Monthly Archives: November 2011

incense, krampusnacht, miscellaneous, players

miscellaneous random

the entire Voynich Manuscript is now online, where intrigued people (like me) can pore over it, download pages and wonder what Emperor Rudolph II of Germany thought was worth 66.4 troy ounces of gold…

i bought some new stock: Golden Nag Champa and Woods, as well as some “reorder” stock, Pradhan’s Royal Life and Shivranjani. i’m really glad to have found a new supplier for pradhan’s royal life, as it is one of my best (and best selling) champa fragrances, and the supplier i was getting it from previously is the notorious sughanda prabhu, who is practically impossible to get in touch with, and has recently gotten out of the incense business(!) but used to provide the best quality incense i have ever found anywhere… but the shivranjani i bought was because i needed more, and it’s not that common in the united states, however once i bought it, i realised that the supplier i usually get it from sells it for about half the price that these new guys sell it for, so i think i won’t change suppliers for that fragrance…

bleh… seeds… 😛 ptui…

i’m SO glad mother-in-law is gone… she’s my mother-in-law, and i’m grateful for her existence, without which there would be no moe, but if she can exist somewhere that’s far enough away from me that she can’t come over, rant about how my liberal views are going to make a mess of our country, decide our house isn’t good enough, try to make it better and end up making it worse, it would be just fine with me… her predictably abortive attempt at painting resulted in paint splashed from floor to ceiling, and ripped wallpaper where i took off the tape that she had me put down so that she wouldn’t paint beyond a certain, random point… it’s in the “spare” bathroom, that i don’t use very often, so i don’t have to see it every day, but it’s irritating that it was functional if consistently ugly, and now it’s functional and inconistently awful, and moe and i are left to clean up the mess.

i’ve got a busy few weeks coming up… i’ve got two rehearsals on wednesday, a gig on friday, a gig on saturday, and a gig and a rehearsal on sunday, then next monday (which is krampusnacht) there’s a rehearsal, wednesday there’s a rehearsal, friday there’s a gig, and next saturday is the start of the panto run, which is two shows saturday and sunday, excluding the 24th and 25th, and the 31st, and the 1st, and then two shows saturday and sunday for two more weeks, ending january 15th. if anybody is interested in coming better get your tickets soon, because we’re selling out very quickly. 8)

i am a terrorist

another week closer to the eschaton…

To Change the Country, We Just Might Have to Change Ourselves – which is why it’s never gonna’ happen… just sayin’…

Urge the Senate to Oppose Indefinite Military Detention – the U.S. Senate is considering the unthinkable: changing detention laws to imprison people — including Americans living in the United States itself — indefinitely and without charge.

When they took the fourth amendment,
    I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
    I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
    I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
    and I can say nothing about it.

Six Children Are Killed by NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan – i wonder what their parents are thankful for…

Occupy Peace – Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. — Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

Occupy Language: the struggle over meaning – my impression is that it will be a lot easier to convince those who don’t want to change with language that is meaningful and consistent. at this point, i don’t see a lot of that happening.

The Use of Pepper Spray On Peaceful Protesters Is Illegal … And Can Seriously Injure Or Kill – just in case anybody had any doubts. however, whatever you believe, According to a UC Police Captain, linking arms to form a human chain is an act of violence – just in case anybody had any doubts…

Who Wasted $13m on Occupy Protests? – hint: it wasn’t the 99%…

Disabled Man Tasered To Death For Falling Off Bike – police are now trained that “pain compliance,” a euphemism for torture, is acceptable in apprehending anyone even if that person poses no physical danger.
also, Cop Arrests Five Year Old for Acting Out in School and 5-Year-Old Handcuffed, Charged With Battery On Officer – 😮

Fort Worth Man Gets 80 Years For Buying A Hot Dog With Fake Money – the people who caused the economic collapse, however, get bonuses with real money, as everybody else has to put up with no heat and not enough food.

Federal agents shut 88-year-old man’s business, because his product is being used by meth labs – federal and state drug enforcement agents are coming down hard on a humble homemade solution, which helps backpackers purify water…

Vancouver Mayors Say Legalize Marijuana – that’s good, but vancouver is one place in a large variety of places that, illogically, don’t want cannabis legalised, so it probably won’t happen any time soon… 😐

my music

almost…

today i realised that i have almost a complete new albums worth of original music, and the only thing preventing me from releasing my fourth album of original music is that about half of the tracks don’t have endings…

so i got busy today and came up with endings for about 6 tracks, and put together a preview. it’s not completely ready yet, and there are still 5 tracks that still don’t have endings, but here’s a sample: Freedom by Saint Fred – ©2011 by Saint Fred/Hybrid Elephant Music, All Rights Reserved.

also, i “stole” a sample from the pile of unfinished “And More” songs i have lying around, and rearranged it so that it’s pretty much unrecognisable… i’m not sure whether i am going to include it with the rest of the album of original music because the original sample involves people other than myself, even though it’s altered enough that it probably wouldn’t be recognisable by them, even if they did hear it.

i am a terrorist

another week closer to the eschaton…

Mississippi Republicans Only Narrowly Support Interracial Marriage – this isn’t 50 years ago, it’s today. 😐 the reason we’ve got to deal with “the war on terrorism”, and “global warming”, and occupy wall street, and priests abusing kids and things like that, these days, is because there are still people who would keep us thinking this way. it’s ignorant, it’s wrong, and i don’t like it. the way to change the world, is to change the MINDS of people who don’t want to change… and that’s the part that i still can’t figure out. but you have my word as an enlightened person, that if i ever figure that out, it’s going to be the first thing on my list of things to do. in the mean while, we’ll have to put up with videos like this popping up from time to time Actual Video of Water Torture Our Ex-Leaders Confess to on Their Bestselling Book Tours and Our Current Leaders Falsely Deny and there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do about it. that’s it: either change the minds of people who don’t want to change, or put up with their little antics and pretend nothing is wrong.

do what you like, i’m convinced that “antics” like that are wrong, regardless of who they’re fighting. 😐

Police Force Peaceful UC Davis Students to Open Their Mouths … and Then Shoot Pepper Spray DOWN THEIR THROATS and Police Attack Peaceful UC Davis Students With Pepper Spray and Seated and not offering any threat, protesters at Occupy Tulsa get sprayed, point blank, in the face with pepper spray, by cops – it is unclear how a person who refuses to get off the ground could be persuaded to do so by blinding them. more info at Addicting Info

however, University of California President ‘Appalled’ by Police Brutality Against Student Protesters is probably going to be the last you’ll ever hear about getting justice for the downtrodden, and the aggressors are probably not even going to get a warning.

You Say You Want a Revolution – Occupy Wall Street is a paper tiger: All drums and no message. If you want to change the system under which you Americans suffer you must stop collaborating with it…

Make No Mistake: This Is Illegal. Also Insane. – the police said they felt they had to take the semi-automatic-wielding action because “the group used large banners to obscure the windows to the business…”

Former Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis, In CuffsFormer Police Captain and Current OWS Protester Ray Lewis Arrested and Former Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis, In Cuffs – they say a picture is worth 1,000 words…

NYPD Joins Spanish Inquisition in Attack on the Written Word – “the police are saying the books weren’t destroyed, but simply removed and that they could be reclaimed later”… from the dumpster, where they were “deposited” by a bulldozer…

Lobbying firm’s memo spells out plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street – the 1% thinks that the expenditure of less than $1 million will completely take down the OWS movement… we’ll see how right they are…

Fake terror plots, paid informants: the tactics of FBI ‘entrapment’ questioned – gee, you think? unfortunately, nobody will pay attention to the goofy brits and their offbeat humour…

TSA Warns Travelers Not To Smuggle Carry-On Items In Christmas Gift Wrap – another meaningless imposition on what should otherwise be a joyous occasion…

Europe Bans X-Ray Body Scanners Used at U.S. Airports – but the U.S. ignores the ignorant europeans because they don’t know any better…

An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the Senate Judiciary Committee – The Internet Blacklist Legislation– known as PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House – is a threatening sequel to last year’s COICA Internet censorship bill. Like its predecessor, this legislation invites Internet security risks, threatens online speech, and hampers Internet innovation. Urge your members of Congress to reject this Internet blacklist campaign in both its forms!

The ‘School to Prison Pipeline’: Education Under Arrest – remember how, when you were in school, you made the connection between forced education and the prison system? it’s worse now, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better any time soon.

High Childhood IQ Linked to Subsequent Illicit Drug Use – it’s to help us deal with the IDIOTS in charge… of course research won’t tell you why there’s a link, but that’s the reason, when it comes down to it.

Pizza Is Not a Vegetable – at least when reagan tried to convince us that ketchup was a vegetable, people had the sense to vote him down (and, technically, nothing is really a vegetable anyway, but that’s beside the point).

miscellaneous

random

moe and i went to a friends’ house last night, and we ended up watching a really funny movie, which was odd, because it was likely intended as either a “holiday” movie, or a “horror” movie, both of which would be things which i would not have a tendency to watch, given the choice…

the film started with a bunch of english-speaking technicians, and one english-speaking “big wig” discussing a very bizarre drilling sample that had just been taken from the mountain which they were on top of, and it then followed a couple of suomi-speaking kids (with english subtitles) who had been “spying” on them as they went back to their families and their wintertime activities. it turned out that the english-speaking people had been drilling into an enormous grave-mound and had dug up the “original santa claus”, which caused a big problem for everyone. nobody in the film actually used the name, but they were clearly referring to krampus, and his “little helpers”, who were old, naked men with nasty tempers. it ended up with a full, double-unexpected twist that makes me want to get that movie on DVD so that i’ll have a film to suggest when everybody else wants to watch those awful stop-action animated monstrosities. 😉

bizarre, pictures

gauri shankar

Gauri Shankar Rudrakhsha have been an interest of mine for some time, and i actually own a 7 mukhi gauri shankar bead

gauri shankar rudrakhsha

gauri shankar rudrakhsha

so i was sort of amused this afternoon when i was out for my walk and i passed the abandoned house up the alley from our place, where i discovered an abandoned gauri shankar pumpkin.gauri shankar pumpkin this was not growing, but apparantly had been deposited there, probably by teenaged doodlehums who frequent the area, and had smashed a few pumpkins a little further up the street.

geek stuff

woo hoo!

i finally got around to installing OS9 on the motorola G4 computer that has been hanging out in the workshop for the past few months.

it has the capability to connect to wireless networks (something i did not know when i got it) and the only reason i’m not posting this from my OS9 mac is because i can’t convince it to connect to our wireless network… it will connect to the neighbours’ unsecured wireless network without a problem, but since we got a new router, our network has been secured with a RIDICULOUSLY long password that i can’t get OS9 to handle… it may be that it only accesses the network from OSX, but i can handle that…

and i never thought i would be running OS9 again as recently as two years ago… 8)

bssb, music, philharmonic, players, snake suspenderz / alive

鮭汁

鮭汁

so i’ve been feeling really subdued since being cracked last week… despite the fact that it didn’t really affect me that much, and i recovered quickly and completely with no more hassle and upset than the crack caused itself, i just haven’t felt like communicating that much.

we have only just gotten started with the panto rehearsals, although my understanding is that the players have actually been working separately for some time. we’ve only got a few weeks before the show goes live, and it has been almost completely rewritten between OCF and now, so it would really be good if things were moving somewhat more quickly, but i imagine it will all work out in the end.

snake suspenderz has a gig at mosaic coffee house on friday, which nobody remembered until i made some comment about a week ago that i had this gig on my schedule… and, at first, it was dismissed as a hallucination until hobbit realised that he had, in fact, scheduled the gig. we were doing really well, had a whole bunch of gigs in a row there for a while, and were making regular money busking, but recently it’s gone downhill, and we haven’t even rehearsed since the middle of last month.

the sousa bash went off without a hitch, and the sousa band is now officially on vacation until spring, with the exception of the phinney ridge holiday festival, which i’m not sure i’m going to this year, because it is REALLY crowded.

i am a terrorist

another week closer to the eschaton…

the another week closer to the eschaton post this week is made using the colour Pantone 2685C purple, as a form of protest over the Cadbury® trademark, which has been mostly upheld by the UK’s trade mark registry. if more people were concerned about news like this, it would be an indication that the world no longer needs another week closer to the eschaton. unfortunately, that is not the case, so here we go with another one.

Sign the Declaration to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons – if enough people sign it, maybe it will actually do some good…

UK backs US bid to overturn ban on cluster bombs – people who know fear this is an attempt to legitimise the use of weapons that are widely deemed to be inherently indiscriminate. doesn’t that just warm your heart? you can Sign a petition to stop cluster bombs being used if you think it will do any good.

Freda - Liberty GropedObama Invokes Jesus More Often Than Bush – obama is the best republican president that could have stolen our votes… i’m not voting for him again.

39 Things Obama Could Do To Get My Vote – but the only one that is REMOTELY possible is for him to end the war on drugs, and that’s not gonna’ happen…

Alabama county files biggest municipal bankruptcy – this can’t be good…

Pressured to Name Leader, Occupy Denver Elects Dog and Occupy Denver elects a new leader: Shelby, a Border Collie mix – “Yes, I appointed a horse to an important management position. But, unlike the directors, I appointed the whole horse.” — Caligula

What Happened When I Tried to Get Some Answers About the Creepy NYPD Watchtower Monitoring OWS – this can’t be good…

Reasons America Will Be Judged as the Most Brutal Empire in History – with things like this happening, it’s no surprise… 😮

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey – this can’t be good…

geek stuff, hybrid elephant, malfunctioning computers, rants

that was “interesting”…

if, by “interesting” you mean “screaming in mind-wreaking terror”… 😐

i got cracked* this morning.

about 2:00 in the morning, someone compromised a “soft” password on one of my wordpress sites and defaced every PHP index page that they could find…111110 web site hack

when i started up my computer this morning, i was confronted by this, rather than the expected page on hybridelephant.com, przxqgl.hybridelephant.com and several other web sites that i host. it was a shock, let me tell you.

FORTUNATELY i have a backup… 🙂 and a backup of a backup… 8) and i was able to put everything right within a few minutes of discovering that it was wrong, but finding out how was a little more tricky.

i logged into the administration sides of the web sites i manage, to determine if anything other than PHP pages had been tampered with, and i discovered that i couldn’t log in to one of them… so i clicked the “lost password” link and discovered that it didn’t know who i am… so i decided to get a bit more forceful: i logged into the database with MyPHPAdmin and discovered that the administrator account (which had a “soft” password that “could be remembered easily” by someone who has never had to do DBA stuff before) had been changed, and then deleted…😐

once i regained control of the database (and DELETED the admin account with the soft password) and removed the file that he sneakily uploaded to a plugin directory that i had deleted (which is why i knew it was there), i went to work to discover as much as i can about the cracker as possible. i learned that he uploaded files from 66.23.237.186, which is located in new york, but he also has close associations with 46.38.130.10, which is located outside of louisville, kentucky, but he’s apparently all for iran and down on saudis, so it could be that he’s using those IP addresses as proxys, at which point he could be anywhere… i also have a “DecodedBase64.bin” file i retrieved from the file he encrypted and uploaded to the deleted plugin directory, which potentially has a little more accurate indications of who he might be, but executing it on any of my computers is totally out of the question. that’s probably as close as i’m ever going to come to actually knowing who he is, but that’s a fair amount more than i could have expected.

and the client gets a STERN talking-to about the value of very strong passwords… i’m fairly sure that she won’t do it again.

Continue reading that was “interesting”… →

i am a terrorist

We Demand A Vapid, Condescending, Meaningless, Politically Safe Response To This Petition.

We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition.

Since these petitions are ignored apart from an occasional patronizing and inane political statement amounting to nothing more than a condescending pat on the head, we the signers would enjoy having the illusion of success. Since no other outcome to this process seems possible, we demand that the White House immediately assign a junior staffer to compose a tame and vapid response to this petition, and never attempt to take any meaningful action on this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.

—–

finally, a petition whose results i can actually support… 😐

i am a terrorist

another week closer to the eschaton…

Hiroshima Survivor Asks World to Awaken – but, unfortunately, she is one person expressing an entirely unpopular view, and she will be roundly ignored by everybody who can make a difference.

screw us and we shall multiplyA New Declaration of Independence – 1. Debt relief, 2. A substantial jobs program, 3. A healthcare public option, 4. Reregulate Wall Street, 5. End the Global War on Terror and rein in the defense budget, 6. Repeal the Patriot Act, 7. Tackle climate change, 8. Stop locking everyone up for everything and end the drug war, 9. Full equality for the queer community, 10. Fix the tax system… everything sounds reasonable so far… let’s see if it gets anywhere.

Dimock, Pennsylvania Water Still Tainted By Fracking, Lawyers Claim – the oil company came in, polluted at least 11 wells, and then convinced a court to let them stop paying for drinking water to the people affected by their pollution. and at this point, it looks like they’re going to get off scott free, because they have money for lawyers and the affected people victims don’t. next, the people are probably going to have to sell off their land at a substantial loss, because they no longer have a source of water, which means that the oil company can swoop in and buy it all. big oil wins again, at the expense of their customers. isn’t it the american way?

Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Suprise You! – i already know i’m an anarchist, and the answer sure surprised the hell outta’ me…

Super Committee Pressed To Raise Medicare Eligibility Age – meanwhile, it’s business as usual, and nothing has changed… 😛

Obama’s Legacy of Shame – obama is the best repubican president that could have stolen our votes… 😛

Internet Freedom Threatened – DMCA, PROTECT IP and SOPA vs. EFF… but the EFF – which is you, me and everybody else – is going to lose, because people are ignorant, and even when they’re aware enough to have a handle on what’s really going on, they don’t care. 😛

Feds’ Use of Fake Cell Tower: Did it Constitute a Search? – of course not… the constitution isn’t meant to impede the federal government from catching terrorists… everybody knows that.

When they took the fourth amendment,
    I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
    I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
    I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
    and I can say nothing about it.

I’m not a sexual harasser, says Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann Falsely Claims Iran Threatened U.S. With Nuclear Attack – and these people want to be president?

White House response to NORML’s “We the People” marijuana legalization petition – and NORML’s response to the load of tired, old propaganda white house response… but nothing actually changes…

He forgot. All is forgiven. – try that with anyone other than a cop and see how well it works out… 😛

2nd vet hurt at Occupy Oakland event – the oakland cops CLOWNS (although i probably shouldn’t use that term either, since it is probably offensive to real clowns) are a real piece of work: they hospitalise a veteran, then they say they’re sorry and participate in one of the protests, and then they hospitalise another veteran who wasn’t even protesting! it’s getting to be about time to TAKE THESE SUCKERS DOWN! they may have weapons, but we have numbers, and, as Mario Savio said, “There comes a time when the workings of the machine become so odious that we must throw our bodies onto the gears of the machinery to make it stop.” they can only shoot so many times before they are overrun with opponents… 😐

Suitcase sized device can remotely disable phones, intercept communications, record unique IDs and track you in real time and British police surveillance system can turn off mobile phones – and you can safely bet that if the british have the capability, we do too, even though you might not hear about it so much… especially since it is a suitcase-sized device… 😐

Alcohol Is “More Than Twice As Harmful As Cannabis” — So Explain To Me Again Why Pot Is Illegal? – because “everyone” knows that marijuana is a schedule one drug that has no known medical application, and a strong propensity for abuse… especially by brown people and those who would disrupt society in general, anyway…

malfunctioning computers, malfunctioning people

the email fiasco is mostly resolved…

i hate these things, and they appear to come in batches, so i’m hoping that i won’t have to deal with them for a while…

spamcop is up and running. there’s still a significant amount of mail from the past few days that has yet to be delivered, and there’s a good bet that, even when it is delivered, it’s not going to be all of it, but hopefully it will be enough that i get caught up again.

also, my “alternate” email address, which i was using during the time spamcop was down, now POPs the way it’s supposed to, which means that i don’t have to keep a browser open on my mac in order to reply to emails. what i’m hoping is that the technique i used to fix my POP problem will be the same as my clients whose POP mail accounts at sedentarysousa and kosherredhots need, but, unfortunately, i won’t find out for a couple of days. i’m fairly confident that it will work, though…

the only remaining snag is that qwest/centurylink’s SMTP server is STILL on a couple of blacklists, and there’s no telling how long they’ll be there, because qwest has its head so far up its ass that it can see daylight out the other end*… and there’s a very good chance that, despite the fact that i’ve had “someone with more authority” (i.e. my host provider is going to try to contact their real postmaster, and not just some phone-flunky) attempt to communicate with them, they’re going to ignore it anyway, which is why i don’t really expect anything to change in that regard.

Continue reading the email fiasco is mostly resolved… →

bizarre, crazy people

genius!…?

this guy has it all figured out: Russian ‘genius’ lived with 26 female bodies – the guy is a college professor and museum curator, and he speaks 13 languages… and he had a little “thing” for corpses in teddy bear costumes… but because of he didn’t actually produce the corpses, and they were all people who died many years earlier, the guy will probably not face any charges…

if an “ordinary” person did this, you can be guaranteed that the local government would come up with a “law” that he “broke” in order to put him away, but because of the fact that this guy actually knows something that most people don’t, and the local government knows that, the guy gets away with anything he likes…

as long as he’s not hurting anybody, i say more power to him! 8)

malfunctioning computers, malfunctioning people, qwest sucks

oh my GAWD what have i gotten myself in to?

continued…

spamcop is working, however…

when i send email from me at salamandir dot info to a friend of mine, whose email address i provide (spreznib at hybridelephant dot com) it bounces with the following message:

ERROR: Your message could not be delivered.
The mail server generated the following error message:

This message was created automatically by the mail system (ecelerity).

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed
[email protected] (reading confirmation): 550 High probability of spam

Arrival-Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:10:45 -0400
Reporting-MTA: dns; smtp.centurylink.net

Action: failed
Final-Recipient: rfc822; [email protected]
Last-Attempt-Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:10:45 -0400
Remote-MTA: dns; mx1.thewebhostserver.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 High probability of spam
Status: 5.0.0

when i check mxtoolbox dot com, it tells me that 208.47.184.3 (the IP address for smtp.centurylink.net) is on a couple of blacklists, because SOMEBODY has been sending spam from smtp.centurylink.net without encountering the HAMMER…

however, when i call qwest/centurylink, they say that it’s not 100% sure that their server is on a blacklist, and i should investigate “other problems” because of the fact that they don’t show anything wrong, they can’t do anything…

 

 

 

 

 

 

this is the sound of me, repeatedly faceplanting on the desk… 😛

geek stuff, malfunctioning computers, meta

grmph…

i rarely NEVER have problems with them, so when i do, it’s an emergency…

there have been some “issues” at spamcop.net, the origin of my regular email address. i’m not exactly sure what’s going on, because i don’t check their web site for months at a time, but apparently the email servers, and particularly their webmail servers had some sort of catastrophe that has meant that they had to restore from an old backup, or something like that. what that means, in my case, is that email that is addressed to my regular email address – salamandir at spamcop dot net – may or may not be received by me, at least until saturday and maybe longer or, alternately, it may not be received by me at all…

there also appears to be a similar problem with my “business” email address – ganesha at hybridelephant dot com – as well, because that mail is also filtered by spamcop.

i don’t know whether or not recent mail for either address will be received at all. i tried sending a test message from one of my yahoo.com accounts to spamcop.net and it hasn’t arrived. other people have told me that when they try to send email to my spamcop.net address, it has bounced with a notice that my previous ISP no longer handles email for that address (which leads me to believe that it’s on spamcop’s end, because the mailhosts on my end are set up correctly)…

i am getting some email, but for the past two or three days, i have been getting significantly fewer messages than i am used to, which also makes me think that it’s something on spamcop’s end of things…

meanwhile, you can try to send me email at “me at salamandir dot info” or “rev underscore deluxe at yahoo dot com” – although i don’t check yahoo as often, and i’ve never actually received any email at salamandir dot info (because i just created the email address today)…

geek stuff, meta

really meta…

i’ve been poking around behind the scenes again, because, recently, i’ve been getting a whole slew of spam comments on various media pages. i didn’t even know that each media file that was part of a post had its own, separate page until fairly recently, probably because i use flickr and don’t link too many media files from my own server, and when i do, i don’t put in the “link to the file” option that i am offered most of the time. apparently that doesn’t matter to the spam-bots that are out there, and they’ll link to, and comment on any page that looks like it may have comment form stuff on it…

anyway, i added the disable comments plugin, which made me look at my caching plugin and discover that it is HOPELESSLY out of date (when things work, i have a tendency not to mess with them, unless absolutely necessary), so i installed a new caching plugin, which required me to change my permalink method…

the end result is that, now, instead of linking to “?p=6651” (a rather ambiguous name that doesn’t really mean anything except to a computer), you can now link to “/2011/10/24/whatever…” which is an actual date, plus the title of the post: a much more “enlightened” way to do things, that makes the blog a lot more “human friendly”… and it makes it so that search engines could actually index my pages… if i would let them (which i won’t).

and, despite all of my griping about them, i am, actually a human being, after all, and even i have trouble remembering whether the information i wanted is in post 1864 or 1684…