Alden Bates' Weblog

Wow, it's the middle of the month already! Where does the time go?

A week or so ago I noticed an odd hit in my server logs. The referrer url looked like this:
http://buxhotel.com/?page=<script> eval(unescape('%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72
[whole bunch more encoded characters cut out]
%72%61%6d%65%3e%22%29%3b'))</script>&t=2

Java script in the referrer? I guess the idea was that it would end up in the referrer logs which I don't publish on my web site, and then any unsuspecting people who visited said logs would execute the javascript. Or possibly would follow the link to the buxhotel page, which would give them back the javascript. Anyway the pile of encoded characters translated to more javascript, which looked like this:
document.write("<iframe src='[URL REDACTED]' height='2' width='2'> </iframe>");

The iframe loaded a URL containing yet more javascript which started document.write(unescape('%3c%68%74%6d%6c%3e etc etc etc. I didn't bother to extract all of it, but what I did translate made it obvious that the page was loaded with nasty spyware and viruses.

So to recap, this method depends on the target site publishing its logs publicly in some manner that people will either execute the long chain of javascript by visiting the logs or by following the link. Either way, it seems just a bit desperate to me...

So, back when Target was novelising Doctor Who stories, they ran into a bit of a snag with several of them. In the cases of Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks, they were unable to come to an arrangement which writer Eric Saward and the estate of Terry Nation were all happy with. Nature abhors a vacuum (and so do fans), thus in January 2000 the NZDWFC published an unofficial novelisation of Resurrection of the Daleks along with reprints of the four previous unofficial novelisations. Time marches on, and now Resurrection of the Daleks is available to read online in both spiffy HTML and PDF formats.

As usual, there are a number of cool extras such as author's notes and an article on the history of the novelisation. As mentioned previously, I've still been getting emails asking if we're going to put the rest of the novelisations up, and I expect to continue to get them until the last one goes up. Perhaps I should put up a "coming soon" notice on the City of Death page (but then I'll probably just get "How soon?" emails).

See also: the write-up by Paul
Previously: TSV 56

James Marsters, I suspect, is trying to do a tour of the major SF franchises. So far he's been in Smallville, Torchwood (which is as near as spit to Doctor Who) and ISTR he has a non-speaking appearance as Tarkin in Episode III. Watch out for him in the new Star Trek movie! So, now Torchwood series 2 is over, I give you the ultra-short episode guide...

Continue reading "Torchwood Series 2 (spoilers)"

Good morning, April (I meant to post this yesterday, when it would have been 25% closer to the start of the month, but oh well...)

Continue reading "Random Sunrise Photo!"

Goodnight March!

Continue reading "Random Sunset Photo 2"

Dr Who Tardis on sale on eBay

"A TROWBRIDGE Christian who renounced the evil of Dr Who in favour of his religion is selling his collection on internet auction website eBay."

Yeah, another political post. This will be the last one for a while, hopefully. I hate politics.

Recently the NZ government has been working towards a Free Trade deal with China. A bunch of people, including the Green party, have said the Trade deal should be thrown out due to the way China keeps killing Tibetans, and their crumby human rights record in general. Also, there's talk of boycotting the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

Leaving aside the fact that the Olympics are actually nicely bringing attention to Tibet (and I'm sure some of the athletes will defy the ban on mentioning Tibet), I point you to Statistics New Zealand's External Trade Statistics page.

In 2005, New Zealand imported 3.67 billion dollars worth of stuff from China. In 2006, it was 4.44 billion, and the projected total for 2007 is listed as 5.28 billion. For contrast, in 2006 we exported only 1.74 billion dollars worth of stuff to China, and in 2007 the projection was 1.88 billion. So we're already dropping a fair amount of money into the Chinese economy, and whether or not we get a free trade deal with them isn't likely to change that. We'll go on buying their stuff and giving them money, and they'll go on doing what they're doing.

Or is there something I'm missing?

And so we start on the last year of the 90s with issue 56 - the major item this issue was the Bottom Ten, another Doctor Who Magazine inspired article. Writers examined the ten stories which came lowest in the DWM mega-poll. I'm going to take a look at the stories myself further down this post. TSV 56 also contains not only the first installment of a new Erato comic Pex, but one of my favourite episodes of The Karkus (and the first Christmas episode, despite the issue coming out in January).

The big news this issue was the news about a missing episode, The Lion, turning up in Bruce Grenville's film collection. Paul Scoones wrote about this in the editorial, and Neil Lambess wrote up his first impressions in Indiana Who and the Lost Crusade. The full story is already online in TSV 57.

My favourite piece of artwork is Alistair Hughes' picture of the Destroyer from Battlefield. He also did the State of Decay picture on the back cover, for which we have a colour version as a bonus! Tom Baker looks a little familiar there... :) Also there is Peter Adamson's Mel and Pex artwork for the Bottom Ten entry on Paradise Towers.

See also: write-ups by Paul and Jamas.
Previously: TSV 55

Continue reading "TSV 56"

No, not the US elections, the New Zealand ones. For while the Americans try to decide whether they want Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John "Dubya II" McCain as president, New Zealand is gearing up for the 2008 elections. Unlike the US elections we vote all at once, so the buildup is purely campaigning.

Last election I posted about the current political parties so I guess it's time I did so again...

Continue reading "Predicting the election outcome"

Made by the same people who make Demon Energy, of course. The chief difference between this and Demon, other than the gold and white Imperial Dalek packaging, seems to be that it's sugar free. They haven't got the Angel Energy website up and running yet, but I'm presuming it won't have pictures of naked men hanging by their penises.

...

Mental scarring! Aieeeeeeee!

For reasons which are currently beyond me, Googlebot has started requesting search result pages from the MT search script I have installed here. Some 500 or so of them yesterday. I have no links to search pages, and many of them appear to be for banal words like "since" and "though", I can only assume that some spam page somewhere has linked to them. Seems odd that it's only Googlebot. I stuck a disallow for it in my robots.txt, though I'm hoping the URLs might still pop up in Google Webmaster Tools so I can see why Googlebot's been hitting them.