Category: Weblogging

Categories
Weblogging

Spam comments

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

One of the advantages of going with MT comments is that I can see comments from older postings. And I’m finding out that a posting I did quite some time back when I was still living in San Francisco, is getting spam comments.

The posting had to do with the problems I was having with Sprint and international long distance charges. The company charged me over 600.00 dollars for about three hours of conversation — over 3.00 a minute.

The end to the long distance bill saga is that after a bit of investigation into my options and legal rights, I ended up only having to pay relatively reasonable fees and not the excessive amount first charged. (Who says the Internet isn’t useful?)

However, the posting associated with the Sprint long distance problem is now getting spam comments. Take a peek and you’ll see exactly which ones I’m talking about.

Spam email is bad enough, but spam comments? Is this a case of any comments are better than none? (Answer: I don’t think so.)

Categories
Weblogging

Stubbornly letting go

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Loren Webster writes compellingly, wonderfully, about the virtues of stubbornness:

More importantly, stubbornness got me through Vietnam. Unlike most of my fellow soldiers, I had few illusions about that war, but my stubbornness and unwillingness to give in to my feelings of despair got me through my tour there. I was determined to stay alive, and if that meant never taking a drink, never smoking anything stronger than a cigarette and experiencing the whole hell that it was while stone-cold-sober because that gave me the best chance of coming out alive, that’s what I would do. Stuck in a platoon that was dramatically understaffed with sergeants and experienced soldiers, I felt it necessary to assume responsibilities that aged me long before I should have been. Sheer stubbornness got me through that war without enduring psychological problems and allowed me to deal with the hostility I met in the “liberal” groups I ran with when I returned home.

I see a stubborn streak in all of the webloggers whose writing I enjoy on a daily basis. I sometimes wonder if this strength to hold one’s ground is the reason why I do like their writing, regardless of what they write about.

I am not a stubborn person. There are a few universal truths I hold on to with fierce grip: protection of the environment, a great dislike of war in any form, a disgust of hypocrisy, the importance of treating fairly with one another, and a love and appreciation of beauty no matter its form. However, outside of these philosophical generalizations, I hold on to very little else with any great strength.

You only have to look at how many times I’ve moved to see this. From Kettle Falls to Seattle to Salt Lake City to Seattle to Yakima to Phoenix to Yakima to Ellensburg to Seattle to Portland to Vermont to Boston to San Francisco, and finally here to St. Louis. And I don’t have even the excuse of being in the military to provide reason for my restlessness.

I also let go of people, as easily as I let go of places. The slightest hint that I have no place among the people I’m with, and I walk away. It’s in my nature to let go before being let go. Yet none of us have a place within any group that isn’t of our own making. Rather than walking away so easily, perhaps I should have held on, but found a different grip.

Categories
Technology Weblogging

The beauty of change

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

It would seem that Google has changed its algorithms and webloggers no longer dominate. I checked my own name, Shelley, and found I’m an ignominious second pager now. Still, we webloggers are facing this algorithmic demotion in stride, with humor, and wit.

However, the only way to know Google’s algorithmic change’s true effect, is to run a test. Searching on poem change, I find:

Five months ago the stream did flow,
The lilies bloomed within the sedge,
And we were lingering to and fro,
Where none will track thee in this snow,
Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!
For if I do not hear thy foot,
The frozen river is as mute,
The flowers have dried down to the root:
And why, since these be changed since May,
Shouldst thou change less than they.

Elizabeth Barret Browning, Change upon Change

You would have liked
Who I could have been,
But he died with the rest of my dreams.
I could have changed this,
But I tried too hard…
…I tried.

Paul Graves, Change

I made a deal with God
a few years ago
and told him
“This is it!
until the end of this year
I return the money
if they give me too much,
from then on
I feel free to keep it.”

Moshe Benarroch, Change

Returning home

I left home when I was young, at old age I returned home,

I still had the hometown accent, though my hair had turned grey.

I met the hometown children who knew me not,

Laughingly the children ask me, where I was from.

He Zhi Zhang 659AD to 744AD – A Tang Poem

i cannot feel my skin right now. if i pinch myself, it does not hurt. if i embed my fingernails in my arm, i cannot feel it. only my fingers can feel the pressure of digging into my arm. if i cross my right leg over my left leg, only my right leg can feel anything. if i cross them the other way, only my left leg can feel. right now, there is a tiny itch on my right leg. when i scratch it, i can no longer feel my leg. it therefore no longer itches. theoretically all i would have to do to stop the itching would be to put my elbow on my leg. but then if i moved my right leg, i would feel it again without feeling my elbow. this would only be useful if i had an itch on my elbow.

crushing a bird :: pocket change

 

No, Google seems to work fine. Just fine

Categories
Weblogging

Pilgrim’s rock

One year ago today, Mark Pilgrim set a dangerous precedent: when told by his boss to remove his weblog or else he would lose his job, he said no, and was fired. Defying management was bad enough, but to make matters worse, since that fateful day Mark has enjoyed success after success — a better job, respect and success online, even getting engaged.

Mark, that’s not how these things are supposed to happen. When management gives you an order, you’re supposed to grovel; and if you don’t and get fired, you’re supposed to end up on the street, destitute, homeless, begging lattes on the street corner.

Next thing you know, with the example you set, all workers are going to want to be treated with dignity and respect. Sheesh!

You’re a dangerous man, Mark. And only your kitty and I and every corporate manager in America knows it.

Categories
Weblogging

RSS, XML, and Namespaces—oh my!

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Dave writes that the use of namespaces is fundamentally flawed because the hasty introduction of namespaces into RSS 2.0 generated problems with several aggregators:

If this is true, we can’t design using namespaces until:

1. All the parsers are fixed, or

2. Users/content providers expect and accept this kind of breakage (I don’t want to be the one delivering that bit of bad news, got burned not only by the users, but by developers too, people generally don’t know about this problem, or if they do know are not being responsible with the info).

Anyway it looks to me like there’s a big problem in the strategy of formats that intend to organize around namespaces.

Sam Ruby writes:

I therefore must change my opinion. Where I previously thought that RSS 2.0 suffered from a simple omission, now I must consider RSS 2.0 fundamentally busted.

My oh my oh my oh my.

Dave, saying that the problem you experienced with the hasty rollout of RSS 2.0 is because namespace implementation in XML is flawed, is about the same as me saying that MySQL and PHP aren’t working correctly on my system because the theories behind relational databases and web application script engines are fundamentally flawed.

Damn PHP and MySql for mucking up my system, anyway. Bad boys.

Update: I think Dave’s essay was deliberate bait. I think he was having fun with us when he wrote it: pulling our legs, yanking our chains, getting a rise out of our choleric reactions. Why, if he really believes in what he wrote, I’ll eat Jonathon’s hat.

Update Two: Lovely posting on this by I. M. Orchard. More fodder over at Ben’s. Now, ‘scuse me, I have to find work to do.