I took advantage of the weather today to take the kayak out for its shakedown cruise. It was… educational.
First off, the previous owner put a fair amount of energy into customizing the cockpit to fit to his body, using closed-cell foam pads to make hip pads and thigh braces. Having a fit like this means that you don’t so much sit in the kayak as wear it. Admittedly, it’s like wearing something (very) highly starched, but still… It makes for a much more responsive boat, but there’s a fine line – too snug, and you can’t easily bail out in an emergency; too loose, and you slop around inside. (In theory, a good fit will also help you with Eskimo rolls, but I’m not at that point yet.)
When I bought the boat, I knew I was buying something that had been changed from one-size-sorta-fits-most to one-size-fits-one. I also knew that I was broader and taller than the previous owner, so I knew that at some point I’d need to reshape his foam. That point came late this morning; I spent about an hour making room for my wide(r) ass.
Still, it felt pretty good sitting in the driveway. I strapped it to the car, and headed off for Lake Washington. When I got there, I learned that I’m going to have to tweak the replacement skeg that I fabricated – it’s a shade too wide, perhaps due to expansion in the cold, and I’m going to need to figure out a better way to secure it to the S-hook that attaches it to the cable that raises and lowers it. Okay, so let’s see how it handles sans skeg. That’s the boat’s true nature, after all.
The verdict? It’s a nice little boat. It’s quick and responsive – maybe a little too responsive sometimes, I surprised myself a couple of times when I did something stupid creative – and very nimble; I’m willing to bet it does fun things in the surf. There was a steady wind, resulting in some smallish (1m or less – mostly less) waves, which the boat handled just fine. It does love to weathercock, so I’m really going to have to get that skeg squared away ASAP.
I’ve still got a little work to do with the foam, too – my right side fit fine, my left not so much. My hips were fine (otherwise, I probably would have tipped over), but my left thigh wasn’t quite in the right place.
Oh, and my second-hand dry gear is, in fact, quite dry. Not that I’d lose my balance while getting out of the boat in the shallows or anything like that. No. Never. Still… *ahem* Quite dry.
Good to know.
My inadvertent waterproofing test also brought home in a very real way the value of the maxim “Dress for the swim, not for the paddle.” The air temperature today was in the high 50s, low 60s, even with the wind. The water temp? High 40s, low 50s. Capilene thermal underwear is a Good Thing.
All in all, it was a most productive 90 minutes of paddling. The boat looks like it was a good purchase, as does all my gear… And I have definitely whetted my appetite for more. Er, more paddling that is, not gear.
Well, okay; gear too. But that’s sort of a given. C’mon, summer!
Posted by protected static as kayaking at 6:50 PM UTC
No Comments »
On Talking Points Memo this morning: there’s an 18 day gap in the 3000 pages of email released as part of the evolving DoJ Attorney firing scandal.
The gap runs from 15 November 2006 to 4 December 2006… From TPM:
The firing calls went out on December 7th. But the original plan was to start placing the calls on November 15th. So those eighteen days are pretty key ones.
Yeah, I’d certainly think so. But I can’t think of anything that might have been influencing their decision-making at that time. Nope, nothing at all.
Posted by protected static as politics at 8:39 AM UTC
No Comments »
It’s a spamalicious morning, I guess. In my own blog’s spam trap this morning was this nugget:
i sell im crap….read me.
me internet marketing guru
Phil Coel
me internet marketing guru
Why yes – you do sell crap. How refreshingly honest! But ‘guru’? Dunno ’bout that, Phil; this just makes you look like an idiot. Maybe you’re being joe-jobbed – if that’s the case, then you’ve got some damage control to do, because I’ve reported your site to Google Ads.
So Phil? Me not internet marketing guru. Me not sell im crap. Me blogger. Me not like spam.
Posted by protected static as asshattery, spam at 9:06 AM UTC
No Comments »
Hey, Google? What are you doing about this?
Three out of every four unique Blogspot.com URLs that appeared in the top 50 results for commercial queries were spam, the study said. Blogspot is the hosting site for Google’s blogging service. Blogs created for marketing purposes are sometimes referred to as “splogs.”
Right now, hauntedvampire.com is being hammered by a comment spammer who is using nothing but blogspot.com URLs. Hundreds and hundreds of them, all unique, all following the same pattern (spamproduct-randomstring.blogspot.com), and the bots are all coming from a huge range of IP addresses, so I can’t efficiently ban access by IP blocks.
Oh, it’s all being caught by our spam trap, but still – it’s annoying as hell, and frustrating to see THE SAME HOST again and again and again. I expect to see spam on .info sites (And as an aside: can we just shitcan the entire .info top-level domain now? Please? Has anyone ever seen a valid .info site? The signal to noise ratio in this TLD is rapidly approaching zero.), and .edu domains frequently have ancient or understaffed subsystems just crying out to be exploited, but Google? Google’s got the cash and the brainpower to do this right, and well… they aren’t.
It’s almost impossible to reach Blogspot.com abuse, and it is impossible to report more than one splog at a time. Given that Blogger’s new AJAX facade has also made it a more attractive delivery platform for malware exploits, you’d think that Google would want to make it easier to contact abuse. But no – you have to search creatively to even find the link to their crappy ‘report abuse’ form. (Here’s a hint: you’ll have better luck using Google to perform a site-specific search on help.blogger.com instead of using the actual Blogger knowledge base.)
Now that’s customer service.
You’d also think that a company like Google would be able to discern the patterns in these splogs, and implement some proactive measures. Oh, wait! That’s right! They make money from this too, since they’re the ones selling the ad space in the first place.
Mind you, Google isn’t alone in this – AOL and Netscape’s free pages are probably equally polluted, and their abuse team is just as impossible to contact. (Surprisingly, Tripod and GeoCities are the most responsive, and easiest to contact.) But I guess I’ve come to expect a little more from Google…
Don’t be evil, right? Behold, the Invisible Hand: producing varying values of ‘evil’ since 9 March 1776.
[via /., of course...]
Posted by protected static as blogging, blogspot, spam at 8:47 AM UTC
4 Comments »
At 3/14 1:59 PM, wish your favorite geek a Happy π Day!
(No, I can’t take full credit for the title – I ganked it from the Cosmic Log link.)
Oh yeah – it’s Einstein’s birthday today, too…
Posted by protected static as 30-second science blogging at 10:43 AM UTC
No Comments »
Like some Carboniferous-era marsh being crushed under geologic strata to produce coal, the layers of ‘misdirection’ and ‘misleading’ from the fever swamp of this Administration are slowly compressing and crystalizing into their pure, base essence: lies:
As has happened so many times in the last six years, the maximal version of this story — which seemed logical six weeks ago but which I couldn’t get myself to believe — turns out to be true. Indeed, it’s worse. We now know that Gonzales, McNulty and Moschella each lied to Congress. We know that the purge was a plan that began at the White House — and it was overseen by two of President Bush’s closest lieutenants in Washington — Miers and Gonzales. Sampson is the second resignation. There will certainly be more.
If this should prove to be as combustible as its carbon counterpart, I’ll glady help fan the flames, Kyoto Protocols be damned.
Maybe this Administration is finally collapsing under the weight of their duplicity and single-minded devotion to Executive power. But I’ve thought this before; I’m not holding my breath.
Posted by protected static as politics at 9:20 PM UTC
No Comments »
Just to make the point of my previous post, because I used a magic phrase, a splog named O2 Bazaar sent me a trackback within an hour of posting.
How do I know O2 Bazaar is a splog? Because it’s only a month old, and has no original content – just 36 posts of stuff they’ve scraped from other blogs. So, to pee in their Google juice, let’s try this, shall we? The phrase that they like is:
‘dedicated server’ – O2 Bazaar = spammers
‘dedicated server’ – O2 Bazaar = content thieves
‘dedicated server’ – O2 Bazaar = asshats
‘dedicated server’ – O2 Bazaar = splog
O2 Bazaar is run by asshats who steal the content of others. They sell nothing, they provide nothing. They are the pubic lice of the blogosphere. They also edit the content of others to highlight the phrase related to stuff that they’re stealing: in this case, the asshats like ‘dedicated server’. Got that, O2 Bazaar? ‘dedicated server’ spammers?
How’re they gonna like that on their front page? When/if the trackback comes in, I’ll take a screenshot of them…
Oh, and if you run across a splog like O2 Bazaar that is using GoogleAds to raise revenue, report them to Google. Click on the “Ads by Google” link, then select “Provide feedback about the site you just visited.”
Posted by protected static as asshattery, spam at 11:56 AM UTC
5 Comments »
Over at The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire, we’ve seen a fairly large surge in comment spam attempts. In the past, I’ve tried to deal with this with a mix of plugins but the best one of these had the unfortunate side-effect of preventing the site owner (Carnacki) from accessing the blog (he’s got some funky configuration issue with his ISP, I think). We’ve been relying upon Askimet alone for a while now, and while it works really well, it’s kind of tedious having to review and delete comments. Askimet has trapped a handful of false postives, so I like to eyeball the output before deleting it. When it’s a dozen or so pieces of spam, that’s fine – but when it’s hundreds? Bleh.
Not wanting to futz around with plugins again, I opted for a blunt instrument approach: the .htaccess file. For those of you who don’t know, .htaccess is a file that you can use to control site access when you don’t have access to the root server configuration settings – which we don’t, since we don’t have a dedicated server. (Hell, we don’t even pay for a fixed IP address. MotHV is small enough that it isn’t worth the expense, particularly since the site doesn’t generate any revenue.)
Now, with .htaccess you can block individual IP addresses, but most comment spammers use a range of IP addresses. Looking at the worst offenders, I began blocking large swaths of the ‘net from accessing the site. Chinese ISPs? Gone. We’re an English-language blog, and we never get any interactive visitors from Chinese IP addresses, only bots. Hosting-only companies? Gone. Sure, some of their IP addresses may be allocated to ‘real’ domains, and some companies may be using those IP addresses as gateways, but in those cases, the IP address should resolve back to their domain name. If it’s just one IP address out of a pool of thousands? Nope. It’s a bot. You get the screamin’ 403 “Access denied” error.
I’ve used some discretion – we do get legitimate visitors from Japan, Korea, India, Thailand, & Malaysia, so I won’t take the totally drastic step that some people have of banning the entire range of APNIC IP addresses. That’s stupid. But individual ISPs in Asia that have never sent us a single legitimate visitor? Bzzt. Blocked. That one European host that is responsible for 50% of our comment spam? Every single netblock gets blocked. That US-based host responsible for another 20%? Same thing.
So the other night, I blocked a couple of dozen ranges of IP addresses, covering tens of thousands of IP addresses. Comment spam attempts are back down to a manageable amount (hundreds per day to dozens per day), though I know this will be temporary. And guess what else happened?
We lost almost 40% of our RSS subscribers.
Yup. 40%. At first I was a little surprised by the drop – but then I remembered my .htaccess changes, so I’ll say good-riddance to bad rubbish. It’ll be interesting to see how many site visitors we lose over the next few days, too – though we typically don’t count bots since we’re mostly using JavaScript-based counters to track visitors, and bots don’t run JavaScript.
So… How many of your subscribers are really just monitoring your site for activity?
[edited to add - do I lose any points for having two back-to-back posts with "*really*" in the title?]
Posted by protected static as blogging, geek, spam at 10:10 AM UTC
4 Comments »
If I was, there’s no way in Hell that I’d have gone in to work today – I’d've spent it on the water instead. Today was simply glorious… and the extended forecast? Rain. Straight through the weekend. Temps in the 50s, but still. Lotsa lotsa rain.
Eh. Oh well. Spring is well underway, even if the water is still really bloody cold. I managed to pick up some secondhand semi-dry gear in great condition this past winter (w00t! Craigslist!); now’s as good a time as any to see how well it works, right? That and some Capilene long johns and I should be fine.
On a semi-related note, I’ve recently learned about this new boat:
[thumbnails link to full-size image; images originally from here]
Big deal, a red boat; so what. Okay, so look at it here:
Gosh, it’s like a kayak, only smaller!
Yup. It’s scaled to kid size, with all the features you’d expect of a serious adult hybrid/light touring kayak. Current Designs has been offering this new Raven model in limited production for a few months; according to a factory sales rep I emailed, they’re just now gearing up for full-scale production.
In addition to this new model from Current Designs, Wilderness Systems is also introducing a kid-sized sea kayak. WS’ boat is plastic, unlike the CD boat which is composite; there’s about a 4kg difference in weight, but there is a fairly substantial price difference. The WS boat is also scaled for a slightly larger child, with a bottom weight of 28kg or so; the Raven starts at 23kg (23kg or so is where The Boy should be by the end of summer – that’s also the lower bound of most of the adult-styled floatation vests).
There’ve been a couple of niche builders out there for a while who make ‘yaks for kids, but this looks like the first time that any of the major manufacturers has decided to build a full-featured kayak for kids instead of offering a glorified recreational boat. I don’t know if this is a cyclical trend or not, but I hope it lasts a few years – the niche builders’ boats are competitive in price, but not once you add shipping…
So… Bet you can’t guess what we’ve got The Boy signed up for this summer (among other things).
Really? What gave it away?
Posted by protected static as gadget, kayaking at 11:24 PM UTC
No Comments »
Regarding Coulter:
Lesson for the Edwards camp: if you can’t directly address the hate fomented by Coulter in light of the public backlash felt by Tim Hardaway and M&M Mars, you haven’t progressed beyond 2004 either. All you have to do is Google a few seconds to find incidents of blatant bigotry and violence like the ones I mentioned above. That is the real price LGBT citizens pay when the new F-bomb is validated at a political conference of this size and scope.
The point isn’t that Coulter is a bigot. We already knew that – she’s a mean-spirited buffoon who in and of herself isn’t worth the time of day. What needs to be pointed at again and again and again is the degree to which the contemporary GOP has hitched their wagon to her star.
Her remark drew tremendous applause at CPAC. That is the issue, and needs to be the issue at every press conference that every GOP presidential aspirant holds between now and the primaries: X, do you agree with Ann Coulter’s characterization of Edwards as a ‘faggot’? And Mitt Rommney in particular needs to be asked at every turn what Coulter’s endorsement of him (and his endorsement of her, immediately prior to her remarks) mean about him as a person and as a candidate.
I’m not a big fan of Captain Ed, but to give credit where it’s due, he gets (part of) it:
At some point, Republicans will need to get over their issues with homosexuality. Regardless of whether one believes it to be a choice or a hardwired response, it has little impact on anyone but the gay or lesbian person. We can argue that homosexuality doesn’t require legal protection, but not when we have our front-line activists referring to them as “faggots” or worse. That indicates a disturbing level of animosity rather than a true desire to allow people the same rights and protections regardless of their lifestyles.
Personally, I don’t think that much of what constitutes the modern conservative movement is interested in ‘allow[ing] people the same rights and protections regardless of their lifestyles’, but hey – if they can demonstrate a real committment to equal protection under the law, albeit from a different perspective than mine, that’s great; let’s have more of it.
Until then, the hate speech itself deserves nothing but contempt. The true outrage needs to be reserved for those who quietly sit by and reap political gain from it.
Posted by protected static as politics at 8:52 AM UTC
4 Comments »
shorter so close to verbatim it isn’t funny Ann Coulter: John Edwards is a faggot.
Yup. There’re your conservative values, proudly on display at CPAC.
Posted by protected static as politics at 8:36 PM UTC
No Comments »
