Category Archives: Uncategorized

Assault of the spam-lords, and the swag arriveth.

Turns out it’s not only foot-fetishists with a thing for Marisol Nichols who swing past this site.  I’ve been hit by wave after wave of increasingly sophisticated spam comments.  It started off just being garbage link salad to what I assume are russian porn sites or similar, which are thankfully blocked by a handy little plug-in called Akismet.  Can’t recommend it highly enough, the hard-working little bugger catches just about everything that hasn’t come over the transom via human hands.

Still, it’s interesting to look at the increasing verbosity of the spam, as it grows and learns, much like electronic sea monkeys.  What started off as “Cheap Doxycycline!” and “Farmville cheats” has now grown into fake people who, while they may not quite pass the Turing Test, are definitely evidence that Skynet is here and is trying to make with the blog niceties. 

Today’s top 3 philosophical spam moments:

1. “All men have an instinct for conflict.  At least, all healthy men.”

2. “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

and today’s favourite #3. “The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth–that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.”

Word, Skynet.  Word.

In other news, my Writers of the Future swag has arrived.  At last my stonking huge trophy sits on the brag-shelf, and I’m looking for the perfect place to hang Seth J Rowanwood’s stunning picture of my story “The House of Nameless”.  I am not surprised he took home the illustrator gong, it’s just gorgeous.  Speaking of Seth, my talented polymath collaborator has a new story available in an e-anthology, which can be found here: http://www.sethjrowanwood.com/archives/601

Ah yes, was very good to get into this swag of goodies.  The added bonus is that Toddler Fisch thoroughly enjoys the enormous box it all arrived in, and loves being ferried hither and yon in said box.  Buggered if I know why we buy that kid toys 🙂 

Best errata ever. I salute you, oh nit-picking nerds.

The comments are where the gold is, almost 300 now, evenly mixed between “who gives a shit” and “you’re still wrong, it was X spaceship”.

(lifted from http://www.news.com.au/technology/were-sorry-for-claiming-captain-kirk-was-in-command-of-captain-picards-starship/story-e6frfro0-1225947119042

 

YESTERDAY, a news.com.au article incorrectly stated that the Star Trek starship USS Enterprise-E, otherwise known as model NNC-1701-E, was the successor to Captain Kirk’s original USS Enterprise.  

It has since been brought to our attention that the NNC-1701-E in fact came two models after Captain Kirk retired and was under the command of Captain Jean Luc Picard. 

Read the original, poorly-researched article here 

User “Your Mum’s Lunch” led the charge of those who correctly pointed out that after losing the original Enterprise to the Klingons, Captain Kirk was given the Excelsior Class Enterprise-B as a stop-gap measure until the refit of the Enterprise-A was completed. 

The Internet is a Rock, Lift at Your Peril

For the first time I played around with the statistics tools for this website, just to see what’s been going on there.  It’s interesting to see how many folks are dropping by to read about my various adventures in My Writery Life, even if many of them are spam robots/agents of Skynet.  Amongst the number of visitors, locations read from etc, there’s an interesting section that shows just what search terms have brought them to the site.

Today’s creepiest one?  “Marisol Nichols feet”.  Someone really wants to see photos of this poor lady’s trotters, possibly Quentin Tarantino.  Good luck on your foot-fetish quest, oh random weirdo!

Not seen in photo: feet.

Still, I seem to remember Lee Battersby got a driveby viewing of his blog based on the search term “Billie Piper’s Nipples.”  And now, that person will also come here.  Just go and hire Secret Diary of a Call Girl, you sick freaks.  Better yet, use your one-handed typing skills for good, not evil.

In other news,  I recently ploughed through the first two seasons of True Blood.  I quite enjoyed the show, even when it got a bit soap-operaish and everyone-roots-everyone.  I have to say that my favourite character by far is Jason Stackhouse, he’s so stupid that he simply transcends intelligence, and you gotta love his enthusiasm.  Furthermore, a spoof of this show ended up on Sesame Street, titled “True Mud”.  Vampire porn on Sesame Street?  HOW?!?

On professionalism, goings on, and some quick absurdity

Professionalism

I’ve kinda neglected the blogging a bit lately – call it a spurt of professionalism, in that I only wanted to blog Things Of Note and not just pollute my new site with rubbish jokes, pictures of stupid stuff I found funny, and all of the crimes against humour that I committed on my old Livejournal site since 2007 or so.  I tend now to email this stuff to a select few and spare the greater world my special brand of spam 🙂

Still, I’ve rethought this approach, particularly as my parents even read this to find out what’s going on and I’ve been more or less silent, barring some writing-related news.  There seems to be a cast-iron infallible belief amongst many aspirant writers that, above all else, you have to be professional at all times, and conduct yourself with perfect decorum in your online life, and most definitely in person when you are at cons or what have you.

Continue reading

Some belated WOTF congrats!

Just found out that the winners of the 2nd quarter of the 2010 Writers of the Future have been announced.  And 2 out of 3 of the winners are Aussies!  WOOHOO!

THE 2nd QUARTER WINNERS ARE

1st Place — Patty Jansen of New South Wales, Australia

2nd Place — Ben Mann of West Australia

3rd Place — Van Aaron Hughes of Colorado

Some special Vegemite congrats to Patty and Ben (and of course Van)!  More in the write-up here:

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/latest-winners-announced-in-international-writers-of-the-future-contest-104980524.html

Went Bush

Just spent some time at Kangaroo Island, and it was amazing.  So beautiful, and so many cool things to do.  Saw oodles of native animals (both roadkill and still hopping), drove over 1000km on several scary dirt roads, looked at some Remarkable Rocks, ate honey from the purest strain of Ligurian bee in the world, and paid $1.70/litre for fuel.  Most importantly, I had an absolute ball with my nearest and dearest. 

Our cabin at Kangaroo Island – geez, we sure did it tough 🙂

It was an interesting exercise to go without phone coverage, internet access or TV – I have proved to myself that I’m a sucker for these modern conveniences, and have spent most of the time since getting home huddled to the computer, plugged into all the goings-on.  It’s scary how much I like to suckle from the information superhighway.  Sigh.  I wouldn’t change a thing.

Read a bunch of stuff while away, including China Mieville’s “Iron Council” (how have I NEVER read a China Mieville book until now?) and halfway through George RR Martin’s collection “Dreamsongs”.  In an attempted fit of Literature I got a David Malouf book from somewhere but I’m kinda struggling to keep my interest levels up on that one.

Just putting the finishing touches onto After the World: Corpus Christi, and poking around with a few other writing bits and pieces.  Now, a final week at home to chill and write up a storm.  As far as holidays go, this one’s all fine and dandy 🙂

Daddy and Toddler Fisch, near Seal Bay.  There’s some important sand-castle construction under way and we mean business!

More WOTF photos

A final wrap-up blog post will be coming soon, wherein I finish the retelling of my great USA adventure.

In the mean-while, one of the photographers who recorded the event (the lovely Huguette) has emailed me a giant swag of professional photos taken during the week.  I’ve uploaded them all into a Flickr account for your enjoyment, and it can all be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jason_fischer/