entirely safe and fun

I’ve reported before on my installation of the Akismet comment-spam-fighting plugin, and it continues to amaze with its accuracy and precision. As far as I know, just one spam comment has gotten through since I installed it, and it has yet to flag a legit comment as spam.

But I still review the spam comments from time to time, not out of any lack of confidence in Akismet, but because occasionally, there’s a gem. Among the ph@rm.acy ads, pointers to nu.de höt téèns, and so on, I’ve gotten a spate of chair spam in the last week. Things like (spammer information removed)…

1. Name: adirondack chair wooden | URI: http://www.ANOTHERSPAMHAUS.info/ adirondack-chair-SPAM.html | IP: 212.56.202.147 | Date: 21 July, 2006 adirondack chair wooden…Thanks for clearing this up ….

Chair spam! I am imagining this spammer at 212.56.02.147, apparently in Amsterdam. It’s not just the money for him - he’s got a passion. After a lifetime of just sitting in one, now he’s got a line on a container full of Adirondack chairs, and if just one blog reader clicks on his link to buy “d3ck furnitre”, he makes back the buck he spent mass-posting comments, and introduces one more person to his true love. He’s sitting, even as he runs his spambot, in that Adirondack, using his notebook computer, no doubt on his balcony overlooking the Amstel (but in his heart of hearts, he prefers to think of it as East Lake George). He’s sipping an iced tea, and he and his chair alike are pining for Upstate New York; he’s always wanted to visit the natural habitat of his favorite seating, little knowing that it’s nearly extinct there. But in the wild, romantic Adirondacks of his imagination, the Mohicans still spend afternoons sitting in heavy wooden chairs, hunting the abundant elk in the cool parts of the day, feasting on the trout that thickly school in the lakes, and assembling in backwoods lodges by night to listen to Borscht Belt comedians who are passing through. Perhaps sometimes they Dirtily Dance, but when their feet tire, they always return to the comfort of their chairs.

Oh, 212.56.02.147, the Upstate of your dreams is not, and never has been. But I can’t bring myself to tell you the truth in the face of so beautiful a lie. Sleep well, my spammer friend.

Our friend Deb was in town two weekends ago, and among other adventures, we visited Alexander Cellars / Sarticious Spirits, located in a charming industrial space in Santa Cruz. This sounds strange until you consider… Santa Cruz. Everything there is charming, basically.

We smelled the distillery running from a block away, and it smelled sweet. The operator, Jeff, was at work on a not-yet-announced spirits project, but I can tell you that I had no trouble identifying it, and appreciating it, at fifty paces. Jeff was kind enough to educate us about what he’d been up to, allow us to sample (really, nose) the new product, and pose for this picture with Punam and Deb. It’s a fair, though not ideal, sample of what the 8500 can do as a camera (click for the full-size version). Note the full-size pot still running in the back, and closer to the foreground, the pilot-sized still, which is one awesome toy.

I’m not big on recommending spirits, simply because I know I haven’t tried many, but Sarticious Gin is an intense, herbal preparation which I enjoy immensely. It’s made with the spirits equivalent of dry-hopping, and consequently, it’s the spirits equivalent of an Anderson Valley beer (where the hops just may have been tweezed out of the bottle five minutes before shipping). So, my first spirits recommendation, and not even for a whisk(e)y!

I finally got around to polishing off an Ajax version of Bob vs Sam, just as a little tech demo to make sure I’ve got the concepts under control. It’s something I had been putting off for a while. But now that it’s done, there’s no page reloading or re-rendering, and the Bob vs Sam performance is significantly better, thus alleviating concerns which were often keeping me up at night. Just in case you may not have been around for the beginning of Bob and Sam’s gripping Peano-inspired donnybrook, they’re racing… to infinity… and they need your help.

The actual coding was pretty straightforward. If you go to the web toy - open it in another tab or something, go ahead - and View Source, you’ll see that most of the intelligence is in the “client,” written in Javascript and embedded in the recalculate() function up in the <head> element of the HTML. There are some gotchas.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been compiling a list of configuration information for a totally new, configuration-free Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone. This is, of course, because I have one and need to get it working.

It’s thin, it’s light, and it handles stereo Bluetooth: it’s the QTek 8500. There are a few things I’d like to say are awesome about this phone. The QVGA (320 x 240) screen is excellent, especially if, like me, you enjoy browsing the Web from your phone. A2DP, more familiarly known as stereo Bluetooth, rocks unfairly - listening to web radio with no wires in the signal path is pretty tech. Windows Mobile 5 also includes push email, which I haven’t gotten set up yet. These features make the 8500 the ultimate gargoyle phone, Snow Crash style. Furthermore, the form factor is sexy as hell. Master sexy artisans carve the case out of a solid block of matte black sexy.

I’m still not done getting all of the 8500’s features set up, but so far I have no complaints that I haven’t been able to address by tweaking some configuration. The most frustrating part, when I was getting started, was correctly configuring the network settings. No one has up-to-date information on the web, as far as I can tell. I called and emailed Cingular, and the fruits of that research are now on my list of useful things to know. Then, the thinness of the documentation became an obstacle; I’m pushing through that with sheer experimentation at this point. I’ll update the info page from time to time as I figure things out. Every time I find myself wishing I had a nice, four-color-glossy manual from Cingular, I remind myself that I’m using a product too new to even have US distribution channels (mine came with a charger plug that no one could identify, possibly for Outer Buzkashistan or someplace (see update, bottom)), and that something has to give, and that smart engineers, faced with a choice of what will give, have always chosen documentation. “Well, the History Eraser Button seems to be working great, but we need to ship tomorrow. Copy that wishlist Marketing gave us last year and slip it into the box.”

The one irremediable problem with this phone, right now, is that no carrier is supporting it. You’ll have to buy one with no carrier subsidies, making it expensive, and with minimal expectation of technical assistance, which can be frustrating. Just finding the MMS configuration dialog must have taken me an hour, for instance. I pre-ordered mine from GBT Mobile, who were honest, forthright, and easy to get in touch with. There were some shipping delays, but they kept their customers informed, and didn’t dodge or go silent. There are a lot of really awful cell phone dealers on the Web (e.g. Wirefly, to whom I won’t link), and I am happy to report that my experience with GBT was quite pleasant.

I’ll try to get a more thorough review of the 8500 up shortly. In brief, though, I’m enjoying it.

Update: The type G plug is, in fact, widely used in Outer Buzkashistan, but my bet now is that my phone came either from the UAE or the UK, and if I had to choose, my money would be on the former.

Yesterday, at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, in line, a Small Child craned his neck over his mother’s shoulder to size me up. He asked, in that direct way that is a winning feature of Small Children, “Are you a pirate?”

I nodded emphatically. “Aye, lad.”

Thank you, Small Child.

Rob Cockerham, of cockeyed.com, admonishes you to “Always bring your camera.” With the increasing quality of phone cameras, this gets easier and easier. Having my camera, plus my usual atavistic gift of hunty sneakery, enabled me to get within about ten feet of a black-throated hummingbird in the garden section at Orchard Supply, and document it by snapping this reasonable-quality photo.

Another step was one too many, and my subject took off, denying me the pleasure of roast hummingbird or whatever she might have imagined I’d do with her tasty, tasty flesh. It is a little-known (or at least little-considered) fact that hummingbirds are made almost entirely of meat… and filled with sugar!