spitnik.com is now working, for what it’s worth. The page is very, very old, but at least it shows stuff.

Also, regarding the anti-spam character recognition that many websites use to stop bots: it’s under attack. Bloody spammers.

Um, back from technical-land, I was having much too much fun on the weekend to really do much website administration. Lots of time with Veronica; we went out to our favorite restaurant (the Bavarian Beer Cafe), played piano and guitar together (I didn’t even have time for Guitar Hero 3 on account of actually playing a real guitar), went for a jog together, and made the most of Veronica’s mini-holiday before she started her new work (first day: today). I didn’t get to archery on account of the new “Sam & Max” game, which Von and I are playing through with great glee.

Caught up with Jon & Kate on Sunday, watched some Dr Who and Sara-Jane Adventures, played a little music (Dear Prudence) and had dinner with them. All in all, a really pleasant, mellow weekend, especially after the mad antics of Friday.

Oh yeah, Friday. Remember how Australia won the World Cup Burling this year? Well, we finally got photos, including the official 2007 World Cup Burling jerseys.

Speaking of semi-sentient entities, and despite Marco’s skepticism, I’m pretty sure these are humans at clickbank:

“I think we should all try to help our fellow human beings,who are trying to make a living online. I’m a human, really I am! Bad robots, bad! Hee, Hee.I enjoyed reading your article.”

I’d certainly be amused (and impressed) if this was a spambot, but I’m not going to do a word-jumble humanity-checker because I really think that’s just going to let some of the spammers in. It’s easy enough to sort the friends from the spam at the moment. I don’t think I’m missing much.

OK, a hypothetical question for the clickbankers, then:

You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It’s crawling toward you. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?

Just a guess, mind you, but it explains the generic and impersonal (yet curiously relevant) comments from random strangers on clickbank IP addresses. For example, a typical one:

“Great Article! Vik”

or

“I have to agree. This was the best of the series.”

(in response to a post about the last HP book being good)

or

“Looks like you’re having loads of fun; now maybe you can find some time to sleep.”

Here’s a more cunning one:

“I would really like to learn how to make things out of balloon. I’ve always been interested in how to come up with creative images very quickly. I’d like to see more. Please post more images. Thanks.”

…which I almost approved, except that it comes from clickbank.

The penny kinda dropped when I got this comment from a clickbanker, in response to my previous posts on the topic:

“No, it’s just someone advertising their websites, just like everybody else advertising on the web. Even the owner of this site is advertising his website here. That’s how he continually get viewers such as yourself to come here and read the articles and make comments. So what if you’re advertising a website. That’s what it’s about. Someone took the time to visit your website, now you can “choose” whether you would like to visit their’s, IF it interests you of course. I have a website to advertise also but when I come to these sites, I search through the articles like everybody else, looking for a topic that I’m interested in reading just like everybody else, click on it, read it , post a comment, like everybody else. I have a website that others can choose to check out if they’re interested. If you don’t like advertisements, maybe you should stay off of the internet. And really, I would teach you how to advertise, which posting a website to comments is such a small way for exposure compared to others but I am making over 5 thousand a month by advertising clickbank companies and i started only 2 months ago.”

So, yeah, a spam scam.

Anyway, I’m not sure the technology for resisting spam will keep up with this approach for long. Soon they will be able to conceal that they come from clickbank, and then I’m straight into paranoid mode. Hence: if I don’t know you, and you send a marginally relevant comment, I’m afraid I’m not going to approve it. If it’s a *good* comment, I’ll post it directly in a weblog entry. But not in the comments.

It’s friends-and-relatives-only in the comments from now on.

Oh, and some stuff happened. Like (for example) some scumbag spammer was using this very weblog (and filmforensics, and lexifab) to forward spam, thanks to out-of-date wordpress software. It got our domain name host very cross with us, because we were consuming huge amounts of CPU and causing the server to repeatedly crash. Fortunately, they let me upgrade to the latest wordpress, rather than trashing the whole thing, which, in their position, I’d have been sorely tempted to do. This happened in a blitz of emails and frantic activity on Saturday night. That’s the kind of wacky fun I get up to on weekends nowadays.

You’re sick of archery, right? I’m not. I’ve been going regularly, twice a week, and I’ve been rapidly improving too. I finally got used to 38lb bow weight, and because that was as far as those limbs were going to go, I upgraded the limbs to the next weight up. Now I’m drawing 40lb, and the arrow is hitting the target with a real snap. The new limbs are considerably lighter and seem to really give the arrows the hurry-up signal; I can see them bending back and forth as they fly toward the target. I need stronger arrows. I also added two more flanges to the bow, which steady it against lateral movement, and immediately got better scores; very gratifying, I’d hate to upgrade something and not have any difference! On Tuesday I managed an unofficial “All Gold” at 40m range (All Gold is all the arrows in the yellow 9-and-10 area; the best I’d previously managed was 20m), and just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, I managed it again on Saturday morning. I won that day’s competition. And since I only just upgraded the limbs, I went back on Sunday and shot until I couldn’t shoot no more. It was great. Now my arms feel like lead and I can barely stay awake.