It’s absolutely amazing that people would take the time to either manually create comments on blogs they have no relation to in order to elevate their ranking in Google by embedding links, or, worse yet, take the time to write sophisticated bots to do their bidding for them. I used to employ a Captcha in order to weed the humans out from the machines, but even then, the manual comment spammers would get thru and I’d have to block their postings.

I’ve since gone to Akismet spam checking, and it’s working pretty well… no false positives yet, and no false negatives either… but the amount of attempts is bewildering. It’s already filtered over 250 spam comments.

Don’t even get me started on email spam. I get, easily, 250 spams a day through my various email accounts. Fortunately, Apple Mail does a pretty decent job of catching those as well. However, I still get 10 or so false negatives a day and the occasional false positive. This means I have to continuously sift thru the sludge to make sure I didn’t miss an important email, which has happened. I used to have a pretty good server-based spam catcher, but it started randomly crashing my SMTP server, so I had to abandon it.

The thing that makes me slap my forehead is the fact that spammers wouldn’t continue their flood of garbage if they didn’t receive some sort of return. That means that some (albeit small) percentage of people out there are actually dumb enough to fall for their pitch and follow the link. It’s pretty simple, folks: if they have to resort to such low-life ways of getting their message out, their message is not worth hearing, and is most likely a scam of some sort.

I know sending emails is a relatively cheap way to get the word out, but even so, I’ve got to think that if the click-thru rate on this spam went to zero, the spam would dry up.

I think what is needed is some sort of authenticated email system. The ability to send anonymous email over SMTP is entirely too easy. If people had to attach their true, authenticated identity to each email they sent, things would be much more above board. Shine the light and the cockroaches tend to scatter. I can’t think of hardly any scenarios where true anonymous email is necessary, can you? In the rare case where it might be, there is probably a different channel available for that communication.

I’m going to try to be better about posting, I promise. There’s a lot going on, and I just don’t manage to find the time to keep this site up to date. To that end, I’m just now getting around to posting pictures from our December 2006 trip back to Walt Disney World with my parents. Check the post out here (backdated to place it properly in the archives) and the pictures here.

I’m also working on a new design for the look of this site, I’m getting a little bored with the blue boxes, although I’m not sure what I’m going to change things to.

Mom has started blogging! You can see her new site at http://www.devoll.net/mamade.

I’ve upgraded to the latest build of Wordpress, and am liking what I see. The upgrade process is almost as painless and easy as the installation process. I’m very impressed with the Wordpress people.

I’ve finally bitten the bullet and signed up for a .Mac account. I’m using it primarily to sync address books/calendars/etc. between my desktop and Mac Book Pro, since I’m doing more and more with my notebook each day (that’s a topic for another post). Having .Mac is turning out to be a pretty neat thing… I’ve started using iWeb in conjunction with iPhoto to post pictures. The basic templates that come with iWeb are nice, and the slideshows created on .Mac are pretty cool. I’m just starting to learn Aperture, and am anxious to see how powerful it’s web publishing tool is.

I’m also trying a new comment spam prevention method. Let me know if there are any problems posting comments.

I decided, since I’ve turned comments on, to provide a comments feed as well. You can find it in the upper right of the page, or click here:

Well, after a short (ha!) hiatus, I’m back in the blogosphere.

Things have been busy, but I’ve managed to rework the site entirely into WordPress. The layout is very similar to the old one, but CSS-based, not table-based.

I’ll be picking up the story of our Disney trip with day 6, and writing additional entries to catch things up to the present.

If you’ve been keeping up with this site via the old RSS feeds, please re-subscribe via the link in the upper right-hand corner.

Also, I’ve started enabling comments on the posts, so comment away. Wordpress uses an authentication scheme, so your post may have to be initially approved. I’ve also included a Captcha plugin to prevent comment spam, so you’ll have to decipher the letters in the little images. Annoying, to be sure, but it seems to be one of the best ways to prevent automated spambots from flooding the comments on blogs.

OK, so it’s only been about 47 days since my last post. That’s not too bad, right?

Let’s see, how to summarize…

• Work: busy
• Family: busy (lots of basketball, and Madison and Michael are another year older)
• Church: busy
• Health: well, sick, well, sick, well
• iPod Shuffle: cool
• Michael’s new Mac Mini: very cool
• Oscars: very boring
• March: looks to be busy

one…two…three…

Things have been really hoppin’. Too much to allow blogging time.

Cynthia and I took a short trip to Vegas, stayed at the Luxor, saw Blue Man Group, had a blast, but had to come back.

Work is busy. So much so, that I haven’t even had the time to put together a decent website for the new business. Got to get that done. Several projects (happily paying ones) have been keeping my attention.

And yet, the world marches on. Plenty of dumb things happening in the political landscape: Fahrenheit 911 is getting plenty of press, but people seem to be wising up to all the fallacies and deceits of this mockumentary. John Kerry picks a “safe” VP running mate that won’t help him at all. A story leaks today that Homeland Security is investigating the possibility of postponing the election in the event of a terrorist act; something that won’t happen (the postponing, that is). It would be just about the stupidest thing ever to do, giving in to the terrorist threat. Ah, to have more time to comment.

Apple previews Tiger, steps all over a successful developer, introduces marvelous new displays (including a 30″ monster), and sells the 100 millionth song on the iTMS. If they’d only hurry up and release Motion…

O, and it’s hot. But that’s not news, that’s normal for Texas in July.

So, now that probably anyone who used to venture here on a semi-regular basis doesn’t any more since it’s been, oh, forever since I posted last, I thought I might kick things back in gear.

It’s not like I’ve been busy or anything. You know, starting a new company and all. Oh, I forgot, hadn’t blogged about that yet. OK, I’ll get to that.

Anyway, suffice it to say that the last month has been quite a whirlwind and now that the dust is beginning to settle just a bit, I guess I’ll get back on the stick of posting. Betcha you’ve never heard that one before.

OK, the silence is broken. Sorry for the absence from the blog, but things have been a little crazy in the real world. I’ll get to that over the course of the next few days.

Right now, though, I’m at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas, and while I haven’t even been able to step foot on the floor yet, Apple has already unleashed a slew of updates and new products:

• Updates across the line for PowerBooks and iBooks. The PowerBooks now top out at 1.5Ghz with a 4xDVD-R drive, and iBooks go to 1.2Ghz starting at just $1,099.
• eMacs have been seriously upgraded to 1.25Ghz, with a superdrive option for only $999.
• Final Cut Pro HD, which is really FCP 4.5. Lots of new features, including much improved workflow with other apps like LiveType, and lots of new support for HD over firewire.
• Updates to LiveType, CinemaTools, etc.
• DVD Studio Pro 3.0 with much improved workflow and integration, and the return of the flowchart view from 1.5.
• Shake 3.5, which is still too expensive for my blood, but I’m not sure I have a use for such a high-end compositing package, yet.
• Motion. New product that looks to compete with AfterEffects. Must look into this one today.
• xSan - xServe RAID on steroids. 64 simultaneous users, each with up to 400Mbps throughput to a common data store, perfect for video postproduction environments.

And that’s just what they announced in the last 24 hours. This is gonna be a fun week.

And yes, I know it’s been a while since I posted. I’m out of town, although that’s no particular excuse. I’m trying to catch up now. See, I updated the books on the right side…

I’m in San Antonio, recording voiceover and video for a training series we’re doing for the US Courts. Long hours in the sound booth, woo.

There’s a lot going on, both at work and at home. And in the world. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to comment on some of it soon.