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Month: November 2002

Spam: N ENZO & CO

November 12, 2002
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[Removing the Spam : Email Processing and Filtering (Addison-Wesley Networking Basics Series)]
I’m really annoyed as I’ve now had over 600(!) spams from the same idiot. Well, I say ‘had’, they’ve got as far as my mail filters but have then been automatically tagged as spam: but it’s still annoying they got that far. I tried to change my server settings so that they couldn’t even that that far (IP blocking etc), but unfortunately they relayed them through my secondary MX (ie my ‘backup mailserver’) which is now passing them to their proper destination (ie my primary mailserver). Obviously, I can’t block that IP as then all mail that does end up on by secondary MX won’t reach me – so grr. (Ok, a few were directed at my primary MX, but by looks of things it’s mainly my secondary one that’s had the brunt of the spam)

I have installed SpamAssassin on the server, but I’ve still got to correctly configure Qmail to use it (currently I’m relying on MailWasher to do all my spam filtering – mainly because I’ve got a domain which cannot, for historical reasons, that cannot support server-side filtering).

Continue ReadingSpam: N ENZO & CO

Game: Fly that paper plane!

November 11, 2002
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The Paper Airplane Flight Simulator was blog’d (blogged?) about by Firda on the 24th of October, but I wanna blog about it now 🙂

Basically, you control a paper plane by settings it’s angle, thrust and ‘elevator’ and see how far it can fly, how high and how many loops/revolutions it can do.

I’ve just managed a distance of 190ft, maximum altitude of 43.25ft, 0.15revolutions and 50.35seconds in the air. Ok, I cheated. I was constantly changing the angle of the plane whilst it was in flight (trying to keep it on a straight line instead of going down).

TV: Playing God

November 11, 2002
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“OMG!” Was my response when I saw the following news headline on BBC News: Public ‘play God’ in game show.

Fortunately/unfortunately (depending on your viewpoint), it’s not quite a dramatic as it sounds. It’s not a way to raise/save money for the NHS: (the viewing public don’t get to say ‘Turn off the life-support machine”, “Yes – give that person a life saving operation”), but just to give their opinion on peoples lifestyles for a Channel 4 gameshow called ‘Without Prejudice’ (hosted by Liza Tarbuck).

Blogging: Slashdot: Notification of blog move

November 11, 2002
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I’ve just posted the following on my “other journal” at Slashdot to try and help any ‘fans’ of my journal/blog (if any 🙂 ) to this new site.

Hmm, I’ve installed Movable Type on my new “blog site” at blog.rac.me.uk (possibly a temporary URL, I haven’t decided yet) and I’m just running it to see if it gives me the additional ‘flexibility’ that Slashdot doesn’t. I’ve added a couple of modules to it so that I can actually have smilies in my posts easily (I’m quite fond of the little critters 🙂 ) and various other things – but we’ll see how things go. It’s only been a week since I installed it (and a day since I got around to getting fr’isk PerlMagick/ImageMagick properly installed), but you don’t know until you try.

At the moment, it’s mainly got mumblings about Distributed Proofreaders (recently on Slashdot), the ODP Mozzie Awards and just a small continuation of my previous journal entry (i.e. still no word from Kim – I’ve got no idea who she is).

Oh, and I haven’t really had a chance to play with the site design yet (it’s practically running in ‘default design’ state): but if all goes well, then I’ll instigate a nice look to it as soon as I’ve finished a couple of other site redesigns I’m working on.

Comments/criticism/ideas welcome (either via here or via the new blog). If everything is alright (and, more importantly, I’m happy with it), then I may think of offering ‘free blogs’ to a couple of my Slashdot friends (particularly one with the initials ‘NW’ who has, in some strange way, been ‘helpful’ 🙂 ).

Search: The Mozzie Awards – The Winners Are…

November 10, 2002
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Well, voting has now closed in the ODP “Mozzie awards November 2002”, and I must say I’m disappointed. I didn’t win! *sob*. In the category of ‘Best Editall’, I came a lowly joint 15th with 2.4% of the vote (6 votes). 15th out of 35 isn’t too bad is it?
A final rallying by myself in the dying hours of the polls (with oblique references to The Prisoner in the form of “If Number 2 is runner-up then who is Number 1? is Number 6” and “Vote for me (in Best Editall and/or Best Ambassador)! A vote for me is a vote for variety!” helped increase my standing in the ‘Best Ambassador’ poll to joint 10th position with 9 votes (5.1% of all votes cast went to me). Question is – is 10th out of 17 better or worse than 15th out of 35?

Never mind, it was a hell of a lot of fun and I’m going to try even harder next time (I’ve gotta win one of these days – and if it wasn’t for those pesky newbies I would have gotten away with it). Congratulations all those who took part, many thanks to all those that voted, commiserations to those who didn’t win, thanks to all the ‘non-nominated editors’ which help make ODP the place it is and to the winners – “I’ll get you next time….”