Category Archives: Geek

Cable Free

Posted on by
Reply

I’d have to look at our cable TV bill, but I’m pretty sure it’s about $80 a month for television cable which doesn’t include HBO, but includes other important channels like Comedy Central, Biography, Science, AMC, TCM, et al. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s $960 a year for television. The truth is, we don’t watch as much television as normal Americans. I have my NBC Thursday night line up, The Walking Dead, Castle, Jon Stewart, Family Guy, Hellcats, and well…that’s about it. AJB watches sporadically and certainly not as much as me.

Like a lot of people, I’ve been exploring the possibility of giving up cable altogether. It’s just too expensive and Charter Communication is the worst. You’d think for a thousand bucks a year, you’d at least get HBO, but cable companies have all these complicated packages and you find yourself making compromises – as we did when we were forced to modify our package when it no longer included Comedy Central and Turner Classics.

These days, just about everything is online. Getting rid of cable would mean losing the spontaneity of flipping channels to see what’s on, but it will also force us to figure out something better to do than flip channels when we’re bored. In theory, it sounds like a good idea and it’s probably not that big a deal.

As an experiment, I plugged my MacBook into the TV and forced myself to only watch shows online. It hasn’t been bad at all. We don’t have real cable downstairs anyway. Long story short, the cable guy told us he couldn’t install it for some reason – something about us not ordering it and him not having the box to connect. It was annoying. Admittedly, I sneak upstairs to watch The Walking Dead on Sundays, but otherwise, it’s been a rather pleasurable experience. TV on my time, I watch when I want. Since I’m not hooked on any shows YOU CAN’T get online, I’ve been good to make the switch.

We looked at some of the internet boxes like Apple TV, Roku, and Boxee. All of them fell short in some way. The closest contender was Roku. After a little more research and reading the reviews, we made the plunge. While the MacBook is the ideal method, I really can’t donate my laptop to the cause because I need it for work and travel. We went with Roku based on it’s deal with Hulu. It wasn’t until after we’d purchased the box that we realized having Hulu meant subscribing to Hulu Plus at $8 a month. That’s still only $96 a year – significantly less than regular cable. Roku also gives you access to Netflix, but we can get that on our Wii.

The problem with Roku is that not only are you severely limited to what you can watch, turns out, just because it’s on Hulu doesn’t mean you can watch via Roku – which I found out today when I tried to watch the recent episode of Community. Seems as though companies license for internet watching and separately for internet TV box watching. Stupid, right? So I’m paying for Hulu Plus and still not getting to watch everything I want. In fact, I get less. The conclusion here is that hooking up a laptop is the way to go. Except, we don’t have an extra lappy sitting around and are having a hard time justifying the $1300 expense for a new one. In the long run, however, a laptop would pay for itself – in about a year. We’d also have access to all the online shows, torrents, and iTunes. Aesthetically, it’s not the best option, but content-wise it’s superior. AJB’s main complaint through all of this is not being able to watch live news. I agree there. Some of the more progressive news sources stream live online, but BBC and News France aren’t always relevant to us here in The States.

I’m disappointed that the internet TV boxes are so limited and no one’s figured out how to make it work. In this new frontier, companies are trying to figure out fresh and exciting ways to nickle and dime us to death. Furthermore, a lot of the “channels” Roku includes in their packages are subscriber based – which means when all is said and done, how much are you really saving? You still don’t get access to iTunes, live news, or Torrents. Sadly, I’m not loving Roku and I’m annoyed that it’s being sold as a solution rather than yet another compromise.

Second in line is Google TV, which seems to offer the most flexibility and options. While Hulu’s browser ID is blocked from Google TV’s Chrome-based browser, apparently there’s a minor tweak you can make to get it to work. The other bummer about Google TV is that it comes with a keyboard for searching. 1996 called, it wants WebTV back. The Logitech console to run Google TV is a nothing-to-sneeze-at $300. Its not as svelt as the Roku box and the keyboard makes the whole set-up look dated. You could also get a MacMini for $600 and not worry about restrictions like with Hulu.

In the end, my laptop will most likely get used for TV watching and I’ll just have to disconnect it when I need it for work and travel. Connect and disconnect. Its kind of bothersome. You also don’t get a handy remote and have to walk to the TV any time you want to change something. Until someone comes out with a proper internet TV box, this is the way it has to be. Is it just me or does it seem like TV is going backward instead of forward?

When thinking is a crime

Posted on by
1

In 2006 when Christopher Handley was accused of owning too much Manga, I didn’t hear about it. I heard about his sentencing yesterday. OK, so the basic story is that this guy, Christopher Handley, owns a crap load of Manga. As I understand it, Manga is Japanese Anime in book form. It comes in various forms from completely innocent to totally grotesque. It goes from Pokemon to Tentacle Porn. It runs the gambit of cute fluffy animals having fun in the forest to people having sex with cute fluffy animals in the forest. It further delves into what could be construed as child pornography…or at least, that’s what they’re calling it. This guy, Christopher Handley, apparently owned a ton of it and a good deal of it involved images of children engaged in sexual acts.

Understand, this is artwork. Manga are cartoons. They are drawings on paper. They are Japanese comic books. Handley is guilty of reading cartoons. According to the articles I’ve read, he’s never acted on these images. He looks at them and ‘bates to them. Hey, whatever floats your boat. So tell me again how that’s a crime?

I don’t read Manga, but my step-daughter does. She reads the cutesy teen romance stories. I had Little House of the Prairie, she has Manga. I’ve seen plenty of Manga, it’s hard to ignore when you’re a Comic-Con attending dork and yes, a good majority of it is about sex, implied or explicit. Big boobs, young girls in smaller than small skirts…but not all sex is profane, some of it’s just inferred and a lot of it’s just kid stuff. Television and movies go further than that, so what are we talking about here?

I wouldn’t read the books Handley does and I don’t even really like Manga, but it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist. If he’s just reading, collecting, and ‘batin’, where’s the crime? If no one’s being hurt and this doesn’t uncover some illegal Japanese child pornography ring, why is this man serving time? If my step-daughter is reading Manga, should I be worried? I’m not. Not all Manga is bad. How does this effect my life?

It effects everyone’s life. You, me, your mom, everyone. This law basically states that any implied child pornography, even cartoons, is illegal…which means it’s illegal to own or look at Lewis Carroll’s photographs. Does this mean Anne Geddes is a pedophile? She takes pictures of naked children, where do you draw the line? Why is the line an issue when it comes to art and concepts? This is merely a first step to domination, control, and censorship. Criminalizing art? What’s next? Serving time for killing digital men in video games? Will I go to the big house for allowing Mario to fall of a cliff? It was an accident. This may sound extreme, but once we allow people like Christopher Handley to go to jail for READING and THINKING we lose more and more freedom. It happens slowly enough and enough under the radar that by the time people take notice, it’s too late.

Photography by Lewis Carroll

I think most people agree that child pornography is wronger than wrong, but if artwork depicting it doesn’t actually hurt children and the people reading it aren’t physically committing crimes, what’s the problem? What this boils down to it what George Orwell called “thought crimes”; you think bad things and bad things happen to you. If America is the Land of the Free, why are people being imprisoned for THINKING about child pornography? Let me be clear, this man never acted on the images aside from wanking off (sorry, no one ever said that, but it’s pretty obvious).

I don’t know the law, in fact, if I try to read legal forms I glaze over in a dumbfounded haze which can only be cured by funny cat videos on YouTube. What I do know is that yes, a crime has been committed, just not by Handley…but by the American Justice System. OUR justice system, the one that’s supposed to protect us from the baddies of the world. I bet all those cartoon kids are happy Handley is in the clinker. He can’t hurt them anymore. Wait…THEY’RE CARTOONS! They have no feelings! They’re not even remotely corporeal!

The biggest mistake Handley made wasn’t owning kiddie cartoons, it was pleading guilty. I’m not sure why he did this, but he should be fighting for this rights and the rights of every American. Perhaps he didn’t want the publicity, too late. Perhaps he just figured he’d serve his time and go back to his life. And what? Go back to the life where he can’t read what he wants, where thinking bad things is a crime. Thankfully the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund seems to be on the case. Handley may not be fighting for his rights, but other good people are.

When I’m outraged to this level, I ask myself what I can do. I can do two things: I will not be afraid and I will help spread the word. If anyone has any better ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Organizing a Digital World

Posted on by
Reply

It’s 2010 and hundreds of nano-robots have entered my brain and are accessing my organizational programs. We also have that *big thing coming up, so it’s time to get busy. Trepidation? You bet.

Since around 2004 when I got my very first digital camera, I’ve simply loaded images onto my computer willy nilly. With hardly any regard to structure, it’s one of those things I told myself I’d do later. 40,000 images later, I’m at an important juncture in my career. I have too many images, don’t need access to them all, and need to find them faster. Furthermore, iPhoto isn’t meant to handle 40,000+ images. It’s meant for Mom and Dad’s photos of birthday parties, Christmases, and the Grand Canyon. Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not a slight on Mac or anything. Mac and I are good friends, but iPhoto really isn’t the high-octane photo organizer a photographer like me needs. It bogs down, chokes up, and fades out.

The problem now is that I do indeed have 40,000 photos (maybe more, not counting everything on my laptop). I’ve done some research and have come across a lovely $300 application called “Lightroom”; it’s made by our friends over at Adobe, the people who brought you Photoshop. Lightroom is like iPhoto on crack. It’s got quite a few more advanced features and really seems to take organization seriously. In addition, it makes me feel more grown-up.

Problem is, how do I integrate 40,000 photos into a new application using new organizational methods? I have no idea. I thought I’d import everything and then organize, but I couldn’t figure it out. I thought the best way to do this was to import everything at once. Once I got everything in, I couldn’t figure out a good method. I thought about starting over and importing folder by folder. That was until I realized iPhoto isn’t necessarily organized that way. Besides, I don’t think I can import image by image one by one. That would take forever. I deleted everything I’d just imported. Not the original files, by the way. The added bonus came when I cleared the trash bin. I then realized I could indeed organize the way I wanted to within Lightroom, except, now I have to start over.

Yesterday, the import took around 4 hours. At present, Lightroom is acknowledging that the images were there but cannot find them. Yeah, that’s because I deleted them. I’m not sure how to get the ghost images out of there and a second “delete” is taking forever. Good thing I’ve allocated the entire day for this project. And I have to do it. It’s integral that I stay organized, can find images, and can get my workflow working. Up until now, I haven’t had an efficient workflow and I’m pretty sure it’s hindering my work. I’ve come to hate downloading images and I have hardly any desire to work on them, work through them, or put them to any good use. That’s because the current method doesn’t work. I need things that work.

We’ll see how it goes. I’ve got 4 hours to kill. I guess I’ll do laundry or something.

UPDATE: When tried to re-import the images from the iPhoto Library, the entire library was gone. Yes, this means what you think it means. Everything. Gone. We still have no idea what happened, but are hoping that by using Time Machine to restore the internal drive to an earlier date before the Lightroom debacle, this will fix things. I hope. Of course, this means I must also face the fact that all my images might be gone. Forever.

*Note to self: Five years from now, you won’t remember what you’re talking about. Hint: 320

Good-Bye Saturday Morning

Posted on by
2

It’s 10:30am on a Saturday morning and AJB’s kids are still asleep. Their eyes are not glued to the set watching 4 hours of uninterrupted Saturday morning cartoons, the way I did when I was little.

superfriendsWhen I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to get up Saturday mornings. It meant all the cartoons you could sink your teeth into. Sometimes I’d get up too early and end up watching Villa Allegra – A Spanish educational show, sort of like The Electric Company – or the New Zoo Review; both of which were syndicated 70′s shows and sort of creeped me out. After that, it was a flurry of animated shows that came and went faster than I noticed. I watched it all, but my favorites were Looney Tunes, Superfriends, Shirt Tales, The Smurfs, Turbo Teen, Monchhichis, The Littles, Dragon’s Lair, Ewoks, Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies, Droids: The Adventures of R2D2 and C3PO, Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Misadventures of Ed Grimley, Superman, Plastic Man, Rubik the Amazing Cube, Thundarr, Pac Man, and CBS Storybreak. I’m sure there are more, but there are the ones that come to mind.

The decline of Saturday morning cartoons came towards the end of the 80′s and into the early 90′s. I was in junior high, starting high school. Once I got into high school, I remember not waking up so early anymore, but when I did, I still watched whatever was on. I remember thinking that I had to watch them or else they’d disappear forever – as if my watching made a difference. I knew I was getting older and the shows weren’t that great anymore. In fact, by the early 90′s, the era of Saved by the Bell (which I hated with a fiery passion) was dawning and Saturday cartoons were already waning. It coincided with my becoming a teenager and being more concerned with The Cure, The Smiths, and Siouxsie Sioux.

I was born in 1975, so by the time I could get myself up to watch TV, the glorious Saturday morning routine that 80′s kids recall with such loving devotion was just getting started (about 1979). I, along with everyone else in their mid-30′s, were given this unique gift that no other generation will know. I see AJB’s kid rise after 10am and immediately turn on the Wii. When I was a kid, rising at 10am meant missing all the good shows and it meant only another hour or so of animated programming. If, for some reason, I awoke late on a Saturday, I was bummed all day. How could I miss the cartoons? How awful! It was horrible. Kids on Monday would be talking about them and I would have to say I missed it. So, no, I rarely got up late. I also recall feeling sad when the final cartoon came on. Once that song for Saved by the Bell came on, we turned off the TV and played with our toys. Of course, back then, my parents liked to clean the house on Saturday so we did everything we could to get out of it.

It’s funny how kids change from generation to generation. AJB’s kids watch cartoons, but on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. At 12, the age of the twins, I was watching Teen Wolf, Muppet Babies, and Mighty Mouse. The twins watch something called Total Drama Island (which is actually fairly mature), Robot Chicken, and Spongebob. No wonder, I just looked it up and Spongebob is on 6 times in a row on Fridays and at least 4 times in a row during the week. That’s a lot of Spongebob.

There are very few new cartoons that I actually like. I don’t like Spongebob, even though some adults think it’s great. Occasionally a gem like Powerpuff Girls comes along, but it’s not like the old days when even the shows that sucked were good. They were good because they were cartoons. Good because Saturday was your day, a day for kids. AJB’s kids will spend the day playing Wii, Club Penguin, and Nintendo DS – all in separate rooms. AJB might round them up and take them out, but it’s been raining and a it’s a bit soggy outside.

It’s now 11am. If this were 1984, I’d be watching Mr. T followed by The Incredible Hulk and Spiderman.

All Hooked Up

Posted on by
Reply

I’m in the process of making my online life a little bit better. I’ve set up an account on ping.fm which allows me to update my Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter at the same time from the same place. I have also added a function in my blog which will allow me to crosspost blog entires from here to MySpace. Let’s see if it works….

Yes. It works. So here’s what happens:

Whenever I post a new blog on my WordPress site (this very blog you’re reading right now), a copy of each entry is cross-posted to my MySpace blog. Furthermore, a notice of each new entry appears on my Twitter status.

Secondarily, whenever I update my status from ping.fm, it cross-posts to Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. I might never have to log into those bitches again.

Oh dear lord. I love technology. Do you know what this means? Do you? Can you comprehend the previously wasted minutes going back and forth from one social network to the next updating my status (cause you know, everyone wants to know what I’m doing) and then forgetting to update one for weeks on end? Look, in the grand scheme of things, my status updates don’t amount to a hill of beans. I know. I’m one small ant in a giant ant hill called teh interwebs. Most importantly, it’s fun. I think it’s cool and I’m a giganto-geek for cross-posting all my networks and blogs. All hail giganto-geeks and teh interwebs we dwell in. I am among friends. Of course, none of this matters since apparently we’re all going to die in 2012…or so say the Mayans or Aztecs. I think.

Now, to figure out how to notify Facebook of my new blog entries…

It Takes a Special Kind of Nerd…

Posted on by
Reply

When I was little, I had no problem being a nerd, but I was more concerned with being a girl. I was all about Barbies, but took note when toy makers also created female action figures for popular cartoons including G.I. Joe and The Transformers. I liked the boy’s toys too, but felt obligated to show my support for the gals. Once high school rolled around, I became increasingly concerned with defining myself as “cool” and trying to figure out what that meant. One thing was for sure, I could only divulge my deep love of Star Trek to people I really trusted. I found myself in a paradox. Show my true self and find myself surrounded by socially inept (and kind of greasy) nerds, or hang with the cool kids. I opted for the cools kids. Naturally, because I was trying too hard, the cool kids never really got on board the Kristen Train and I ended up befriending all the nerds anyway. At the time, I didn’t fully understand how to enjoy the best of both worlds or for that matter, I didn’t quite comprehend that I was actually enjoying the best of both worlds. The strange thing is, the cool kids didn’t get me and the nerds all wanted to marry me. As you can imagine, I spent a good deal of time trying to figure it all out. Mostly, I attempted to be an artist and that (in itself) meant not really cultivating a great deal of lasting relationships. I was also highly dramatic and moody. That didn’t help socially, but it made me a good Goth.

After High School, I realized that I loved being a nerd and a Goth. I also found that there were more nerds in the Goth scene than I thought and felt like I could finally be myself. Bringing up topics such as computers, video games, classic cartoons, and Star Trek lead to meeting some fascinating people and I was surprised at the reaction. Into my 20′s, I celebrated my nerddom and totally embraced it. Besides, it never hurt being one of only a few females at Comic Book or Sci-Fi conventions. Of course, now, that’s not the case. Those things are filthy with cute girls.

While I have long since been a card carrying nerd past the point of no return, I think it takes a special kind of dork to take things to a new level. And so I have. Last night, mostly because I was tired and couldn’t validate going to bed early, I sat at my computer, hunted down footage and created an homage to the Obama Victory speech at Grant Park…Star Wars style.

For your approval, disapproval, and entertainment, I present a video montage of Obama clipped together to the tune of the Ewok Return of the Jedi “Yub Nub” song. Geeks will appreciate the usage of the original Ewok song and newbies will enjoy the inclusion of the newer Jedi finale. Do note, I could have used better footage, but I stole most of it.

Enjoy.

If loving Wil Wheaton is wrong, I don’t wanna be right

Posted on by
Reply

OK. I figured it out. I’m boring and Wil Wheaton is a genius. When the dorks in junior high invited me to RPG, maybe I should have. Apparently, roll-playing is good for the brain. Of course, this is according to a self proclaimed geek.

On that note, every year or so, I go through a self-induced Wheaton-binge where all I do is read his blog and think about how cute he is; and how, even though he was (ocassionally) annoying on Next Generation, he was so frickin’ adorable, I couldn’t stand it – only strengthening my deep love and appreciation of nerds. Nerds = Hotness. All this means, reading his blog again everyday and after a year, discovering he’s on Twitter. So yeah, it may SOUND like I’m cyber-stalking him, but I’m really not. Really, I love him because he posts Twitterz like this: A kid just walked down my street, kicking a can. I looked for other kids rolling a hoop with a stick, but saw none. Timestream: intact.

I woke up this morning with an authentic plan to get back into eating better and exercising. Believe it or not, I use to exercise regularly. Then I started having problems with my back and it all went into the crapper. Woke up, did some exercises, realized it’s hard, went for a 20 minute walk. When I got back, I felt pretty good, but slowly this heavy feeling set in. Slug. Tired. I started watching Planet of the Apes, followed by The Day the Earth Stood Still, and fell asleep hard in the middle. Waking up intermittently to watch War Games. TCM is MIA from our cable line up, so I’ve been watching a lot of AMC. Damn commercials. Still, good stuff on my teletubes. When I woke up, I realized that today was hotter than it’s been in the last few weeks. That’ll do it. Being the delicate flower that I am, I don’t do well in the heat. It’s my hibernation time, you see.

And, I got a new gig. A vintage clothing company has hired me to shoot apparel for their eBay listings. Great. The pay is less than glamorous, but it will keep me busy several times a week. And that’s good.

Did I mention the Pasadena Weekly thing? I might have. An old friend/not friend asked me to participate in his weekly feature called “5 Questions”. It’s a neat opportunity and is the paper equivalent to MySpace surveys. Irrelevant questions towards irrelevant people. I can dig that. PT Barnum did say that one thing about publicity, so it’s all good. When it’s printed, I’ll post it. OK? I also had to include a picture – which was a new lesson in self loathing. I had a friend, who’s a kick ass concert photographer, do some shots of me. Lesson one: Fish-eye lens in my mortal enemy. Lesson Two: Concert photographers are better at catching fast moving moments, rather than still standing models. Ah well, what can I say? My good deed will be noted and the photographer will get photo credit.

Noteworthy Items of Note

Posted on by
Reply

I’m in the process of getting ready to fly out to Chicago. We’re taking the red-eye and will arrive at the butt-crack of dawn tomorrow. Chi-Town. I’ve been several times, but have yet to actually see the city. Two times snowy/rainy, one time funeral, another time…can’t remember why, but it was frickin’ cold. We’re going for a few days to see AJB’s mom and maybe actually spend some “GF/BF time” together.

Noteworthy items:

I haven’t had time to go through or upload my Comic-Con pics. As usual, I made it a point to take pictures of the people no one was taking pictures of. That’s my fave. The chubby Wonder Women, the old masked vigilantes…they’re the real heroes. I mean, seriously, if you’re old and fat and you’ve got the balls to dress up like a comic-book character, you’re A+ in my book. It takes real guts to dress up like that to begin with. Part of me loves the balls-to-the-wall attitude of these people, part of me finds it amusing, but mostly, you should see the looks on their faces when you ask them to take their picture…like you just made their day. The great thing about Comic-Con is that everyone there is willing to have their picture taken. For a few days, they’re celebrities. And with the total mass assimilation of Comic-Con, some of these people show up on new sites and in magazines. How great is that? Warhol said everyone gets their 15 minutes.

I’ll post Comic-Con pics when I get back from Chi-Town.

Along with that, I’ve spent a good deal of time going through images from several paid shoots. It got to the point where my eyes were starting to cross. I’m done, for now. I can’t complain. Being busy means I’m doing something right.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve jumped on board the Twitter band-wagon. I’m not sure why. My brother put it fairly accurately: It’s like text-messaging…except you’re texting yourself. I get the concept of Twitter, but I haven’t figured out why it’s necessary in life. I’ll admit, it’s moderately fun to post mini-updates from my iPhone (as if anyone cares), but right now the only person on my list if AJB and I don’t think he reads it all that often anyway. I also think that once I start poo-pooing things like Twitter, it means I’m old. Get off my lawn, kind of old. I figure, as long as I at least see what all the fuss is about, I’m doing alright. I’ve also integrated into my blog, which is kind of neat. It also automatically posts daily Twitter updates, so if you’re not Twitterpated, you can at least know that at some point yesterday I was doing something….not all that interesting enough to blog about. Do you care? I don’t see why anyone would.

We live in such a extreme realm of voyeurism. We need constant updates from our friends and must keep tabs on them at all times. Frankly, Twitter is kind of sick, but you didn’t hear that from me. Once again, I find myself contradicting myself. If I dislike Twitter, I should dislike blogs. Right? Besides, news of this week’s earthquake in So. Cal hit Twitter before it hit the news. I guess that counts for something.

Japanese Monster

Posted on by
1
Which Japanese Monster?

Which Japanese Monster?

Today as I was driving to my hair appointment, I spotted this sign at the off-ramp of Fair Oaks Ave. Immediately, my brain went “Holy crap! Cloverfield!” Well, who knows. There are talks of sequels and prequels and the way J.J. Abrams and company work their secret magic, I say, you never know. Like a total dork, I followed the sign and found absolutely nothing. In fact, by the time my hair appointment was over, it was gone. You’ll also note that there is a secondary sign above with an arrow and the letters “BS” – what the heck does that mean? I’d like to think that a sequel/prequel is in the works. Tomorrow we leave for Comic-Con and who knows, maybe I’ll get a scoop. You know, a scoop that about a thousand other live-blogging nerds will get.

In preps for Comic-Con, I’ve gotten a new fresh coat of paint:

Why So Blue?

Why So Blue?

We leave for San Diego tomorrow. We’ll wander the booths and geekery on Friday and Saturday and come home Sunday. I haven’t studied the schedule yet, so I’m not sure what or who we’re going to see, but all I know is, JJ Abrams will there and that bitch better talk about Star Trek. Alright fine. I’m a nerd. I’m OK with that. And oh yes, there will be pictures.

The Most Tedious Job Ever

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, during a lull in my day, I decided to tackle something I’d ignored for about 8 months. My blog SPAM. There were over 25,000 entries in the queue. Most, if not all, bloggers face an almost impossible onslaught of spammers hitting their comments sections. I use an application called WordPress to blog and it’s actually pretty great. It comes with all kinds of bells and whistles and is the reason why I switched over from Live Journal to begin with…more flexibility. With that comes the ability to mass edit/delete your comments. Still, when you’ve got over 25,000, it’s more than daunting.

I decided that I would not only go through all 25,000+ comments, but create a keyword blacklist containing words commonly used by spammers. For example:

Adderall
ambein
Ambien
Amoxicillin
animal sex
atenolol
Avandia
Biaxin
birkoff
Bontril
Carisoprodol
Celebrex
Celexa
Cephalexin
CheapAdobePremiumSuite
Cialis
cipro
Codeine
Cyclobenzaprine
Cymbalta
Diazepam
diethylpropion
Diflucan
Doxycycline
Effexor
Eltroxin
ephedra
Ephedrine
fabiola
fabiola-qz
feechka
Fioricet
Fosamax
hananim
Hydrocodone
ionamin
kistov
klonopin
Larcik
Lexapro
Lipitor
Lortab
meridia
mimaxa
Norvasc
oxycodone
oxycontin
paxil
percocet
Phendimetrazine
Phentermine
Prednisone
Propecia
protonix
provigil
Prozac
Reductil
Ritalin
rohypnol
Sibutramine
Soma
Synthroid
tamadol
Topamax
Toprol
Tramadol
Ultracet
Ultram
Valium
Valtrex
verasova
Viagra
vicodin
Wellbutrin
Xanax
xenical
Zithromax
Zocor
Zoloft.
Zolpidem
Zovirax

As you can see, I listed 82 words. You might also notice that 98% of those words are names of drugs. Of course, this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Spammers (crafty lot that they are) will bombard your comments boxes with links, keywords, and gibberish. And because they hardly use the same IP twice, banning IP addresses is useless. Furthermore, even though I could ban the several thousand IP addresses held within 25,000 comments, it just wouldn’t make sense in the long run. You see, Internet Service Providers sometimes use blocks of IP’s for their users and often rotate them on a regular basis. It’s not like any one person has the same IP over their lifetime…it’s not like a home address. I could ban a block of IP’s, but I might be blocking whole groups of people who aren’t spammers. Which might not be bad or rather, wouldn’t actually matter.

In all the 25,000+ comments that I moderated, there were only 4 that I approved. Two of which were questionable, but not so much that I would block them. It’s sometimes hard to tell. Spammers are sometimes real people who get paid to post links as much as they can, anywhere they can. They get paid via click-thrus. When someone clicks their specific link, they make something like 10 cents or something per click. I’m not sure how it works. It’s a shady business anyway. And because they realize there are people like me out there taking a stand, they’ve learned to become sneaky. One specific comment read:

[...] Cinka is very entertaining. Check out the latest and greatest post on Fly Home Like a Rock Star. See below for a quick excerpt of the entertainment: [...]

I found this example amusing. Made to look as though they were informing me that they’d linked back to a certain post. Which hopefully means I’ll approve the comment allowing them to comment more in the future, like an open door. The grand purpose of all this is to get web-traffic; which in turns means commerce.

So why don’t spammers stop spamming a particular site after they see they’re not making any headway? Because it doesn’t matter. The majority of SPAM is automated. I’m not certain of the logistics, but I do know that the method is computerized and the application doesn’t care if the comment gets approved. It’s job is to simply post, post, post. With hundreds of thousands of comments being sent out every day, if 10% don’t go through, they’re still ahead of the game. Thus, lowly bloggers such as myself simply have to deal with it. And even with bells and whistles, you can’t stop SPAM completely. You can hinder it slightly, but defense is the best offense. Vigilance and determination. Up until yesterday, I’d completely ignored my SPAM, but when you spend 4 hours wading through it, you tend to get a fire lit under your ass.

My 82 keyword blacklist will help, but as I reached the final 2000 comments, I realized that SPAMMERS also use common words you wouldn’t want to blacklist. Words we use everyday. Blacklisting everyday language would mean the two legitimate commenters wouldn’t be able to post anything. I don’t get a lot of comments here. I never have. In fact, with any regularity, there really are only two people who comment: My sister and Nevla. Even though I know more than two people read this blog, they’re the only ones who comment. Thanks guys! Makes me feel special. My blog is only mildly entertaining and not enough to drive in masses of traffic. I don’t know how I feel about that.

I receive an email every time a comment come in. WordPress holds unapproved comments in a queue until I can deal with it. I’ve cleared my inbox, I’ve cleared the queue. I’ve cleared the slate and can really start to get a handle on this. Of course, it’s a daily task. I’ll have to moderate SPAM everyday. I feel like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid…I know I’m licked, but I’m going out in a blaze of glory.