Alden Bates' Weblog

Drae Barclyas Mmeber,

Tsih eliam was stne by the Baalcrys srevre to vfirey yruo eamil aderdss. You msut cmoplete thsi prsseco by cikcilng on the lkni bwole and eniretng in the slaml wdniow yuor Bayalcrs Mihsrebmep nmuber, paocssde and mbaromele wrod. Tsih is deno for yruo prnoitceto - besuace semo of our mebmers no loegnr hvae assecc to theri emial aderdsses and we mtsu vreify it. To veyfir yoru eiaml aerddss and acsecs yuor bkna anuocct , ckc

Of course at the bottom was a cunningly crafted form styled using CSS to look like a regular link. The CSS didn't work in FireFox, only IE - yet another reason to make the switch to an alternate browser, people!

But come on, even with the "link" looking like a link, is anyone going to read the text above and think it's a legit email

I mean, I know there's no shortage of stupid people out there, but really. A chimp could spot that one.

Boing Boing: Pet pillows

Pet died? Make it into a pillow!

*eyes the cat*

Edit: the link on BoingBoing is dead, and I can't find anythign about the pet pillows on the site it links to... I suspect it was either a hoax, or they got complaints...

Some hours ago now, the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who finally played on TV over in England. I can only experience it vicariously, seeing as Prime TV here haven't even announced a date when the show will be screened, but I've seen both positive and negative reviews. Personally, though I've only seen the leaked version, I quite liked "Rose".

OTOH, Timestreams issue 5 is now up on the NZDWFC web site, so if you can't see the new episodes, at least you can read some good fanfiction. :)

I finally got around to playing this today - my brother gave me a copy for Christmas. I started playing the first park, but had to stop as it was suddenly 4 hours later...

Some initial thoughts:

1. I really like what they've done with the graphics. The whole 3Dness adds more reality, and the ability to ride the rides! They still managed to keep the same level of cusomisation as the previous two games though.
2. The ride creation is basically the same as RCT1 and RCT2, which is good. I much prefer those to the less intuitive method in Theme Park World.
3. Raising and lowering ground seems to be a lot harder. I tried to make a simple pond and ended up with the ground going everywhere.
4. It also seems to be slightly harder to get the people to ride the rides. They seem to either love a ride or stay away from it.
5. It took a while for me to work out how to train the staff - the only place you can do this seems to be in the Human Resources screen, by pressing the "plus" box next to the staff member. Also, staff can now get disgruntled - several entertainers quit before I worked out how to give them a pay rise.
6. More customisable shop produce! Looks more like the options in Theme Park World, actually. Although shops can now break down...
7. A golf course with more than 4 hole types - huzzah! :P
8. There no longer seems to be a people summary screen, so you can't get an idea of what the overall opinion of the guests is, other than the approval rating scale. The new variety of people is a pretty cool improvement over RCT2 though.
9. No sign of any VIPs yet... Must try making a fireworks display. :)

I shall have to waste some more time in this highly unproductive pursuit at some point...

Now that I've more or less gotten on top of my comment spam (with MT-Blacklist's invaluable help) I seem to be getting more trackback spam.

All of the trackback spam I've received has had HTML-style links in the excerpt. I'm now wondering if I can safely block any such trackback - Six Apart's Trackback specification doesn't say whether the excerpt is allowed to contain HTML, though it does say the excerpt will be truncated at 252 characters, which would cause havoc if at that position there are tags open. Unfortunately MT-Blacklist doesn't (currently) have any way to selectively filter a string only on Trackbacks and not comments. I may drop a suggestion in to the author. :)

OK, I've set up a new bunch of templates for Movable Type, so that my weblog finally looks more like the rest of my site. I've only hit one problem: when you use the search box on the main page, the search results come up in the default MT template.

There isn't a template listed for the search results in MT's configuration, and there isn't any mention of one in the manual entry for templates. Yet in the manual entry for template tags, there's a whole section on using search result tags in your "search templates".

So far as I can tell, you have to construct the search templates as standalone files and upload them yourself. This seems an odd way of doing it when the rest of the templates are stored in the database!

So Moby's latest album Hotel came out. I'd already decided to get the limited edition version, because it comes with an extra CD of ambient music and it's also in a lavish cardboard slip case. Unfortunately, it also comes with the dreaded "Copy Control" rubbish on it.

Hotel played... I won't say fine, because the intentional errors in the data manifested as clicks and ticks in the sound. This is especially obvious on the quieter tracks where the graceful strings are intermittently interrupted by a sound similar to a spark jumping between two wires. Then I tried to play the ambient CD, and my player wouldn't recognise it at all. When I put it in my PC, Windows reported it was corrupt or an invalid format. I bought the $40 Limited Edition version for an extra CD which turned out to have all the properties of a coaster.

OTOH, I also bought Daft Punk's new album "Human After All" yesterday. Not only was it only $25, but it is damn good. I'll have a review up on my music page (which is now valid XHTML! Woo!) soon.

Previously, Moby's said "if i release a cd and it has copy-protection on it, it's not by my choice.". Well, it looks like his new album "Hotel" has, indeed, got copy protection on it. *sigh*

Edit: and guess what.

JeffStoat's emails to me started bouncing today. After some investigation, we discovered that his SMTP server's been blocked by SpamCop. I didn't even know my webhost had put a blacklist on my mail server. 'Scuse me while I go see what can be done.

I went in to Subway this lunchtime to get a meatball sub and discovered to my horror that they had cut the mustard. Yup, mustard (and oil and marinara) had been removed from the menu (at least at my local branch) because no one was asking for them.

Oil I can understand. As a menu option it's a bit vague. What kind of oil? Vegetable oil? Olive oil? Cooking oil? Crude oil? Who wants oily food anyway? "Mmmm, I'll think I'll haves me some OIL!"

I have no idea what marinara tastes like. Apparently it goes well with seafood, which I'm not particularly partial to. For that matter, the idea of putting fish in a sandwich never really appealed to me. I'll eat it on its own, sure, but in bread? Really it never occured to me to ask for it. Now the option is GONE! Departed. Left the Subway.

But mustard, dagnabbit, goes perfectly on a meatball sub. Whenever I had one before, on went the mustard. Now it too is GONE! Nevermore will I enjoy a meatball sub with mustard on it! Woe is I! Cast adrift, alone on a sea of mustardlessness, forever condemned to order meatball subs without mustard. Cruel mustard, why hast thou forsaken me?

*bows as audience throws vegetables and small bricks at the stage*

My site (or the Mel Bush page at least) was mentioned in a thread about the recent leak of the first new Doctor Who episode. Well, not in a good way, since they were disparaging Bonnie (but that's Slashdot for ya). Grrr!

But Slashdotting ain't what it used to be, so the traffic to my main site merely doubled for a day or so and the Mel Bush page got an extra 200 or so hits.

Also a bunch of message boards linked to the post on the NZDWFC Message board about the leaking of same episode, so a few people have trickled through there... (more, ironically than from Slashdot).

MT-Blacklist has blocked almost 2000 spams on my weblog so far. Some still get through prompting me to add more string blocks. Damn them. Damn them all.

Though my site doesn't get as much spam as many others, I'm beginning to see the appeal of outing them.

Over the last month, Timestreams (the fiction zine of the NZDWFC) issues #2, #3, and #4 have all gone up on the site, so now a lot more fanfiction by New Zealand fans is available to read.

Some of my favourites are: Intersect by Craig Young, which is a crossover with The Tomorrow People; Across the Universe by Jeff Stone, in which the Doctor and DJ meet the Beatles; and a prologue for Power of the Daleks by David Lawrence.

Pinched from Lyssie:

List everything that's on your computer desk! I know we all have messy desks, but try to get everything. You can tell a lot about a person from their clutter.

This also gives me an excuse to clean it a bit. :P

Continue reading "What's on my desk"

Australia != New Zealand.

And furthermore New Zealand != Australia.

I can't stress enough how important this fact is.

Thank you.