December, 3, 2006 archives

i noticed last week that i was getting stock-related spam at the address that was only ever given to tdameritrade (when it was just ameritrade). fortunately it’s easy to shut down an address like this and shift to a new one. we’ll see how long that one lasts.

i still get over a thousand requests a day for feeds that no longer exist from amphetadesk users. the particularly astute may notice that it has been over four years since the last release of amphetadesk.

unfortunately, that’s only 20% of the requests for these long-dead feeds that i get every day.

to appease my non-technical readers, i will just mention in passing that the breakfast of spam, rice, and eggs is yummy.

on to the technical gobbledygook.

i’m really disappointed by gmail’s spam handling. i listed my gmail address on my about page, so it eventually made it into some spammers list and is now getting inundated with spam. there are 1240 messages in the spam folder, and i get about five to ten obvious spam emails in the inbox every day, mostly lottery and financial transaction scams.

have i mentioned lately how much i hate systems that filter spam into a folder? just bounce the damn messages and let the sender sort it out.

i also get a bunch of spam through my apache.org address. i should figure out if there’s some way i can configure things there to not accept mail that isn’t addressed directly to me. or maybe i should just give up the address when i move on to emeritus membership.

my mail handling could be a whole lot smarter. i started using gmail because i didn’t have to worry about email systems that rejected mail from my system because it didn’t have reverse dns set up, or sometimes end up on a blacklist due to nearby hosts, or whatever. the gmail interface is not bad, but i think i want to get all my mail back into one system.

i have some vague ideas about an amazon s3-backed mail system, but no real motivation to get started on it. i’d also like to write a mail client that behaved like i want. something like a gui mutt with some gmail goodness thrown in.

the other day, my fiancée celia said she was surprised that i hadn’t been writing anything about what she’s been working on. the biggest reason is just that i’m not sure how much i can say — she always obfuscates things and i wouldn’t want to screw things up by saying the wrong thing about the wrong person.

early in the whole writing process of her current project, about the time we were getting our engagement party together, i was fixing some rice krispie treats in the kitchen area of my old loft. i heard this thud which sounded exactly like a body falling on concrete. when i turned around, i saw she was sprawled out on the floor. my first thought is that it was a very odd pratfall, but once i got over to make sure she was okay and it was clear she had fainted, it became a lot less funny.

she has been fine since then, even through six more months of rewrites. and now she is once again close to the finish line (and it looks like it might not move once she reaches it this time) — until it moves on to the next stage and there are more rewrites.

i read most of the iterations of the script, except for the last few. it is interesting to see the process, and to see how it compares and contrasts with the types of projects i’ve done. unsurprisingly, i guess, you see the same sorts of dysfunctions (problems with decision making, shifting deadlines, communication breakdowns, etc).

she has been off at dov s-s simens two-day film school this weekend, and then it’s time for one more round of script polishing before it goes out to be read by important people.