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Spam subject today:

"You have never thought that this could change urlife for better."

What is urlife? And why would I want to change it?

Yes, it was a spam for, ahem, "enhancements."

As of right now, I've enabled a system called "reCAPTCHA" to prevent spam comments, not that I've gotten any spam comments yet. OK, a couple. But instead of being just an annoying roadblock to posting comments, reCAPTCHA is actually useful. The words with which you are presented when you make a comment are words that have been scanned from old books, but cannot be clearly read by the computer digitizing the books. So, to post a comment, you enter two words, one which is already known by the system, and one which is unknown. If your answer to the "known" word is correct, and your answer for the unknown word matches other people's answers, then that word is successfully digitized. You can get all the details on the reCATPCHA Learn More page.

Enjoy helping digitize old texts!

I just came across an interesting spam message. It was a spam offering to sell me (I think) health-care-related e-mail addresses. After getting over my fright at facial features being deformed by the drip bag, I noticed what seemed to be a weird fuzzy area in the photo. If you don't see it, look really closely at the area just to the left of the drip tube. See it? Yup, it's a watermark. That usually indicates a photo that might be a thumbnail or sample from a stock photography site.

So, I did a little investigating. Looking at the source of the e-mail, I found the URL to the photo which included this file name: SuperStock_1491R-120345.jpg

That's right, he didn't even rename the file when he downloaded the sample from SuperStock. Hmm...that really gives me confidence in his character and operating principles.