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January 2007 Archives

January 31, 2007

Animated Doctor Who

Filed in: Doctor Who, Links.

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.

Posted at 6:49 PM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2007

Spammer humour

Filed in: Spam.

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.

Posted at 6:35 PM | Comments (2)

January 28, 2007

KITT was programmed in BASIC

Filed in: TV & Movies.

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!]
"KITT, give me a readout"
[Sure, Michael *basic code*]

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...

Posted at 5:38 PM | Comments (5)

January 27, 2007

Googlebombing

Filed in: Internet.

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. :)

Posted at 7:38 PM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2007

Doctor Who pops up in the strangest places

Filed in: Doctor Who.

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

Posted at 10:43 PM | Comments (3)

January 25, 2007

NZ government trying to emulate China

Filed in: Misc.

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.

Posted at 5:44 PM | Comments (1)

January 23, 2007

Spam post #456345673

Filed in: Spam.

Our first contestant this evening posts has been mentioned here

So far he's been posting roughly once a day, leaving comments which start off with phrases like "Pleasse Do not delete this urls , i need money for my child", "Please Do not delete it , I need lots of money urgent.", and "Do not delete it please. I need money urgent". He uses http://google.com/ as a link, probably to trigger whitelisting, but his comments a filled with links to message boards on phpbbx.de (I'm sent an email to their abuse address), myforum.ro. The email addresses he uses are along the lines of corpseh@tut.by, seomail1@tut.by, seomail2@tut.by, etc.

The message board links all redirect to pages on the domain online-deals.org (I've just informed their web host). Whois information is mostly blank, but there is this:

Registrant Name: Alexey Tesliuk
Registrant Organization: BelPromStroy
Registrant Country: BY (Belarus)
Registrant Email: wrestlerr@mail.ru

I have no idea if that's valid info or not. There's a Belpromstroy bank in Minsk...

Contestant number two posts using hotmail addresses like d87s_test994@hotmail.com and d92s_test637@hotmail.com, but all other information is randomised. Comments consist of a random text string followed by four URLs in various formats consisting of links to files on site which allow file uploads. These links redirect to rx-simple.com and rx-simple-pharmacy.com. Both domains have their details protected by WhoisGuard - I've sent them two reports, and also sent abuse reports to the web-hosts the two sites are on.

Posted at 6:49 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2007

The Other Ghostbusters

Filed in: TV & Movies.

Randomly, I was driven to look up info on the other Ghostbusters.

Back in 1975, long before the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, Filmation put out 15 episodes of a live action series titled "The Ghost Busters" (IMDB Wikipedia) which featured a team of three who investigated paranormal events. The three investigators were Jake Kong (Larry Storch), Eddie Spencer (Forrest Tucker), and Tracy the Ape (Bob Burns in a gorilla costume). 70s Live Action Kid Vid has a Ghost Busters page with some fascinating pictures.

Of course, in the 80s, a completely unrelated live action movie titled Ghostbusters came out. After some legal wrangling, Filmation put out a cartoon titled "Filmation's Ghostbusters" to more or less cash in on the movie's popularity. The cartoon, which ran for 65 episodes, featured the sons of the original Kong and Spencer (IMDB Wikipedia). Eddie Spencer's voice in the cartoon was provided by Peter "Optimus Prime" Cullen. :)

This also explains why the tie-in cartoon to the Ghostbusters movie was retitled "The Real Ghostbusters"...

Posted at 6:37 PM | Comments (0)

Star Trek: The Animated Series

Filed in: TV & Movies.

Recently I got hold of and watched Star Trek: The Animated Series. Not only did it introduce such concepts as the Holodeck years before The Next Generation, but it also features some of the stiffest animation known to man. I also made many screen shots from some of which I constructed this panorama of the animated bridge:
[Bridge panorama]

I've also made some LiveJournal icons which will made available shortly in the Trek section of my LiveJournal Icons page.

Posted at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2007

Random updates to previous entries

Filed in: Misc.

I have a few ideas for entries, but they involve things I have to Get Around To, so here's an update entry:

Work continues apace on the Harvey Norman Center:
[Harvey Norman Centre]

They have some exterior walls on now!

The Foxwoods protest was apparently a bust - although twice as many people as usual called out, they were able to cover the shortfall. Bummer.

Xtra Broadband seems to have settled down speedwise, though now I keep having pages fail to load the first time I try them. Needs more work.

Posted at 9:00 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2007

TSV 42

Filed in: Doctor Who, TSV Online.

Onto the first issue for 1995 - TSV 42 would have come out right after I finished university, in fact. Among the major items this time are a guide to the Doctor Who annuals, a script to screen on The Happiness Patrol, and an article on the TARDIS key. There's also a follow-up to TSV 41's Lovecraft article this time examining the Cthulhu references in the new adventure All-Consuming Fire, which makes a nifty counterpoint to an article from TSV 58 which has been online for a while and examines the Sherlock Holmes side of the same book.

I had one item in this issue, a "Dr Hoo" cartoon which no doubt shows off the fact I had no photo-references for the control room from Planet of Fire. Note also that the Doctor is always facing away from us so I didn't have to attempt to draw his face (the Master's a lot easier - just slap a goatee on him) and Tegan doesn't appear at all despite the Doctor mentioning her in frame 1!

And that was the last Dr Hoo strip I did for TSV, though I've done one or two other cartoons - the latest being Dr Who in "The Crap Pun", a collaboration with Jeff Stone which appeared in TSV 73 which you can order in paper form...

Next time, in TSV 43: Andy Lane, Paul Cornell, Steven Moffat and David Bishop; the return of TARDIS Tales, More than 30 Years in the TARDIS, and lots of other cool stuff. :)

Previously: Doctor Who and the Pirate Planet

Posted at 9:05 PM | Comments (0)

January 6, 2007

Spammers using Google Groups beta

Filed in: Spam.

I was sifting through the spam comments which my protective measures had stopped, and found to my surprise I was getting spammed with google.com URLs. It looks like there's a security hole in Google Groups beta which allows users to upload files containing Javascript redirects. Observe the following URL:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/pharmed/

When I tried to report this through the abuse form Google have set up, I got the following error:
The following errors need to be corrected:
• Sorry, we are unable to find the message you specified.

I've sent them a message through the contact form, but had no response, or apparently any action taken so far...

Posted at 9:53 AM | Comments (0)

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