Yesterday, I received a typical piece of link farming spam:

Dear Webmaster,

My name is Richard Volt, and I run the web site Online Dating with ManWoman.com.au | Find Your Perfect Match Online:
http://www.manwoman.com.au/

The other day I wrote you to let you know I’m very interested in exchanging links. I’m sending this reminder in case you didn’t receive my first letter. I’ve gone ahead and posted a link to your site, on this page:
http://www.manwoman.com.au/links/weblogs_3.html

…

Before deleting the message I clicked on the link to the page supposedly containing the link to my site (it’s safe to look at that page,I can’t speak about the rest of the site). As expected it did no such thing. However, I did spot one familiar link:

Stephen Pollard
A daily news commentary/blog, using newspaper columns and internet sources for analysis of the days events.

Now, it’s been stated that Pollard is an Ignorant Git, and who am I to argue with people who read his drivel regularly?, but in this case is he an innocent victim of the spammers? Or has he resorted to acting in cahoots with them in order to expose his hackery to a larger, unsuspecting audience?

[Update] - I spoke too soon, my site is linked to from the next page in the link farm. Damn, I was just too slow in getting around to dealing with my spam and it had been moved downwards by the flood of new submissions.

Very True Mood:  chipper

Today I made it as a blogger. Today I joined the upper echelons of the blogosphere. Today I received my first e-mail (complete with poor grammar) asking me to remove comments about an individual from my blog

Nataurally, I complied with this request because I wouldn’t want to cause any upset. It’s a shame really, because removing the person’s name means I have to remove a rather nice digression about some cool TV shows. I’ll have to have a long and careful think about making a nice, fluffy post about the same person in order to reintroduce that digression.

Very True Mood:  pensive

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birthday (excluding the year). List three neat facts, two births and one death in your journal, including the year.

Events

1. In ancient Greece, the first day of the Eleusinian Mysteries, during which the sacred objects were brought from Eleusis to Athens.
2. 1752 - The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2).
3. 1901 - President of the United States William McKinley dies after an assassination attempt on September 6, and is succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.

Births

1. 1486 - Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, German alchemist
2. 1936 - Walter “Chekov” Koenig, American actor

Death

1. 1852 - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, British general and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Oh, I’ve just looked up the characteristics of the personality type I received from the meme in my last post:

• moody
• not good at sports
• low energy level
• unable to speak up for self
• avoidant
• depressed
• withdrawn
• attracted to things associated with sadness
• easily frightened
• feels defective
• lonely
• no self confidence
• easily discouraged
• avoids crowds
• backs down when threatened
• easily intimidated
• socially unskilled
• loner
• unproductive
• late with work
• prone to health problems
• focuses on fantasies more than reality
• self loathing
• wounded at the core
• easily hurt
• often sad
• becomes overwhelmed by events
• fearful
• rarely prepared
• fears doing the wrong thing
• often aware how the color and lighting of a room affects their mood
• feels untalented
• quiet around strangers
• prone to addiction
• doubting
• anxious
• easily confused
• frequently overwhelmed by unpleasant feelings
• weak sense of purpose
• relates to broken and discarded things
• unsure where life is going
• continually losing things
• fears drawing attention to self
• avoids unnecessary interaction
• often bored
• second guesses self
• embarrassed by praise
• worrying
• resigned
• prone to jealousy

Wow. That’s really positive isn’t it?

Very True Mood:  shocked

There’s a comment in some code at work which just says <!-- XXX country? -->. XXX country? Holland? Sweden? Add another X, Australia? Okay, this comment appears straight after the code to write out a venue’s address so maybe some developer in times past was wondering whether we should write out the country as well. Except… this is a London web site and all the venues are in, or near, London. So, ignoring for a moment embassies and the like, what would be the point of listing countries?

Yesterday in the doctor’s waiting room there was an old lady sitting next to me reading a book. When she got up I saw that the book was Mein Kampf. Is this normal reading matter for the over 70s?

After yesterday’s pub / church, today I found a hotel in the middle of the Natural History Museum. Again, check it out quickly, I hope it will have moved to its proper location soon.

And a meme, via sharikkamur

Your personality type is RLUAI

You are reserved, moody, moderately unstructured, moderately accommodating, and intellectual, and may prefer a city which matches those traits.

The largest representation of your personality type can be found in the these U.S. cities: Washington DC, Portland/Salem, Richmond, New Orleans, Norfolk, Denver, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Kansas City, St. Louis, New York City, Indianapolis, San Antonio and these international countries/regions Slovenia, Croatia, Caribbean, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Belgium, Guam, Ukraine, Argentina, Greece, Brazil, Israel, Wales, Finland, Germany, Poland

What Places In The World Match Your Personality?
City Reviews at CityCulture.org

Yes. I belong in Wales. Or the Caribbean. Result.

Very True Mood:  blank

I’ve just used the phrase “we need more camp disco cheese” in a sentence. Help.

Last night a small group from work were taken to Roast by one of our suppliers. Great food (not much suitable for veggies however) but very, very rich. I had the Young Spring Leeks with Beetroot Dressing and Sieved Eggs; Roast Large Black Pork with Sage and Onion Gravy; English Custard and Nutmeg Tart with Rhubarb. All very yummy.

And if you move quickly (or if we move slowly at our end) you can see a rather confused entry from our database. Is it a church or a pub? As one of my colleagues said - “Wrong type of spirit”.

Very True Mood:  cheerful

Jim Stevenson’s Starship Schematic Database has finally been beaten by the bandwidth monster. Understandable, but still a great pity.

Very True Mood:  sad

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Doctor Who on BBC 4, 7:10pm tonight. It’s The Green Death so Welsh sterotypes and giant maggots galore.

“Watch me get dressed up as a cleaning lady!”

This Wednesday is the First Annual CSS Naked Day when web sites should be displayed in their naked glory, bare of all stylesheets. Unless the author has anything to hide (such as, gasp, non-semantic HTML perhaps?).

Very True Things will be a very naked thing on the 5th. (At least the main version of the site will be, the Live Journal mirror will still be fully clothed).

Bollocks. Forgot to turn off the iScrobbler plugin and now my Last.fm profile is full of all sorts of strangeness that pink_weasel was listening to this evening. I can’t delete them for a week.