Category: Witterings

Witterings are, well they’re witterings really. They’re not uncategorised posts but don’t really fit into anything else

Managed to get hold of, quite legitimately, of a copy of “Secrets of The Witching…

Managed to get hold of, quite legitimately, of a copy of "Secrets of The Witching Hour" by The Crimea. 

This was an album that was made freely available for download from their website when they released it but only at something like 98Kbit or 128Kbit and it was a slightly modified version of the purchasable album.

The band recently split up, just after releasing their third, and last, album but you can now get SoTWH  at 320Kbit directly from their website, and its the full version with with tracks in a slightly different order and with some vocal links re-introduced

The best thing is that it's still free. So if you like quirky, odd, English Alternative Rock then its probably worth checking out.

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Semalt really don’t get it

I posted on Semalt’s facebook and they deleted my posts. I made another post suggesting that deleting my posts simply confirmed that they were a rogue element.

Then they tried to friend me… I have a rule on Facebook : If I don’t know you and I’ve not met you or had a drink or three with you then don’t expect me to friend you.

So then they sent me a message:

I would like to bring apology on the behalf of our company if our service caused you some troubles.

Our bots have accidently visited your site, as well as the sites of other webmasters. These bots harvest statistics for our service and cause no harm. I don’t think this can be an issue, since nobody complains on bots that belong to Google, Bing and other search engines. There are so many services on the web that are believed to mess up the webmaster’s statistics.

This shows that they have no clue.

I have no problems with Google, Bing and other search engines running over my sites as they help bring traffic to me. Also they obey robots.txt and crawl at a sensible speed and don’t just sit there hammering the home page. Also they clearly identify themselves and come from recognised blocks of IP addresses.

Semalt do NONE of these – they use random IP addresses from all over the world, they don’t obey robots.txt. They don’t clearly idenfify that they are a bot. They don’t crawl my site and they don’t access it at a sensible request rate. On top of all of that they offer me NOTHING of any use – all they do is suck bandwith and give me nothing in return.

I had added a rule to my .htaccess rule to ban them (and I’ve left it in there because I don’t trust them) – but they did accept a list of domains from me and have removed them from their rogue bot.

Well you learn something new every day

Actor AND home brewer!

Reshared post from +Wil Wheaton

#Homebrew question: I'm making a barley wine. My boil gravity should be 1.106. Hydrometer reads 1.042, and at 140* the adjusted SG comes out to more like 1.06. Iodine test says I have all the sugars out.

I mashed 22 pounds at 148 for 90 minutes, just like the book said. I have collected just about 6 gallons.

Did I sparge too fast? Do I put the wort back into the mash tun and keep it there for X minutes or something? Am I going to have to put LME or DME into the boil?

I will be very unhappy if I fucked this up beyond salvaging. Any help you can give me would be much appreciated.

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Are Spammers really THAT stupid?

Or do they think the people they are sending their shit to are? No… please do NOT answer that.

Witness this wonderful pile of crap that landed in my spam bucket today:

From: Chief Executive and Permanent Secretary
HM Revenue & Customs – 100 Parliament Street
London, SW1A 2BQ. United Kingdom
Department:  Audit and Risk Committee Team
Telephone: 070 4577 2860 (Int:+447045772860)
Telephone: 070 4577 9897 (Int:+447045779897)
 
Message: Sole Beneficiary
File Code: RC/8366-32
 
This message is to notify you of a very important information which will be of great help to redeem you from all the difficulties experienced in securing your fund payment due to inappropriate documentation of your case file presently forwarded to our agency for correction.During the course of our investigation on the issues delaying the payment of your fund here in United Kingdom, we have reviewed several cases of delayed payments including your records and have approved to release most unpaid funds which includes contract/inheritance funds,Gambling/Lottery awarded funds (sponsored by multinational companies)and other international suspended/withheld funds yet to be paid to its beneficiary's foreign account.

In view of the above, we have immensely sorted out issues with the regional financial units in charge of your transaction and our extensive investigation confirmed that you are the original beneficiary shortlisted to receive an unpaid sum of $15,000,000.00 USD which is presently approved for payment pending your acknowledgment to this information. According to the information received, those representing you have failed to credit your funds into your international bank account and any correspondence in regards to your claim sent to them again, we will not be able to help nor advice you outside our jurisdiction and dispensation of power and duty. Further to this development, we are yet to confirm your original identity in order to be sure that your email address is not hacked or being accessed by an unknown personality and that we are paying this $15,000,000.00 USD directly to the beneficiary's details we have on file. Therefore, we request that you forward a copy of your identification card within 7 working days for confirmation.

This review is being undertaken to ensure that we confirm to the latest regulatory requirement of the Inland Revenue Services before you are issued an application for payment. If your identification card is not received for payment verification within this period, you will never be paid and we will be compelled to seek legal representation from our in-house attorney to terminate your payment until further notice.

For more information, kindly forward all inquires and requirements to us for confirmation.
 
Yours Sincerely,
Ms. Lin Homer.
(Chief Executive Officer).
HM Revenue & Customs.
————————————————————————————–
Disclaimer: The information in this email and in any files transmitted with it is intended only for the addressee and contains confidential and/or privileged material. Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized. If you receive this in error, please contact the sender immediately and delete the material from your computer. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is strictly prohibited.

Dollars? Wasn't this sent from HMRC?
Identify card? What sort of complete and utter bullshit is that? 

And I know HMRC outsource a lot of stuff but I think they make sure the people doing the work can write good English.

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