spugbrap’s blog

Ever since I removed the registration requirement for commenting on this blog, I’ve been getting a good bit of comment spam. Thankfully, Akismet does a great job of keeping it from polluting my blog. I do periodically go through the comments that Akismet has marked as spam, though, to ensure that no good comments end up getting filtered out.

When looking through the spam comments, there are some clear patterns. Lots of praise (usually in very broken English), with random porn/advertising links mixed in. Today, I decided it was time to separate all that praise from the slime and post these kind words for all to see. :)

Here are some of the things the stupid evil spammers have been saying about this blog. I removed all links, names, URLs, porn words, and marketing words with a series of regex search/replaces in Textpad. I also broke paragraphs into individual sentences, and sorted them alphabetically, removing exact duplicates. They’re numbered, to make it easier to reference them in comments:

1. [spugbrap’s blog] seems quite interesting
2. All I can say is congratulations on creating this site and what took you so long?
3. All the best!
4. Camping out in the woods can be one of the most gratifying experiences available for those who stress over the hustle and bustle of daily life in or near a city.
5. Congratulations!
6. Easy to find helpful information.
7. Excellent forum with fantastic references and reading.
8. Excellent forum, added to favorites!
9. Excellent site with fantastic references and reading.
10. Excellent webforum!
11. Forgive that beside You was little ed!
12. Good aftenoon !
13. Good info!
14. Good luck!
15. Good resources here, Enjoyed the visit!
16. Good stuff, very nicely done!
17. Good stuff, very nicely done.
18. great post.
19. Greetings!
20. Hello !
21. Hello webmaster - fine blog with Animals Files
22. Hi !
23. Hi all!
24. Hi, good site!
25. How do you do.
26. I am glad to find this forum !
27. I am glad to find this forum!
28. I couldn’t understand some parts of this article : Danzig, Playing classic Misfits and Danzig Songs [spugbrap’s blog], but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
29. I couldn’t understand some parts of this article eb Clips are context-sensitive (kinda funny) [spugbrap’s blog], but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
30. I couldn’t understand some parts of this article productive ads [spugbrap’s blog], but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
31. I couldn’t understand some parts of this article r anyone who just got braces [spugbrap’s blog], but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
32. I delighted!
33. I found your blog via Google while searching for pictures of mouth sores and your post regarding r anyone who just got braces [spugbrap’s blog] looks very interesting to me.
34. I is pleasantly amazed!
35. I just wanted to pass on a note to let you know what a great job you have done with this forum.
36. I look forward to reading more!
37. I look forward to returning.
38. I much like site!
39. I simply mad about this forum!
40. I was impressed by your site and offerings.
41. I was looking at some of the articles and it really impressed me.
42. I Will be back!
43. I wish you health!
44. I\’m a real sucker for anything to do with accelerated learning ideas.
45. I\’m going to get back into this next month.
46. is very interesting.
47. Like!
48. maggots!
49. now throw yo hands up in the sjky!
50. Pretty nice forum, wants to see much more on it!
51. So interesting there was that I fell asleep.
52. Thank you!
53. Thank!
54. thanks alot!
55. Thanks for the blog!
56. Thanks for your post.
57. Thanks much!
58. Thanks!
59. The Author, you - genius.
60. The Author, you - super hero!
61. The dangers of contemporary lifestyles and environments can themselves drive people to the.
62. The Excellent forum!
63. The Good lad an author!
64. The Pleasing text and design!
65. The Regard!
66. There was merrily!
67. This simply prodigy!
68. Very good contents.
69. Very good forum!
70. Very good web forum, great work and thank you for your service.
71. Very nicely done forum.
72. well done indeed.
73. What beautiful text and visitors!
74. Wow!
75. Your awesome post about s blog].

The public has spoken! I’m a genius and a superhero; my blog is an excellent forum with fantastic references and reading, and pleasing text and design; and you, the readers, are beautiful!

“Now throw yo hands up in the sjky!” and be sure to check out my “awesome post about s blog].” “I delighted!”

Hey, check it out! The funny Gmail Web Clips phenomenon I blogged about a couple years ago was the subject of a recent entry in the Official Gmail Blog.

Yes, Miriam Schneider, Associate Product Marketing Manager at Google, went through the same steps I did, when I first saw “Spam Hashbrown Bake” at the top of my gmail window:

1. disbelief: Is that really a context-sensitive ad for Spam-related products, appearing at the top of my Spam folder view? Maybe it’s just a funny coincidence.

2. confirmation: [refresh page a couple times] Hey, it’s another recipe involving Spam, and another one! There’s something funny going on here!

3. research: Ms. Schneider one-upped me on this one. When I encountered this Spam folder Easter egg, all I had available to me was the Gmail help system (which seemed to imply that this context-sensitive Web Clip thing should not be happening). She has the benefit of being a Google insider, so she actually went and talked with a Gmail Product Manager about it.

Here’s what Ms. Schneider found out, regarding the origin of the Spam recipe Web Clips:

At first I was told that these recipes “were placed there by elves when we weren’t looking” (real cute), but Keith, one of Gmail’s Product Managers, eventually divulged the real story. Turns out that when they came up with the idea for Web Clips, they didn’t think it made sense to show these RSS feeds and ads in the spam folder. After all, these clips should be useful and fun, but spam (of the email variety) is neither of these things. Not knowing what to put here, Keith searched for “spam recipes” and decided to make a feed out of the results. As he said, “it was just one of those late night ideas” — probably a consequence of too many said [sic] energy drinks.

One thing that she may not have noticed, though, is that a similar behavior occurs when viewing your Trash folder in Gmail. guess she didn’t notice (or just didn’t mention) that the Trash folder also has trash-related Web Clips (see screenshot in my original blog entry about this).

It was nice to finally read an explanation about this mysterious Gmail behavior, after all this time. I didn’t even have to seek out the explanation–it came to me in a feed! :)

If you read this blog on the web, you may have noticed that the whole site looks different. I’ve never been too fond of the default Wordpress theme, and didn’t like any of the other Wordpress themes that I’ve seen, enough to use them.

I did always like the theme I had on my old Blogger geek blog, but that theme was not available for Wordpress. The theme is called “Rounders 3″, originally designed by Douglas Bowman.

So, I hacked apart a page from my old geek blog, and did some reading about Wordpress theme development (see links section below), and worked on building a Wordpress theme based my old geek blog’s theme. Today, I decided to go ahead and switch this blog to use that newly-ported theme.

Here are two screenshots, for comparison:

Useful Links:
Theme Development « WordPress Codex
How-To: Create a Wordpress Theme in 5 minutes

Feedback:
What do you think of the new look? Please feel free to leave a reply, below! Also, if you run across any broken links, unreadable fonts, missing images, alignment problems, etc., please let me know. Thanks!

I finally set up my own instance of wordpress at: http://www.spugbrap.com/blog

All posts/comments from the existing spugbrap.wordpress.com blog, as well as my two old Blogger blogs, have been migrated to the new site.

There are two main reasons for this change:

1. I will now be able to modify the templates/install plugins/etc., which will allow me to do some customizations I’ve been wanting to do since I first tried out wordpress.

2. Since spugbrap.com is my own domain, I can change my hosting provider anytime I want/need to, without breaking/deprecating any links, and without requiring any readers to update their bookmarks/feed settings.

Speaking of updating feed settings… if you already subscribe via the feedburner feeds (posts / comments), you will not be affected by this recent change.

I recently started a new blog at http://spugbrap.wordpress.com, which may replace both of my blogger.com blogs soon. I’m trying out wordpress, comparing it with the new blogger beta, and will decide from there.

At this point, I will probably be posting all new entries over there, so you may want to go ahead and subscribe to it via the Entries feed, and possibly the Comments feed. I may cross-post a little bit, for the sake of comparing blogger beta vs. wordpress, but the wordpress one will be my primary outlet for all things geeky/personal/both (sometimes it’s hard to draw the line).