Wired on Splogs

The title Spam + Blogs = Trouble is a rare understatement from Wired, but the article is a good examination of the dangers of splogs—sites that look like blogs but are constructed entirely of links to get-rich-quick sites, link forests that artificially inflate the PageRank of pages within them, and “male enhancement” or phentermine ads.

The most insidious part of the spam blogger’s arsenal comes when they try to get people to link to the sites. Since no one will do that voluntarily, spam bloggers abuse the comments features on sites like mine, using automated tools or low-paid labor. How bad is it? I’m routinely deleting upwards of fifty comments a night and my site doesn’t even get that much traffic any more. I will most likely crack my 10,000th message in my site’s Manila discussion group this week (all comments, along with my posts and any images I upload, are stored in the discussion group), and I’d guess that something like 40% of the total message count has been spam messages.

In fact, spam is the number one reason that I will likely move off this blogging platform as soon as I find a way to migrate my content. Spam is an arms race, and with my site host not upgrading to the latest version of Manila—which doesn’t see frequent updates anyway—I’m badly underarmed. The Boycott Sony blog probably gets as many spam comments if not more in spite of its not having been updated in seven months, but they go into a holding tank for approval, and if I upgraded to the latest WordPress version, the vast archive of spam already flagged would serve to educate my spam filter to keep more comments from coming in.

Crikey.

Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin killed. And the tributes pour in. I’m sure I’m not alone in praying for Terri and their kids.

And thanks to Irregular Webcomic, who have been running a Steve and Terry (sic) tribute feature since the earliest days of the strip, for their tribute today. You may need to know that in the strip, there’s an incarnation of Death for every possible way to die, and all of them have been going after Steve, and having to let him go, for many years.

The news is shocking because Steve Irwin did cheat death for so many years to bring happiness and knowledge to so many people. Rest in peace, Steve.

Brackbill picnic photos

kids flying a tractor

New on Flickr, a set of photos from the Brackbill picnic. I was in more of a hurry than last year, since I had a long drive ahead of me, but I managed to capture a few things.

One that surprised me was how many kids there were… and how grown up they were. This shouldn’t surprise me; there are a bunch of the kids of my generation (who I still remember as being, at most, teenagers) who, like me, are over 30 and married. One part that surprised me was the children of my mother’s cousins who were now entering their teens… and holding down conversations… and clearly having a blast hanging out with each other. But the smallest kids were the most fun to watch, as the photoset indicates.

Speaking of Pump Up the Volume…

pumpUpTheAchewood.gif

Achewood’s brilliant series of Great Moments in Cinema, “brought to you by Roomba! the Robotic Floor Vac,” just tripped across that great Christian Slater teen film. You have to see it to believe it—and perhaps you have to have seen the movie to get the last panel, but oh boy, Samantha Mathis should be blushing somewhere.

Other wonderful moments in the series:

Special bonus: the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, as brought to you by Roomba! the Robotic Floor Vac.

Friday Random 10: On the map

It’s a slow Friday before a holiday weekend. Tomorrow will bring Elvis Costello with Marian McPartland at Tanglewood; Sunday and Monday some more kitchen demolition; Tuesday is back to the working week. So I’ve been catching my breath and organizing a few things.

For instance: my Flickr photos are now geotagged, allowing you to find them on the Flickr world map. So there’s that. (It’s a pretty damned cool feature, actually.)

So enjoy photobrowsing while this week’s random 10 plays:

  1. Miles Davis, “Selim” (Live Evil)
  2. Funkadelic, “Music for My Mother (Single Version)” (Funkadelic)
  3. Lionheart, “Veste nuptiali” (Paris 1200)
  4. Cathode, “Gravity” (Sleeping and Breathing)
  5. Ayub Ogada, “10%” (En Mana Kuoyo)
  6. Squirrel Nut Zippers, “Anything But Love” (The Inevitable)
  7. Hilliard Ensemble, “Alleluya. V. Nativitas” (Sumer Is Icumen In)
  8. Pulp, “Seductive Barry” (This is Hardcore)
  9. Sufjan Stevens, “Holland” (Greetings from Michigan)
  10. Sting and the Radioactors, “Digital Love” (Nuclear Waste)

Eliminating stuttering in iTunes for Windows

I’ve been plagued by intermittent stuttering in iTunes playback on my work machine. Until today I lived with it, figuring it was just a bug or a problem with my machine. But today on a hunch I Googled the problem and found what appears to be the fix: switching to “Safe mode (waveout only)” in the Audio tab of the QuickTime preferences. This fix for stuttering iTunes for Windows playback comes courtesy of Technovia, where the comments also have some more advanced things to try, including the DMA settings on the hard drive.

I should note one caution: in my tests, I didn’t close iTunes before I changed the setting. After changing the setting, iTunes finished playing the song and then closed abruptly. After reopening, it has been stutter-free. I would suggest closing iTunes first as a general rule.

We will not walk in fear, one of another.

Funny what happens when you’re out of the country for a week. I totally missed Donald Rumsfeld going off the deep end and claiming that critics of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war were propping up fascism. Huh?

It’s a type of criticism we’ve heard from this administration and its toadies before: we must live in fear. We must not question the president, regardless of the evidence; to do so is treasonous. It’s the same message that got a pass from the American people for the last five years.

How astonishing, then, that MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann was able to turn Rumsfeld’s syllogism around on him, comparing Bush’s government to Neville Chamberlain’s in their certainty of their command of the situation and impugning the integrity of their chief critic, Winston Churchill. It’s six and a half minutes of some of the finest display of journalistic integrity and courage since Edward R. Murrow, whom Olbermann invokes to good effect:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.

Indeed. See also Slate’s roundup of reaction from both sides of the blogosphere.

No update. Bad blog.

I ended up on the road all day yesterday, so no update happened. It was a really surreal week in Mexico City, and I didn’t see that much of the city other than my hotel, our customer’s offices, and the roads in between. That’s pretty much a normal business trip, but because the hotel was in an office park, we didn’t really get any time at night to explore the local culture.

I have two lingering impressions of Mexico City. The first was walking down the street and mentioning to our host that the enormous double-deck elevated highway we were walking beneath surprised me, given Mexico City’s history of earthquakes. His wry response was, “Yes, that surprises us here too.” Mexico City has so many cars that there aren’t too many alternatives, apparently.

The other was watching the city recede beneath us as we took off—miles and miles of dense city and residential blocks of gray and brown concrete, livened with splashes of earth-tone colors, receding into the distance as far as the eye could see, lapping at the sides of the giant mountain peaks and hills that shrugged their way up from the plateau into the clouds. The contrast with Chicago, where our flight connected, could not have been more vivid—yes, miles and miles of residential blocks, but blocks that were tree-lined, with space between the buildings, green-lawned… all luxuries that were reserved for very few properties in Mexico City (at least from my vista near the airport).

The trip wasn’t a total loss, though. I ended up talking with my seatmates for the entire 90 minutes between Chicago and Boston. My companions were a Mexican girl who will be studying international relations for a year at the University of Maine, and John McBride, a managing partner McBride & Lucius who likes Father Ted and Janacek. It was definitely the most entertaining random conversation I’ve had in a while.

Listening queue

Currently waiting for my review at eMusic, once my subscription renews: two early Lucinda Williams recordings, Gillian Welch’s Hell Among the Yearlings, In Camera’s 13 (Lucky for Some), and Scott H. Biram’s The Dirty Old One Man Band.

Currently listening: the Sacred Steel compilation, Max Roach’s astonishing We Insist! The Freedom Now Suite, and the Replacements’s Hootenanny.

I don’t know, but every now and then I run across a pile of music that makes me very very happy. This is one of those times.

Culture jamming as patriotism

I don’t know that there’s anything more inspirational on the anniversary of the post-Katrina disaster as this prank by the Yes Men, who impersonated HUD officials to tell a crowd of contractors and media in New Orleans that HUD would be refocusing its efforts on getting people back into their homes, rather than knocking the homes down and letting new contracts for mixed-income flats. Read the article. It, combined with the constantly excellent reporting from the New Yorker on the disaster and reconstruction (much of which is missing from the archive link), ought to raise some questions.

Mexico City

The blessing and curse of business travel is that while one gets to visit exotic locations that one would never have visited otherwise, they all tend to look the same.

I’m sitting in a very nice hotel in Mexico City—the suburbs, technically, looking out the window and waiting for the sun to come up over the mountain to the east. This is the technology center; we passed signs for EDS, HP, IBM, and FedEx among others on our way in. So far, aside from brushing my teeth in bottled water as a precaution (though the hotel has its own water treatment plant), I could be anywhere in Europe or the big cities.

Except that, on the way from the airport last night, we passed a colonial Spanish building sandwiched in between the access road and the main highway. And we saw intimations of the enormous cathedral and the Zocalo—the second largest public square in the world, after Red Square in Moscow—from the air coming in.

It will be an interesting three days to say the least.

Friday Random 10: South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)

With the rules of the Random 10, the odds of any mariachi music coming into this list are probably pretty slim. But it should be there anyway: I have a three day business trip to Mexico City next week and will be experiencing that fair country for the first time. Should be a heck of a trip; I’m really looking forward to being there now that some of the post-election fallout has settled.

  1. MF Doom, “Who Do You Think I Am? (Feat. King Ceasar, Rodan, Megalon, Kamakiras, and Kong)” (Operation: Doomsday)
  2. Chris Bell, “Fight At The Table” (I Am The Cosmos)
  3. The Velvet Underground, “I Heard Her Call My Name” (White Light/White Heat)
  4. Bettye Lavette, “On the Surface” (I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise)
  5. Death Cab for Cutie, “We Looked Like Giants” (Transatlanticism)
  6. David Byrne, “Walk on the Water” (Look Into The Eyeball)
  7. Mazzy Star, “Mary of Silence” (So Tonight That I May See)
  8. Sting, “Shape of My Heart” (Ten Summoner’s Tales)
  9. The Cure, “Jumping Someone Else’s Train” (Three Imaginary Boys)
  10. Bobby Bare, “Shine On Harvest Moon” (The Moon Was Blue)

Battery update (again)

So in the middle of a broad battery recall for older Powerbook and iBook batteries (my machines weren’t affected by this one), I thought I’d follow up about my own battery situation. As you’ll recall, Apple is also recalling some MacBook Pro batteries, not for explosive reasons but because they apparently “don’t meet the company’s performance standards” (more on what that means in a second). And you’ll also recall that when I sent in my notice, I got a pair of iPod earbuds instead of batteries.

Yesterday afternoon I spent something like an hour and 15 minutes on the phone to Apple support waiting for an answer. Finally they put me in touch directly with a guy in Dispatch, who said, “I have no idea how that happened,” and sent the new battery out. This time I have a tracking number, so I have a high level of confidence that I’ll actually get the battery.

But back to the real battery recall: it’s funny how different news outlets are handling the news. While most are saying that it’s bad news for Sony, good old Business Week managed to spin the recall as a “more bad news for Apple” story… By contrast, the analysis in Forbes, which points out the technological and manufacturing issues underlying the problem, is much deeper and more insightful.

Finally, an article on iPodNN appears to tie the mysterious “high standards for battery performance” that were at issue in the MacBook Pro recall to the infamous MacBook Pro whine, which is only audible when the device is on battery power. We’ll see when my new battery comes in, but maybe this will make the laptop as quiet as the old G4 was…

Link roundup

Catching my breath for the first time this week, and there are some interesting things going on out there:

  • Diebold’s voting machines failed miserably in the Alaskan preliminary and ballot measure election yesterday, forcing a hand recount. Surprised?
  • Navarro Vineyards Wine Grape Juices, which sound like a great alternative to wine on the table—good for pregnant women and diabetics, among others. Available in Gewürtztraminer and Pinot Noir (thanks, BoingBoing)
  • In New Jersey, insurance prices are falling substantially following some selective deregulation, for some drivers as much as 30-40%. Hear that, Massachusetts?
  • Cautions on the Long Tail from the WSJ. I think The Long Tail’s argument countering the winner-take-all madness with some real thinking about the shape of the overall distribution is worthwhile, particularly in the music business. But I’m also glad to see some skeptical analysis—at times I was gasping for air in the optimism of the book. One point to consider: arguing that it’s harder for new acts to get recognized is different than making a choice about putting back catalog material online where it can be more easily discovered and downloaded; indeed the latter is a far less costly proposition and could probably generate a lot of value. So why isn’t every Sting b-side, for instance, available online already?
  • At the Parkhaus, a wall comes down—more progress in their ongoing substantial house expansion.
  • Is it any wonder if homeowners are confused about lead paint removal in Massachusetts? The Boston Globe asked 12 area paint stores about stripping paint and got approximately 12 different answers.
  • Alas, poor Pluto. It was inevitable, really, with all the other minor planets being discovered. (And thanks, Tin Man, for getting the best soundbite in about this: “On the other hand, isn’t it wrong to allow an unelected body to redefine the word ‘planet’ for all of us? Shouldn’t we let the people decide?”)
  • And finally, it’s a good day for The Boy (must we now call him The Man?) as Dark Esther has her way with him in Scary Go Round. So the news isn’t all bad…

Jumping, saying hi

Finished reading The Discoveries last week. A recap of the major scientific discoveries of the 20th century, complete with the actual research papers, it plunged me back into my physics past.

It made me think about quantum physics and how it has really changed everyday life. Example: while for some medical imaging ultrasound is the way to go (including the echocardiogram and fetal imaging), to view the detailed inner workings of the organism you have to go CT—computed tomography. Three dimensional reconstructions of 2d x-ray slices.

And what’s an x-ray? High wavelength light being absorbed and reflected from different densities of materials, and a little fluorescence.

And what is fluorescence? A photon’s energy is transferred to an electron, kicking it into a higher energy state—usually followed by retransmission of the energy. It’s as if the electron is jumping, saying hi, then dropping back down.

I thought about this as I watched our dog Jefferson, an inveterate ladies’ dog, greet a crowd of teenage girls out for a walk tonight, as he stood on his hind legs, wagged his tail, barked once, and sat down again in the grass.