I wonder what in hell this person in China was trying to do?

- -> /adminhh/ytpylogin.asp 61.191.53.53
- -> /adminhh/login.asp 61.191.53.53
- -> /adminhh/login.asp 61.191.53.53
- -> /database/pibuaddsfedsffdsggfhhdf.asa 61.191.53.53
- -> /database/addsfedsffdsggfhhdf.asa 61.191.53.53
- -> /database/addsfedsffdsggfhhdf.asa 61.191.53.53
- -> /database/fqtmaaddsfedsffdsggfhhdf.asa 61.191.53.53
- -> /database/aaddsfedsffdsggfhhdf.asa 61.191.53.53
- -> /database/aaddsfedsffdsggfhhdf.asa 61.191.53.53

Nothing good, I'm sure.

UPDATE: Presumably they were looking for some sort of vulnerability in a Windows Server, since that's what ASP runs on. Still, it's a weird one.

There's another thing I've seen off and on over the years where someone tries to access a specific GIF file in one of two specific directories, and when they don't find them they go away. I've always assumed they were using that as a way of determining if a certain specific software package or server package was present. Presumably if they did find it they would then launch some sort of targeted attack. Since they never did (neither directory exists here) they left me alone.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 01:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 165 words, total size 1 kb.

I am going to take my server off line now, to blow it up out. I'm tired of it rebooting with heat faults.

Until further notice you will not be able to load the top rotation picture, and I will be offline and unable to receive email. In the best of cases, it'll probably take 20 minutes. In the worst of cases I'll be gone for a week.

UPDATE: Back.

It wasn't quite as disgusting inside as I thought it would be, but the air intake vents on the bottom outside were awful. Anyway, let's hope this makes a difference.

UPDATE: I think so, but only time will tell. There's a fan on the back that blows air outward. I vaguely remember that it was hardly moving any air, but now it's blowing quite well.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 04:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 139 words, total size 1 kb.

It looks like Pixy fixed the time issue, so that instead of 3 hours in the future, time is now. But since things like comments and posts are sorted in time order, that means there will be some strange ordering until we catch up, 3 hours from now.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 12:19 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Pixy is going to make another attempt to port mee.nu to the new hardware. Transient disruptions of service and odd behavior are to be expected. He intends to start at 0600 GMT, which is 11PM PDT.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 08:16 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I received this yesterday:

I hope I'm within the strict confines of what is acceptable to you in email.  Anyway...Why does a bright, intelligent adult such as yourself give one shit about mindless "Chizumatic" cartoons, cool for a nine-year-old?  Utterly strange and sadly, meaningless.....

Boy, I sure hope I can become cool and smart and sophisticated like you when I grow up!

I didn't respond like that, or in any of the other obvious ways ("What the hell business is it of yours?" "Who appointed you to be my mother?" "It's never too late to have a happy childhood." etc.). Instead, I sent him the URL of the "manifesto" linked in the upper right corner of the page, which explains why I decided to start blogging about anime:

After a couple of months of cooling off, with some of the bruises healing, I thought that I wanted to start blogging again. But I didn't want to go back into that same lion's den again, and face all that horseshit. The solution?

Blog about something totally inconsequential, something so trivial and unimportant that the self-important people who Had A Mission would never pay attention to me. Write about something fun, something I enjoyed, and something that made no difference at all. In so doing, I would attract people with similar interests, I hoped, but chase away all those who suffered from excessive earnestness.

Anime! The perfect choice!

I suppose I can understand why someone might think I was wasting my time on this stuff. What I don't understand is why he felt the need to tell me.

Well, maybe I do. Fashionable cynicism strikes again. What good is it to feel superior to someone if they don't know it?

Anyway, my benefactor is Canadian. Maybe I need to start telling Canuck jokes again eh.

UPDATE: I could make jokes about the Canuck Human Rights Commission, except that deep down it ain't funny.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 02:26 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 323 words, total size 2 kb.

1 *cough*  Given your reviews have pointed me in the direction of some anime I might never have watched otherwise, I consider your work quite meaningful. 

Also. . . Animation Age Ghetto:  HATEHATEHATEHATE!

*ahem*

Posted by: metaphysician at June 12, 2009 05:29 PM (WPSw+)

2 If my life has taught me one thing, it's this: letting people know that you're superior to them always, always, always makes you look like a jerk. No exceptions. ;p

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at June 12, 2009 06:02 PM (pWQz4)

3 I love the assumption that intelligence and enjoying anime are mutually exclusive, and that one should spend all of one's time with a furrowed brow, thinking Deep Thoughts.  Life is too short for that.  (Even Richard Feynman played the drums.)  There is nothing wrong with having fun, although Mr Sour Persimmons seems to think so.
And as an expatriate Canadian, I give my blessing to you to lob a few Canuck jokes his way.

Posted by: Toren at June 12, 2009 06:16 PM (KzOif)

4 I would be reminded of the occasional arrogant intellectual who views any activity that isn't "productive" as a waste of time. . . but really, I don't think this is even that deep.  Its the Animation Age Ghetto, pure and simple.  Animated axiomatically means "kids stuff", which axiomatically means "crap writing", to some people.

Posted by: metaphysician at June 12, 2009 06:26 PM (WPSw+)

5 I'm green with envy.

BTW, glad you're feeling better (presumably).

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at June 12, 2009 06:41 PM (/ppBw)

6

I'm still a little dizzy, once in a while, but a WHOLE lot better than I was on Wednesday. I'm back to eating normally, and I can walk without staggering. Really a relief.

Wednesday was absolutely miserable. It's actually a nice advantage to be a caffiend; when I wanted to sleep the whole day, I just stopped using it and was able to get in about 36 hours of mostly sleeping. (And, surprisingly, didn't suffer from a headache.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 12, 2009 06:54 PM (+rSRq)

7 I've been meaning to talk to Stephen about maybe watching more sophisticated stuff, but I don't have time, I'm about to miss _Pinky and the Brain_.

Posted by: pgfraering at June 13, 2009 08:16 AM (G4kC0)

8

I know some of my friends who share my political views tend to look oddly at me for being into anime, but generally it is along the lines of 'Huh?'

When even National Review Online has writers who are into Dungeons and Dragons, I see no reason to apologize for any diverting interests.

C.T.

Posted by: cxt217 at June 13, 2009 02:07 PM (ibBFq)

9 Holy HELL!

A distraction from the express elevator to hell the world is on!?

Mindless fluff!!? In someones LEISURE ACTIVITY!?!

bEAVURZ!!!!???
dUX?

cCCCC...C..OOOKING?


Dear God Steven what are you thinking?
ZOMG!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at June 13, 2009 04:16 PM (V5zw/)

10 It is good to hear that you are feeling better. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at June 13, 2009 04:17 PM (V5zw/)

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Pixy is going to be porting mee.nu to the new hardware at a time which translates to Sunday evening here in North America. We'll be down for maybe an hour.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 07:29 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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This guy has Pete in his sidebar, labeled "Grumpy old man." (Do a mouse hover.) And he's got me in there, too, labeled "Grumpier old man."

You know what? He's right about us both.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 03:52 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 40 words, total size 1 kb.

Looks like Pixy is doing server work today, so we'll have periods of strange behavior for the next few hours.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 11:31 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 22 words, total size 1 kb.

Pixy either already has, or is soon going to, port us to new hardware today. Interruptions of service and/or unusual glitches are to be expected.

Just be patient, and reality will settle down again soon.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 07:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via this guy, I just found a site which claims to evaluate and rank blogs. Naturally I was curious, and learned that it would only rank mine if I filled out a form. OK, fair enough.

Once Chizumatic was in there (I used the mee.nu URL, not the old one on my own server) it said that I had 36,872 incoming links. I find that difficult to believe, frankly.

I think the only reason I have any kind of visible ranking is because "anime" is a very small category of blogs. But they seem to have a rather odd overall heuristic. I rank 21 overall.

I don't show up in the "unique montly visitors" category, and I'll be damned if I can tell how they think they figure that out. But according to sitemeter, I've been running about 900 per day, so my number would be about 27,000, coming close to tieing with #2 in that list.

I'm 3 in "number of pages". I'm 4 in "number of pages indexed by Google". 3 in "incoming links".

UPDATE: And since I posted that, I've risen to #15. Probably because they've since collected more data about me, though it's anybody's guess what and how.

I'm 5 in "links per page", with a rating of 12. The top ranking entry in that category has an average of 531 links per page, which... well... is hard to believe if the guy hasn't been engaged in SEO tactics.

As always, these kinds of sites exist mostly to give egoboo to people like me. Ah, well...

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 01:47 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 262 words, total size 2 kb.