Another significant milestone was passed yesterday. Over 500,000 low-life, would-be spammers have joined the bimbogami forum in an attempt to post links to their often offensive, sometimes vile, but always pointless rubbish.

Now I’m sure those folks keen on procuring an authentic Swiss watch at a knockdown price, a no-need-to-study degrees from a reputable university or enough pharmacuticals to make your hair (and perhaps other things) curl are sorely disappointed. I’m sure there are more appropriate places they can find them than a puzzle site.

So, half-a-million eh? That’s a big number by anyone’s measure. And 300k of those in the last seven months. That’s nearly 1500 a day! Fortunately I can console myself somewhat with the fact that I had the presence of mind to create a little bit of code to stop them posting at the point I only had a small number each day to deal with.

Now, if I had a penny for each one of them…
Well, I’d be five grand better off I suppose.

It’s now at the stage, my forum is creaking and some of the queries crash because of the number of users logged. I’m going to have to clear-down some of that space. Better dig out the SQL book…

At that time, I had passed what I thought was a significant milestone. I had blocked just over 25,000 potential spammers from posting on the forum. Automatically.

I thought 25k in a single year was a lot. That’s about 68 attempted registrations a day.

Now, while I’d love to think bimbogami is quite popular, the reality of the situation is it’s very niche and therefore not that busy. Even when I’m running with a new season, there’s maybe 50-100 players a day on the main site on a busy day.

Well, I’ve realised recently that wasn’t even a teeny little milestone. Today, I passed a proper milestone – 200,000 thwarted spammers. Yes, 200k of these objectionable people have tried and failed to post their little morsels of crap promoting their wares on my site.

That’s an average of 685 attempted registrations a day. And that’s when the site itself  is quiet. Where are these people coming from? Are there really rooms full of people, paid buttons to search all day for phpbb sites and post spam on them?

This really annoys me, as I can’t see the point in it. Are people actually making money out of it and I just don’t understand? It’s a bit like virus-writers – what do they get out of it?

Maybe it’s just me. Get a life freaks!

Anyhoo, as a result of a series of random conversations in work (and when I say random, I do mean random – that’s one of the great things about where I work), I challenged one of my colleagues to the Desert Island C90 Challenge.

I partook in this a year and a half ago and found it great fun – you should try it; If you could only take one c90 cassette (remember them kids?) of music to listen to for the rest of your life, what would you put on it?

As I say, it came up in conversation, but it prompted me to look back on what I chose, to see if I would change anything on there.

Then I remembered that I posted again in March 2009 to say that the music industry were suing Youtube for unlicensed material unless it was removed. So I thought I’d check how many of the embedded videos I had added to my mixtape had survived. It made interesting reading.

So here we are; a naming and shaming of bands/artists out of my 2009 top 24 tracks that allowed their publishers to remove material under the guise of ‘copyright infringement’. Granted some of the artists are dead now, but let’s not let that get in the way of a rant. More than half of the tracks I chose are now barred on Youtube:

The Mamas & Papas, The Rolling Stones, The Cocteau Twins, The Sex Pistols, Billy Talent, Bon Jovi, The Go Go’s, The Associates, Nirvana, Muse, U2, The Smiths and The Jam. Disappointing, given the amount of money I’ve contributed to those very bands through vinyl, CD, merchandise and gig tickets over the years.

And of the others; The Cult, Bluetones, Queens of the Stone Age, Stevie Wonder, Radiohead, Ugly Kid Joe, The Bangles, REM, Simon & Garfunkel, Gary Jules, The Four Tops, all but two of them (The Bluetones and Gary Jules) were either live versions or soundtrack only with pics.

Perhaps “the man” doesn’t have as much control over the usage of those.
So maybe I need to do a trawl for some live examples…

I even offer a ‘purchase’ option on the post, giving those very fat cats a slice if someone paid.

Get a grip corporate sharks!

So much so, their logo even incorporates this magnificent creature, as you can see.

SeaWorld has a general sea-related theme running through the park and the majority of the various shows and attractions, including sea-lions, dolphins and sea-otters, culminating in the main attraction; the Shamu Show. So called because of Shamu, the Killer Whale.

Shamu is of course a generic name, a brand if you like, as it can be any one of a number of Orca from the SeaWorld ‘cast’ that take the role in the show itself. Over the years, various Shamu have perished and been replaced with yet more. The show must go on.

I know a lot of the justification for SeaWorld’s activities centres around the rescue, research and conservation they do, and all that, but when it comes down to it, here we have a large corporation making a significant buck from keeping and breeding wild aquatic animals in captivity. Not only are they keeping them in an unnatural habitat, they are training them to perform for the pleasure of the general public.

Now, I have no doubt SeaWorld look after their Orca and other sea creatures. The trainers clearly know and love their animals. But let us not lose sight of the point here; SeaWorld are not a sea-life rescue charity. Yes, they may put something back, which is admirable but they are in it for the profit. Lots and lots of profit.

I’ve seen these wonderful creatures in the wild. I was fortunate enough to be able to go whale watching off the coast of Iceland a few years ago and was delighted and somewhat mesmerised to see a pod of healthy, wild Orca, including a mother and calf swimming alongside the boat.

The sheer size of these beasts, compared to us mere humans, in their natural habitat of millions of square miles of deep, deep ocean really was quite stunning.

With the advent of high-definition TV and the internet, documentaries and simulations, people now have ready access to what it’s like to see these animals. They can see them as often as they like, in their original habitat, doing what comes naturally. They no longer need to go to a SeaWorld or a zoo to see these creatures cooped up in a man-made prison made from reinforced glass and concrete that’s been moulded and coloured to look like ‘natural’ habitat.

The bottom line is that a Killer Whale is a wild mammal, they do not belong in captivity. Evidence the extremely distressing sight of the various captive Orca with their sad-looking drooping dorsal fins swimming around in a big fish tank filled with startlingly blue water.

There are theories why the fins droop, one being that it’s from swimming on top of the water more than is natural, which a whale will do if the water is not deep enough. As a result, water pressure on each side of the fin, keeping it upright, is replaced by gravity and air meaning over time, it droops.

There are also attempts made to statistically justify the occurrence of the phenomenon by quoting percentages found in the wild. The simple fact is that almost all the ones I’ve seen in the wild are straight, and pretty much all the adult ones I’ve seen in captivity droop.

Now, before you say anything… Yes, I paid my bucks, I went in and it’s not the first time I’ve been. So yes, in a way I’m supporting what I’m railing against here, but this time I viewed it all though a different shade of glasses, and it wasn’t nice.

We should indeed be looking to do what we can to conserve our endangered species. However, I for one do not think keeping them captive for entertainment and profit is the way. Someone should step in and force the timetable of re-partiation of the wild animals to the wild – at cost to the current captors.

And don’t get me started on the Polar Bear…

However, my gripe’s not with the spiffy hedge-fund boys, with their wonderfully complex financial models to efficiently lose shedloads of cash, nor is it the folks that reckoned sub-prime lending would be a wheeze or even those responsible for doling out massive payouts to executives of failing companies. While these are all undoubtedly ‘bad things’ that affect us all, they’re not affecting me directly, personally, right now.

I’ve just now come across a needlessly arcane banking practice that shouldn’t exist, needn’t happen in this technologically advanced day and age.

Why does it take five, yes five – count-em, working days for a cheque to clear in my bank account to allow me to spend the money?  Two cheques were paid into my account on Tuesday this weekand they tell me I cannot use the finds until next Tuesday!

Now, I know for a fact we’re not talking about actually moving physical bundles of folding cash in a big crate from the account and branch of the cheque-issuer to my account in my home branch.

So we’re not talking about a horse-drawn Securicor van making a treachorous journey up a long, rainy motorway, adhering to speed limits and then having to wait till the teller opens the bank in the morning, checks his credentials, counts the cash and then, opening the big vault, locate my own personal money-drawer and carefully putting it in.

I know a little bit about computers. They can transfer the money from one account to another in a fraction of a second. Even allowing for the process not to start until the bank is closed for the day and adding in some time to include a few double-checks to make sure there’s no funny business, it could be processed and available to use the next day, 24 hours max, whether it’s a working day or not; the computers don’t go home at 5:00pm when the bank shuts.

So, Banks, NO!

Get your act sorted out and stop conning us. We know you just want to hang ont to the money for longer so you can cream a bit of profit off it in the international markets.

You’re delaying me getting my new car!

People still seem determined to have a party to celebrate the dawning of a New Year, but it’s really because they think they have to, it’s more like just going through the motions. I mean, we’ve just had a major celebration-fest of over-indulgance less than a week before, it’s not as if we’ve not done anything for a while

Even the ‘Last Call’ and ‘Only An Excuse’ that seemed so good in years gone by appear desperately old and tired; well past their sell by date. And all that tartan and piper nonsense, as if us Scots have exclusivity to this time of year (surely they don’t broadcast all that nonsense elsewhere).

It’s not that I don’t like a party, I can get down with my bad self as good as the next man, it’s just the reason and timing of it I have a problem with.

Getting old? Aye probably.
Do it again? Maybe not, cocoa and bed for me next year!

After a few days of thinking, “I’ll need to remember to do that”, and then not, I finally got round to it this morning. I fully expected to find an oose-fest similar to that found when clearing it a number of months ago (why is it always lilac?). There was enough in there to keep an arctophile happy for months.

So, having wrestled the toolbox from the garage, and then spent the next half hour hunting for and retrieving the essential tools that should have been in there from their ‘alternative’ locations, I removed the screws from the back of the machine.

Imagine my surprise then, as I prised the back off, half a dozen tiny ball bearings fell out and started bouncing around the tiles. “Oh dear.”, I thought (ahem), “This is going to need more than a vacuum cleaner to resolve this time.” A small, neat mound of dark metal filings had appeared on the floor too. Hmmm, maybe that’s what the recent increase in noise was; the less than tuneful grinding of metal to magnetic-dust.

In all, the bearing was surprisingly easy to remove, metal shards and all. A quick search on the internet yielded a few places were offering the part, some with express or even next-day delivery, “Excellent!”, I thought, “It’ll be here before Xmas.” – Alas no.

Which brings me to the rant…

On every one of the 4 sites offering the part I found, you;

1. Search for the part,
2. Add the part to your basket,
3. (optional) search for voucher code (loving those discounts),
4. select your shipping method, and then,
5. go to the checkout
   only then do they tell you there’s none in stock…

Why can’t they tell you they’ve no stock when you first look at the part? I didn’t buy it from any of the sites first time round, until I had established that none of them had it (yes, I’ve ordered out of stock stuff from Amazon and Play before; don’t do it kids)

Anyhoo, since my options are fading fast, order now placed with partsmaster in the hope its supplier can get its finger out.