Alden Bates' Weblog

From The Sun: Sexterminate (NWS)

BEEB bosses have gone ballistic after discovering the Daleks are starring in a PORN FLICK ... Estate director Tim Hancock said: “The reason the Daleks are still the most sinister thing in the universe is because they do not make things like porn.

Hancock's forgetting the infamous shoot with Katy Manning posing naked with the Dalek, obviously

See also: The Register: BBC pulls plug on Dalek lesbian romp flick and the trailer! Also NWS.

I suspect that the Dalek voices used are soundbytes from the original series. The grey Dalek looks pretty authentic. There's a company which makes them at something like £4000 a go, which probably wouldn't be out of the price range... The red Dalek, however, looks sadly misproportioned.

Having just watched Star Trek: Enterprise season 1 all the way through for the first time, I can safely summarise it thusly:

* NX-01 has joined #Starsystem37754
<NX-01> HIII! WE'RE FROM EARTH!
<BumpyForeheadRace35> WTF?
<NX-01> WE'RE CALLED HUMANS!
<BumpyForeheadRace35> That's nice...
<BumpyForeheadRace35> Caps lock?
<NX-01> WE WANT TO BE FRIENDS!
<BumpyForeheadRace35> ...
<BumpyForeheadRace35> FFS
* BumpyForeheadRace35 has left #Starsystem37754

* BumpyForeheadRace35 has joined #Starsystem37755
<BumpyForeheadRace36> Hey, what's up?
<BumpyForeheadRace35> There's some newbies running around, They say they're from Earth.
<BumpyForeheadRace36> Earth? Never heard of it.
<BumpyForeheadRace35> If they just turn up, just ignore them and maybe they'll go away.
* NX-01 has joined #Starsystem37755
<NX-01> HIII! WE'RE FROM EARTH!
<NX-01> HELLLLLLOOOOOO!
* NX-01 scans for life signs
* NX-01 has left #Starsystem37755
<BumpyForeheadRace35> Thank Roddenberry that worked.

* NX-01 has joined #Starsystem37756
<NX-01> HIII! WE'RE FROM EARTH!
<KlingonBirdOfPrey> P'TAK!
* KlingonBirdOfPrey sets mode: +b NX-01
* NX-01 was kicked by KlingonBirdOfPrey (GRE'THOR WILL BE PAVED WITH YOUR ASHES!)

Because when you can't find anywhere else to park your vehicle of mass destruction, hanging it from a tree is perfectly acceptable.

Who said Unreal Tournament was unrealistic? :)

I'm trying to work out something: Exactly why is the University of Mannheim so interested in my robots.txt file?

The only reason I block robots from indexing the "shared" directory is because stuff in there is hotlinkable - I put pictures in there so people reading my weblog via the rss feed can see the pictures without having to come visit the site itself. But I don't want random people finding the pictures on Google Images and then hotlinking to them from message boards/myspace/etc.

So far as I can tell, it's some sort of security project... perhaps they're looking at robots.txt because people will be blocking directories containing supersecret files. If you have files you don't want people to find, don't put them on the Internets!

The Lower Hutt Warehouse reopened in its location in the Westfield Queensgate mall today... I foolishly tried to shop there and only just escaped with my life!

Metaphorically speaking, of course. The place was packed! Sadly they didn't have the item I was after (A Megadeth CD my brother wants for Christmas).

Yes, they're back, only they're no longer spamming the URLs of blogs. They appear to be spamming the URLs of lighthouse and quotation sites. Quite what the connection is here, I don't know, though I did spot at least one quotation site which allows comments, and which the spammers had hit...

Comment spam text examples:

I really appreciate what you're doing here. Very interesting site. although I am bringing a change of underwear: http;//www.aphids.com/cgi-bin/quotes.pl?act=ShowListingsForSub , Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing , An investment in knowledge pays the best interest

Your site is exactly the kind of sites which make the net surfing so fun. Discontent makes rich men poor: http;//www.seathelights.com , when Cards is Soldier it will Lose Round How Linux thin-clients benefit schools , Soldier can Expect Soldier It's the other lousy two percent

Interesting use also of a rel="itsok" attribute on some of the links. Could be used in a text blacklist perhaps...

As Boing Boing reported, Sony BMG has put in place a program to allow customers to exchange infected CDs with CDs without the rootkit crap on.

Which is sorta sporting of them, but as I pointed out previously, Sony said they were abandoning copy protection last year, so who knows what future Sony releases will have on them. It's entirely possible that they'll take a lesson from the extraordinary amount of bad press they got this time, but (and excuse me for being cynical) I'm not holding my breath.

Just uploaded TSV 32 to the NZDWFC site.

Including! An article on The Doctor Who Magazine comic strip Memorial and making thereof; an analysis of the material cut from Attack of the Cybermen prior to filming; the second Novelisations article, this time featuring the third Doctor Target novelisations; the end of Jeff Stone's Wotan Lives!; and lots and lots of other goodies.

TSV 32 also sees the first appearance of a shortlived cartoon I did titled Dr Hoo. This continued in irregular fashion until TSV 42, whereupon I ran out of ideas. The TSV 32 edition features a character from a more professional cartoon... Also from me is What's Really Inside a Dalek, but the less said about that, the better. :)

What the hey?

I got a comment today with the text "I can't believe it, my co-worker just bought a car for $68517. Isn't that crazy!" from "Betsy Markum". Since it didn't have anything to do with the post in question, looked automated, I googled it, and it looks like Betsy has been posting the news on quite a few blogs, with different dollar amounts every time.

Looking at the logs didn't reveal anything notable: their tool doesn't have a user agent set, and the IP address resolves to a dyndns.org address. The only other hit from the same IP was on the 3rd, when it fetched the entry page (again with no user agent). Visiting the dyndns.org address gives a 818KB text file of what appear to be logs from router connections (infected networks?).

The comment didn't have any links with it, other than a yahoo email address. I don't get it. Walks like a spam, talks like a spam, but what's the payoff? Or is it just for car-ma? (d'oh!)

Enquring minds want to know:

The UK release of Light + Shade has 13 tracks on Light, and 9 tracks on Shade.

The NZ release of Light + Shade has 8 tracks on Light, and 8 tracks on Shade*.

Enquring minds therefore want to know why we here in NZ miss out on 6 tracks which the UK dwellers get? I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, seeing as it is a double CD, but...

* The Smokecds listing appears to be missing Nightshade, but then the Marbecks listing shows the UK track listing...