Wait, was today supposed to be my day to shower upon the known universe a cornucopia of dewdrops of enlightenment, full of wit, charm, humor, and wisdom?
My bad, y’all! I completely forgot to put it in my calendar. I thought that today was the day I was supposed to pay my property taxes (done!), not the day I was supposed to save the world.
Sorry about that. My bad!
Besides, enlightenment is so overrated! Not to mention transitory and fleeting. I’ll be they never mentioned that in the brochure, did they? Nope! Everyone thinks when they’ve gotten enlightenment, whammo, the whole magilla is their’s to understand until the heat death of the universe. Sorry, doesn’t work that way.
Aside from the whole 27-dimensional, string theory based, infinite multiverse bit (which, by the way, means that somewhere, in some universe [just not this one], I actually am typing up the greatest thoughts ever known to humankind, as we speak) there’s that whole pesky “time” thing that no one ever bothers to factor into the standard nirvana/bliss/rapture thing.
You want sage wisdom? Something good for all of eternity, regardless of eon, era, period, epoch, or age? Try this:
Backup your data regularly and often — multiple copies — keep them in a cool, dark, dry place — keep one set offsite.
Yesterday and today, reading about the final minutes of Philae’s adventures on Comet 67P, I got to wondering again about the way we anthropomorphize these machines we make.
I want to be cold, logical, and cynical enough to realize that they’re just machines! Yes, people involved with these projects spend years and years designing, testing, building and launching these machines. I can see how they would form an attachment to the project, with the actual robot / probe / spacecraft / machine being the obvious symbol that represents all of that. I get it. But you and I aren’t part of that team, we’re just bystanders watching on television or Twitter. (If any of you ARE on one of those teams, can we talk?)
Yet we do it anyway, form emotional attachments, thinking of the robots as brave little soldiers, sent out into the cold and dangerous depths of space on a one-way suicide mission. They do their best to struggle on against all the odds, getting those last little bits of data for us before they expire.
If we pull ourselves out of our mourning and grief, we know that they “struggle on” because they were built solidly and the engineers who designed and built them were thorough and did an excellent job of anticipating different conditions and problems and building in ways of coping. Even when the spacecraft 300,000,000 miles from Earth runs into something unexpected, the engineers down here at ESA or NASA or Roscosmos or JAXA or ISRO or JPL are very clever at coming up with ways to work around it. The robot, the machine, the spacecraft is just doing what it was built for and what it’s programmed and commanded to do.
Yesterday the end came for Philae, which isn’t really “dead.” It’s more like “sleeping” or “hibernating,” since it can reactivate itself should something change on the comet which would allow sunlight to reach its solar panels. (For those who haven’t been following, it bounced on landing, ending up someplace against a cliff or in a canyon of some sort, where it gets very little sunlight.) The mission was designed to last 56 hours or so on batteries, and despite some problems in landing, Philae still carried out 100% of its science mission, getting data from every experiment, taking all of the pictures it was programmed to take, and sending all of that data back to Earth before the batteries died. It’s an overwhelming, spectacular, amazing success!
Yet we get teary-eyed when the end comes.
There are many examples of similar things in movies, but I wonder if the movies are training us to act this way in the real world or if the movies are simply reflecting the zeitgeist of our age. I remember being embarrassed on a date in high school by being so emotionally involved with Huey, Dewey, and Louie, the three small robots in “Silent Running.” We all consider R2-D2 and C3PO to be primary characters in the Star Wars films. (All three Star Wars films!) We worry about Wall-E. We know Johnny-5 is alive. When the Iron Giant sacrifices himself to save everyone else, I’m a puddle. I can watch “Blade Runner” all day long and root for Roy Batty & Pris. The list goes on.
But that’s entertainment, and we know the difference between it and real life. (Don’t say it — just don’t!)
Last night, this was real life, and it left me feeling like I had just shot Old Yeller:
I got it. I understand. It’s just a machine, doing an extraordinary job of doing what we designed it for. I know that the “@Philae2014” is a Twitter account being created by some human being at ESA.
But I dare you to read that and not put it on a par with our best human tales of triumph mixed with tragedy.
Finally, on a related note, even two years after I first saw it, this (damn you, Randall!) will tear me up every time:
I was thinking about patterns again today in a couple of different respects. One thing was the human propensity to see faces in random patterns, a psychological phenomenon called “pareidolia.” More about that some other time.
Another thing was the idea of cataloging, categorizing, organizing, and generally trying to bring order out of chaos. I’ve seen a lot of that for decades in data management, from accounting to databases of pictures, songs, files, newspaper articles, scientific data… Turns out when you go to research it, there’s an old, old discipline that has already figured out a lot of this and is working hard to bring the tools and concepts into the 21st Century — library science. Some days I wonder if I shouldn’t have studied it instead of physics, if I knew then what I know now. It might make it easier to keep track of which photos and article ideas I’ve used and which are still open to abuse writing and publishing.
Again this week our Flash Fiction Challenge goes off in a new an interesting direction. Inspired by the fact that we’re always being inundated with spam in our email inboxes and the comments sections of our blogs, and given the fact that Halloween is coming up, we’ve been challenged to write a horror story in the form of some sort of spam message. The programming background far in my past took over.
{SCRIPT|HORROR|SPAM}
{You have|You’ve} been {surfing|browsing|waste time} online more than {three|3|666|69} {hours|eons|weeks|millenias} today, yet I never found any interesting article like this. {It’s|It is} pretty worth enough for me. I {couldn’t|could not} {resist|refrain from} commenting. In my {situation|Problem|damnation} my view, if all {webmasters|demons|monsters|succubus} and bloggers made good content as you, the {Pit|Hell|nether regions} will be {much|a lot} more {blissful|wonderful|special} painful than ever before.
{It is|It’s} {appropriate|perfect|the best} time to make some plans for {the future|torture|eternal damnation} and {it is|it’s} time to be happy. {I have|I’ve} read this post and if we could I {demand|command you|desire} to suggest you {few|some|infinitely recursive} interesting things or {advice|suggestions|tips|terrorist demands}. {Perhaps|Maybe} you {could|can} write next {articles|curses|magic spells} referring to this article. I {lust|wish|desire} to read {more|even more} things about your imminent {death|disembowelment|dismemberment|demise}!
I am sure your {article|post|screed|rant|paragraph} has touched all the internet {users|trolls|simpletons|visitors}, its really really {nice|arousing|sensual|fastidious} {sermon|appeal|recruiting} on building up new {servants|worshipers|sacrificial|supplicants} for our {Lord|Master} {Satan|Lucifer|Beelzebub|Antichrist}.
Wow, this {article|post|propaganda|trolling} is {appealing|deceptive|tempting}, my {innocent|younger|virgin|slutty} sister is analyzing {such|these|many} things, {searching|looking|yearning} for {carnal|sexual|perverse} {pleasure|excitement|arousal} {so|thus|therefore} I am going to {tell|inform|let know|convey} her. She {will|wants to|must} be a {perfect|wonderful|tender|innocent} {offering|sacrifice} for your next {Black Mass|orgy|saturnalia}.
With your {interest|fascination|obsession} of the {study|worship|perfection} relating to the {Dark Arts|Satan|damnation} we are sure your {blog|site|RRS feed} can soon {allow|permit|let} me {realize|recognize|understand|recognize|know} {so|in order|what} that many others {may just|may|could} be {subscribe|sacrificed|damned|devoured}.
Please {keep|continue to|advance} writing as you are, {much|most|all} of the {scum|slime|sheep} that is now {humanity|internet users|the world} will soon be at your {feet|command|beck & call} so that {Armageddon|the End Times|Ragnarök} will {commence|be at hand|come to pass} and you will {reap|enjoy|receive} the {pain|suffering|damnation} which you have been {seeking|earning|deserving}!
Thanks. {Saved as a favorite|bookmarked!!}! {LOL|TTFN|BRB}!!
It’s been a very long and very busy day helping a friend of a friend of a friend and there have been many exciting adventures. I’m sure I’ll share some of them that can be safely shared, but on another day.
For now, I wonder why people line up for hours and hours in malls to get new phones:
Aren’t there ways to order one online a week or so in advance and just have it delivered to your door today? What do you mean, “That doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to?” Yet another story for yet another day.
In our journeys we passed through Palos Verdes, which has some pretty spectacular views. Yeah, (on a clear day) you can see the Hollywood sign, Griffith Observatory, downtown, Century City, LAX, Santa Monica, Malibu, and probably that old Nike base observation site in the hills over Encino. (Binoculars or a small telescope might help, but you can see them!)
I was hoping that the first run of the training season wouldn’t be quite so bad as in previous years when training started. My logic was that: a) even though I haven’t been running or exercising a lot I’m still overall in better shape and weighing less than I did in previous years, and; b) I’ve learned how to pace myself, my body knows what to expect, blah, blah, blah. All of that perfectly good logic appears to have been trumped by one simple fact – I’M OLDER.
Sitting here with the bright lights on at night, there are usually some kind of bugs tapping on the window, trying to get in and mate. (And we thought we had weird sex lives!) But tonight, it sounds likes hummingbirds trying to get in, repeated big smacks against the glass.
Three days in a row there have been attempts to launch a Delta 4 out of Florida – three days in a row they’ve had weather that looks like this: This weather typically violates at least three or four (and sometimes as many as six or seven) launch rules regarding the weather. But the best comment so far (commentator unknown) has been, “The Russians would have launched!” It’s funny because it’s true. (On Monday they’ll try for a fourth time to launch the Delta 4, the weather’s predicted to have a 60% chance of being acceptable. By our standards, not the Russians’.)
Coldstone ice cream is proof of a God/Universe that wants us to be happy. With my current healthy eating habits I only get it once or twice a year. Tonight I had enough so that I’m starting to see time. THAT’s a sugar rush!
Is Joe Maddon, manager of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, just one of the neatest guys on the planet? I think we knew it before, but this is confirmation.
Maybe the tiny bugs are teaming up and building tiny battering rams to try to get through the window and to the sexy light. Isn’t that how a Steven King novel starts?
Slatter’s Corollary to Murphy’s Tenth Law of Food says I’ll be regretting tonight’s ice cream tomorrow morning. Willett’s Rebuttal to Slatter’s Corollary to Murphy’s Tenth Law of Food says the ice cream tonight was worth it anyway.
Those bugs are really going to be disappointed, even if they break through the glass with their insectoid battering ram — it’s a double-pane window. (As a precaution against just this possibility, I might add!)
It really sucks when your computer locks up in the middle of writing a blog article and requires a reboot using the pull-the-plug-out-of-the-wall method. How do I know this, you might ask…
Remember, “Some days you’re the bug. Some days you’re the windshield.”
Item The First: Since you’re all cool and wonderful and “in the know” type folks (hey, you read this every day, right?) I’m sure you’ve all already seen this ultra-fantastic video. But just in case you’ve been too busy fighting crime and saving civilization, go watch it now! It’s one of those “why didn’t I think of that?!” things where it’s obvious once someone else has done it and now you’ll see everyone doing it, but this is the first that I’ve seen and it is just awe-inspiring.
Jos Stiglingh took a DJI Phantom 2 amateur drone capable of going up several hundred feet and (probably) a half-mile or so from the operator, attached a high-def GoPro camera – then flew it into the Sunfest 2014 fireworks display in West Palm Beach, Florida! The soundtrack was originally “Con Te Partiro” by tenor Andrea Bocelli and it was perfect — apparently there were copyright issues and now it’s got a hard-driving techno soundtrack that SoundHound can’t identify.
Either way, if this isn’t the most stunning video you see today, you’ve obviously had a much more interesting day than I have!
Item The Second: And then there’s that moment when you hear your computer going nuts, the “Windows Default Beep” sounding off like DingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDing… You figure that it’s probably smoking and tossing bits of the hard disk all over the room and you’re desperately trying to remember how recent your last full backup was, until you find that it’s just the freakin’ cat who decided to sit down on the keyboard and start bathing.
Item The Third: Has anyone else noticed that the ebola outbreak in Africa is still growing? Even three and a half months after we were told not to worry, “it’s quite difficult to transmit” and “the risks are quite small.” Now it’s blown way past all previous outbreaks to be the largest ever, both in terms of the number of people infected (over a thousand), the number of fatalities (632), and the size of the region showing cases (started in Guinea, has now spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone as well). To show just how bad it’s getting, the top researcher in Sierra Leone’s effort to combat the outbreak now has contracted the disease himself.
They will let us know when to worry, right? Or do we wait until we see Brad Pitt running past us, pursued by zombies?
Item The Fourth: As a long, LONG time fan of Weird Al Yankovic’s music, it’s great to see his new “Mandatory Fun” album hitting the charts at #1. We’ve seen him a couple of times in concert over the years and he really puts on a great show. His parodies are great and many of his original songs are wonderful. The “polka mashups” on many of his albums are sheer genius. He’s a treasure.
Over the last week he’s been releasing videos from the new album, eight videos in eight days. The first couple, “Tacky” (apparently one long tracking shot?!) and “Word Crimes” (superb and clever animation) were outstanding, and on “First World Problems,” one of my other all-time favorite people-who-happen-to-be-musicians, Amanda Palmer, sings backup.
Item The Fifth: Speaking of music, what’s your walk-up music? I asked this question a while back and I’m sure that you’ve all been giving it a lot of thought. Feel free to drop your answers into the comments, but for me, I think it would depend on my mood.
If I wanted to freak out the opposition and see if anyone was actually listening to the words of a song they almost certainly hadn’t heard before, I would use the chorus of Julia Ecklar’s “Temper of Revenge.” I would use the more upbeat and angry version off of the “Divine Intervention” album (which you can buy here, hint, hint). “Find me a horse / As red as the sun / Find me a blade / That will make their blood run / I will ride out at dawn / While the sun’s in the sky / So the buzzards can see / Where the bodies will lie.” Yeah, that would get their attention.
If I just wanted to be unconventional and weird, what better than some of the above-mentioned “Weird Al” Yankovic? Although it would be tough to decide whether to use one of his parodies (to see if anyone’s actually listening and notices that it’s not the original) or one of his great original songs.
But let’s say that those plans are nixed by either a stodgy team management or by the Prince of Darkness himself. What can I get away with for a more “conventional” choice? After all, they’ve allowed “Sympathy For The Devil” and heavy metal tunes such as “Enter Sandman” have become routine. So, surely I could use something like Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves Of London” or Frank Zappa’s (NSFW!) “Dinah Moe Humm”
To push the boundaries completely, how about TonioK’s (pretty NSFW) “H-A-T-R-E-D” or The Nails’ (yeah, a great song, but NSFW) “Eighty-Eight Lines About Forty-Four Women”? Or go completely to the opposite extreme (as Josh Reddick of the Oakland A’s did) and use something like “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked” or Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne”?
Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated with maps. It’s fascinating how they’re a representation of the real world, but one that can be manipulated and annotated.
Another aspect of it for me is the way things look from different perspectives. Even before I ever flew, I would look at the landscape from a high viewpoint and try to match things that I saw with the map that I might have. I would follow along in the car as we went on family road trips. From the first time I ever went up in the air (1968 or 1969, Paletine Airport outside of Chicago, a little Cessna 150) I’ve been looking at how things look different from up above.
As a private pilot, it can be critical to use maps as a tool. While most small planes have GPS navigation systems in them, and if you have one that doesn’t your phone or tablet can run software that will do the same thing, it’s important to be ready to deal with Mr. Murphy when he flies along with you. One of these days you’ll run out of batteries, or it will break, or the aliens will cast the GPS satellites down from the heavens, and then you’ll need to have that map so you can find a place to land.
You’ve seen plenty of pictures here of cities, airports, farms, and landmarks as seen from the air when I’ve been on commercial flights. There have even been some from when I’ve been flying myself. In addition, on some of these posts, it shouldn’t be surprising that I include maps to show the airplane’s route, weather along the way, and so on, tying together different “views” of what was going on.
In the last few weeks, thanks to a new set of cameras on the ISS that I told you about, showing live video of our planet passing below pretty much 24/7 (they can’t show anything when it’s dark, and there are a few spots where they lose communications), I’ve been able to take this game to a new level.
I’ll pop onto the website a few times a day. Sometimes it’s dark. Sometimes it’s showing nothing but a mass of white clouds. Sometimes it’s showing nothing but wide, blue ocean (and a few clouds), which is not surprising since 75% of the planet is ocean. (Why do we still call it “Earth” when “Water” would be so much more appropriate?) Sometimes it’s showing vast stretches of brown & tan land masses which could be Asia, Africa, Australia, the US Southwest, or Mars. (Okay, not Mars, just checking to see if you’re still with me.)
But sometimes you see a coastline, an island, a city, a lake, a river — some place that you can identify and get that different perspective, that connection, that new point of view. Those are the great times to be watching.
On July 4th morning between about 06:50 and 07:00, I tuned in on my iPad and immediately started seeing some of these great scenes. Islands. Coastlines. Cities. When this happens and I see something especially interesting, I will take a screen snapshot or capture on the iPad, to look up later, use as wallpaper, whatever. For whatever reason, on this morning, I had a new idea.
Look at all of those islands! And coastline! And bays! The jackpot!
And suddenly in my head was my new thought. If I start snapping these screen capture pictures ever two seconds or so, I would almost certainly be able to find some software that will put them together into a short movie.
That’s what I did. The coastline and islands I had seen at first faded off to the right (we’re travelling right to left in this view) but almost immediately a new coastline came into view.
Then there appeared this huge, distinctive, almost familiar island.
As the island moved to the right, another new coastline came into view.
Perspective is important. I know that the ISS is always travelling from northwest to southeast or from southwest to northeast, depending on where it is in its orbit. Descending node or ascending node, and if you google it, it’s the orbital mechanics definition, not the astrology definition. (Don’t even get me started on astrology!)
Finally we’re over lots of brown and red and tan mountains and dirt — but there’s something interesting there just to the upper left of center, at the base of that mountain range, might be a large city. But if so, which large city?
Image: ESA
Quickly loading up the European Space Agency’s site that shows where the ISS is at any given time, I see that we just came over Europe, Greece, and the Arabian Peninsula. (The orbital track is in yellow and ISS is always moving left to right, west to east.) That makes sense with what we saw. But where exactly? This image can’t be zoomed, unfortunately.
Image: ISS Tracker & Google
The ISS Tracker site has a lot of features that the ESA site doesn’t, including the ability to zoom in or out on the map. Zooming in a bit we get a closer look at what we passed over a few minutes ago. The ISS, of course, has kept on truckin’ and is now over the Indian Ocean, heading south of Australia.
Image: ISS Tracker & Google
Zoom in some more and look back on the orbital track. There’s Greece, with lots of little islands and coastline. And that really big island, which turns out to be Cyprus. And the next coastline we saw was the Middle East.
Image: Google Earth
Now let’s go to one of the other more spectacular, neat, and free plaything (that really is not just for play at all) out there on the internet, Google Earth. Why didn’t I immediately recognize Cyprus? Perspective. From the orbital viewpoint, we just happened at that moment to be looking at the world with south toward the top of the picture, more or less. But Google Earth can be spun, zoomed in and out, moved up and down, shifted left to right, until we have a view that’s pretty close to that fourth picture up above. (Stick a pin in that image, at least on Google Maps — yet another wonderful feature.)
Image: Google Earth
Now that we know what settings on Google Earth will give us a field of view that approximately matches the field of view in the ISS photos, let’s go back to the first picture above, the one with a few clouds but a lot of distinctive islands. We don’t want to rotate the orientation, nor do we want to zoom in or out. To a very good first approximation, the ISS would have been floating along without changing any of those variable, so we can leave the Google Earth settings the same and “float along with it,” at least in this simulation.
Looking for islands that are distinctive shapes and their relative positions to other islands but only moving the Google Maps image up and down or left and right, it doesn’t take long to get this view, which is a pretty good match for the first image. (Another pin.)
Image: Google Earth
Keep doing that until we get to the final image. Sure enough, there’s that “city”. You can also see how the dry river valleys (which appear white) in the mountains on the right match up to the final image above from ISS. (Final pin.)
Image: Google Earth
Now that we’ve got that all done and we’re not worried about keeping the same field of view and orientation as the ISS photos, let’s zoom in on the Google Earth image and see what city it might be. Only to find that it’s not a city at all. You can literally “see it from space”, but that’s because the dark, circular, irrigated fields of green crops stands out in such sharp contrast to the featureless tan of the desert. Another mystery solved, but who knew that there were these huge areas of irrigated crops out in the middle of the desert?
Image: Google Earth
Now we can back up and look at those (bright green) pins we placed, starting with the one looking at the coast of Greece, down to Cyprus, over the Mediterranean coast close to the Israel/Lebanon border, and down to where the desert is blooming near Al Jowf. That was the ISS pass that we saw.
There are two interesting observations to be made. (At least, I thought they were interesting.) First, in the fifth image above from the ISS video feed, the large inland body of water at the upper center is obviously the Red Sea, another good landmark. Secondly, since we know that the ISS camera being used was the one looking straight down, the line of green pins above shows our actual ground track for that pass. But it’s just a bit different than the one shown on the ISS Tracker and ESA maps.
A number of things could account for that. It could be that there’s some margin of error in the actual orbital parameters (two-line element sets) given out to the public. I’m quite sure that NASA knows exactly where ISS is and where it’s going, but that doesn’t mean that the two-line element sets are always up to the second. I’m not sure how often they get updated, but it could be as little as every day (or longer), in which case any maneuvers that the ISS makes will throw it a little bit off of the predicted ground track. The ground track could also be calculated base on orbital parameters published by a private site such as Heavens Above, which may in turn be predictions based on NASA and NORAD data that’s a day or two old.
But we know exactly where it was on this pass, don’t we?
Finally, back at the original point (“Remember Alice? This is a song about Alice.”), can the sixty iPad screen capture images that I saved over four minutes get turned into a video?
It’s a piece of cake, actually. The iPad saves screen captures in PNG format. Microsoft Movie Maker will take them and turn them into a video in any number of formats. (If your newer version of Win7 or Win8 doesn’t have Movie Maker included, you can download it for free from Microsoft’s website.)
Presto change-o! This incredible high-tech HD camera on a freakin’ orbiting 925,000 pound crewed laboratory sent pictures down live from space to the internet which sent it to my iPad, whereupon we identified landmarks using a free high-resolution online map covering the whole freakin’ planet and then used a free program to make a HD time-lapse (a bit jerky) video. No worries!
For many, many months after starting this blog last April, I had no idea that there were spam comments being sent this way. (This may have something to do with the fact that for many months I wasn’t getting any comments other than from close friends and family members. You’ve got to start somewhere…)
Once I started getting other comments for approval and moderation, I eventually noticed that there was a “spam” folder on the comment moderation page. In retrospect, I am surprised that I was surprised by it or its contents. I’ve been using, programming, fixing, building, and SysAdmining computer hardware, software, firmware, and wetware for over forty years.
Nonetheless, I was surprised. Part of it was that WordPress was doing such a fantastic job of catching it and filtering it out. It sits there for two weeks before being automatically deleted. Right now I’ve got 179 messages sitting there, so that’s a dozen or so a day.
There are a few that are the usual ads for get-rich-quick schemes, penis enlargement procedures, even the occasional personal letter from a Nigerian prince, Janet Yellen, or a friend who’s been mugged in Rome. There are also a fair number that are in non-Western character sets, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Arabic, or at least what I believe are those character sets.
Those aren’t hard to filter.
When I started getting requests to moderate submissions from some highly unusual new commentators. I first became aware of these “high-grade” spam comments. They were never from folks who had already “followed” this site, but that’s not any kind of requirement. Also, as I started to get better at my submissions to Chuck Wendig’s “Flash Fiction Challenges”, I started to get some comments and hits from there. Those were always from people new to the site.
The first time I saw a “high-grade” spam comment I was this close to approving it when my bullshit indicator went off. I’m now getting about one a week of them. They’re very clever and well done, but they don’t quite pass the “sniff test” yet.
First of all, they got by the WordPress filters, which mean that I was inclined to believe that they were real. They had cachet.
Secondly, they always start out being very complimentary. Of course I’m going to approve it! Who doesn’t like a comment saying that they love your writing and think your site is great?
Next, they’re actually written in pretty decent English, which I assume is coming from a more advanced automated text generator. Before, we would see something like, “Hello my family member! I wish to say that this post is amazing, nice written and include approximately all important infos. I’d like to peer more posts like this.” Now, it’s something like, “Excellent post. I was checking constantly this weblog and I am inspired! Extremely useful info, specifically the ultimate part about lunar eclipse photography. I was looking for this particular info for a long time. Thank you and best of luck.”
It’s not perfect, but I could imagine that coming from someone with a limited command of English — but much better English than I could dream of writing in Japanese, French, Spanish, or whatever.
Finally, the old fashioned spam comments would be coming in on a post that’s months and months old, usually a post that I didn’t consider to be particularly exceptional, and the comment text is very generic, with nothing to do with the post it’s supposedly commenting on.
The “high-grade” spam comments are on more recent posts, posts that almost always have several “likes” and many views, and there’s something in the comment that references the content of the post.
I think some low life scumbag got some better software for generating spam. I see why WordPress’s filters are being fooled. I almost got fooled myself.
But when my BS alarm went off, I wondered who was making the comment. Before approving, I clicked on the return email address identifying the comment’s author, expecting (or hoping) to see someone else’s blog, or FaceBook page, or Tumblr blog, whatever. Instead, my anti-virus software lit up like a Christmas tree and refused to connect to the site.
Oh. I see.
I had been wondering why this spam was being sent. Who in the world ever, EVER believes these things and responds? Who in the world doesn’t know that it’s a scam?
You don’t have to believe, you just have to click, by accident or otherwise. If you don’t have good, strong, up-to-date anti-virus and firewall software, it could be a bad day.
Sorry “cleveland_rosenhain@arcor.de”. If you’re real and not a bot, you’re going to need to prove it just a little bit better.
Pain meds can be really great, but they leave me with the attention span of Oooh, look, a hummingbird outside the window!
I need to start running again and I’ve had an ingrown toenail that’s been getting worse. It’s a problem I’ve had as an adult every two to four years for as long as I can remember. In 2012 I had one cut out in January, just eight weeks before the LA Marathon. I’ve often wondered if that might have had something to do with the serious cramps in the soles of my feet that day.
I’ll leave the details and gory descriptions of the procedure to another day (maybe), but the last time I had this done the doctor mentioned a procedure other than just removing the nail, where they remove it and kill some nerves or cells down underneath the nail to prevent it from ever growing back. They get some kind of acid or “bad gunk” (to use the technical term) and pack it down in there after the nail’s gone. Whatever works! I will be just as happy to not have to do this again in 2016 or 2017 (or any other time).
Here are the before and after pictures:
The funky green color is not my natural skin tone, but some kind of antiseptic they put on, sort of like Bill Cosby spreading the lime jello to save himself from the Chicken Heart. (Although green skin would be pretty cool…)
In part because it’s tough to wear shoes for the next forty-eight hours, in part because I’m just a touch loopy from the pain meds, I’ll be staying off the roads and chilling at home for a couple of days.
Which means that I’ll be spending time on the computer, which is what brings me to the little gripe, which is this little message I get on a regular basis while trying to use FaceBook:
FaceBook has some of the best programmers on the planet working there (ask them, they’ll tell you!), so don’t you think they could come up with a few more and/or better options than “Stop script?” Maybe they need help, so here are some suggestions:
Never run a script longer than XX seconds ever again.
Please go to “Settings” where you can pick how long the maximum script time (XX) allowed.
Please go to “Settings” where you can choose to have any script longer than XX seconds to identify itself and ask permission to run.
Please go to “Settings” and turn on the display which shows how many scripts are running, what they do, and how long they’re going to take.
Please hit the “Esc” key a few hundred more times so that the program knows that you think it actually does what it’s supposed to do.
I apologize for interrupting your script oh wise ones, please forgive this humble servant and be merciful in your punishment.
Please piss off and remember that you sold your soul when you signed on to FaceBook — you’ll do what you’re told!
Please go to “Settings’ and turn on the “Pay more attention to *ME* than to your freakin’ advertisers” option.
Please press the button to stop the script and smile to your webcam which we’ve taken control of so we can file your picture and all of the personal information you’ve given us in our “troublemaker” department.
Please rearrange the Universe so that every time I have to wait and hit this stupid button, some programmer at FaceBook gets festering hemorrhoids.
Please tell me that the long-running script is working for my protection and to ensure the sanctity of my privacy. Please, I need the laugh!
I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg reads this blog, this problem should be taken care of in a few days. You can thank me later.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 