Odds and Sods
World Crossing is apparently closing its doors, or rather having its doors closed on it. Another piece of my past vanishing. Not that I'm particularly upset about it. I pretty much stopped hanging out over there at all once b.org finally found a stable hosting solution. But it is sad. The folks still over there are scurrying around looking for alternative hosts and ways of saving their forums*.
* I took a look to see if my Caretan icon was still in place on the last forum posts before the move, but I must have replaced it with my usual Opus icon during one of the brief returns during a b.org outage. OTOH, Lorne's head is still falling off up at the top of the page. I hope someone saved that somewhere.
It was never the best system, and since it was essentially a test bed for the platform, service was occasionally spotty. But it had the virtue of being free, and it served as a lifeboat for a number of communities after Salon pulled the rug out. And for awhile the Buffista Contingency Plan was the most active forum over there, at least until the Rules Girls showed up. Good times.
At least there is some warning for those still there. Peoples Forum, which ran on the same platform and served as another b.org safe house, just vanished without a trace one day, an example of what happens when one entrusts a community's existence to a single hobbyist. Table Talk continues to hang on, but it seems a ghost of what it was before it went pay. There is still a Buffy thread, #9, although it was frozen three years ago. When we left it was on thread #8. And Mary Beth is still there, so that's something.
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For the past few months an old post of mine here on LJ has been attracting the occasional spam comment. I screen anonymous comments, so LJ notifies me every time one shows up, and I delete them as spam as soon as I see 'em. It's always the same post. The odd thing is that the post is from June 2009, and is just me quoting another blog comment that I thought was hilarious. (Still do.) Clearly this must be a spambot algorithm gone wrong, because why spam a two year-old post? Nobody except me has likely looked at it in ages (if ever). I suspect a couple of words from the quote are the red flag for the bot. I suppose I could put up a test post using them as a honeypot to see if my suspicions are correct.
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Spring seems to be slowly making its way to Rhody. The weather has been a little warmer, and the snow cover has mostly gone away. The exceptions are shady areas and the huge plow piles that are holding tightly to their existence.
I hauled out the bike yesterday for the first time since December, and took a ride on the bike path. It was good to be on the bike, less good to have to deal with all the puddles on the path. At some point it was plowed, and being in the woods, the plow pile is still there leaking all over the path. Plus, they only made one pass, so only about 2/3 of the path is exposed along most of its length, making for some narrow squeezes twixt strollers and bikes. Also, I started breaking in a new saddle (more on this later), and my butt got really sore. If it gets a little warmer, I may have another go today, this time with the old saddle.
* I took a look to see if my Caretan icon was still in place on the last forum posts before the move, but I must have replaced it with my usual Opus icon during one of the brief returns during a b.org outage. OTOH, Lorne's head is still falling off up at the top of the page. I hope someone saved that somewhere.
It was never the best system, and since it was essentially a test bed for the platform, service was occasionally spotty. But it had the virtue of being free, and it served as a lifeboat for a number of communities after Salon pulled the rug out. And for awhile the Buffista Contingency Plan was the most active forum over there, at least until the Rules Girls showed up. Good times.
At least there is some warning for those still there. Peoples Forum, which ran on the same platform and served as another b.org safe house, just vanished without a trace one day, an example of what happens when one entrusts a community's existence to a single hobbyist. Table Talk continues to hang on, but it seems a ghost of what it was before it went pay. There is still a Buffy thread, #9, although it was frozen three years ago. When we left it was on thread #8. And Mary Beth is still there, so that's something.
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For the past few months an old post of mine here on LJ has been attracting the occasional spam comment. I screen anonymous comments, so LJ notifies me every time one shows up, and I delete them as spam as soon as I see 'em. It's always the same post. The odd thing is that the post is from June 2009, and is just me quoting another blog comment that I thought was hilarious. (Still do.) Clearly this must be a spambot algorithm gone wrong, because why spam a two year-old post? Nobody except me has likely looked at it in ages (if ever). I suspect a couple of words from the quote are the red flag for the bot. I suppose I could put up a test post using them as a honeypot to see if my suspicions are correct.
---
Spring seems to be slowly making its way to Rhody. The weather has been a little warmer, and the snow cover has mostly gone away. The exceptions are shady areas and the huge plow piles that are holding tightly to their existence.
I hauled out the bike yesterday for the first time since December, and took a ride on the bike path. It was good to be on the bike, less good to have to deal with all the puddles on the path. At some point it was plowed, and being in the woods, the plow pile is still there leaking all over the path. Plus, they only made one pass, so only about 2/3 of the path is exposed along most of its length, making for some narrow squeezes twixt strollers and bikes. Also, I started breaking in a new saddle (more on this later), and my butt got really sore. If it gets a little warmer, I may have another go today, this time with the old saddle.