Hamarana

For those of you who publish your own blogs:

A comment is posted by a real person who asks how to contact the site administrator, If, like me, you have your spam handler set up for certain conditions, you’ll get a notification. If, like me, you think that this is just an innocent question… don’t be foolish. There are only two outcomes:
1) You allow the comment through and answer it on site… and once the comment is through, the comment spam starts (so you go back and recategorise the original as spam, and you don’t let any more through). Observe the number of comments which have been filtered by typepad antispam since I switched from Akismet… its only been a few months to get to over 2000 and most has been in the last month. Maybe it will slow down now but I am not hopeful.
2) You email the individual concerned. If you do, make sure you do it with a disposable email address because I promise you, you will open your real email to more spam than ever, if you respond.

So.. a message to those Russian spammers who are currently trying this technique with me… Don’t bother. You are wasting your time now, I’ve figured it out.

Or maybe its just you and not the rest of the internet…

Here’s how to find out:
Visit Downforeveryoneorjustme and plug in the site you are wanting to know about.

I’ve set up my Facebook account with Flog again, but still no ping option. Dammit. Oh well, daily updates are enough, considering I post so erratically here

Reading in my WordPress Dashboard this morning I found a reference to Typepad antispam which is based on the Akismet code. There is a plugin for WordPress and I have now installed that and disabled Akismet again. I don’t know if they use the same spammer database but hopefully they dont, and G & J will now no longer have “issues” when they post comments.

If you want to use this instead of Akismet, you will need a typekey account (I had one already) and you will then need to use the API key you can get with that account, to fully install TP-AS.

Looking forward to testing it out

I suppose I get two or three of these every month, sent by well-meaning friends. Today’s post is prompted by an email I received today, cautioning me (and the others in the cc list) not to flash headlights if you see someone coming who has not turned their headlights on. The story goes that its a gang initiation rite and if you flash your lights you will become a target for murder and mayhem.

it is NOT true. Its a hoax, and its been around for at least 10 years that we know of, and probably longer.

The thing is, whenever you get one of these warnings in your email, no matter whether you normally trust the source or not, it behooves you to make enquiries of your own before mindlessly blasting a CC to everyone on your email list.

The places to check on email hoaxes are Snopes, Hoax Slayer, and, indeed, at any of the sites you can find by googling “email hoaxes” and then doing a search. It took me about 5 seconds to find out that the flashing headlights thing is rubbish. Thats better than clogging up the email systems of the planet by just forwarding everything that hits yer mailbox.

PLEASE PLEASE just THINK before you hit the FWD button.

There’s a lot of debate around at the moment regardin FTTN (Fibre to the node) and who will build it and who’s going to get it and who’s going to pay for it and how it will roll out. There are two camps, one being Telstra, the current owner of most if not all the infrastructure, and the G9, a group/consortium of IAPs who are attempting to prevent further monopolising by Telstra.

The CEO of Internode (my ISP), Simon Hackett, has posted on his personal website, his take on whats really going on.

Read it here. Its extremely enlightening.

I wrote some time ago about an online game in which real dollars could be earned, and bemoaned the fact that as a Mac user, I could not play.

No such restriction exists in Second Life, and in fact there’s also an early alpha download available for Linux users, as well. Again, its an online “real” world, in which you earn Linden Dollars, which can be sent to a real world bank account as offline dollars. You go in with a fake name and an avatar, amd move in this world as you would in the real world. You can interact with other players, buy and sell property, go nightclubbing, buy clothes etc etc… It all costs money but you can join as a free member and take a look around.

I’ve only just joined and depending on how I find it, I MIGHT upgrade. For those who are looking for something different, here’s my link (yes, its a referral link, please don’t remove the referral code, its worth $2000 Linden for everyone who upgrades).

You can play as a free member, or upgrade with a monthly fee which entitles you to a certain bonus payment to begin, and then $300 Linden dollars per month as a stipend.

It should be noted that Linden dollars are NOT equivalent to offline dollars. I’m not sure what the exchange rate is.

Why don’t you join as a free member, and have a play?