spamguy

I am furious right now. Not in the sense of an emo punk ranting on his blog about how his little sister kept bugging him whilst at Starbucks. This is far, far geekier. There will be no spamguy.com.

As previously reported, I negotiated with someone at Vanderbilt, and convinced him to let his spamguy.com domain expire in July 2007. By standard web service procedure, an expired domain enters a grace period, a pending delete, and finally full delete. All this takes 75 days from the expiration date listed on a ‘whois’ profile.

Today was Day 75, and it would be marvellous…there are no spamguys to speak of in this world, so who the hell would care about some lame domain name?

Well, clearly someone. Checking ‘whois’ tonight, something was wrong:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, by paying the hefty sum of $19, you can have a stake in picking up an expiring domain the second it frees up. Yet, it doesn’t guarantee it’s yours. If another twerp pays his foot-in-the-door fee, it becomes a game of which provider has the speedier, cooler bot.

The provider in this instance, eNom, is famous for being unresponsive, so I’m not even going to try making my legally baseless claim that it was supposed to be mine because the previous owner said so. Money and registration bots talk.

It’s possible this is a lame-ass company seeking to profit by dumping a manufactured site on spamguy.com and getting traffic redirected to paying clients. Because of that, I ask you not visit spamguy.com to see what’s there.

First encountered on Metafilter, then BoingBoing (both inspired by this blog post [YouTube]), I was struck by CBS Austin station KEYE-TV’s report on vote fraud within the Texas Legislature. The lege’s biannual convergence is so rare and brief that it causes a political uproar in Texas media. Usually cameras are pointed at the House/Senate floors to document how truly effective our politicians are at being ineffective ((For out-of-state readers: yes, that is our governor. Politician or GoodFellas extra? You decide!)) time-wasters. KEYE reporters, though, picked up on something else: not only do legislators vote, but they vote for their neighbours not at their desks. The coverage, posted and viewable on YouTube above, has an element of sick humour to it, possibly because of the otherwise dead-serious ding sound effect made when a vote is cast: when one person votes four times, it creates a political pinball machine. If you don’t laugh at the absurdity of it all, watch for one legislator’s excuse as to why she does it.

Ding!

I was watching Fox News over lunch (don’t ask), and an odd advert came on. It was an over-the-counter pain medication, and its tagline was Prevents 1 In 3 Heart Attacks.

Pause for a moment. Let that statistic sink in. If a prevented heart attack isn’t a heart attack, then…ouch, my brain hurts. Perhaps popping a few of these pills will prevent 1 in 3 logic traps?

My favourite American folk melody is probably ‘Old Dan Tucker’:

Being a traditional melody, stanzas come and go with the singer’s wish. Wikipedia offers a version rendered in 19th century Negro, since the song’s origins may be minstrel shows:

If you have no idea what this sounds like, I recommend listening Bruce Springsteen’s version, especially one recorded live in Dublin, Ireland. It may well be the catchiest song post-Civil War America churned out. Well, disregarding Tippecanoe And Tyler Too.

In the tradition of announcing when my iTunes Library has reached a magnitude divisible by 1,000, I hit 5,000 songs this evening. The magic song was Ween’s ‘Take Me Away’ from their 1994 CD Chocolate & Cheese (warning: ironically risqué album art).

Even though I have miles to go before I hold a candle to my obsessive file-sharing friends back at uni, 5,000 is still plenty. Hint: Hadyn. Lots and lots of Hadyn. If you need more name dropping, just read the whole damn list (1.4MB, 84pp).

Unless you play Pac-Man by following strict paths laid out by the masters, the game is infuriatingly hard. The unique psychologies of the ghosts have always befuddled me. With a little research, now the ghosts seem a little shallow. Luckily, there are ways of making the game seem more real.

Have I discussed the Jane Chord before? Four-and-a-half years of blogging have become hazy. Perhaps a review is in order, especially if none of the old posts from Blog City will be joining the WordPress party.

The Jane Chord is the two word phrase created by combining the first and last non-article words in a book. The phenomenon, first observed by an editor’s wife aptly named Jane, provides an efficient summary of the text and offers a deeper look into the author’s soul than the 100,000 other words sandwiched between the front and back. Sadly, greater detail on this Jane person isn’t available. Given the multiple people who have brought the concept up, though, I assert it to be the de facto standard for literary analysis.

Ulysses‘ Jane Chord, which was the first Jane Chord taught to me, is stately yes. Stately? Yes! There are more listed here, even though the author focuses on science fiction books, which more often than not don’t deserve the effort associated with opening the book in two different spots.

With all the fiddling I’ve been doing with PHP, databasing, AJAX, and the like, I think up odd ideas for a Web 2.0 world. Usually the path of thought leads from ‘How can I make myself keep up with [task X]?’ to ‘How can the computer help me keep up with [task X]?’ to the inevitable ‘Wouldn’t it be craaaaazy if everyone could use the computer to keep up with [task X]? And make it 3-D and multiplayer? With lasers?’

Lasers? Why not—the definition of Web 2.0 is that there is no definition. Sort of like proactive or streamline. Drop the lasers if you wish, or add dinosaurs or something. The point is that in today’s interactive-to-excess Internet, information must be shared first and used second. This is why Facebook profiles stretch on for pages, and why MySpace profiles are ugly regardless of practicality ((Exceptions exist, but they require the use of professional designers, thereby defeating the purpose of MySpace entirely.)): the volume of information is important, not the composition.

Every maniacal thought I have that involves data, therefore, can be made digital by inserting sharing somewhere in the description. A few months ago, I thought of starting an interactive haiku depository website…with sharing ((In all fairness, my friend Daniel had the same vision this week. This idea may actually get off the ground.)). Then I thought of a radio station library front-end…with sharing. Tonight, I had the strangest but most compelling plan yet: what if there were a digital swear jar [YouTube] connected via PayPal to various nonprofit institutions? The micropayment system is a development of e-commerce that sadly has yet to get off the ground, and the swear jar model ((It wouldn’t necessarily be for swearing, naturally. The idea came when I was thinking of ways to break this filthy habit I have.)) would be a step in the right direction. And the only way to take a good idea over the edge?

…With sharing.

My favourite facet of modern programming language is the obscure, mysterious ternary conditional statement. It compresses unsightly code into a tightly packed line of even more unsightly code. Yet, somehow the end result is graceful and stunning.

The lame way: ((What an excellent excuse to introduce a killer feature of the new blog: GeSHi-based automatic code formatting!))

[code lang="php"]
if ($A || $B || !$A * $something)
	echo 'Hot dogs!';
else
	echo 'Hamburgers!';
[/code]

The real man’s way: ((This attempt to introduce automatic footnoting of my posts, meanwhile, is weak at best. To hell with it! I’m just glad to be rid of the practise of writing [1], [2]… after sentences.))

[code lang="php"]
echo ($A || $B || !$A * $something) ? 'Hot dogs!' : 'Hamburgers!';[/code]

Its greatness lies not in its ability to squish code, but in driving other people nuts. Few know of its existence; fewer actually apply it. To the rest of the world, it is a string of random characters that somehow spits out the right content.

Now if only I could apply <script language=”COBOL”> to my web pages…

During coverage of the scandal-soaked 2007 Tour De France, CNN lightly hinted at the cycle race’s history with associating itself with controversy. Research on my part showed this is true.

The 1904 Tour De France bordered on comedic farce. Cheating was rampant, even conspicuous. One rider crashed repeatedly in compliance with blackmail threats. Another was found to have ridden a train part of the way through. Even though skipping on the very definition of a bike race defies logic, it seems almost reasonable in realising that the Tours prior to 1906 were continuous races without pause. Six stages were to be completed without sleep.

The spectators were no better. Fans left nails in the path of their enemies. In one instance a riot of onlookers escalated in the road, resulting in revolver shots and slashed tyres.

After all the scandal, the ridiculous length of the race, and spectator boorishness in the path of the cyclists, the newspaper L’Auto (which had established the race as a publicity stunt in 1903) declared,’The Tour is finished.’

More about the race here.