Foreign Dispatches

Words of Warning

I've just had to clear my inbox of more offal from yet another idiot who seems to think I owe him a duty to act as his personal researcher on some subject or other, just because I happened to write about it in the past. This fool isn't the first of his kind by any means, nor do I harbor any hope of his being the last, but in the hope that it will do some good by deterring at least the odd crank, I wish to make something absolutely clear to anyone wandering onto this website: I do not work for you, I don't owe you a damn thing, and I'll write about what I want, and only when/if I want to. It is not my duty to keep you entertained by meeting some imaginary posting quota you might have in your head, nor should you imagine that my having expressed some view or other makes me your "ally", who you can pester with whiny email messages demanding that I drop whatever I'm doing to help you in your quarrels with some loser: as hard as it might be for some individuals to believe, this blog is not, nor has it ever been, more than a very minor part of my life, the rest of which I have no intention of sacrificing to the whims of people I've never met and about whom I care nothing.

To make it short: unless I already know you, think twice, no, thrice or even four times before sending me an email message making any sort of demands on my time or attention, and if you do, don't even think about insulting me or bombarding me with more messages just because I don't bother with an answer - and the chances are indeed very great that I won't. If you want a research assistant, rein in your inflated self of entitlement and go put an ad out for one - and odds are that you can't afford to compensate me for the opportunity cost of my helping you anyway - instead of petulantly expecting that I'll rush to fill the role for you for free.

Still Here

After going without a blog update for what must be the longest period in several years, I just thought I'd let the 4 or 5 people still reading this that I haven't folded in the towel or anything like that: the fact is that I've just moved, am currently without internet access at home, and am too paranoid about keyloggers, trojans and the like to feel comfortable using internet cafes with anything requiring the entry of passwords or personal information.

It feels really strange being offline for so long, I must say. It makes me realize just how important internet connectivity has come to be in my daily life; it also makes me realize that dialup is well and truly dead in the UK at least, as I haven't been able to find a shop to sell me a dialup modem I can use until my broadband connection is installed. Still, only a few days more now ...

TypePad Authentication Now Required

It looks like I've finally acquired my own personal racist loser admirer,* all standard idiocies included, and since unlike such cockroaches I'm gainfully employed, I've no intention to waste my free time playing whack-a-mole with some subliterate maggot with all the time in the world to kill. As such, I've decided all comments from now on will require Typepad authentication; henceforth, all anonymous losers with delusions of white supremacy and similar riffraff will just have to find some place else manned by idiots like themselves to deliver their dumb rants.

Oh, and for the benefit of the loser racist nutters - I'm smarter than you can ever dream of being, I make more than you ever will, I've had more success with much prettier examples of "your" [sic] women than you could ever possibly aspire to other than in your wet dreams, and in general am more of a man in every worthwhile respect than all you nuts combined ever will be, not least in being willing to put my name to whatever I write: since your imaginary racial superiority buys you absolutely nothing in the real world outside whatever shitholes you losers congregate to anonymously post your worthless chest-beatings, I suggest you stick your stupid rantings deep up your "superior" <laugh> aryan arses (For sexual relief, you know you really want to go here ...)

*Posting from 81.169.178.235 and 85.25.141.60, both IP addresses located in Germany. You're not as anonymous as you imagine, moron.

Trackbacks Now Require Approval

I've been overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of trackback spam which has come my way recently, so I've decided to switch on pre-approval of all trackbacks from henceforth: blame the braindead spammers for spoiling yet another good thing (and for absolutely no benefit whatsoever in my case, seeing as TypePad implemented the "nofollow" tag quite a while ago). In any case, if your trackback doesn't show up immediately, please don't assume anything's wrong, as I might simply be too busy with work to be checking my email messages: it will be posted eventually, as long as you aren't hawking anything.

New Commenting Requirement

Having just cleaned up yet another draught of comment spam, I've been pleasantly surprised to learn that TypePad has finally implemented on option to impose a CAPTCHA requirement on posters, an option which I have now exercised. I realize this might prove a pain for some people, but short of making this blog an open-house for spam-vermin, the only alternatives available were either to enforce mandatory registration, to hold all comments in a queue for review (which I don't have the time to do), or simply close off comments altogether.

Now, if only TypePad would get around to implementing an option to close off all comments and trackbacks to a post after a given period of time ...

Service Resumed

It's only taken almost an entire day, but at least nothing seems to have been lost. Go here and here for as good an explanation of what happened as I've managed to get.

The unreliability and all too often abysmal responsiveness of TypePad, as well as the utter uselessness of its help ticket system, make me wonder what exactly it is I'm paying for - if I wanted to live with such issues, I could just as easily have stayed on Blogspot. That the much more numerous non-paying LiveJournal users seem to enjoy a quality of service level superior to that experienced by Six Apart's paying customers tells me that TypePad must be one hell of a poorly engineered platform.

A Warning

I'd just like to make one thing clear for all those who might be tempted to emulate a certain idiot whose moronic rantings I've just had to clean up: while it's quite alright to quote excerpts of others' articles in support of an argument, I absolutely will not tolerate crapflooders and cut-and-paste trolls who fill up my commenting facility with screenful after screenful of regurgitated material, and anyone who does so can expect an instant banning. If there's some lengthy material you'd like others to see, just post the URL for it, and if there isn't a handy URL for whatever reason, you're better of starting your own free blog over at a place like this rather than attempting to use my property as your private syndication platform.

Do Not Adjust Your Monitor

Yes, you're on the right page, and no, I haven't suddenly gone in for white on white minimalism. TypePad's introduced some changes to its service over the past night, and one consequence has been to mess up the appearance of my weblog, so in the meantime I've chosen to settle on a style that minimizes the resulting ugliness until they've got the issue sorted out; even so, IE 6 users will notice that my right panel has mysteriously retreated below the left one (for which Microsoft is almost certainly at least as much to blame as Six Apart ...)

On the plus side, Typepad's finally introduced some comment management features, including Typekey authentication and holding comments/trackbacks on queue until they've been approved. I'll be trying these out over the weekend to see how well they work in practice, so don't panic if your comments don't show up on here immediately.

PS: Everything seems fine now, and as I'm sure you've noticed, I've switched to a theme that's slightly less monochromatic. Comment queuing is switched off for the time being as it's proving too cumbersome to be workable.

Do Not Adjust Your Monitor

Yes, you have reached the right page. I'm just messing about with the design template for the blog, as I've grown tired of the old one (the blue background clashed with the green header section, for one thing). Consider the current template provisional as well: if I see some way to improve it in the next few days, I fully intend to do so.

A Word of Advice

I've noticed what seems to be a pattern amongst many bloggers nowadays, a pattern I have little tolerance for, namely the habit of sending trackbacks to posts to which one has no intention of referring. This, as far as I'm concerned, is nothing more than spamming: if my post is too odious for you to refer to in your commentary, then it ought to be too odious for you to bother sending a trackback to as well. I have no interest in playing host to selfish spongers who are looking to leech traffic from sites they think beneath them, and from now on, anyone who does so on here can expect to have his or her trackback promptly deleted.