Monday, 13th February, 2006

I Wholeheartedly Endorse This Software And/Or Website

mail email spam

The choice of email cient is not, I suspect, something that your average run-of-the-mill transvestite weblog goes into on a daily basis, but then, I'm me. So nyah

I love Apple's Mail.app. It's clean, simple, and makes me feel somehow that I'm dealing with email the way it was supposed to be dealt with — plain simple text, with none of your ghastly HTML formatting and whatnot.

When Apple first debued (?) it, one of the things they blew their trumpets about what the way that it filtered spam. I've been reading up on it over the weekend, and I'm led to believe that their 'statistical analysis' predated the wide adoption of Bayesian filtering that's used in a lot of spam filters these days.

Thing is though, I've been getting more and more frustrated with it. The tide of drug offers, Nigerian businessmen, and random text has been getting through the floodgates more and more recently, and my lovely little inbox was becoming swamped.

I have, in the past, taken other steps to try and cut the spammage down a little. Erin's mail server is plugged as much as possible — bouncing a lot of gumpf, especially badly-formed addresses. I've also got SpamAssasin running on her — or at least I had, until it got in the way of my 'upload pictures to the Course Website from your mobile phone' script (which I am very chuffed with, and I'm sure there must be a simple way of side-stepping SpamAssasin on the account — but I'm lazy).

The thing that's really stumped me, is that no matter how often I try to mark certain emails as junk — you know, the ones that are just a gif of some pills, or (oddly) some kind of pornographic depiction of the Simpsons — Mail.app keeps letting them through.

It's not a vast amount (I'm led to believe that some people have thousands of pieces of crud in their inboxes of a morning), but it's an amount enough to piss me off on a regular basis. And I know that all I have to do is quickly hit ⌘⇧J a few times to at least try to teach it that it's junk...

...but it's the disappointment that annoys me. Let me explain...

I love getting emails. Even the letcherous ones

Every morning, I plonk myself down on my sofa with a coffee and a fag, I wake Creidhe from his deep-and-peaceful sleep and and fire up Mail.app with a sense of excitement and promise.

Sometimes the emails are just the "ur hot" type, sometimes they're "Oh, you are so wrong about something you said", sometimes they're little back-stage quips from fellow bloggers, sometimes they're Erin telling me that someone's left a comment.

Sometimes, of course, they're long continuations of conversations — things to sit down and read over and over again, before thinking long and hard about a response.

And seeing a little red starburst in my Dock, with a number like "28" in, is just what I need to start my day.

But when I realise that 27 of them are just pieces of shit, the morning collapses in on itself, and instead of having a joyously productive hour or two, I've got a crushing disappointment.

...

So yesterday, I installed SpamSieve — anything that gets the Jon Gruber seal-of-approval has got to worth checking out, yes?

I've been using SpamSieve 2 for over a month (including beta releases), and its efficacy has bordered on the incredible: flagging all but 10 of 1981 spams.

One of the things I really like about it, is how it colours the emails to show how "spammy" they are...

So far, after only one day of using it (which is far too early to make a reasoned judgement about it, but still) it's only let one junk mail through. It's a snap to set up, and I'm really impressed.

So yeah. I'm going to give it a month, and if it's still working as well, I'll buy a licence

Arrrrrrrrgh!

photo

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

I was cleaning, and I knocked it over, and it got damaged

Even With Bayesian Filters, It Still Gets Through

photo

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

I am so funny

I thought you'd knocked a load of white powder all over the place

Now, what would I be doing with a load of white powder?

It's a great big crease. And the end's got all tattered. I had to go back to the photographic studio where I get a lot of my work printed and ask them to make another one.

...which goes against my principles. The idea at the back of my head is that the first print is the end of the process — it's the journey of light from object, through digitisation, then manipulation, and then printing.

But still. If I stuck to that, then how pretentious would that be?

Duck In Jam

cooking story recipe

I've probably told the "Duck In Jam" story before haven't I? I must have — but I can't find it right now.

It's not a long story — but it's one with longevity because people are still taking the piss out of me for it these days:

1. Siobhan decides to invite friends round for food

2. Siobhan starts making "plum sauce" way too far in advance, and uses an entire bag of sugar in the process.

3. "Plum Sauce" becomes "Plum Jam", and Siobhan has the piss taken out of her ad nauseum.

The thing is though, despite this evidence to the contrary, and despite the fact that I seem to chow-down on crap each night (if I remember to eat at all — and people ask me how I stay thin...), I can actually cook

Every week, for example, me and M (who I stay with in Harrogate) take it in turns to cook each other tea. And, given an actual audience, I find no problem at all in rustling something up.

(This ties in to something I was thinking about earlier, on my way to the studio to get that photo reprinted. I like doing stuff for other people. I can never see much point in doing stuff just for myself. People sometimes wonder why I go to great lengths — ften out of my way — to do things for others, and I can't give a reasonable explanation, other than "I like it". Perhaps it's an innate belief in Karma. But if that's the case, then why — after having trapsed all the way up Caton Road to get a new print — have I just burnt my fingers on a cigarette eh? Answer me that Mr Buddah )

Anyway, I thought I'd buck the trend of a lifetime tonight, and spend a bit of time pampering myself for a change. Earlier on, having been a little frantic with the old text-editor, I suddenly realised that I'd finished all the work that's been deperately urgent for the past month or so.

(I still have lots to do, but it's not half as urgent as what I've been doing)

I'm just about to run a bath, I bought myself a face-mask earlier (no, no pictures), and I thought I'd treat myself to one of the things I normally only do for other people: my garlic prawns

I've probably given out the recipie for these before, but I think I've changed it since then, and there's no harm in regurgitating something every once in a while is there?

Siobhan's Garlic Prawns

You will need:

• Some prawns (duh)
• A clove of garlic (duh again)
• A red chilli (because, strictly speaking, it's not food if it doesn't have chilli in it)
• A shallot
• A handful of spaghetti
• White wine (this being the only time buying white wine actually becomes a possibility for me)
• Double cream
• Butter
• Parsley (the flat stuff, because it's posher)

OK, whack the spaghetti into a pan of boiling water, and while that's bubbling away, melt the butter in a frying pan. Shove the shallot and the garlic in, and fry for a little bit until it all goes a bit gloopy.

Then add the prawns (bigger are better — as with a lot of things in life...) and leave to sizzle for a bit. Whenever takes your fancy, chuck in the chilli (I should have mentioned earlier — chop the garlic and the chilli and the shallot up finely) and splash in the white wine.

I have no idea how much wine to use — however much it takes to stop the cream getting too thick I guess.

Oh yeah. Add the cream — a couple of dollops should do. Grind a bucket of black pepper over it, and go light a cigarette. Pour a glass of red wine too.

When the spaghetti is done, drain it and pour it into the frying pan with the rest of the stuff. Stir it around a lot (so that all the spaghetti is coated with the sauce) and sprinkle the chopped (or torn, if you're a fat-tongued mockney) parsley on it.

Ta dah!

I must just point out that this was a bit of a monumentous occasion for me this evening. Apart from being an example of the rarity of "cooking for myself", it was also the first time I used the new knives I got the other day.

God are they sharp...

(I would have taken a picture, but (a) it's too dark, (b) I'm not a food photographer, and (c) I ate it all before it even occured to me to photograph it. Sorry)

Random Stat-Check

stats

Apparently, I've had three visitors from ".hm (Heard and McDonald Islands)"

"Heard and McDonald Islands"?! That is so a made-up place. Surely

...

Wait, it gets better ... Check out this map — They're right next to Shag Island

— you crazy Antipodeans

Sticks That Look Like Other Things

photo

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

Number 325: Lancaster University's Logo

Should I have maybe not made that one quite so locally-specific? I take the point about it looking like the Atari logo, but here, see what I mean?

No, t'other way around