Category Archives: Geek

Nerd Valentine

I realize this is both stupid and quite late, but it totally cracked me up:

ROSES ARE #FF0000
VIOLETS ARE #0000FF
ALL MY BASE
ARE BELONG TO YOU

I Want

eluminix.jpgEvery time I go to ThinkGeek, I discover frivolous crap I adore the moment I lay eyes on it. I mean, really, it’s amazing the fun and useless crap they sell there every single day of the year.

For instance: I want this keyboard now, please.

It glows in the damn dark, people! IN THE DARK! How do they always know what I want? First the Zippo digicam, and now this!

Oh what I would give to work at ThinkGeek!

goblinbox.com

spring_gb.gifToday the ‘box is green, in honor of what I hope will soon be an early spring. (There’s snow on the ground outside, but hope springs eternal.)

I used a fixed wallpaper backgroud, and edited a stylesheet from movablestyle.org. I think it’s pretty busy, but it’s less boring than the white terror I’ve had up since moving to this server.

It’s greeny! Do ya like it?

Trackback Ping Spam Sucks

I’ve turned off trackback for this entire domain.

I was so happy last week to feel like I’d finally conquered the comment spam problem – or at least get it sufficiently under control that I wasn’t daily considering turning off comments altogether, and then today I login to MT to find I’ve got myself a little nest of trackback pings. I used MT-Blacklist to delete them, but STILL.

It seems that somewhen on or near February 5th (which was my dad’s birthday, incidentally) some asshat learned how to use trackback pings to savage web servers. Trackback link spam is, apparently, less like comment spamming and lot more like a DOS attack, but the results still up spammers’ numbers in engine rankings.

Why do they do it? Well, you can read this interview with a link spammer to get an idea. How does it affect webmasters and webmistresses everywhere? Read this heartfelt post called No one can have nice things! that I thought sums it up quite coherently.

To fix it, turn of trackback. This article, Trackback Spam Attack, tells how.

Or, less drastically, you can use .htaccess – instructions available here and/or here.

Mac mini

macmini.jpgThis almost makes me wanna switch… to Apple.

Not that I would. (All my warez are for PC.) But damn that’s a cute little bugger, ain’t it? And at “only” $499 it’s an “entry level priced” Mac designed to pique the interest of die-hard PC users like myself.

Not that I’m die-hard: I know my way around a Mac. I’ve used them off and on over the years and they do have their points… they’re actually cute as hell. I mean, Windows has basically looked the same since 98 came out; sure, XP has a bit of a cute factor, but I hate XP because it sucks. So. Hmm.

Damn that cute little Mac mini, anyway. *grumble