More S.P.A.M. Please

So no one has figured out how to stop spam.  This is self evident if you've ever tried using an e-mail address, but it's also readily apparent when you look through the comments of a personal blog.

In this case I receive few enough comments that I can simply accept them manually, sifting through the spam and hatemail (surprisingly rare, considering this is the internet) to accept the comments that a human probably wrote; the rest is relegated to digital oblivion.  I try not to delete the stupid comments from faceless members of the chinese propoganda ministry (yes, that's actually happened) whose sole job is to trawl the internet for blogs like this one and counter any point raised about china, but it can be hard to let the counter points filter through.  The hope is that these comments are self evidently beyond a joke - but if you read more than a handful of comments in your lifetime you will see that people are fucking stupid.

For example.  Or how about this.  Or this.  One of those is definitely real, the other two are extrapolations, the end result of the actual stupidity in the human race, taken to logical ends.  Whether all of them are real or not, in my books they're all winners.

#pearlharbour
#neverforget

Anyway, the reason I bring up spam and stupidity on the internet is because the war for our eyeballs is evidently hotting up.  My e-mail inbox has been filling at an increasing rate, and this humble blog (with a sum total f'all readership) has started creaking under the weight of comments waiting to be approved.

Comments like:

This way if you are a family person, you get to allocate more time to your loved ones,
especially if you are a parent. Most would obviously avoid
real estate investment prospects like a bubonic plague. This is because people want to know they can trust the person that is in charge
of helping them to close the biggest financial deal of their lives.


Feel free to surf to my website; Eco pret 0

Or like this:

 

While the festival and its artists may be curated by
ICP and Psychopathic Records, both parties are selfless enough to not make the
Gathering exclusive to Psychopathic Records. And by the time he was eleven, he
had convinced the Cash Money label to take him on, even if it was just for odd jobs around
the office. If you are looking for a strong competitive college dance team, look into these
schools and see what they have to offer.

my website Nekfeu

Or even like this:

 Other economy changes include lower level availability clash of clans hack apk Dark Elixir
Drills (Town Hall level 7 for the first, Town Hall level 8 for the second), increased capacity for Dark Elixir Drills
of all levels, and an additional level for Gold Mines and Elixir Collectors (12).

Be certain that you know the rating of any video game before letting kids play it.
It is easy to hire an i - Phone developer or an Android developer today and making useful and quality applications are so much easier today.

To highlight the volumes I'm talking about, these were all sent within the last hour.  Or at least I received them in the last hour.  Considering how bad some of these services are at timely posting, they could have been sent last month for all I know.

It's really interesting to see the demographics they're going for, even if google translate is letting them down somewhat in the execution.  Home owners/potential buyers, psychopaths and gaming people.  I would love it if there were a correlation between the people who read this and the spammers, i.e. they've done their market research (an automated bot has determined the readership) and have targeted appropriately, but it's pretty unlikely.  I suppose that means the internet at large consists of mentally unstable people, game players and home owners.  Only those three groups though.

In case you were wondering what spam stands for, it's:

Somewhat
Processed
Automated
Mail

Only somewhat because the messages aren't intelligible.
I think the processing is converting the message from Mandarin or one of the Indian dialects into English.
They are very much automated.
And even though this is a comments section, it's still a mail of sorts.  I guess.

Anyway, let it be known that the second coming of spam is happening, and it'll be big news in a few weeks when there's a slow news day.  The battle for your eyeballs is hotting up!

And for the love of dog don't click on any of the links that the spammers are advertising.  Christ, just don't do it.

Oh Football...

So there's a nutcase in charge of FIFA, apparently.  Having no idea what's happening in the land of spheres, I happened upon an article describing power struggles in the world of football.

I then read this statement, by the current head of FIFA:

"I thought we were living in a world of fair play and respect and discipline.

I unfortunately see this is no longer the case because the famous Fifa pyramid is suddenly unstable and there is a danger.

On Wednesday I will speak to you on this danger that is lurking, and tell you how we can fight and work against this threat."

Now I admit I know nothing of football, but did FIFA elect Colonel Gaddafi as president?  He acts like a despot, talks of plans to destabilise his regime, like a despot, and crucially, holds elections like a despot.  That is to say, he is a dictator:

'Blatter is the only candidate as his rival Mohammed bin Hammam is suspended.'

I find it incredible that we get outraged, as a nation, by despotism in other countries - but actively endorse and fund despotism in sport.  (Of course I'm not so naive to believe that we don't fund criminal dictators in other countries, of course we do, but at least that serves a national purpose.  Pouring advertising revenues and government funding into a corrupt, incompetent fools lap, while everyone is watching, is criminal genius.)

This man is, plainly and for all to see, a genius.  He runs an organisation that employs thousands of people worldwide, is guaranteed to be re-elected for as long as he feels like, makes an absolute packet, secures his legacy (to be remembered as the hero who saved football), and takes bribes.  It's a challenge to pull this off when you're running a country, but when you're running a sporting organisation, it's a cakewalk.  You don't even have to do much killing and maiming.

What do I want to be when I grow up?  Either Chairman Cat, or Sepp Blatter.  Both men are criminal geniuses.

Korea Versus Argentina Then

So Korea lost against Argentina today.  I didn't preface this with a spoiler warning, because it was already a foregone conclusion.  Korea are not good at football, and they will never be.  I went down to a bar with a couple of colleagues of my own volition, (twenty minutes into the game) and also came home of my own volition, twenty minutes before the game ended.  There is no game of football in the world that can hold my interest for the full period of play.  Highlights are good, but nothing more than five minutes please.

The interesting thing was that I didn't realise it would be a worker style event, with most of the office turning up.  I wasn't going to drink anyway, on account of my myriad diseases and me badly wanting to play american football next week; but after seeing all the people you work with, at what amounts to an enforced gathering - that'll knock the party atmosphere out of anyone.

There is a Korean woman in the office who everyone, to a man, flirts with.  (I call her everyones favourite because I don't know her name yet - eg. 'Has everyones favourite been in this morning?')  They finally (after much cajoling and mild, playful, disgusting and flirtatious threatening/coercion) convinced her to watch the game with them and wouldn't you know it, another (far less attractive, (I'm tempted to say fat, but by western standards nowhere near) bitchy and obnoxious) woman joined the party somehow, and they all immediately forgot about everyones favourite, and focused their attention on the 'kind of fat but not really,' girl.  If I were everyones favourite, I would be pretty devastated and would, frankly speaking, ignore the lot of us tomorrow.

But that's not the Asian way, she will come in tomorrow and smile, laugh at the terrible jokes the five guys in the office try to make simultaneously, and enjoy being the centre of attention.  I would feel sorry for her, but I guess humanity is a fickle cauldron, and it takes all sorts of desperation to make people what we are.

On a side-note, my coughing has begun, which is good news because this is the last phase of my disease.  The guy I caught it from said this was the last part of it for him, and within two days he was completely illness free, which is cool.  What's not cool is him giving it to me in the first place, but we play basketball together, so I guess it couldn't be helped.  On a further side note, the kids are starting to get sick now, as are a couple more in the office.  You might hear about us on the news in a couple of months; I hereby name the next flu pandemic, De Roeck flu.

(It's insanely humid here, just for your information.)

(Oh and my electric bill for this month was Four pounds.  4 pounds.  4GBP)

Seoul Again

So I thought I would give Seoul another go, as my last attempt was surely not indicative of the city (I reasoned).  Luckily I was correct, and this time around was a lot more fun.

The pictures are low quality, get over it.

This is an electronics mall.  You know we have department stores for clothes, knick-nacks and wares seemingly no-one would need?  They have them for electronics too.  This was taken from floor four of ten, but I missed the opportunity to take a shot illustrating the scale of the place.  It's quite vast, and has some of the most incredible electronics stores I've ever seen.  The whole place is like an indoor market, with each seller having an open booth.  The effect is cool, because you can see from one side of your floor to the other.  There's one floor that houses all the computer based electronics,  and there are guys who sell legacy hardware, I saw graphics cards from ten years ago, it was a cool blast from the past.

A couple of stores had my camera on display, but wouldn't let me touch it.  It's not like Japan at all...

The Saturday was the day of Korea vs Greece, and they had a big screen set up for everyone to watch it on.

Red is the national colour of Korea.

Yeah that's a neon hot air balloon on the ceiling, this place is also an indoor theme park.

This is the cool screen they set up.  The first thing I thought when I saw  this was, 'I wonder if you could hook a PC up to this?'

Then I thought, 'You'd need a dozen graphics cards to power a display of this resolution.'

Yeah I'm a geek.

Bitchin' panda chocolate cake.  I actually ate two cakes while I was there.  This was the tastier of the two however, and is, frankly, an amazingly tasty cake.  As something of a connoisseur of cakes, I can safely say that Korean cake making abilities rank far higher than their other baking abilities.

I did however find a baguette in the shop earlier that is amazing, it's crunchy, soft and delicious, just like the real thing.  It cost 1.50, but for my first taste of real bread in a couple of months, it's worth it I feel.

Here's a bit of free advertising for them; they deserve it for making a couple of extremely delicious cakes.

The people behind the till also deserve a standing ovation, for not laughing when they saw me enter the shop for the second time in one day.





On a side note, I'm extremely ill at the moment.  My fever is extremely high, I can't stop sweating, I have a chesty, infected phlegmtastic cough, and everything aches.  My finger is still broken too.  Stupid girls making me sick.