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! :)

I’m having an annoyance right now from some evil marketing company, possible in Maine, or maybe the UK. I don’t really know. They call my grandcentral.com number, and since I’m getting fed up with it, I sent a message to grandcentral support today. Here is that message, which describes the problem I’m having:

I’ve received this call from 5 different numbers over the past 2 weeks. They show up on my grandcentral.com account as coming from the United Kingdom, with a +44 prefix. Here are the numbers:
+44 2074225790
+44 2088082763
+44 2088981403
+44 2088093629
+44 2074413433

When I pick up, the recording is in mid-sentence, and says something like “This is your final notice for an interest rate reduction. Press 1 to speak to a live operator.”

The first couple times, I just hung up.

The second and third times, I tried pressing 1, and got put on hold, but I was on the road and my call got dropped.

The next time, when I pressed 1, I got put on hold for over 6 minutes (all the while planning to place THEM on hold as soon as they picked up), then finally the hold music stopped and the call ended quietly. Nobody ever answered.

The last time, today (2/15/2008) at 1:46pm, I answered quickly, and hit 0 which made the greeting message repeat. It said something like “Hello, this is Heather with Account Services! This is your final notice regarding an interest rate reduction on your credit card! Press 1 to speak to a live operator, or press 2 to stop receiving these notices. Since I’d already shown them that I’m alive by pressing 1 on previous calls, I pressed it again this time. I was on hold for less than a minute, then someone answered, saying “Do you have a balance of $3000 or more on one of your credit cards?” (or something like that). I said “Please hold for the next available operator” and put her on hold. She hung up before I got around to picking back up (I was going to wait at least 2-3 minutes, if possible).

Anyways, I’ve marked all 5 of these numbers as spam on my grandcentral account, and changed my preferences so spam numbers get BLOCKED rather than going to spam voicemail

The problem is, they call from a different phone number each time! I’d like to block ALL numbers that start with +44, or even starting with +4420. I do not expect or care about any legitimate calls coming from numbers that match those prefixes.

So, do I need to just let them keep calling me, and just send them to voicemail, and deal with the fact that they’re going to keep calling me? Or can you block them all somehow?

Every time I get a call where they just hang up, or from a company that’s annoying me, I go to whocalled.us and look up the number/post info about it. Usually the numbers are not listed there, yet, but I’m mentioning this site because if we all report evil spammer companies there, as a community, it will become a more valuable resource over time.

The only reason I ever pressed 1 at all is because I wanted to find out what company was behind this evil automated phone call crap. Since they mentioned credit card interest rate reduction, that narrowed down the possibilities to 2. If I could find out which company was responsible for this, I would cancel my card, and complain publicly about their horrible marketing scheme. At this point, though, after hearing that live operator ask a stupid question, I know that it’s not from any of my credit card companies. It’s just some evil marketing company, and/or scammers. I hope grandcentral is able to help me out with preventing future calls like this!

When looking through my gmail Spam folder today, I saw several titles that stood out from the rest. About two thirds of them were about online pharmacies selling cheap Cialis. The rest were mostly about debt reduction; cheap replica watches; and people pretending to be someone I know, wishing to contact me. Some even included my email username in the title, which caught my eye. But, I still didn’t need their Cialis, so I didn’t click on them.

A few others actually made me click for a closer look–just for curiosity’s sake–because they used technical terms. Before deleting them, I decided they deserved publishing, because this was a relatively clever way to send spam to a geek. Here they are:

• Output iterators do not have a value type, because it is impossible to obtain a value from an output iterator but only to write a value through it.
• To launch and access an out-of-process server across the network in a COM application, both client and server must fulfill certain security requirements.
• The statistical engine makes use of the kernel-level packet filter to efficiently classify the incoming packet.

The messages, themselves, were actually another ad for cheap Cialis; an “insider” stock tip; and a collection of various mostly-geeky sentences–clearly collected from many different sources–and randomly strung together. The latter was somewhat amusing to read, so I’m including it here:

Paths in this manual may not reflect those compiled into httpd. A string representing the culture name.
Oh, wake up, Arthur. He knew there were heavy catapults there, and some fast boats in the island harbor.
Broken Cross Disk Manager 3. It will never be found, because I could never possibly describe where it is and how to find it.
Then the Ghost Not component kicked in, and the map got chopped up and stuck together again with the dark bits now completely missing.
Is especially effective in recovering digital images in JPEG format.
Utilities for Windows 95. Checked links to see if they work, and added an article for each red (unlinked) link.
The texture of his writing as a whole is undistinguished, at times fumbling. Chris looks askance at him.
There are no such rules. Look, pretend you’re injured real early.
Spanish Reversers might care to download the entire WKT Site (837k).
The 10Base-T Ethernet system uses this approach.
One advantage of fighting monsters was not having to worry about identification and who-goes-there games. LTM has been improved and simplified. It does not explain how to break into the E911 system. You may go no further.
You can normally use these modems by loading the program under DOS and doing a warm boot. I want you to listen to it.
For information on this, please see. Changes to Support Conditional Compilation Based on Build Environment.

Oh, and that last one also had an image attached, which was, of course, another advertisement for cheap Cialis from some overseas pharmacy. :)

I was looking through my Gmail Spam folder today, as I do once in a while, to make sure nothing is in there that doesn’t belong. Among the actual spam, there were a couple of legitimate messages (nothing important though), including the official Google Earth newsletter (Yes, Google automatically marked one of its own newsletters as spam. I went ahead and clicked “Not Spam” on that one, since Google Earth is a cool program), and the MySpace newsletter.

My focus today is on the latter. After taking one look at it, I agreed with Gmail’s determination that the damn thing was spam. It consisted almost entirely of images (49 IMG tags!)! None of the images had alt tags, and 26 of them were linked to myspace pages (the rest were spacers/decoration).

It also included one little line of text at the very bottom:

Unable to view this newsletter? Click here to view the MySpace Newsletter profile page! :)

Gmail does not display images in messages marked as Spam, so what I saw was 3 browser-window pages of image placeholders. On the left side of this post, you can see 3 screenshots of the message, scrolled one page at a time. The screenshots are linked to their full-size versions, but I think the miniature versions and my explanation make it clear enough: This is utter garbage!

I wasn’t even the slightest bit compelled to view the images, or to click the link at the very bottom to view it on their website. Gmail was right to mark this crap as Spam!