The last time I updated the top rotation, it had been a year since the time before. That's really too long. And I'm starting to get tired of pictures from Ai Yori Aoshi (except for the pictures of Taeko), and even more of Dokkaida and Aria.

So I've been kind of fitfully collecting pictures to update the top rotation. I'm not really ready yet, but I've got quite a few.

I've got maybe 20 from Kaze no Stigma, and another 20 from Dragonaut, and about 40 from the second volume of Kenichi, and 50 or so from Macademi Wasshoi, and 17 from Saki. (How many pictures of Nodoka can I use, really?) There's also 25 from Shrine of the Morning Mists. And tonight I collected about 65 from Real Bout High School.

That's not enough, though. That's not even 250. The current top rotation is 734 images. So I'm going to have to do a lot more, and probably that means I'll have to dip into fansubs some more.

I'm going to be doing Strike Witches, and I simply have to get at least a few from Exercising with Hinako. It'll be tough, but I may be able to find a few worthwhile images in the first two episodes of Aika Zero that aren't too ecchi. And there are some other things I might be able to use.

I was hoping that the full-season BD of Burst Angel would be good for a few, but it looks like manipulating full-resolution M2TS files is a problem. It may only be possible if I process and recode them, and that's a lot of effort.

So it won't be yet, but when I reach the point where I have no more ideas for things to do, I'll go with what I have. It may not be another 80% replacement like the last one.

Some of the grabs I took from Real Bout High School aren't really appropriate for the top rotation. There were two from the very end that I really really want to use, but I can't. I've put them below the fold.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 10:36 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Not literally i.e. not really SlashDot. But someone posted one of my articles (from 2001!) onto "Hacker News" this evening and my server is getting a lot of traffic.

It's kind of a strange feeling. It's been a lot time.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 09:38 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Lots of folks here in the mee.nu/mu.nu empire have been getting plagued with spammers recently. Brickmuppet, and even Pixy hisself. And even the Duck got hit just now.

Not me. In the two and a half years I've had this blog on mee.nu, I haven't had a single spam comment.

Why? Because I require commenters to register and log in. That's too sophisticated for a spambot, and most of the morons running the bots don't check to see if they succeed or fail on every site they hammer. So while I'm sure that the bots have been trying to leave comments here, they've been receiving error messages telling them that they have to log in. And spambots don't have the kind of AI it would take to recover from that.

And that's why there aren't any entries on my recent-comment list trying to tell us about shoes or clothing, like this:

I occasionally receive an email from someone complaining that they want to comment and don't want to register, and I sympathize. Or they don't understand why they have to get a website here at mee.nu just in order to comment.

Well, it's kind of like Live Journal. Membership is all or nothing. I had to create an account with Live Journal in order to leave comments on a couple of blogs there (e.g. Pete when he did his anime blogging there) and part of what came with that was a Live Journal home page. But I never used it. And people who register here don't have to use their mee.nu home pages that get set up.

I am not going to be changing this policy, because it serves me well. And as for certain people who just mail their comments to me instead of posting them, I really wish you'd register, log in, and post for yourself.

I'm going to be blunt about this: I do it this way for my convenience, not for yours. But that's because it's only just a little bit inconvenient for you, whereas if I went back to open commenting it would be painfully inconvenient for me.

UPDATE: Pete responds but misunderstands. There have been people who have written to me to say, "I have a comment but I don't want to register. Would you post the comment for me?"

I like email, when it's personal and private. I don't like it when it's make-work.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 06:07 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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1 I originally broke down and registered just to comment.  I still have dreams of actually doing something with my site someday, when I have time... somehow, I don't think Pixy's going to be needing new HDs for me anytime soon.

Posted by: BigD at September 30, 2009 07:11 PM (LjWr8)

2 Speaking solely for myself, I've had a total of five spam comments in the past six months.  When you're not a big-name blogger, it seems that The Evil Ones don't bother too much with you.

But because I've had so few spams, and because I know that a few of my commenters (Official First Reader Mallory, for example) would probably end up barred from leaving comments-- her computer is very old and very very slow-- it just works better if I don't have registration.

Though, to be honest, if I was being plagued by spambots I'd enable registration in a heartbeat.

Posted by: Wonderduck at September 30, 2009 08:22 PM (/O6qY)

3 I don't think I had ever even commented when you set it up where you had to register in order to.  I still did it in case I ever did want to comment.

Posted by: Arson55 at September 30, 2009 08:33 PM (rAY/z)

4 I'd sure rather register than have to fill out a Turing word box every damn time I comment.

Posted by: Toren at September 30, 2009 09:10 PM (9K6fX)

5 Time for spam filter 2.0 - and to ban China.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at September 30, 2009 09:11 PM (PiXy!)

6

There were times back in the old days when I seriously considered banning both China and Russia.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 30, 2009 09:26 PM (+rSRq)

7 Add Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, and Netherlands to the list.  Those four, along with Russia, account for 98% of my spam on a board I admin.

And you don't want to know how much Houblog gets.  Trust me, I am closing in on 100,000 caught by Akismet in only three years.

Posted by: ubu at October 01, 2009 04:13 AM (kL7KW)

8 It looks like someone's written some code specifically to spam Minx.  All the spam on the mu.nu side is hitting via the new comments thingy - an early version of Minx, with the same spam blocking tricks, whereas before it mostly came via the standard Movable Type comments form.

Now that I know that, I can mess them up good.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 01, 2009 04:52 AM (PiXy!)

9 This post has inspired me to register, and maybe start leaving comments.

Posted by: MeganeNeko at October 01, 2009 03:58 PM (IAtUE)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Fledge has info about a Wordpress hack that some of you may have been vulnerable to.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 02:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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An hour or so ago, someone from the power company knocked on my door. They wanted to replace all our power meters, which meant our power would be interrupted. Couldn't tell me exactly when it would happen, but advised me to shut down all my computer equipment.

So I did, and then walked to the grocery store and did some shopping. Just got back, and they should be done by now, so everything's back up again. But that's why you couldn't see the top rotation picture for an hour.

UPDATE: Son of a grumble-grumble! And three minutes after I posted that, the lights went off and back on again. Damn it!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 03:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It would seem that July 31 (which it still is, here) is System Administrator Appreciation Day. Even though it's August 1 in Sydney as I'm entering this, nonetheless:

Thank you, Pixy.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 03:02 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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My internet link was down for about an hour. As is usually the case, it was because Comcast was here fixing something. Fortunately I figured out that they were around, and got to them before they left.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 12:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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That's what the weather bureau says we got coming the next three days. I'm going to be doing the blocks-of-ice cooling trick, but it may not be sufficient.

So I'm posting this to warn you that I may have to shut off all my computer equipment for a few hours during each of those days, to save it (and me) from the heat. There may be periods in which you can load this site from Pixy's server but won't see the top rotation picture, which is hosted on my server here.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 03:20 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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Any site like this which has existed for quite a long time will get a significant number of refers from big search engines. I think Google is my biggest referer, on an ongoing basis.

And you know what the most referred to article is? It's the one about PedoKuma. I've been seeing that one show up a frighteningly large number of times in the Sitemeter listing. Turns out that people are doing image searches for him, and they're seeing the fake "Magic the Gathering" card featuring him and following that link.

Is this really my legacy with this blog? Sigh...

(The number 2 most referred page from Google is the one with the frame grabs of uncensored pictures from Ikki Tousen. They say, "If you want traffic, post porn." And I don't really mind so much showing people pictures of Hakufu's boobs.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 08:20 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Pixy sez we had a hard drive failure which took down the server.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 12:14 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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