Browsing the blog archives for November, 2003
Nov 30, 2003 I added a sideblog for some random links that don’t get a full entry in the normal blog. Inspired by Mark Pilgrim and idly.org.
My HTML and CSS is a mess and in dire need of a complete redesign, so I’ll do that sometime this week. I’ll keep this basic layout with two columns centered on the page, but I’ll rewrite the code to get it more streamlined. My CSS is full of overlapping classes and definitions and exceptions and is generally a bitch to modify now.
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Nov 29, 2003 Melotron will be playing at Tech Noir tonight. I haven’t decided if I want to go, but it would be a good opportunity to use my camera for some real motives. Taking pictures of my breakfast is only entertaining for so long.
Here’s an mp3 for you, if you want to try Melotron out. I’ll delete it in a week or so. This is a full song; a bunch of samples of their entire discography is available on their site.
Nov 26, 2003 
So I finally caved in and ordered a digital camera. After much reading and fretting over at Cyberphoto, I decided for the Minolta Dimage G400 (Swedish).
It’s small. Very small. Slightly larger than a credit card. Sizewise, it’s a perfect camera to bring along in your pocket and take random pictures here and there, which is pretty much my primary purpose for it. Despite its size it takes very high quality pictures, all the way up to 2272×1704.
It should arrive today or tomorrow. Then I’ll go crazy with pictures.
Nov 17, 2003 I just had a look at my referrers (every blogger loves his referral statistics!), and noticed something weird: a bunch of referrals from other blogs, all of them with a unique domain name. Now, nothing strange so far, but all these “blogs” contain are what looks like a random news entry from somewhere. And upon further inspection, all these referrals came from the same IP; 141.85.3.130. I’ve blocked it via .htaccess.
The domain names used so far are jennifersblog.com, kwlablog.com and malixya.com.
jennifersblog.com looks like a typical personal blog running MovableType. All entres are news headers from various sources, including Reuters, AP and BBC. All entries have exactly four comments, but all links in the entry (comments, trackback, permalink) are a javascript that points back to the root of the domain.
kwlablog.com is the same deal — the first paragraph of various news items. This site gives the appearance to run on Blogger. No bogus comment/trackback links here. The entries are clearly automated, added by a script in increments of 20 minutes.
malixya.com — same shit, different name.
wr18.com — just spotted this one in the referrers. This one differs a bit. The entries don’t look like mainstream news items, but is clearly the first paragraph of texts from other places.
And once I had a look at the HTML source of the sites, it all became clear: it’s porn spammers. At the very bottom of each and every one of these fake blogs, there is an invisible gif image with a link to /adult-webcam/. This link in turn points to splash.homesexnetwork.com, which tracks you and throws you deep into the bowels of the porn industry.
It’s obvious that this is done to increase their Google pagerank, though I don’t quite understand how they expect it to happen if they just do referral spam most likely wanting to appear in the statistics on spammed blogs, and hoping that Google finds and indexes the stats. The only one who sees the referrer is the site admin, and they’re not very likely to blog about it — well, unless they’re me. And I don’t actually link to the spamvertized domains.
And while I’m at it, bloogz.com is either a referral spammer, or they have a very rude spider. In either case, they’re not welcome to this domain. Banned.
Update 031117, 19:21: Here’s another analysis, including whois info for the domains.
Update 031117, 23:36: One more spamming IP address: 217.73.164.106.
The list of spamvertized domains looks like this right now:
Adding insult to injury, the layouts of the fake blogs are stolen, too.
Nov 11, 2003 John Gruber elaborates on font rendering in OS X. Great read if you liked my text on anti-aliasing.
Nov 10, 2003 I had my first piece of comment spam since installing MT-Blacklist today. The spamvertized domain wasn’t in the default blacklist, but MT-Blacklist conveniently adds a URL at the bottom of the comment mails I get where I can block the URL with a few clicks. Very quick and easy.
The domain in the spam was an apparently random bunch of letters, which made me draw the conclusion that it was registered for the sole purpose of comment spamming. The whole point of spamming in comments appears to be to increase your pagerank when the Google spider makes a driveby, which is why comment spam should be nuked as soon as it appears.
Upon upgrading MT-Blacklist, I noted the Comment Spam Clearinghouse where you can submit your comment spam, and get it added to a centralized blacklist to use with MT-Blacklist. If you could auto-update the blacklist on your server, comment spam would be shot dead in its tracks. Maybe in a future version…
