Tag: Google

Sometimes Spammers Lose

Everyone gets spam email – certainly I get more than my fair share. Because my email address appears in so many places on the web (this site for instance has thousands of instances of my email address ready for the plucking), I’m easily added to spammers’ lists.

Since January 1, 2004, I have received 22,347 spam emails. That’s over 63% of the total that have made it to my inbox. There are countless thousands more that never even get that far. They are screened by a few dozen brute force filters which discard obvious spam at my server.

There’s another spam I get – comment spam. That’s when people (actually machines) send comments to my blog so their website addresses will be posted. Their hope (sneaky but clever) is Google will see them on lots of websites and mistakenly believe they’re important.

Today, I’ve gotten dozens of these comment spams from a poker site. Filters I have installed for that purpose (and which don’t work anywhere near as well as the email spam filters) stopped them dead in their tracks.

Out of curiosity, I went to the site to see who was doing this. The site’s name was very close to a legitimate poker site and I wanted to know if they were responsible.

Here’s what I saw:

THIS PAGE HAS BEEN RE-DIRECTED FOR ABUSE / SPAM VIOLATIONS

I’ll bet the spam was still being spit out after their site had been closed down! Hopefully, they were paying someone for this exercise in futility.

The bottom line is, no matter what small security hole exists, there will always be someone willing to exploit it. All you need is a lack of scruples and moral fiber…and someone who knows how to program.

Ashlee Effect Gone

My new found traffic related to the Ashlee Simpson lip syncing story is now gone. After I posted my entry on Sunday morning, this website became Google’s 4th result for “Ashlee Simpson Saturday Night Live Lip Sync.” Now that same search leaves me on the third page!

Monday saw 19,970 visitors. At the pace I’m going, today will be back to around 1,000.

My original entry from Sunday has a Google ranking – 0 of 10. My homepage is a 5 of 10. Though everyone starts out equally on the net, the big sites are considered more important and do rank higher.

It was fun while it lasted.

A Night For Numbers

I’m in a very mathematic mood – if such a thing is possible. I got home late after Monday Night Football, sat down and played some poker online. I haven’t written about poker too much lately. Maybe that’s because of how poorly I’ve been doing for nearly two months.

Some of it is bad luck, but the majority is bad play. I see the trend, which is too much aggression on marginally winning hands. If you go all in four times and win only three, you’re gone. I have to be more conservative in that way. Keep my neck off the chopping block.

I have moved down in stakes and reined myself in. So far I’ve done OK against lesser competition. We’re still up since August 2003, but much of our winnings have been squandered by me.

I have to maintain discipline. I can’t play on tilt. Bluffing is a good plot technique in a novel, but a losing strategy in real life poker.

Like I said, I was really into numbers tonight. There was poker and before that my new found infatuation with the ridiculous traffic this site had on Monday. With more traditional, higher ranked sites now on the Ashlee Simpson story, I’ll soon be relegated to the third and fourth page in the Google results and my traffic will tail off.

My final numbers play was looking at the latest election polls. It is too late to look at the popular vote. Analyzing raw numbers is a fool’s game since it isn’t how we elect a president anyway.

I looked at state by state polls on the three sites I’ve grown to enjoy for this: The New York Times, Slate&#185, and my new discovery RealClearPolitics.com.

I love thumbing through the charts and maps on each of the sites and reading their analysis. This is definitely like predicting the weather… actually predicting a snowstorm. I say that because predicting snow is inherently difficult. There are parameters that interact with each other and the data is never as complete or as well initialized as you’d like.

The wild card in this election is voter turnout. Most of the major polling companies limit their surveys to likely voters, and they are qualified based on historical criteria. It seems to me, and this is gut not science, that the turnout for this election will be higher than historical norms. That would mean there will be more voters than the surveys take into account. Will those additional voters vote the same way as the likely voters surveyed?

If the election does draw a heavy turnout, will lines or delays at the polls send people home without casting a ballot? Will those people correspond proportionally to the survey results?

I don’t know. But, it stands to reason, the more unknown variables that are thrown in, the less likely it is that the election will be accurately called.

Just as each individual forecast has a separate degree of difficulty, so too do elections. This one is incredibly tough to call, but is fascinating to look at piece-by-piece. And, unfortunately, just because I have lots of pieces to look at doesn’t mean I will understand any more.

&#185 – Last week I wrote about Slate’s state-by-state polls showing Kerry ahead. Tonight that is reversed with President Bush leading 276 to 262.

What Ashlee Simpson Did to My Website

Early Sunday morning, literally a few minutes after it happened, I posted an entry about Ashlee Simpson’s lip syncing incident on Saturday Night Live. (It’s two entries below this one – or just click here). Because of the time it happened, after midnight Eastern time, it got very little ‘conventional’ news coverage until Sunday evening.

In the meantime, Google was busy indexing the Internet… including this site. All of a sudden, geofffox.com was listed up near the top when people searched to find out what had happened.

Because of this one event, this has been a very unusual day on this website. Of all my October 2004 traffic, half has come today! In fact, I have delivered nearly twenty times my normal number of pages, and the day’s not over yet.

So, what have I learned from this? Certainly the power of Google. I always knew it drove Internet traffic, but never to the extent I see today. And I didn’t even write my page to be optimized for Google. There are ways it could have been presented which would have gotten me more search hits.

It’s also obvious that many of the entertainment sites people depend on are really Monday through Friday affairs with minimal or no weekend staffing. Yesterday, once I realized the traffic had begun, I looked at all the conventional entertainment news sites and found virtually nothing on this story. I haven’t looked tonight, but I’ll bet Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and the others led with Ashlee’s problem.

It will be interesting to see how quickly the story of her scheduled ‘live’ performance tonight is reported. I’m guessing this one will get online a lot sooner, and by sites that have more ‘schlep’ than I have.

If you are here for the Ashlee story, thanks for coming by. Take a look around. Squeeze the produce. Post a comment. Come again any time. I’m thrilled you’re here.

All The News That’s Fit to Google

I read an article today about some of the shortcoming of Google News.

I have no idea how they do it – finding the most important news and putting it together on a web page without human intervention. It is an incredible artificial intelligence feat.

The headlines that appear on Google news are selected entirely by computer algorithms, based on how and where the stories appear elsewhere on the web. There are no human editors at Google selecting or grouping the headlines and no individual decides which stories get top placement. This occasionally results in some articles appearing to be out of context.

Still, though I check Google News all the time, I find it lacking.

One of the things I like about news on the Internet is the room available for detail. I’m not a USAToday kind of guy. I think Google misses the point on this by often choosing the wrong lead source for the stories that appear.

Here’s an example. In the current rundown is this headline: The Sopranos buries the competition. That’s a valid story in entertainment news, but the source is, “The Scotsman – Scotland’s National Newspaper Online.” The next listing was for the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) followed by ABC News and Planet Out.

Shouldn’t Google ‘know enough’ to find a valid expert on entertainment for entertainment stories?

I still like it. I still use it. I wish it were better. Maybe people would help?

Gmail

I have heard lot of talk about Gmail, the new mail service from Google. It certainly has forced the other free mail providers to expand the storage space they offer. Gmail itself offers 1 gb of storage, an unheard of amount.

The advantage of Gmail is, it treats your email like Google treats the rest of the Internet. Searching capabilities are very strong and very quick.

Still, for me with a ‘vanity’ address it’s just not appealing, except under one circumstance. Gmail has become my address when I need to fill out forms. So, I let the Gmail account deal with the additional spam that comes when I register for something online.

Since Gmail is still in beta, it isn’t freely available. The way they get new users is by giving invitations to current users, like me. I now have 6. If you’d like a free Gmail account, drop me a line. As long as I still have one, it’s yours.

Having a Blog – The Fringe Benefits

I like writing in my blog. Hopefully, that’s obvious. Whether anyone reads it or not, it’s an opportunity to vent and reflect. There are, unfortunately, far too few places to do either.

A side benefit of having a blog is the web presence it gives me. Do a Google search for Geoff Fox and you’ll find me first, even though there are other Geoff Foxes – most more accomplished than I am.

Once you’ve found the website, getting in touch with me by email is simple. From time-to-time I get a note from someone I knew a long time ago who stumbled across this site. One came in tonight.

Actually, I’m lucky I found the note from Dave Kulka, because it was in my spam box, snuggled between herbal Viagra and mortgage offers&#185.

David Kulka here. Geoff, how the hell are you? We haven’t spoken in a

long time. I was sifting through DX artifacts and other memorabilia

from the past and came across a batch of old letters from you. You

were certainly easy to find on Google.

Email seems insufficient for catching up after 30 years, why don’t you

give me a call. 818-xxx-xxxx.

73’s

David

He’s David now, but I first met Dave Kulka in person in August 1968. We had met through correspondence and a mutual hobby, broadcast band DX’ing&#178, months earlier.

I had just turned 18. Dave was a few years younger. We planned on meeting for the National Radio Club convention in Los Angeles, visiting another radio nerd in Riverside, CA and spending some time at Dave’s house in Marin County, just outside San Fransisco.

This was my first time away from home by myself. I was flying cross country to meet a stranger. Who knew what he’d be like?

At 18, I was naive. There was never a question of fear or worry. I remember getting some incredible 1/2 price youth fare on TWA and flying from Kennedy Airport to Los Angeles.

There’s not a lot I remember, though a few individual events stand out.

The convention was held in an older, somewhat worn, hotel in Hollywood. I believe it was the Roosevelt, but I might be wrong. Within an hour of being in LA and checking into the hotel, I got myself arrested for jaywalking at Hollywood and Cahuenga! I think Dave got pinched too.

When we went to the desert in Riverside, it was as foreign a place as I’d ever been. I remember how bare the ground was, and how we were fairly close to a bluff which overlooked Riverside Airport. I went there a few times to watch the Hughes Air West Fairchild F-27’s takeoff and land

One day while we were in the house in Riverside, everything began to shake. I could hear plates and glasses rattling. Earthquake! It scared the living daylights out of me… though Dave and the home’s owner, Don, made like it was nothing. To this day, it’s my one and only earthquake.

Spending time in Marin County was also an eye opening experience. Dave and his family lived in a beautiful home on the side of a hill. There was a deck which ran from the side to the back. His parents cars were parked on the narrow road in front of the house. Their auto registration was somehow affixed to the steering post. Having grown up in apartment 5E, this was all culture shock.

I remember Dave’s mom. I couldn’t pick her out of a crowd today, but I remember thinking she was pretty and young for the mom of a contemporary. Mostly I remember her during the days of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

This was the convention where Mayor Daley attempted to quash the dissent of the anti-war movement. There were riots in Chicago during the convention. It was all televised live.

Dave’s mom cried. It was a soft, emotional cry. Over 35 years later, that moment is strong in my mind. I remember her standing there, turned 3/4 away from the TV, in an emotional state because of something going on half a country away.

I didn’t understand the significance of what was going on at the time. Dave didn’t either. But her emotion from that night is still strong in my mind.

Dave’s uncle, Leo deGar Kulka, was the proprietor of a well known recording studio in San Fransisco. We spent a lot of time there, though I never met Uncle Leo.

Like I said, Dave could have been a weirdo – who knew? I was going out there on blind faith. But, he turned out to be a nice guy, and it was a trip which still stands out in my mind.

Tonight, on my way home from work, I called him and we spoke for a while. He has had an amazing life, traveling through much of Asia. These were not tourist jaunts to capitols, but trips through the countryside – places where Anglos are oddities. That kind of world traveling is one thing I’ve wanted to, but never will, do.

He sounds bright, self assured and content. On the phone I told him he sounded happy with his life, but I think content is a much more fitting word.

Dave’s in Burbank, in the San Fernando Valley, designing and installing recording studios. He is married with no children.

We get out there every once in a while. Next time, I’ll have to see him. How much could he have changed in 36 years?

&#185 – I always hope I find all the non-spam in my spam box, but, as good as popfile is, I am never sure. The downside to having a website like this is the amazing amount of spam I receive – hundreds of pieces every day.

&#178 – Broadcast band DXing is a hobby where you try and listen to distant, often foreign, broadcast stations on the regular AM dial. Using sophisticated, incredibly nerdy equipment, I was able to hear Europe, Hawaii, even Africa on an AM radio from the East Coast. I haven’t been involved in years, but still know the calls of most of the dominant clear channel stations and many of the strong regionals.

Party for Dr. Mel

About 7 years ago, one of the people I work with in the Weather Department discovered he had cancer. Dr. Mel Goldstein, known by everyone as Dr. Mel, had multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells. Mel had discovered his disease after back pain from a car accident just wouldn’t go away.

Today, Mel and his wife Arlene threw a party. They have a home right on Long Island Sound just east of New Haven. The weather was perfect, making their view of the Sound even better. Long Island was clearly visible on the horizon.

I remember going to Mel’s home right after he found out what he had. I was with Jeff Bailey, our webguy at the station. We went to install a PC at Mel’s house so he could track the weather from home. We hooked up the computer and a modem and then proceeded to show him how to search using Google. This was a while ago and not nearly as many people were web savvy.

We reached the site of the Multiple Myeloma Society. It was a good first example, because Mel and his wife were desperate for information. We all read along silently, not realizing that the page contained a reference to the average time from discovery to mortality – how long someone normally lived after finding out he had multiple myeloma.

I don’t remember the number, except it was was under 1,000 days.

Obviously, Dr. Mel has outlived those projections. This is not to say the disease hasn’t taken a toll, because it has. Not only has he lived with the specter of death, but also the physical pain caused by the cancer’s effect on his bones.

He has lost 6-7″ in height and walks with a cane. At the station, we’ve installed a ramp to allow him to reach the studio floor easily. At home, a small motorized chair saves him from walking the stairs to the second floor. I know he is in pain each and every day.

Today’s party was to celebrate another milestone in living beyond anyone’s expectations. But this is not a story of luck. He is alive because of his own persistence. Dr. Mel became his own best advocate for care. Though not a medical doctor, he became an expert on multiple myeloma and was able to help his physicians guide his own treatment.

Without dedication, Mel would be dead. If he had given up, gone through the motions with his cancer treatment, he would be dead. But he chose not to die. He chose to aggressively fight.

There is no cure for multiple myeloma right now. There is therapy which is working. How long this fire hose treatment will keep the flames down is anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile, today was worth celebrating.

Drudge’s Graphics

I read Matt Drudge all the time. Actually, that’s an exaggeration because the vast majority of what’s on Drudge’s site is just links to other places.

It looks to be written entirely in html – the simplest of web languages. Its most sophisticated feature is the javascript code in ads, written to try to evade pop-up blockers (and it certainly beats Google’s toolbar).

Drudge doesn’t run much in the way of images. Tonight there are three showing on his page. Amazingly, they are all being hosted on websites other than Drudge’s. Two are in yimg.com, which I think is a Yahoo image server, The other is msn.com.

If he’s not paying for this privilege, since it certainly can be done without permission, it’s the equivalent of powering your house through your neighbor’s electric meter.

Comment Spam – Major Trouble For Me

When I came into the room last night, I was surprised to have over 150 emails telling me about comments posted on my blog.

They were all coming from the same place – a series of sexually oriented websites. The purpose was to get their address on my website so search engines would consider them more important. I suppose it works, which is why it’s done. Here’s an article from Wired which goes into more detail.

To me, that meant manually removing every spammy message. It was a pain until I figured out how to automate the removal. Even then it’s dumb to be forced to do this.

There is a way to protect myself from this automated onslaught, and I’ll implement it when we return to Connecticut. I’ll also be looking to see if Google is willing to accept the names of these spammers, so their trick stops working.

Wednesday Evening Fun in Vegas

We took two cars and 11 people to dinner at the Bellagio buffet. Las Vegas is a buffet town and Bellagio is the buffet against which all others must be judged.

We always look forward to the Alaskan King Crab legs, but they were only adequate this time.

I tried venison and buffalo along with some prime rib. Both were good, but I’m not sure I’d change from beef. It’s all in the preparation anyway. Properly prepared, nearly anything can taste great. A bad chef can spoil anything.

I’m not quite sure how Helaine does it, but she got line passes to the buffet. These are worth their weight in gold since they move you to the head of what can be an hours long line!

After dinner we said goodnight to Michael, Melissa and Max and headed to the MGM Grand to see Carrot Top.

Mention Carrot Top to anyone and there are two possible reactions. If they’ve seen him, they’re a fan. If they haven’t, they can’t figure out why anyone would want to see him. My mother was in the latter class – until tonight. Now she’s a fan, as is my dad.

It took a little longer than usual to get to MGM Grand. We drove in the back way but couldn’t seem to get to the main valet. We did find a secondary valet stand, somewhat out of the way, and parked there.

Carrot Top was excellent, but most of his act was what I had seen before. Still, it was great to see Steffie, Ali and my folks really laugh hard. He really does work hard and is very clever with a boatload of props.

I’ve said this before, but if you enter the words “Carrot Top shirtless” on Google, my web pages show up first. Very weird.

That citation is there because I noticed last year how Carrot Top ends his show shirtless. He obviously works of his body and is quite buff. I know that’s not the persona he shows on his 1-800-CALL-ATT commercials, but it is the real deal.

About 2/3 of the way through the show I started to take out my camera to snap a photo. It didn’t take more than 10 seconds before a security guard was over my shoulder telling me not to and threatening to kick me out if I tried again. That was pretty creepy. I admit I went to do it, but I didn’t get to take a photo before he arrived.

After the show we returned to Mirage, and I played a little more poker. This time I won $169. Actually, I won more, but I took tips to the dealer and cocktail waitress from my take.

Poker has been going very well. I am pleased with my play. Tonight I managed to win even though my cards mostly sucked. I only saw the river three times and won each time.

I am seriously considering playing tomorrow’s tournament here at Mirage. It is a lot more pricey than anything I have ever played before, so it will be a decision I’ll mull. It’s certainly within the range of what I’m prepared to lose.

My goal this trip is to come home with a form 1099-G. That’s what you get if you win over $600 at one time (like a slot machine jackpot or winning a poker tournament). I haven’t gotten there yet. Tomorrow’s tournament could be my best chance.

Continue reading “Wednesday Evening Fun in Vegas”

My Very Strange Readers

When I look at the logs for this website, I can often see what brought readers here. Sometimes it’s a bookmark or a link from another site (I am always grateful when others link to this site – though, as you see, I don’t have permanent links to other blogs here). Many times, it’s a search engine leading folks here.

Just to give you an idea, so far in June Google has sucked down 26.5 MB of bandwidth as it indexes this site. MSN, whose search engine is just ramping up, has pulled down over 100 MB! Nearly 1,300 visitors in these 11 days of June have come from search engines. At the moment, Google brings in 3 times as many readers as Yahoo, 10 times as many as MSN.

If you come from a search engine, like Google or Yahoo, the actual search query you entered is logged for me and it’s often fascinating info. For the past few months, many strangers have come here because of things I’ve written, or photography I’ve posted, about John Mayer and his road manager Scotty Crowe (Scotty has many fewer web citations, so I come up very high on a search for his name). They have been the 1 & 2 most popular search terms for months.

Now, joining them on the hit parade is “Carrot Top Shirtless.”

I don’t which is scarier – people are looking for Carrot Top – shirtless, or the fact that there’s content in my blog that makes geofffox.com show up in the search… in the second spot on Google!

Computational Friction

Tonight, I’ve been transferring some videocassettes to DVD. It’s a time consuming process – more alchemy than anything else. This is well out of the realm of standard procedure. I’ve learned it all through trial and error and more error.

I capture the video as avi files and then convert them to mpeg. The specifics of those two aren’t important, except to say they’re different. Same with the resolution. My video capture card wants to give me 640×480 while DVD’s play video that’s 720 pixels wide. Again, all that’s important are they’re different.

In order to go from one format to another, one resolution to another, my computer has to do massive amounts of number crunching. I just popped open my Task Manager a few seconds ago. The computer’s CPU, its brain, is running at 100%.

There’s nothing wrong with that. I want my computer to work as fast as it can.

However, something else has changed while this crunching has been underway. The temperature of the CPU has gone from 143&#176 to 154&#176. That’s not critical, but it certainly gives me a little pause. I believe the CPU can hit about 176&#176 before it starts smoking and breaks down (Actually, the number is probably higher than that. 176&#176 is just the specification).

So, what’s going on? I don’t really know, and a search of Google hasn’t been very fruitful. I think this might frictional heat caused by the additional electrons necessary to really number crunch. But, I could be very wrong.

No matter what, it is very curious that computers heat up when they work hard, as humans do. It is something I would have never expected.

Making Heads or Tails of Google’s Adsense

A week ago I added ads to this website. It’s no big deal. The ads were easy to enable and match the visual style of the site in general. I got one objection, but even he said OK when I explained the ads could pay the entire hosting cost of this site.

So far, I have made $5.32! Please, no loan requests.

Google won’t say, and I can’t figure out how they come up with the numbers. Last Sunday I got one click. It was worth a nickel. The next day one click was worth 22&cent. I’ve seen clicks that were valued at over 30&cent apiece.

Google doesn’t tell me who is clicking what, so I have no idea which clicks are valuable and which are duds. Today I have gotten three clicks. Google says they’re worth nothing!

If I knew which traffic was most important, would I change the website? No. Still it would be fun to know what drives the commerce engine on the Internet.

It’s An Addiction – I’m Not Alone

Katie Haffner had an interesting story about blogging in this moring’s New York Times. I always thought (and Helaine will confirm) I’d gone off the deep end with blogging, but this article makes it seem like I’m not so bad. There are others who have been bitten far worse.

Thanks God for small favors.

Continue reading “It’s An Addiction – I’m Not Alone”