Archive for January, 2006

The State of Spam

Interesting comment about advancing technology in spam on web blogs at Dr. Dave’s site.

Dr. Dave — who I think is a student, or an about to be student currently living in Japan — wrote Spam Karma 2, which is the anti-spam package protecting this blog from spam comments (comments automatically added to blogs as advertisments for mortgage rates, copy machines, cialis substitutes, etc). It was easy to install and works amazingly well. It caught, as far as I could tell, 100% of spam comments and incorrectly flagged only 4 comments in the history of this blog (1 by Chris Gethard that mentioned a series of ninja weapons, and 3 by Erik Tanouye for reasons I do not understand). [...]

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Blocks

Tonight, Channel 102 has a screening. Mine and Matt DeCoster’s child, The Block, will show its second episode. It features John Gemberling. Dave Thunder directed and edited, with Terry Patrick Jinn bringing his steady-cam-ish goodness to the fold. Come check it out. Anthology Film Archives at 2nd Avenue and 2nd street at 8:30pm, fool!

Speaking of blocks, I’m revising my computer programming style. I used to demark blocks of code like this:

foreach ($episodes as $single_episode) {
     $single_episode->get_show_info();
     $entry = $single_episode->get_title_and_description();
     $xml = $single_episode->get_rss_feed_link();
     while ($moreepisodes) {
        $total++;
     }
}

The opening curly brace is [...]

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Can’t seem to get to this blog lately. Just wait, though! It’ll explode with longer meaningless banter one of these days.

Currently listening to “Drivin’ On 9″ by the Breeders.

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Hooray.

If we’ve got Theo, you can keep Damon.

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Thirsty, maybe.

I am looking at the bottle of water.
I do not want to drink it.
I would like to drink that bottle of Diet Pepsi.
You heard me, Diet Pepsi. Yes, you. You.

It is looking at me.

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The Sweet Bean

I thought about it, and for the most part I have 2 cups of coffee a day. One in the morning, then a decaf after lunch.

But I have soda, too.

And I suck on caffeine rosin bags at all other times.

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My improv team Arsenal did a show tonight in Brooklyn. I parked in a deserted alley next to a not-at-all reassuring sign that said “Stripping Cars Will Bring Police Attention IMMEDIATELY.”

I checked the car every hour. It was fine.

Yes, I’m still giving it away. Soon.

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Freedying

Inspired by Glennis’ call for new slang

When Hines Bro Brian and I find ourselves playing the same song over and over and over because we love it so much we CANNOT STOP LISTENING, we call it “Freedying.” That is because in 1997, when we were driving up to Cornell to see Hines Bro Kevin graduate, Brian played a mix tape which had the Freedy Johnston song Bad Reputation, which I had never heard, on it. I made him play it at least six times in a row, because I loved it and NEEDED NEEDED to hear it again.

So now it’s very common for Brian to call me or IM me and say “Been Freedying on the new <whatever> [...]

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Spiteless

Preparing to close down spitemag.com. It’s the home of Spite Magazine, which my brothers and I used to produce on a kind of regular basis. But we don’t do anything there anymore, and I’m not going to get back to it, and it’s a waste of money to have up there each month. So the site will close, and all the content is now available on this server here: http://www.willhines.net/spitemag.

I re-read a bunch of stuff while moving it. There’s some funny stuff in there, all right.

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As an Xmas present, Eliza took me to see They Might Be Giants in Williamsburg on New Year’s Eve. I was disproportionately excited for this show since there was the strong likelihood that there would be mostly adults in the crowd. Most people who love TMBG begin doing so when they are 13-19 year old honor students. The odd thing is that the fan base never seems to age. For 17 years (!) I have gone to TMBG shows and while I (and the band) get older and older — the majority of the crowd seems to have arrived straight from their Calculus AP tests.

My devotion to them has ebbed and flowed over the years. It’s hard to listen to [...]

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On my iTunes now:

Child Star
Child Star
by The Unicorns from "Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?"

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