Alden Bates' Weblog

I have one spammer who has a comment spamming script which regularly pounds on my site. This script hits from four IP addresses sending up to 40 requests per second and despite only getting 403 access denied responses, has not given up. The IP addresses are:

• 195.226.230.58 - owned by the Hard Rock Cafe in Kuwait.
• 82.114.68.194 - owned by the Kujtesa Network in Kosova.
• 62.150.35.230 - owned by "Lebanese Besources for Car Spare parts Co.", part of QualityNet Kuwait.
• 62.150.40.142 - Same ownership as 62.150.35.230

I attempted to communicate with the owners of the IP addresses to try to get this sorted:

• The cafe in Kuwait: They don't have a web page, and their email address on the Hard Rock Cafe web site bounces with a "not a valid mailbox" error. I got another email address from the HRC site's customer care team... which bounced with "mailbox unavailable".
• Kujtesa Network: No response yet.
• QualityNet Kuwait: The email address on the RIPE whois bounced with the error "Over quota". I forwarded it to their support email address from their site. No response yet.

Another spammer (or possibly the same one) is also trying to spam from an IP address from rbnnetwork.com (see also Spacesquad Anti-Spam service). An email to their abuse address I sent on the 1st remains unanswered.

So where does that leave me? At least these spammers are using a small number of consistent IP addresses, so perhaps my last resort is to ask my web host whether I can get them blocked at the firewall level...

Made in Austria, distributed by National Beverages Ltd in Auckland, this energy drink comes in an eye-catching bright YELLOW can (yellow in lower case is not sufficient to describe the yellowness of this can) which this photo does not do justice. So far as I can tell there's no particular gimmick (other than the extreme yellowness they've managed to acquire) - this is just a regular energy drink which comes in a YELLOW can, has 80mg of caffeine, and tastes almost exactly like Red Bull. It scores over Red Bull in that it's slightly cheaper, and is yellower.

Wait, is that name a "Shop and Go" pun? FOUL!

TSV 43 went online a couple of days ago. The paper version was published in early 1995, which means that one of the participants in Four Writers, One Discussion had yet to write anything Doctor Who related. Paul Cornell, Andy Lane and David Bishop were known at the time for their Doctor Who novels (and have done further work since), but Steven Moffat hadn't yet penned The Curse of Fatal Death, let alone the two stories he's done for the new series.

There's also The Engima Magnet, a comic strip featuring the fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and Kamelion, which started off a regular run of comic strips - unfortunately they're not as common in TSV these days. And one of my favourite pieces of Cyberman art to appear in TSV. And a rare piece of Mel artwork! And this cartoon by Jon Preddle!

I had two pieces of art in this issue: pictures of the first Doctor and the Destroyer from Battlefield. I sent in the latter piece after Paul requested artwork for the Andrew Cartmel interview in TSV 40, but it was held over until this issue, probably because it was similar to Tim Hill's depiction of the Destroyer.

In TSV 44: the other half of Tardis Tales: Yet Another Alien Invasion Story, a look at the aborted anniversary special The Dark Dimension, and there's an article by me about the Master which I should probably update...

Further reading: Paul Scoones on TSV 43, Jamas Enright on TSV 43, David Bishop on Four Writers, One Discussion.
Previously: TSV 42

XP is supposed to make working with devices easy, right? Right?

I have an HP Scanjet 5100c which I used successfully on my old PC for ages, first under Windows 98 and then under Windows XP. Recently I bought a new PC and tonight I needed to scan something, so I dug out the HP install disk and had at it.

Problem 1: Once I'd installed the software and plugged the scanner in, Windows XP would get as far as detecting new hardware and promptly reset. This has happened to me once before with WinFast TV2000 XP WDM Crossbar. In this case the problem was sharshtl.sys (Shuttle printer sharer). I fixed it by unplugging the scanner and then renaming sharshtl.sys so Windows couldn't load it.

Problem 2: Once that was done, XP booted up fine and the scanner was there (twice, actually). Unfortunately when I tried to scan with it, HP PrecisionScan would report that the scanner was not responding... and then the scanner would scan anyway (but the data wouldn't reach the PC).

I'm still not sure whether this is fixed or not. After a few reboots and messing about, the parallel port test is claiming "Scanner not responding", but PrecisionScan went ahead and scanned properly anyway.

Tilt.

Oh, and I downloaded an updated driver from HP's web site. When I try to run it, I get an error stating "The file could not be located", and the program quits. Real good, HP.

From Geoff Wessel via the Rustyverse: CBC's archive of character designs for the never made animated Doctor Who series.

Alas, it's got funky Javascript navigation, so I can't link to particular pictures, but there's some interesting image of a TARDIS interior with a very techno-organic console, a hover-converted Bessie, and what appears to be a Cyber-converted supermodel.

Recently I've been getting spam comments from someone who likes to leave a random humorous story evidently culled from somewhere on the interweb, followed by links to their pages. Here is one of the latest examples:

A Girlfriend Called Lorraine

There was a guy and he had a girlfriend called Lorraine. She was very pretty and he liked her a lot.

One day he went to work to find that a new girl had started working there. Her name was Clearly, and she was absolutely gorgeous.

He began to like her and after a while it became obvious that she was interested in him too. But, he was a loyal man and he wouldn't get involved with Clearly while he was still going out with Lorraine.

He decided that there was nothing for him to do but to break up with Lorraine and date the new girl. He planned several times to tell Lorraine but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

One day as they were walking along the river bank, Lorraine slipped and fell in to the river. The current carried her off and she drowned.

The guy stopped for a moment by the river and then ran off smiling and singing..." I can see Clearly now Lorraine is gone..."

:D:D:D:D

[links snipped]

Naturally I was immediately compelled to report the spammer to their web host. I mean spamming is one thing, but there's no call for that.

I was watching a Knight Rider episode ("Knight of the Drones", to be precise, and as the following screen grabs will demonstrate, it provides proof that KITT is programmed in BASIC:

"KITT, give me a readout"

It prints out the sin, cos and tan of 30 random number between 0 and 9, then what looks like entries from Paramount picture's phone book (Mimi Soudan and C Gibson who were listed I found mentioned on this page. Other distinctive names from the list: John Sitcom (inventer of the sitcom??), Deke Miller, David Cazarus, Bill Busak, Chris Alsip, Dave Devlin.

Then after that there's what looks like the start of a news story: "What the heck? The jury decision to deny Mayor Smith his choice of-". The Mayor of LA (where the episode was filmed) in the 80s was Thomas Bradley, so what this was in reference to is a mystery...

The latest Google Webmaster Central blog entry A Quick Word About Googlebombs announces that Google has solved the whole Googlebomb problem, which was typified most famously by the "Miserable failure" bomb. And sure enough, miserable failure doesn't work any more.

However, French Military Victories still does, at least for now. :)

When I was in Wellington this evening, my eye was caught by this poster advertising an upcoming gig featuring Wellington band The Ramps:

Recent issues of Aardvark have been about the blog CYFSWATCH, and more specifically about how the New Zealand government has been trying to get the blog shut down. Bruce Simpson compares this to the Chinese government censoring Google. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to hear if Google is going to capitulate to their demands or not...

As of now (25/01/2007 6pm) it's still up.