Referral Spam Overload

Updated 15 July 2013 with screen captures and testing Tor for browsing.

A very quick post; referral spam went nuts the past 24 hours on the blog totalling 35 hits. The culprits:

adsensewatchdog . com

This is what it looks like without Tor and NoScript. A wide index of terms so they get hits. Just another fake search engine riding the real ones to get traffic and money for pages served.

With Tor (an untrackable browser) and NoScript it looks completely different. Fancier parked graphics and no links.

Running on Less than Empty

The problem with having CFS/CFIDS is that you never have enough energy and if you do have any it expends quickly with little rebound. I write “little” because if there was none, you’d be dead. Instead returning energy trickles in at glacial rate. Add in being a type A personality and it becomes a recipe for running one’s self into the ground the moment you have any energy.

This month of July has been a tough one of burning up energy and crashing repeatedly with each crash harder than the prior one. It began with family visiting and being on maximum output through the first week. Somehow I made it through that with only a small lapse into a bronchial infection that cleared up after two days.

Spam and an Apparent Pyramid Scheme

Commenter Charlotte gave a heads up that a new spammer has shown up in Bloggers stats so I checked it out several days ago. I didn’t get the spam myself and wasn’t feeling the love from referral spammers. Then the last 24 hours produced 22 spam hits of various kinds including the new one awsurveys . com / ?R=1070526 which showed up seven times. I guess they still love me. Is this what they call “bad love”? UPDATED with another link being used and a shady service connected to it.

So I fired up my virtual PC and checked out the link. Remember folks, don’t try this yourself! Clicking on referral link spam can cause any number of problems including getting you computer infected with malware.

Pacific Rim Short In-Theater Review

Giant robots bashing giant monsters using the latest in state of the art computer generated special effects. What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing actually. The movie was my most eagerly awaited of the year due to being a fan of kaiju and giant robots since childhood. I didn’t expect anything brilliant but did fear a turkey that would ruin any chance at the genre getting a fair shake in Hollywood again. I won’t say my fears were unfounded, however it is a simple fact that Pacific Rim is a good movie.

The director, Guillermo del Toro, is on record as wanting the movie to be something airy and light, not something brooding or contemplating the human condition. Frankly, if he thinks this story was airy I worry about what he thinks is dark. While clearly an action movie first and foremost, it is pretty grim from the start.

Old Spam Is Still Indigestible

Getting back to posting reviews is turning out to be harder than I expected and the new rounds of referral spam have taken up time meant for writing on other topics. The latest to hit by Blogger stats is from newsuc . com and according to DuckDuckGo it is a parked domain which means no real content is hosted there. The page showing up from this dedicated to spamming site is newsuc . com / blog / blog1 . php / 2009 / 07 / 20 /giant-quake-tsunami though there are several others at the site.

I fired up my virtual machine (VM) running Ubuntu for safe investigation of the site and to take screen captures. Remember, don’t click on the links from newsuc! What I found looked like a real blog, if out of date by three years. But why would they be linking me now?

A Tricky Bit of Spam

Spammers apparently never sleep and so it isn’t long before a new referral spam hits Blogger or an old one appears under a new link.  This particular one is a new one to me and came in as t . co / 1kXhhiBfBE using a shortened Twitter link. So what is it really?

A misogynistic offer to teach men how to seduce women. Apparently it is a video and the format looks all too familiar. The content is different, but I never did see the presentation due to this:

Firefox on Ubuntu failed to install when the camera icon was clicked on. Children don’t try this at home! Digging into the page source code revealed the video link claims to be in SWF format but as you can see, nothing happened. If it is malicious code aimed at Windows, it found the wrong operating system to play with.

Finally, when you try to close or back out of the page, the javascript launches this appeal to the profoundly desperate. I’m sad to say this will actually work on some guys.

UPDATED: This is now coming in as a full address, thetaoofbadass . pw / ?a_aid=517d032416eac which makes it seem even more silly.

Looking at the source code (with no expertise on my part) was revealing in that this appears to be a prefabricated template complete with instructions. A talented coder will glean a lot more than I did, but it shows just how polished the malware and spam pushing has gotten. It is all very professional now and it seems that the weight loss spam used the same form.

One Week Later: Scars of the Flood

A sunny July 1st provided an opportunity to get a close up look at two places in the Yucatan Valley heavily damaged by the flooding on June 23rd. First up is the bridge at the junction of County 4 and Hwy 76 which was the object of much government concern during the flood.

All the waters funneled to this location during the flood and exerted more force than I saw elsewhere. Approaching the bridge from County 4, you can see a damaged field and water left behind. The bank has been carved out more and there is an object sticking out of the ground with a plastic bag over it.

No, it isn’t debris. That’s a fiber optic cable that was severed by the flooding. It actually goes under the creek rather than on the bridge. Why was this done? To avoid being damaged by flooding. Best laid plans of mice and men…

It isn’t until you crest the hill to make the turn that the dramatic view is seen. A vast cornfield has been obliterated leaving sand and trees behind. The tractor path down reveals the wasteland that used to be very fertile soil with young corn plants growing in it.

The Day After the Flood

Floods do a lot of damage and the full extent of it doesn’t show up until after the water recedes. With that in mind, I went out and took some videos of the damage in the Yucatan Valley and near Houston, MN. Between building a new computer and family visiting, I didn’t get a chance to post what I’d shot.

Here it is at last:

After the Flood

Notice the Ace Communications trucks clustered at the Yucatan town hall. Amazing as it seems, we never lost the Internet during the flood. Others were not so lucky and also had their phone lines out. I used transitions to mark where we traveled on different roads. Okay, it was an excuse to use transitions, I confess.

In order to stitch things together and remove the sound, I ended up having to buy software for the task, Corel VideoStudio Pro. This is my first attempt with it and also using YouTube to host. One of these days I’ll get something that can record better than 480P, but not anytime soon.

Better Pictures of the 2013 Yucatan Flood

All photos are courtesy of Randy Roland, neighbor and friend. Most of the following pictures were taken around 10:00 AM and show some differences from the 5:00 AM ones that I took.

Once again we start close to home at the intersection where the old Yucatan Supper Club once operated. Water has never stood in the area shown despite prior floods and heavy rains.

Creamery Drive was still under five hours after first light. The new bridge held up well but the water simply went over the road in front and behind. It shows man’s limitations in dealing with the weather in a rather pointed fashion.

Going for the Hat Trick

I said I wouldn’t build or buy a new computer until it was possible to get three times the performance of my upgraded old warhorse. Opportunity came knocking and initial results are in…

Benchmarks were not done under perfectly clean circumstances because I wanted something closer to real world performance reflected. Dropbox and other utilities were running at the time. Also, the EVGA GeForce GTX 670 actually performs better now once I found the hardware fan settings were too low. Setting a new software profile changed its performance a great deal so it would be a full five stars now.

Benchmarks increased by the following multipliers:

• Passmark Rating 3.57
• CPU Mark 2.95
• 2D Graphics Mark 2.11
• 3D Graphics Mark 2.56
• Memory Mark 3.74
• Disk Mark 8.27

The focus was on CPU and memory speed rather than gaming benches since I consider myself a power user foremost. Video and image editing is incredibly fast now. Games are through the roof, of course, but less impressive than the multitasking boost.

I’ll post more about the build down the road a bit.

Slowing Down for the Holiday

With Independence Day coming up I’m slowing my posting down. House cleaning for company and wrapping up a technical project are consuming what energy I have. If time and health permit, I’ll get more photos of the flood and its aftermath up. Notes for a movie review are completed so that is in the pipeline. Eventually I’ll post about the technical project, which is going extremely well.

Also, I want to get outside a little since the weather has turned into something nearing perfect with sunlight, no rain, temperatures in the lower 80’s, no rain, cool nights, no rain, and most importantly, no rain.

An Excellent Video on Film Aspect Ratios

Perusing Blue’s News this morning I ran into a link to a must see video on why movies are shaped like they are. Ever wonder why older movies are almost square shaped and newer ones are elongated rectangles? Wonder no more, The Changing Shape of Cinema explains all.

In my reviews, I always detail what aspect ration the DVD or Blu-ray content is in since the ratios vary greatly. While I was aware of some of the history, this video answers the important questions of when and why different formats were created. It also explains why HDTV’s are a different shape than older television sets.

I have to go on record as loving widescreen and used to watch all my DVD’s in tiny letterbox mode on the old 4:3 27” TV. Getting a 40” HDTV as a gift made me a very happy camper and did justice rendering the glories of cinematography.

Go watch the video!

Ohbelog Referral Spam

So I see a Malaysian website on my Blogger stats today and couldn’t resist seeing what the latest spam was. It turned out to be a very interesting place to investigate. An ornate trap is what I would describe ohbelog . com as. At first look it appears to be a social media aggregate site where you can vote up or down on different links.

It’s flashy and oh so modern:

Scrolling down reveals that not a lot of voting is going on and clicking on some of the subsections in the menu nets these results:

Notice anything suspicious yet?

The Yucatan Valley Flood of 2000

Digging through my digital photographs, I did not find anything from the first flood that I photographed here in Yucatan. However, I did find copies of a friend’s pictures from that time. June 1, 2000 was the day I first experienced flooding up close and it all began when my late mother noticed water in the field where it shouldn’t be. I went outside to get a better look and realized that the creek (South Branch of the Root River) had gone over its banks.

Before long County 14 was under and later we heard from my father that he couldn’t get through from the south because the bridge was closed. Later that evening after things were open again, we took a drive along 14 and State 76 to see the flooding. It was beautiful and intimidating at the same time to see the valley filled with water. I felt like I’d glimpsed what it was like in Yucatan when the glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age.

An Eminent Threat

A strange sound awakened me today and it was somewhat like when raccoons have invaded the basement. Groggy, I stumbled out to find my father doing the dishes so I assumed that’s what I heard. While de-installing Nvidia’s latest and buggy beta drivers, I looked out my window and notices a sizeable branch down on the backyard maple tree.

Then I really looked at it.

A full third of the tree had gently fallen on an abandoned old shed.

It looks like rot spread deep and the excessive moisture in the valley helped accelerate the decay. Further splits are developing and that’s very bad news.

With the entire weight of the tree leaning in one direction, it puts the house in jeopardy. Also threatened is the power line so it would be a catastrophe when it falls. We are going to have to have someone come cut it down ASAP. One stiff storm wind could take out my side of the house.

It has been quite a week and it’s only Wednesday.

One Day Later

The flooding has subsided in Yucatan valley leaving mud and debris in the fields. Unfortunately, two waves of storms may hit the area between now and Tuesday morning. So far they have dumped significant amounts of rain in Iowa, but the NWS is warning things could get as bad as 2007 by tomorrow. So I've got the radar on autoupdate and watching the first wave of rain approaching. Thankfully it is fading in intensity for round one.

However it is not like we can afford any more rain. Mudslides worry me even more than flooding in Houston County ever since what happened in Brownsville six years ago. Right now I'm debating getting some more stores in before tonight's storms. If weather and transportation permit, I'll get some photos of the aftermath..

Oh and to the people searching for Lanesboro flood pictures getting routed to my Yucatan posts and the old 2008 photos: Sorry I don't have any from 2013, Google isn't the best for finding what you want these days. Try DuckDuckGo or Bing for better search results.

Videos of the Yucatan Valley Flooding

I took a few videos with my trusty old Canon PowerShot S1 IS to give an idea what it is to see flood waters up close and personal. Unfortunately the wind picked up and you can’t quite get the full audio experience. Rushing waters are loud and something you don’t forget once you’ve experienced them. One thing that can’t be conveyed is the awful smell of flood waters. That too is unique.

This was taken at a flooded over county road and gives a good idea of the strong currents of flood waters. At the end you can hear a tree or trees falling from it.

The second video is from the intersection of County 4 and State Highway 76. When we passed this coming home it was closed. So was Highway 16 out of Houston and 43, leaving 44 the only main route open in the county -- and it is under construction!

More Flood Pictures

My neighbor Randy, my dad, and I went out to get another look at the flooding at Noon. Much to our relief the waters were going down in Yucatan valley from earlier in the day. They had gotten higher when Randy went out mid-morning, so there was cause for worry.

Going up the road past the local Girl Scouts camp revealed that a lot of water had crossed over that road leaving debris behind. My father moved the smaller chunks out of the road after we stopped.

The South Branch of the Root River jumped its banks in many places wreaking havoc on fields and roads. The water in the photos above covers a field. Notice the trees, dead and alive, swept into the water to be left behind.

Yucatan Is Flooding

There isn’t going to be a lot of text for this, I took these pictures shortly after 5:00 AM. Large amounts of rain has produced flooding and I need to go check on things again soon. Houston County in Minnesota is not a safe place to travel right now and people need to stay at home or seek higher ground if needed.

UPDATED 6:30 PM

I’m copying this from the National Weather Service storm report because links move around when they update. Suffice it to say that things are not good:

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LA CROSSE WI
407 PM CDT SUN JUN 23 2013

..TIME...   ...EVENT...      ...CITY LOCATION...     ...LAT.LON...
..DATE...   ....MAG....      ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE....
            ..REMARKS..

0405 PM     FLASH FLOOD      HOUSTON                 43.76N 91.57W
06/23/2013                   HOUSTON            MN   EMERGENCY MNGR

            STATE HIGHWAY 16 CLOSED 2 MILES EAST OF HOUSTON. STATE
            HIGHWAY 76 CLOSED BETWEEN CALEDONIA AND HOUSTON.
            PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE IS 2 MILLION DOLLARS IN DAMAGE.
            STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED FOR COUNTY. 20 TOWNSHIP ROADS
            CLOSED. WIDESPREAD COUNTY ROADS CLOSED.

Riceford Creek is over its banks, this is Creamery Drive at the intersection with County 4.

Standing water is merging with the flooding near the intersection. Further North, the junction of Riceford Creek and the South Branch of the Root River is rising rapidly. Both are out of their banks. There is at least one mudslide near there.

Star Trek (2009) Review

Rebooting a franchise with a rabid fandom is always a dangerous thing, but running afoul of Trekkies, err, Trekkers is suicidal. So when J.J. Abrams of Lost fame was chosen to restart Star Trek from the beginning, a lot of fear and consternation filled the Web. A new take on Kirk, Spock, McCoy, the other original characters hit the big screen in 2009 to boldly go where we’ve gone before. High octane action and modern pacing made for a very different experience along with bigger box office. Updated with rewritten text, Blu-ray review, and HD screen captures.

It was disappointing to hear that Paramount was rebooting the Star Trek film series with a remake of the original series. I’d hoped for something more original like following the first captain of the Enterprise, Christopher Pike, or the murky early war with the Romulans. Instead, there would be a fresh young cast taking the roles of Kirk and company.  Out the window went any interest I had in the project.

Then a funny thing happened, the clips released to the Internet actually looked… good. Snippets of scenes showed decent acting and writing.  Disturbingly, I began to be interested.  Then came the trailers and I was in trouble. The movie looked like it was worth spending money on seeing in a theater, something uncommon for me.

So I ponied up the money, saw it and liked it. A lot.  But would it hold up after a second viewing?  An incredibly cheap preorder deal for the DVD at Target gave me that chance and so the answer is in the form of this review. Since first writing it, I’ve gotten my hands on the Blu-ray and will comment on the differences later.

Star Trek begins with moody music from its rather excellent soundtrack (composed by Michael Giacchino) while a starship comes into view, the U.S.S. Kelvin.  The ship is investigating an anomaly near the Klingon border when a gigantic squid-like ship emerges from it and promptly attacks. Right away the frenetic energy of the fight conveys the seriousness of the situation as the Federation ship is utterly overwhelmed by the mysterious attacker. 

The stakes are made to feel high as one short sequence demonstrates when a female crew member is sucked out of a hull breach and her corpse bounces off of a phaser turret in the silent vacuum of space.  This film is playing for keeps and doesn’t shy away from a high body count.

Summer Has Arrived

Hot and humid weather has at last arrived in southeast Minnesota. Hopefully it will help the late planted crops, but a lot of farmers in area valleys accepted crop insurance payouts rather than plant. At least the corn is visible and we'll see if it can get to "knee high by the 4th of July."

It's been a long week due to my health. Allergies, wet weather aggravating my back, and problems sleeping combined to keep me at low ebb. I probably had a cold or other bug on top of all that to make things annoying. Yesterday was the first day I was up to doing anything real and grocery shopping took that out of me. I swear it wasn't sticker shock -- there were actually some bargains.

Capsule In-Theaters Movie Reviews

Due to a lack of time and motivation, I’m going to give a brief review for each of the last three movies I’ve seen in the local movie theater: Iron Man 3, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and Man of Steel. One eclipsed the others completely and you’ll have to read on to find out the clear winner.

Another Kamikaze Bambi Strikes

It would be nice if car problems would stop happening, but here we are in 2013 and another deer collision happened last evening.

My father was coming home and hit a doe following her fawn across the road. She darted up from an embankment in front of the car as he slowed to avoid the fawn. It appears her muzzle impacted the windshield from all the chewed grass combined with saliva.

The impact could have been a lot worse but the slow down and angle left a dented fender and the badly cracked windshield as the only damage. It could have been far worse as my posts on earlier deer damage show.

Still, this is going to be incredibly expensive to repair if my suspicions are correct. I can feel the center of the spider web fractures on the inside of the glass. A Walmart parking lot temporary repair is probably in order involving reinforced packing tape.

Given the out of control deer population in the area the DNR really should do a massive cull, but that’s not going to happen. Instead the pests will continue to damage vehicles, crops, and gardens. I’m sick of the varmints being cared about more than humans.

Being Prepared to Serve

Any time there is a disaster such as the tornadoes that struck Oklahoma recently or hurricanes like Sandy there follows an outpouring of sympathy and volunteers to help with the clean ups. Churches and volunteer organizations send groups to assist in myriads of ways, which is unquestionably a good thing. But I find myself wishing more people would do the same closer to home at all times, rather than just during a highly publicized catastrophe.

This is a thought that I’ve been pondering for some time. However, recent events big and small have brought it to the fore in a nagging way. I believe we are here on Earth to learn to love one another and that the only real way we can do this is to serve each other. Being a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, lessons on serving others are repeatedly taught in sermons and Sunday school. Service is emphasized for every member through our callings (volunteer jobs) in the church or helping out in the community.

Still, we all have our agency that applies to members and nonmembers alike. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians he wrote, “For brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.” Gal 5:13. That scripture implies that we are expected to choose whether or not to serve one another and that we should do so out of love. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

Real versus CGI Special Effects

Over at BoingBoing I ran into this great post and discussion on old school special effects and what's been lost in changing over to CGI. The starting off point is Ray Harryhausen's wonderful work and things go from there. Rarely are comment threads worth reading on big sites, but this one has a lot of valid points being made.

Personally, I think CGI can be fantastic when used properly and devastating to the suspension of disbelief when poor. Part of that comes from accepting the unreal aspects of older stop motion or miniatures effects for what they are when we visually process them. So when something that is photorealistic doesn't move or behave correctly, the mind freaks out disproportionately. That's the Achilles heel of CGI and I just had that experience watching the trailer to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug:

It looked pretty good until the scene with the elves in the trees chasing the dwarves in the barrels. Right there the fluidity did not match the rest of the image and jarred me out of full immersion. Quick cuts of real stuntmen would have worked much better, but the temptation of CGI leads to directors using it too much. And this is the work of one of the better CGI directors out there, Peter Jackson.

Motion capture is one way to ameliorate the effect, but so far nothing has completely fooled my eye in a movie. So I'm back to learning to forgive the limitations and hope my eyes eventually do too.

Time of EVE Kickstarter Makes Stretch Goal

Having already recommended the anime Time of EVE and how it blew through its initial $18,000 Kickstarter goal in less than 24 hours, I am pleased to report that it has exceeded $126,000 by a good amount. This shows there is a model for import/export that may be emerging even as the world economy is in decline. Transitional time bring opportunity and I've decided to put my money where my mouth is by upping my backing to the $80 tier.

Yes the book is nice goody to have, but my intention has less to do with greed than with wanting to see this economic model flourish. For niche industries such as anime this could encourage more independent projects such has happened with video games. Crowd sourcing is also an interesting way to weed out ideas since demand has to occur up front rather than just being speculated on.

It might be that Time of EVE is an exception and this model won't work for other animes. After all, it is a brilliant work that is not your average animated fair of any kind. Time will tell, but at least this gem succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations.

Some Brief Thoughts on Snowden and Heroism

I do not believe Edward Snowden is a hero like some on the political right and left are hailing him. The timing of the disclosures and his running to Hong Kong are straight out of Cold War espionage operations so I suspect China’s hand in this. From his own statements, I see him as an erratic personality more than likely manipulated by a handler working for Chinese intelligence.

Even if he wasn’t, he’s not the white knight people think he is. A Ron Paul supporter and Obama sympathizer, he did not go public with this information when it mattered most before the 2012 presidential election. Timing is everything in life and doubly so in politics, which is why I believe China’s spies have a hand in this.

This would be a perfect opportunity to weaken President Obama for his meeting with President Xi Jinping on cybersecurity. Given how much attention had been focused on Chinese hacking of defense, government, and business servers in the United States it makes sense to skewer Obama with spying on his own people to deflect attention.

Seeking asylum in China while spouting off about freedom indicates that Snowden is either lying or quite stupid. Yeah, going to a country that censors the Internet, has spied on its citizens for many decades, and suppresses any mention of Tiananmen Square is beyond foolish if you are seeking freedom. It looks like someone has been working on his perception of China, if you get my drift.

Meanwhile, there are purportedly idiots in the intelligence community talking about “disappearing” Snowden in public. Oh and another scandal is hitting involving the State Department covering up drug dealing and use of prostitutes by ambassadors and security contractors.Our government is in the best of hands, isn’t it? There is no way to indicate just how much sarcasm fills that sentence.

There aren’t any heroes, folks. So please don’t rush to put Snowden on a pedestal just yet. Remember that Manning and Assange both proved to have motives that weren’t heroic and even Deep Throat turned out to be someone wanting revenge for being passed over for a promotion.

Isn’t it interesting that all the wrong doings of the current administration are coming to light after Obama was safely re-elected?

Technobabble: Video Card Style

There is nothing quite as infuriating as troubleshooting personal computer issues and it can reach exponential heights when nobody else has successfully solved it. That’s the situation I’ve been in for the past month since getting a Nvidia Geforce 650 TI based video card. Part of the pain was making the mistake of testing the 320.xx beta drivers, which ended up being certified in 320.18 without correcting any of their bugs. Check out this forum for multiple threads on the issues involved.

Some of the bugs are show stoppers. By that, I mean they lock up the computer which truly qualifies as a stopper. The worst symptom is that of Windows Explorer locking up while allowing currently running programs to function. They can be used or shut down, but Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn’t work, launching programs fails, and you can’t shutdown. Other folks have had their video cards actually burned out by the drivers.

So I’ve spent the last week or so uninstalling and installing drivers (use safe mode, folks – you’ll be grateful you did) to find something remotely stable. 310.70 was fantastically unstable, 306.97 was slow in games, and 314.22 showed some of the same lockups. I’ve settled on the latter for now, since they crash the least.

Checking the latency on my PC with LatencyMon reveals large problems with Nvidia’s driver kernel, nvlddmkm.sys. I’ve disabled powering down the video when the PC is idle and that’s helped stability. So far I’ve kept the PC going for its longest stretch by enabling the screen saver to make sure the card doesn’t go dormant.

Digging for solutions exposed another large issue and that was what was causing Mass Effect 2 and 3 to fail to run. It turns out that starting with Windows 7 the power management in the operating systems from Microsoft park the cores in multicore CPUs. This saves power for laptops, but is pointless for desktops. A utility called parkcontrol made all the difference in the world in allowing the games to run.

The big surprise from using that was how much faster and responsive the PC has become at doing everything else. From Internet browsing to graphics editing, everything is much faster now. Why this is an issue with Nvidia and not with AMD Radeon video cards is a mystery to me.

If I had things to do over again I would buy an AMD Radeon 7790 based card. The Gigabyte 650 TI hardware is excellent and never spiked in heat like some with the 320 drivers, which is a testament to its cooling system. But I never had driver issues with Radeons like this.

A Source of Referral Spam

Ever wonder where the strange links in your Blogspot stats come from that don’t really link to your blog? Ever wonder why someone would do such a thing? Wonder no more.

r-e-f-e-r-e-r . com showed up on my stats today and this site blatantly lays out what is going on. For $29.95 you can spam forty million websites with links to your site to artificially drive traffic – or at least that’s what they promise. You may have heard of similar schemes for Facebook likes and Twitter follows to boost apparent status.

Screen capture follows and is safe to click on:

The part selling ads pointing out mostly webmasters visit this site is something I find vaguely hilarious. Most won’t be pleased to be visiting, I suspect.

Please don’t help them out by visiting their site.

Beowulf: Director’s Cut (2007) Review

Before underdressed CGI blue cat people fought “the man” in 3D and made a billion dollars, another underdressed CGI hero fought against “the woman” in 3D and barely managed a profit worldwide. Despite its underwhelming box office, this movie inspired by an ancient Anglo-Saxon poem is the more interesting of the two. Gory, boisterous, beautiful, and dark, it was hampered by trying to be both a meditation on human frailty and a popcorn action flick. UPDATED June 2013 with Blu-ray details and HD screen captures.

In those forgotten days before television, before movies, before radio, and yes even before comic books, heroic tales still circulated. Traveling bards who could recite great tales were highly valued and the superstars of their day. Committed to memory, countless tales that thrilled audiences of the past have been lost. But a few lasted long enough to be transcribed to paper and Beowulf is the oldest in the English culture.

If you are a dedicated fan and purist about the heroic poem, please stop reading here. It will save you time wailing and gnashing your teeth – besides, Grendel of the movie is much better at doing both of those. This movie is more of an “inspired by” story than an adaptation.

Set in 6th Century Denmark, the film begins with with chanting driven orchestral music (composed by veteran Alan Silvestri) and the main title flashing on screen. In 3D at the theater, it looked very good I must say. Quickly the title fades and we are presented with an ornate golden horn drinking cup featuring a dragon. It is apparent that we are supposed to pay attention to this object and I recall thinking “It’s a plot device!”

As the camera pans up, we are introduced to our first look at how the all CGI film renders humans. A very pretty and regal looking Nordic lady is holding the cup during its filling, all the while looking none too happy to be doing so. Soon we find out why and her identity.

A Worthy Anime

While I’ve been aware of Kickstarter for some time now and even been interested in a few projects, there has been nothing that I was willing to put my money on until now. Time of EVE is a wonderful webcast science fiction anime about a café where humans and humanoid robots mingle in a homage to Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. After marathoning the episodes the day after the Kickstarter announcement for an international Blu-ray of the movie version, I knew I had to contribute.

At the moment, the funding stands at $99,112 with my contribution in. The goal was $18,000 by June 22 and was blown through in 22 hours. That should give you an idea of what people think of the anime. Because of the overwhelming support, an English dub is going to be included and further stretch goals are being worked on. Personally, I’m hoping for a soundtrack CD for the next goal.

Time of EVE is wonderfully written and animated, so don’t expect crude Flash animation – this is the quality of theatrical release along the lines of Studio Ghibli productions. Heavy on character development, the film features humor and gentle emotion throughout rather than action.

The story begins when a curious high school student tries to account for the movements of the female humanoid housekeeper robot and walks into a mysterious unmarked back alley café. Inside there is one rule: don’t discriminate between humans and robots. As the mystery deepens, the question of what makes an individual a person is raised, tolerance is tested, and outside political intrigue raises the stakes involved. Along the way, everyone’s personal story gets told.

Check out the first episode for free at Crunchyroll and the whole thing if you are a paid subscriber.

Area 88 Ep. 5: An Unyielding Spirit in Lipstick

An anime original character loosely based on one from the source manga makes her debut in this action filled episode. With their top ace grounded, the mercenaries at Area 88 receive a large surprise when a fighter sweep goes wrong. Forcefully inserting herself into the all male base, a brash newcomer finds her abundant self confidence tested in the lethal skies.

The greatest strength of Area 88 lies not in its action sequences, but in its character development. A third of the way into the series and it had already introduced a good number of unique individuals, but lacked a strong female. Wanting to rectify that, the writer and director of the show decided to bring in a new pilot. It’s a well timed introduction given Shin is grounded while waiting for his new fighter.

Before the opening credits roll, a tense situation is depicted with the commander of the base, Saki, listening to the combat chatter while watching the radar screen. One of the flights has gotten into a furball and used all their ammunition up. Kim, the young boy flying the Sea Harrier FRS.1, is in trouble and unable to shake the MiG-21 on his tail.

Post credits, things look worse as a warning of a bogey entering the area is immediately followed by a radar warning receiver going off. That indicates a fighter radar has gone into padlock mode to lock a target for a guided missile. Kim prepares to die as the missile streaks in from the unfamiliar plane.

So I’m Thinking of Building an Ark…

…Not because I want to or have been commanded to, but because the rain keeps coming. There is a large amount of water standing in the fields around the county, flash flooding between Caledonia and Hokah last night, and the promise of another round of intense storms this afternoon. It’s reminding me a little of 2007 when the floods hit.

So far there hasn’t been anything quite to that level. However, the ground is past saturated and fields in the valleys are mostly unplanted. I did see some corn planted in higher elevations around Caledonia at least. What little thought toward a garden has been negated by the cold and wet spring we are suffering from. The farmers have far more to worry about though.

The Internet service has been going in and out the last few days and I suspect water is getting into the lines or repeater boxes somewhere. That’s trivial compared to how damaged the driveway is getting. A few more storms and we’ll be able to compete with the Grand Canyon for tourists.

The Last Dinosaur (1977) Review

You wouldn’t expect the studio behind Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman to put out a live action monster movie, but that’s exactly what Rankin/Bass Productions did in 1977. Supposedly aimed at older kids, this movie is a great deal more adult in its themes than expected. Ostensibly about a big game hunter getting a chance to hunt a dinosaur, the story is really about being a relic in a changing modern world.

Rankin/Bass Productions had a long running association with Japanese studios with both their animated and stop motion children’s specials being produced in the land of the rising sun. But that wasn’t the only kind of content made for the American producers. In the late 1960s, King Kong Escapes was made as a live action joint production taking advantage of the cheaper suit acting for giant monsters pioneered in Gojira.

In fact, The Last Dinosaur has a direct connection to that classic movie through the special effects studio founded by Eiji Tsuburaya, creator of the effects of the early Godzilla series and television’s Ultraman. Providing all the miniatures and dinosaurs, their work imbues the movie with the kaiju spirit.

The film opens with a dark room with a home movie comprised of big game hunting footage being shown over a fireplace. Hints of shag rug complete the impression of a 1970s make out den and sure enough when the lights come on it’s there. You will not mistake the setting for another time period, that’s for sure.

A pretty brunette in a pink blouse appears to be the trophy girlfriend of the much older and wealthy owner of the residence. He paws her for a bit before handing her his photo scrapbook to peruse while he goes to check on what the guys up front are doing. A quick pullback reveals that this is a room on a plane, which is very impressive.

Then we find out it is actually a model plane from the external shot. Okay, being just a little snarky there, but sometimes the Japanese use of models to just use models doesn’t look too great and this is one of those occasions.

The credits roll while the young woman leafs through the life of our main character, Masten Thrust, Jr. That name is also a giveaway of which decade this was made in, come to think of it. Played by Richard Boone of Have Gun, Will Travel fame, Masten is a man’s man according to the clever device used to show his backstory. Every page shows a part of his life through photos and newspaper clippings. Even his personality shows via the short and humorous comments on each page.

Memorial Day 2013

It is a rainy and cold day that adds a somber atmosphere to the day set aside in the United States to remember those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Many people confuse Memorial Day with Veterans Day, but this day is for those fallen in battle. A gloom has fallen on this holiday weekend, traditionally more a time to grill outside and for families to gather from afar.

I feel an odd foreboding today and have no inspiration to write the kind of post I’d like to. Browsing through my photos, I find that ones of the county memorial exist only in my memory and not on my hard drive. Instead, this photo of the M3A3 Stuart tank from World War II on display in Houston will have to suffice.

Many have sacrificed all so that the rest of us can exercise our agency and enjoy freedom. Sadly, I think remembrance of their deeds is fading in our ever more self centered society. I’m grateful for the way they laid down their lives for a greater good and I hope more of my fellow Americans will reflect on the true meaning of the day.

Topblogstories Referral Spam

Another round of spam has hit the blog stats page and this time it is a link to a purported hookup service for the sexually desperate. Okay, it doesn’t say that, but that’s how I view it.

topblogstories . com / led me to this page:

Link to NSFW screen capture, but not pornographic image.

topblogstories . com / 18331&c=3 led to virtually the same page:

Link to NSFW screen capture, but not pornographic image.

Notice the javascript coding picks up where your IP is from. I suspect false advertising given the number of breasts promised.

As usual, do not click on the referrals! I hope your mother warned you about these kinds of girls…

…and hopefully you will warn others about these kinds of spam.

UPDATE: The first link now leads to a topless photo. It may be that they rotate them, but be warned it is now very NSFW!

UPDATE 2: Seeing another round of it with a small variance. Persistent, aren’t they?

topblogstories . com / 7293&c=6

UPDATE 3: Thanks to the efforts of commenter Edgar Bangkok there are more details on the spammers, both methods and probable location in Ukraine. He’s posted detailed analysis at his blog in two posts:

The first one shows how javascript is used on the webpage.

The second post drops shows the topblogstories spammers are now targeting Google Analytics and shows sublinks going to AdultFriendFinder and Damned Love.

If you don’t read Italian, you’ll need to use a translation service such as Google Translate to read his posts.

Slowdown in Reviews

Due to a trip to Indiana and the resulting penalty to my health, I’ve been slow in getting anything serious done for the blog. A new movie review is currently being written and notes to redo the Beowulf review to cover the Blu-ray have been taken. Somewhere in the confusion I forgot to review the fifth episode of Area 88 so that will come after the review in progress.

I’m mulling over the nightmarish task of adding the tag “kaiju” to Japanese giant monster movies, but can’t decide. It isn’t the task that is dissuading me, it is the definition. Would giant monster movies from other countries fit the category? If not, what label for them? And since so few visitors use tags is it worth the effort? Since I put up the index pages I have noticed they get used far more than tags.

Meanwhile, I have upgraded my multimedia PC in the living room to the point where it has replaced the Samsung Blu-ray player for DVD playback. The picture quality of combining a Radeon 7750 based videocard and XBMC software has produced a result that is nothing short of amazing. While not true HD, the image quality has no right to look so good.

There is probably a decent sized blog post in that project and I may write one about the settings, software, and hardware cobbled together. A few screenshots would be appropriate, but I haven’t figured out how to get any out of the Samsung player. That is most likely impossible, which is a pity. The difference is staggering especially close up and the Samsung is no slouch at scaling up DVDs.

Why am I mentioning this in a post about reviews? Out of concern that my take on DVD picture quality is going to change due to the enhancements. What I’ll be seeing will be far better looking than most people will get to view. Yeah, yeah, I can see you are weeping for me having such an awful problem.

Failure Is an Option…

…At least it is where engineering is involved. NASA has successfully tested the privately built Orion capsule with parachutes rigged to fail. While we live in a risk and failure averse society (no lose soccer matches anyone?), science requires failures to advance knowledge and nowhere is that more true than in mechanical engineering. Failures expose weaknesses so that they can be addressed so that tragedies can be avoided as much as possible.

There is a life lesson in that, I think. My failures have taught me more than my successes, so I appreciate the necessity of screwing up from time to time. Maybe not immediately, but once cooled off things can be assessed objectively.

Oddly enough, the anime Space Brothers is going through an arc involving parachute failures right now, so this article leapt out at me even more than the usual aerospace report. Lives will depend on getting this right, so it is good to see the test went very well.

Moral Apathy and the Decline of the Nation

People who know that I am a conservative would probably think I’m celebrating all the bad press the Obama administration is finally getting this week. The long delayed look at the Benghazi terrorist attack and the huge IRS scandal are actually dominating the news right now. I doubt they would if the Feds hadn’t seized Associated Press phone records in an apparent fishing expedition for whistle blowers. No, none of this is happy news or even surprising.

Instead it feels like a continuation of the slow fall of the United States into a completely corrupt government like all before it. This is the death of the dream established by the founders of the nation, so it isn’t a cause for celebration. Frankly, I only see it as a symptom of what’s going on with the American people themselves.

New Page Index for Spam Posts

Since I’ve gotten a lot of views on posts about referral spam on Blogger and not many people click on tags, a new page has been added at the top under the blog title graphic to make it easier to find those posts. Spam, Lovely Spam is the page and also includes links to posts on other scams and spamming.

These aren’t the kind of posts that one would hope would be popular on a blog, simply because it would be a better world if it wasn’t necessary to identify the garbage filling our Blogger referrals. Being a strong believer in service, I’ll continue to add info as new spam shows up.

I’d say read and enjoy, but…