Category: Blogging

I always get excited when I see an email in my inbox with a subject line that starts “WordPress:…” as it means someone has commented on one of my blogs. Such a simple delight I know but hey, you take pleasure in the little things I guess.

Sometimes that delight is instantly crushed when I realise it’s a spambot that is trying to add a comment containing a link to either some ‘enhancing’ pharamceutical, a flirty comment from a hot chick, or just complete nonsense accompanied by a phishing URL.

However there seems to be a rise in the number of “real” spam comments these days, and that is hugely disheartening. These comments are left by, it seems, real people who have taken a fraction of a second to search, for example, for “Olympics” found my blog post from a couple of years back and added in a perfectly unoffensive comment, with a link to their specialist Olympic Boxing in 2012 website.

And in a weird way that, to me, is worse than any automated spambot. The fact that there is (again, it certainly seems that there is) a real person that has left the comment makes the whole thing feel tainted and dirty.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hugely precious about this blog but really, this new development in comment spam is just ugly. But then it’s always the few that spoil it for the many.

I’ve been writing this blog for quite a while, so I must admit that I’m surprised that this is the first time I’ve found myself in my current position.

Perhaps it’s because I tend not to make inflammatory statements (aside from that post about the Bible being a work of fiction written by the Devil, obv) but I’ve never had to censor any comments before.

Luckily I have a Comment Posting Policy which states:

I reserve the exclusive right to moderate all comments posted on my site, including but not limited to… deleting comments that contain offensive language. Repeated use of abusive and offensive language will be deleted and banned.

So, said comment is gone, forever banished to the land of dead pixels and binary dust.

There was a bit of a stramash in the Scottish press yesterday, when a fairly high profile Reverend in the Church of Scotland coming out of the closest and declaring himself a big gay (those may not have been his exact words…). As many of you will already know, religion and homosexuality don’t mix very wel at all, with homosexuality being stated as an “abomination to God” by some.

Yes, don’t worry, it really is 2009.

Big Rab picked up on this news as well, saying:

The whole thing reminded me once again of the excellent “Why can’t I own a Canadian?” letter and the episode of the West Wing on which it is allegedly based. I don’t know if the letter is genuine but it sure covers all the relevant points.

I’m not going to repeat the entire thing here but it’s funny and pointed and you can read the full thing on his blog:

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

Spotted on the little red boat, head over there for the full details.

There’s a lovely artist I know by the name of Steve Raws, who creates things with enormous letters and colossal words. They’re very beautiful. So. He’s doing this gigantic banner of a Burns poem, that will be displayed in Edinburgh. All the information is here.

The way that Steve works is that he encourages people to get involved, and so is touring Scotland getting people to paint giant letters, which will then get worked into the banner. But he’d really really like contributions from Scots overseas as well, so if you are one, or know of any, can you pass this along? Or at least the link to the blog about the banner?

Go one, it’ll be fun!

I had a long post planned but, ultimately it was really just a way to some how gain approval that buying a new iPod was the right solution.

I had planned to waffle on at some length about the size of my music library (stop, phhnarring at the back you!), and about how I listen to music at work more than most places but can’t store all of my library on my work PC and how slow and cumbersome using a separate USB drive is and how HARD it is (ohh woe is me, I know, I know) to have to sync the USB drive with the home PC and goddamn I wish iTunes had an easier way to switch libraries as I really need my own as well as a larger “everything” library and wwwahhh wahhhh wahhhhh.

And then I read this post over at Swiss Toni’s and realised just how lucky I am and all that stuff.

As the old adage goes, I might have MS, but MS doesn’t have me. I’m not going to NOT write about it because I’m worried about what people might think of it and of me. Isn’t that exactly the kind of thing that MS Week is trying to change? I think it is, and so over the next few days, I’m going to write about pretty much nothing else but MS, and to hell with what people think.

To which I say, quite bloody right Mister!