Alden Bates' Weblog

For some reason the last few days when I've tried to read my Boing Boing subscription on Bloglines, it's done something weird to FireFox. FF ceases to be able to load pages - clicking on a new link causes it to just sit there trying to load but never doing anything. Eventually I close the browser, but it's still sitting in memory, and I have to kill it with task manager before it'll let me restart it and resume browsing.

I can't work out why it only happens with the Boing Boing feed and not any of the other ones. It's not like they all use different Javascript.

For a long time I've been reading newspaper comic strips like Ballard Street and so forth on a site called creators.com. However recently they've started running adverts for smilies which somehow over-ride FireFox's popup-blocking and popup anyway. I've tried comics.com, but they appear to be running the same adverts.

Are there any web sites out there which:
a) carry newspaper comic strips (hopefully the ones I like to read), and
b) will respect my desktop configuration and not bombard me with popups?

I could probably read them through BlogLines or something, but I feel guilty reading them that way.

Is it just me, or is everyone else getting a lot more of those Nigeria-style scams recently. It seems the rate they've been appearing in my Yahoo inbox has been stepping up as of late.

I'm tempted to start sending out replies stating that my country's government has a strict policy of hanging scammers, and they have an extradition treaty with the country of origin.

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.

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 inadvertantly discovered that BlogShares has some interesting HTML on their site. In the "Junior Sponsors" box, right below "BlogShares Gear" there's a row of 1 pixel, white links to porn sites.

Course there's a comment in the source to remove it after the 20th, so if you're reading this later than the 20th of January, they are probably gone...

Once again, I got a popup window while surfing on BlogExplosion. The "Block popup windows" option in FireFox is also being disabled by the same javascript that launches the popup window.

I have reported the problem to BlogExplosion. Of course, when you go back to the same blog, the popup doesn't come up again, making it difficult to trace. I have some suspicions as to what's causing it...

I've added the domain from whence it came to my hosts file to attempt to block it

I've been discovering one of the hazards of surfing on BlogExplosion is that a few blogs seem to have popups. I guess popup makers are beginning to find ways around FireFox's popup prevention. Already scanned for Spyware, so I'm fairly certain it wasn't that...

But it's makin' me nervous...

On another note, why is there no Google International Zeitgeist for New Zealand?