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Month: November 2002

Techy: Microsoft’s losing me….

[Ellen Feiss]It seems “big bad” Microsoft is going to be losing me as a customer shortly. Whilst I’ve never been a great fan of theirs (I was sort of “forced” onto Microsoft platforms after the near collapse of RISC OS), I have used their systems as a primary desktop system for a few years now – however I try and run my servers on Linux as I don’t feel that Microsoft’s server platforms are stable enough yet-plus it works out a lot more cost-effective to have servers running something like Debian Linux than a single copy of Windows 2000 Server).

So far, Microsoft’s put me off them on the Instant Messenger and Web browser fronts, and I’m just hoping for a bit of time so I can clear down one of the harddrives in my main work machine and install Linux: ditching MS altogether…

Blog: Ali’s no longer a Porn Clerk

[A video box]It seems that Ali Davis is no longer a part-time clerk at a video store (which happens to rent out pornographic videos).

I first came across her “True Porn Clerk Stories” via an article on Kuro5hin (you can hear her on the forth ‘act’ of The American Life). I’ve enjoyed reading Ali’s encounters with the her customers, how she deals with problems that I wouldn’t have guessed might occur (how many of you think that people really do “whack off” in a video shop or return ‘dirtied’ tapes), but after a change of management at the store she worked in Ali felt it was time to move on.

Good luck to her and I hope she finds a fulfilling job that she enjoys, but I will miss her insightful diary entries (and, yes, like her, I do have a small collection of singles and albums from Aqua – take that how you will 🙂 ).

(Oh, and why oh why do I pronounce “clerk” as “clurk” instead of the proper British way of “clarke”?)

Spam: An anatomy of a spam

[Spam headed computer]Damn! I’ve just been hit by another “hit-and-run” spammer. They sent around 900 spam emails to me in little under an hour (I was busy doing other things so I didn’t notice the start of the run). Drat! Only 76 got reported to SpamCop though.

What really got annoyed was the fact that they had sent 20 identical messages to the same email address each time. And they had an average size of 20.7Kb each. Richy nashes teeth

So, for your “amusement” and interest, I have “captured” one of the spams and “disassembled” it for you.

Net: Aww! Puddy Tats!

[Part of a picture of a Gig cat]I’ve recently come across Gigology, a page with a collection of 39 images (hence slightly bandwidth heavy) of wide-eyed cats and dogs.

Personally, I think the pictures are quite and adorable (see I have got a soft side 🙂 ), but I can’t seem to find much about the artist (Gig) on the internet which is a bit disappointing (only real information I could find is on the front page of that site).

Oh well, at least they aren’t satanic kittens from hell that Pete Abrams seems so obsessed about (but with lines such as “Don’t go to sleep or the kittens will eat you” you can forgive him 🙂 )

Fun: Do The Funky Chicken

[Bloke doing the Funky Chicken]Ever wondered how to do the Funky Chicken dance? Now, available with photos, it the “Do The Funky Chicken” dance steps – all together now: “Flap down on every beat, and back up in time for the next”… Don’t get it confused with Spitting Image‘s “The Chicken Song though!

Or you could also see a Flash animation by Joe Cartoon of a “real” chicken being funky, or learn how to do a whole selection of dances at the “How To Dance Properly” site.