Joy, Joy Division

Okay, I'd forgotten what a kickass album this really is. Considering the deep black funks I used to pull back then, I'm surprised I lived through a single listen. And yet I remember listening to it many many times, and here I am. Yes, this is a good candidate for most depressing album in the history of rock, but it also shakes and boogies.

I ripped this as soon as I got home, and played the first song on the iLamp. I'd forgotten how damn funky and cool Atrocity Exhibition was! Man am I ever going to waste a few hours reacquainting myself with this CD. But not when I'm feeling depressed, oh no! Only when I'm happy and strong!

Closer is Closer

Whoo Hoo! I love electronic tracking numbers. The USPS says my cd is in Tualatin, having arrived at 4:03am! So with a little luck, I should be listening to the most depressing album in the history of rock this evening.

A Ghost Is Born

As I work away on my iLamp, waiting for Kelly to finish her shower, a new album is playing in the background. It won't be out until late June, but the band, Wilco, are gracious enough to stream the entire thing, in pretty high quality, across the Internet for my sampling enjoyment. The verdict so far: I will be buying this one.

Oooh! Handshake Drugs is playing right now! This was on their Enhanced EP, and is really nice. They made the digital version of the EP available to fans (like me) who bought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I'm a fan for life, I tell ya!

Flea Dip

I dug around on the Internet and found some example code for a way to lock down comments in bulk. With a few changes it worked for my weblog. I'm not turning off comments entirely. Any new post will be open. But the comment spam parasites seem to choose old posts by default, so this will rein them in until MT3.0 gets out. Then I'll probably reverse the closing of comments to allow those rare articulate strangers their voices.

My Blog Has Fleas

I really dislike the word 'blog' as a stand in for weblog, but it fit the title, so be it.

I'm sick of the parasites. Sick I say. I allow comments on my weblog so that friends and family can add something to my posts. I even get useful posts from strangers now and then. Unfortunately, the overwhelming mass of comments are what is known as 'comment spam'. This is when someone posts a comment with a link to a commercial site. The comment itself is not related to the post, and is often total jibberish.

Why would anyone advertise their site on a little known weblog? It's Google's fault. Google rates the popularity of web pages by how many other pages link to it. This is the Pagerank algorithm. So spammers post comments on thousands of weblogs, and try to trick Google into believing their websites are popular.

I get between one and five of these faux commments every day, and it's very irritating. I've contemplated closing all comments on my website, but for now, the balance is still in favor of leaving them open. One comment from a friend, or a comment which leads to a new friendship (hi Pascale! hi Ky!) is worth a hundred of these flea bites.

That may not always be so. The frequency of spam comments is slowly increasing. Yesterday I upgraded my site to MovableType 2.661, which implements Comment Throttling. This prevents multiple comments from the same IP address more than once a minute. But of course since the comment spammers use virus driven PCs, the comments come from all over.

MovableType is coming out with a 3.0 version 'soon', which will allow comment approval. Then the only person who will have to see the spam is me. And I will have the satisfaction of denying the spammers access to my weblog entirely. Until then...

My Blog Has Fleaaaaaas!!!

Thief of Time

Friday I explained Daylight Savings Time to Kelly. You know, Spring Forward, Fall Back, alleged reasons why it's a good idea. Of course, I may have used words to the effect of 'them' stealing an hour from us each Spring. So yes, Kelly's creeping up on nine years, and has had this experience before, but this year, this year it's personal! She was quite peeved Friday night.

Today we went to the garden store, and if I so much as mentioned Daylight Savings Time, she carped bitterly, and it took a heroic effort to steer the conversation to another topic. I swear, it was like turning an oil tanker. So I guess my work here is done.

Book Rollover

I just finished Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. It was a lot of fun. Superscience and Vingean human Singularity wrapped up in a neat package. At times I thought I was reading Roadside Picnic, since Stross managed to capture that enigmatic and puzzling element of the truly alien. Even if the aliens are probably descended from us, by way of the Singularity.

Next on the menu is a great big brick of a sci-fi novel, which is the first of a trilogy, no less: Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds. At 500 pages, on loan from the library, it's doubtful I'll finish it before I run through all my renewals, but I hope to at least determine if it's worth buying.