs of the taxis. Update: they claimed they lost one of the taxi bills, so they could not pay it back!
But! My husband had to go to back where we left the car, then wait for the transport vehicle, then get back to Palma, then wait for an other car, then get back, it was afternoon when he got back to us - so basically they left us in deep sh*t and took one day from our holiday.
Not recommended. Never again!

Updating my earlier review.
I ran a few circles with the incompetent Logitech G Support, as they call themselves. Now I'm showing you how my replacement arrived after a month and no less than 16 e-mails later. Delivery: UPS.
The outer carton was completely intact, but in it...
I didn't open the box, I didn't sit on it, it arrived in this state. Probably it was squeezed into the much smaller carton. Kudos to the packing guys.
The product seems to be intact and unused (smells like and looks like new mouse), it's under testing, I will update this review soon.

I tried to download old family photos from my brother's account. They say you could download photos that was uploaded in a certain time interval, "from dd. Mm. Yyyy to dd. Mm. Yyyy". Well, it told me that it couldn't download those, instead it downloaded the latest photo and counted as one for today. What the heck?
They say you could download the photos in the original uploaded size. Hardly. The biggest image was 1080x1080, since at a standard width of 1080 pixels, Instagram keeps your photo its original size, as long as its height is between 566 and 1350 pixels. If your photo is less than 320 pixels wide, it'll be stretched. If it's more than 1080 pixels wide, it'll be shrunk down. So no, you won't get bigger than that.
I will update this review as soon as I could.

I joined Tumblr to find "older" photos, which I did, that's great, and to "publicize" my Instagram account.
I couldn't post from the Insta app to Tumblr, so I had to do it directly. Which is good really, since it turned out it counts as a reblogged post, therefore doesn't appear in the searches. Yeah, that's a con. So is the fact that only the first 20 tags can be found, although 30 is permitted.
No way to find a reblogged post through tags. Even if it's my own, if I want it to be found, I have to create a new post.
Creating quality content is time consuming everywhere, but Tumblr is less "rewarding" than any site I've seen before. Very few people - I've encountered with - actually use it. Unless you have a steady fanbase, it is hard to get followers - I don't really care about that anymore - you barely get likes or reblogs. That's the way I hoped to find similar blogs to mine, but it doesn't work, only on accidental level. I've tried various times of the day for posting, didn't work either, whatever the "statistics" say I cannot say that matters. I couldn't figure it out what's behind the magic of getting thousands of notices in 3-4 days.
"Staff Picks" is look like the site was operating by anime fan teenagers: that's it, anime fanfic, kitties-puppies, annoying gifs and stupid "artworks" mostly. Not a single artistic or mentionable travel photography.
"Tumblr Labs is a collection of experiments we're working on that might turn out to be useful, fun, both, or neither. They're not official or anything, so if something overly weird happens, don't contact our support team. Just turn the dang thing off." - Sounds very professional and ethical...
I've seen a number of users using irrelevant, but popular tags for notices and followers. Like a stock photo (claiming it's original content/own - it is, just someone else's) of some antique books was tagged with "hollywood", "pc games", "anime", "make up", "celebrities", etc and the sad thing it appears it works. Pathetic.
I gained a number of political/religious followers, they obviously do not follow my blog for photography, travel and fashion - I keep ignoring them. I haven't really recieved inappropriate messages so far (1-2), although recently sugardaddies found me. Lately multiple p*rn blogs started to follow me, I don't make a fuss about it, just block them, they're pathetic. That's why I always check who reblogged my posts and if I see someone inappropriate did it, by blocking them my post disappeares from their blog.
Many people don't like, just reblog the posts - I understand somewhere, since it stacks in your Likes. On the other hand, many people grab my photos and write some influencer rubbish under them, taking them out of context. I'm glad Tumblr and my watermark make clear those photos are mine.
Hard to find posts, partially because of the poor structure and poor management of the site. Say, a fashion photo gets uploaded/reblogged on an Adult content-flagged blog, you have no access to the archive (doesn't matter if the photo in question is not adult content). It's beyond me. Meaning if it's an older photo you have to scroll through the entire blog, which could be problematic if there are thousands of posts in the blog. Nerve-wracking, wasting the user's time for one post. Even with Cascadr or similar sites. Other sites simply blur out adult-content photos and flag them one by one, why not Tumblr?
There are really shamless blogs I've encountered, unfiltered and there are tasteful, artistic photos flagged as adult-content - which are not, according to the rules. Poor management.
The Dashboard is a catastrophe, especially if you want to edit your Queue and Draft, hours of scrolling up and down and lots of facepalms and startover again and again. The mass post editor is almost useless, barely more than a tag-editor.
By the way, "older photos". Almost every - if not all - artist I follow elsewhere, left Tumblr for Instagram years ago, this shows its significance. Preferences.
One thing is Tumblr has way less tags than Instagram and users don't even bother to use them, so it's easier to find anything over there. It also means Tumblr has older photos to explore without scrolling through thousands on Insta.
Another one: for instance, on Flickr (maybe Fb too? I'm not sure) you have an option to allow or not allow your uploaded photos others to download/save, Tumblr has no such function. If you upload something, anyone can take it - and they do. That would not be a problem if these people would give credit and a fashion photo would not wind up in an inappropriate blog, but they mostly don't. I watermarked all my photos, just in case.
Today I found three of my posted photos, surfing on a page and told the person to delete it or give credit to the photographer. They said, it's okay, done. They didn't do it of course. Instead before I could block, they quickly liked plenty of my posts, so they can save and post them later. I blocked them anyway immediately. I can't do anything about it. I cannot report, as it's not a copyright issue. I got that photo from the original owner, but I always give credit to all participants, places, where and when they were published, etc. They are photographers, MUAs, stylists I respect and follow their work since years. It's not the "stealing" bothers me the most (those photos are not mine technically, therefore they cannot be stolen from me, plus they were already published somewhere), but this kind of behaviour: demeanors that of a bully, they clearly let me know "you don't like it, I'm gonna take more". (How do I know it was taken from me and not from the published one? I took a look on their other posts and they clearly not the type who would read the artist's magazine read by a few it was published in, long ago. Also their weird, quick reaction. Gotcha.)
Secondary inconvenience I've found: I don't know which site generates the problem - or what's going on -, but on Tumblr you can pin photos (with the Pinterest app), however if you try to access them from Pinterest it only throws you to your own dashboard (or I don't know where, if you don't have a Tumblr account). The link actually doesn't lead to the photo you pinned.
I think I'm finished with the uploading and bothering with the posting, after my current queue and draft went out. I already invested a lot of time in them, so I don't want to just delete them, but it doesn't worth the energy.

I spent a grand total of five minutes on this site.
When I confirmed my e-mail address I realised I wrote a typo in my username. Okay, I'm going to quickly fix it...
No way! They wanted me to pay for change my username. Seriously? XD
"Alas", I had to deactivate the account before I even could take a look around. I can't believe it exists.

I tried this site, but the link they sent me is broken or something is wrong. I use Windows 10 and Android. I tried to open it from four different browsers, two different devices, multiple different settings, etc and all I got is either a white blank page or a grey one. If I try to reload either it would do nothing or cannot be reloaded at all. I ran out of ideas. Why would I pay for their "services" if I cannot even see what they could offer? What I could see in the "preview" or whatever you call it was a load of certainly outdated information.

I created an Insta account when Fb blocked me during lockdown for unknown and unexplained reasons, I thought I need a social media account to keep in touch with people. First it turned out it's also own by Sugarmountain - whatever; second it turned out as well that most people I know has no Instagram account - okay. So, what to do, as an amateur photographer, after a while I started to upload my travel photos. Not the crappy mobile shots, but those that were taken by cameras, and only those that went trough careful Lightroom treatment (not the free mobile version, the PC version), just to be sure that I create original, quality content. I thought I will find similar travel photo lovers, or just similar people. I had to be disappointed. I encountered so few of them and also encountered tremendous amount of shallow human wastes that crawled out from the cesspit of the socmedia networks. Where to start?
The app. It is ridiculous that Instagram cannot be fully used - similar to many other socmedia apps - from PC. If I want to give the quality, every single time I have to bother with get the photos on my mobile. The app itself (for me on Android) seems to be pretty "buggy" - I'm not an IT expert. Very slow, most of the time, if I try to post it on other sites at the same time (like Fb, etc) it crashes instantly 10/10 times. So this function is virtually useless for me. If I want to modify something under a post it is 50-50% it will be a success or "Try it later". It happens very often - most of the time - that I get annoyed/frustrated and just leave it. Waste of time. In the 70% of the time I have to do the modifications "blinded", as the keypad fully covers what I type, the photo wouldn't "get up". Often it does not allow to post a gallery just 2nd or 3rd time. Come on! It's not rare that the app chop a little more off your carefully positioned photo. Wonderful! It happened a couple of times, that the app rewrote - as it seemed - all the tags into one (like 10x the same tag, nothing more). The app often make the wallpaper (or what do you call it) disappear from my phone.
For the phone. Since I installed the app I have to charge the phone more often, although I heard I'm not the only one. Before I open the app I used to pull back the display settings a bit, but it doesn't seem to be very effective.
As for the users community. That is a vast understatement that there are many-many shameless, shallow and blithering idiots. My favourite was the user who tried to contact me in a pm and it started with: "I can see you are following many dentists..." Well, no. Not a single one. One of the things that really annoys me in Instagram - I know I shouldn't bother with it - are the incredible amount of users with seemingly quality content - who follow me, so I would follow them back, than they unfollow me a day or couple of hours later. Well, so far I was unable to gain a lot of followers, so I exactly know how many are they. If I notice 1-2 missing just go, find them and unfollow them. I'm a person of principles, yet. If I see a very popular user follows me, that's 90% doesn't give a damn about my content and will leave in a heartbeat. Although there are very few exceptions (or they just forgot to unfollow me, whatever). What bugs me really is how on earth people, who - although I'm not a pro photographer, I'm not bad either - post definitely worst content than I do are able to gain hundreds of thousands of people. What are they? Blind zombies? Paid bots? I tried a lot of tips and tricks with the tags, the timing, promoting it on an other site, etc and none of them worked. I don't pay for it, that could be the problem. Then there are those, who spam-comment under my photos to follow them - of course they either wouldn't follow back or do the aforementioned "pull the d*** move". If I call them out, they disappear back into their caves, but that's just socmedia, nothing special that wouldn't happen anywhere else. A user started to follow me, and this particular user is selling their paper-writing services. I'm not sure whether it is legal or should I report them, but this is just disgusting. I worked my *** off for my diploma and these people encourage others to not to bother with it.
I accepted that only a very few people are interested (?) in my travel photos, okay (mostly cultural, not coctail-on-the-beach kind, there are a very few selfie amongst them). It must be like "uh, an other Unesco World Heritage site photo, meh". I don't think I can do more, than I already did. So this is why Instagram is a waste of time for amateurs like me, who are seeking feedback. I see it as gaining experience.

I was really excited, because a photographer told me about Gurushots, it worked for her. I thought I give it a try, what can I possibly lose. Time, that's what you will lose and you'll win frustration, you certainly will not grow as a photographer, that's why I joined in hoping of.
It is full of cheaters, that's how many of the players are able to get high ranks! I'm an Expert now, but yesterday I had enough. I spotted the crappiest photo I've ever seen, blurred, poor composition, poor light, it could not be more out of focus, etc. - submitted by a Guru - in the first 10 in the challenge. While one of my photos I'm really proud of and on another site that operating with strict rules, unlike Gurushots, it already got acknowledgements was the 150th. In a Vote-mania "contest" one of the high-ranked players in a matter of seconds gave away thousands of votes! How?! On several occasions I got votes from a "phantom"/non-existent profile. (It says "Oops, the page doesn't exist".) It was odd that the same player voted for all my photos in the contest at the same time. The voting supposed to be anonymous and the algorithm doesn't show - so they say - all your photos next to each other. So, I don't know what happened. I've seen numerous times that magically some players are able to submit the same photo multiple times in a challenge! (I checked it: liked them, but amongst my Likes only 1 photo appeared, ergo that is the same photo.) I've seen that in a 6 days challenge a Guru's pick (=50 votes) was given out in an hour after the voting started, in the first 10 or so - it also means that photo has the highest chance to be the Guru's Top pick. I also noticed that some high-ranked players gained so many GS points in no time, in a GS-point-hunt, that they even could not get if they would climb all the running challenges; as if you want the max amount (1250 GSP) you only can receive that when a challenge ends. As no challenge ended since the hunt began that's an interesting progress. I conducted an experiment (I'm in cast, I have time): I borrowed a National Geographic-level, breathtaking photo and submitted it in the very beginning of a challenge. As it should be, it was Elite in no time, in the first 10, amongst really good photos. Okay, I left it. I checked it an hour later, as I expected: it was 49th and all the other good quality photos are gone as well - the Gurus, Masters and Champions arrived with their crappy/mediocre/raw pics. A day later this pro photo was 554th. As others mentioned here before me, I'm sure there are groups operating "undercover", manipulating the votes and people literally purchase their high ranks somehow (literally or not). This is just one of the many flaws of this so called game.
People submit the challenges with everything. I even saw a magazine cover, a chicken as a water bird, photos saturated/photoshopped to death, they are mixing with landscape, seascape, cityscape, personal photos, holiday shots, plastic dinosaurs in the animal portrait challenge, don't know what black and white means, pathetic mostly and there are loads of obviously stolen photos! Once I accidentally joined a challenge with a photo without any humans on it (there's an instant option with the suggestion of the algorithm and I accidentally hit it) - it was a "people outdoor" challenge. I had no any swaps, so I thought they'll just boot my photo out. It made it to the All star rank. Seriously?!
This algorithm or whatever is also seriously flawed, although I'm not an IT expert, but how is it possible that the 90% of the time I only get votes if my exposure meter is pushed to maximum (rhetorical question). Also happened that the algorithm suggested to swap a photo in a good position with the same photo!
I noticed that as time passed I got less and less votes on every challenge I joined, now my best photos barely pass the second level (I don't use the same photos everywhere as many players do, that's another con for me). I don't know that whether it's anything to do with that I reported a lots of off-topic photos and uncovered adult contents lately or what is more realistic: I don't spend any money on the game.
The clock starts running about 1-3 hours earlier than you are able to vote, so a 24 hours challenge is not 24 hours long. The "game" does not reward the players for good quality, it's all about quantity. Just click as fast as you can.
If you want more swaps, fills, keys to get further - naturally - you have to pay for them. And always a Guru or a Master wins the challenge. Your rank only means you are in this waste of a casino for a longer time, it's absolutely nothing to do with your skills and how good is your "strategy". It does not supposed to be a strategy if the game was about merit.
Conclusion: I do not want to win every challenge, this is a game after all, it's fine, nevertheless I want fair play, but with so many cheaters in the first rows and without real prizes I really think that it doesn't worth my time to try to get to the next rank. My advice: shun this site as far as you can! They could not care less about photography.