Spam is spam is spam

During my hiatus, someone left a comment on that post that fell prey to the spam filter.  The comment said this:

I love the blog that you have. I was wondering if you would link my blog to yours and in return I would do the same for your blog. If you want to, my site name is American Legends and the URL is:

[site URI redacted]

If you want to do this just go to my blog and in one of the comments just write your blog name and the URL and I will add it to my site.

Thanks,
David

Before I rip into David Stefanini for his ignorance, let me also point out he immediately followed his comment with this e-mail:

From: David <lilhouston7@gmail.com>
Website: [site URI redacted]
Message: Hi, I just left a comment on your blog, but I wasn’t sure if you check the comments so I decided to contact you directly.

I was wondering if you would link my blog to yours and in return I would do the same for your blog. If you want to, my site name is American Legends and the URL is:

[site URI redacted]

If you want to do this just go to my blog and in one of the comments just write your blog name and the URL and I will add it to my site.

Thanks,
David

With such a rabid approach to getting on my blogroll, I thought it only prudent to check out the site.

It’s about sports!

I mean, come on!  What a stupid idiot.  Does anything about my site make you think of sports?  I have a very limited tolerance in that area (hockey, soccer, and rugby are the sports I love; the rest are hogwash), but I don’t talk about sports here, I don’t endorse them, and mostly any mention of them is of a sarcastic and derogatory nature.

So why in the world would anyone think I’d be interested in linking to a sports blog?

It’s obvious he didn’t look at or read anything here.  If he had, he wouldn’t have contacted me or left a comment, and he certainly wouldn’t have lied about loving my blog.

Besides, it says this right in my blogroll policy:

I do not take requests to be added to my blogroll.  Period.  I do not do link trades.  Period.

Is something about that not clear enough for you, David?

And there’s also this from my comment rules:

Submit your comments only under the post to which they correspond.

So, David, do you think your comment on that post is in any way on topic or related?  Do you think it was an appropriate remark for that entry?

Oh, and those same rules also state that

I read all comments.

Saying you’re not sure if I check the comments means you didn’t even check the rules before you posted.  For someone out fishing for links, that seems like a terribly stupid idea.

Then I Googled dearest David and found he’d posted the same comment all over the place…  He posted it on blogs from nature to science to video games and everything in between.

I guess he gets around.  I also guess he’s just a link whore who can’t help but inundate blogs across the intertubes with his mindless gibbering and begging for links.

Ultimately, David Stefanini is a spammer, one who’s trying desperately to increase his incoming link count at any cost, even when that means lying through his teeth and being a general jackass.

Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!

I stepped into the garage yesterday afternoon to fetch a pair of shoes I’d left out there.  I’d worn them during a recent walk and had returned with them covered in mud, so I left them in the garage to dry out.

The moment I stepped through the door, I noticed something odd about the antenna on my car.  Keep in mind I’d driven it hundreds of miles over the weekend as I journeyed to and from the family farm.  Knowing that, I suspected I was looking at some poor insect smashed against the vehicle at high speed, but this one happened to get hung up on the antenna instead of embedded in the front grill.

I opened the garage door to get a better look.  As I approached the rear of the car, however, the dark lump turned to follow my movements.

A male regal jumping spider (Phidippus regius) clinging to my car's antenna (184_8451)

Aha!  Whatever it might be, it certainly wasn’t dead.

I could see immediately that it was a spider of some kind.  To be quite honest, it was a large spider, perhaps the size of a quarter, and it crouched down to move but would prop itself up to look at me.

The closer I got, the further in the opposite direction it would move.

And so began the chase.  It scampered across the surface of the car while I scrambled around it trying to snap photos.

As if to provide me with a reason to laugh, each time I got too near it would turn, lift its front up, and look directly at me.

A male regal jumping spider (Phidippus regius) staring at me (183_8396)

With it facing me directly as if challenging me to make the first move, I was able to see it more clearly and finally recognized it as a male regal jumping spider (Phidippus regius).

It would then turn and scurry away as if satisfied I did not intend to pounce upon it.  And as it went, so did I in hot pursuit.

A male regal jumping spider (Phidippus regius) scampering across the car (184_8421)

Repeatedly I would attempt to get in close for a macro shot, and repeatedly it would turn, sit up, and look at me directly.  There was to be no sneaking up on this little predator.

A male regal jumping spider (Phidippus regius) closely watching me as I snap a photo (184_8458)

The whole scene must have looked terribly ridiculous.  I ran in circles around the car sitting in the garage, and all the while I snapped photo after photo of what appeared to be nothing more than a dirty automobile.

From my perspective, though, it was nothing as mundane as that.  I was rather enjoying the chase and finding great humor in the spider’s ability to outmaneuver me at every turn, not to mention its apparent sixth-sense skill at knowing precisely where I was even as it tried to make its escape.

A male regal jumping spider (Phidippus regius) trying to get away from me and my camera (184_8459)

We eventually made our way around to the moonroof where it quickly retreated to the center of the car.  From there, it had a perfect vantage from which to watch me carefully, and it could easily escape in any direction based on where I went.

But, alas, the spider owes me a debt of gratitude.  By chasing it to that position, I put it within striking range of a meal, one which neither of us even knew was there when our little hide-and-seek game began.  In fact, I thought the tiny speck was nothing more than dirt from the road trip.  But then it moved…  And the spider saw it.

When he started hunting his prey, I stopped bothering him.  I didn’t want to interfere with food time.

It was fascinating to watch it sneak up, size up, and finally attack and eat the little bug that found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It was too dark to capture any video of the event, although I certainly tried.

And once the meal was done…  Well, that’s when I decided to leave the guy alone and let him finish mopping up whatever hitchhikers remained on the car.

A male regal jumping spider (Phidippus regius) in natural light as it stares at me from atop the car (184_8426)

Open thread

Is holding hands unique to humans?  Obviously not.  Watch the entire video through to the end.  I realize it’s terribly cute and causes a great deal of oohing and aahing, but I think there’s more to be gained by seeing this.  It’s yet another anthropocentric premise down the drain…

10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World.  What a cool look at some very interesting trees.

And speaking of trees…  Festival of the Trees 10 includes some great photos along with its collection of links to arbor-related posts from around the web.

Although I’m a bit late with this due to my hiatus, be sure to visit Friday Ark #132 for the usual celebration of life from around the world.

Nothing will cure your canine craving like the combination of Carnival of the Dogs and Weekend Dog Blogging #79.  Go ahead and fetch yourself some fun.

While you’re at it, you don’t want to miss Carnival of the Cats 158–April Fools Edition–Part I and Weekend Cat Blogging #95 for a frenzy of feline frolics.  And note part II of the carnival should be available by Saturday, at which time I’ll post a link.

Take a look at these close-up photos of spiders.  Wow!

As I’ve said before, I won’t be upgrading to Windows Vista—ever.  I don’t recommend anyone use it.  It marks the turning point for Microsoft products as far as I’m concerned.  It’s now time to evaluate other options and move to something else.  For yet more reasons why this is true, I strenuously suggest you read this article.

Circus of the Spineless – Edition #19 focuses on discovery and offers a plethora of invertebrate posts for your perusal.

Fly over and check out Birds in the News 77 (v3n4).  There’s ample eye candy for you Peeping Toms and Peeping Tinas, and there’s also plenty of avian news from around the world.

Image regrets

I’ve completed the migration of images to Zooomr.  As I said many times before, I migrated the vast majority of images—but not all of them.  There are some I want to maintain tighter control of, like my tattoo photos, so they remain hosted on my server.  Barely a handful of pictures fall in that category, so this should not be a major bandwidth strain.  Similarly, I did not migrate anything that I don’t have rights to control.  That includes public domain images like those cute little tidbits that often get forwarded to me via e-mail.

I successfully migrated 1,016 images and left some other number on my server.  Going through all those pictures brought back many memories.  It also brought to light some regrets.

For example, I wish I had known better how to use my camera back three or so years ago when I first began tinkering with it.  So many photographs from my preliminary dabbling in the digital medium truly did come out looking rather infantile at best.  Although I’m still no expert and still am learning the ins and outs of taking decent photos, let alone the various settings of my little ol’ camera, I think I’ve gotten much better at capturing images.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m still not a professional at it, and I never will be.  Nevertheless, like any good wine, I’ve improved with the march of time.  There are moments I see depicted in those old snapshots that I wish I could revisit for no other reason than to attempt a do over, one hopefully that would improve tremendously upon the original.

Something else I noticed during this little jaunt down photography’s Memory Lane has to do with redundancy.  That is, I was quite surprised to find some pictures that, while not exactly the same, were at least so similar to other images I’d posted as to be near copies.  I can’t say there are a vast number of these.  In fact, given the number of photos I’ve posted to date, I’d say they represent a tiny fraction of what’s online.  And still I can’t help but feel a little daft for thinking myself creative 100% of the time when in fact I was simply regurgitating something very much like something else I’d already shared.  Then again, with 15.2 GB of images and videos across 8,425 separate files—and that only covers the multimedia content I’ve taken with this one digital camera—I suppose it’s not entirely shocking to know I might not always remember a specific scene when perusing the archives looking for something to present.

The final regret has nothing whatsoever to do with the images.  It’s about the memories.

Remembrances both good and bad fell upon me like wolves feasting in an unguarded flock of sheep.  Each step back in time carried me further into the recesses of my own mind and heart.  I encountered opportunities lost, times forgotten, experiences relegated to the confines of dark forgetfulness, and an ocean of life whereupon the waves of the past washed over me time and again, sometimes threatening to drown me in the depths.  Whether it be by lamentations or joys, losses or gains, or simply the realization of some minute aspect of life now forever gone, the journey felt like a thousand lifetimes wrapped up in a few weeks.

To read what is in my journals is one thing, for they date back more than 30 years, but to visually experience worlds long forgotten is something else entirely.  Cliché though it might be, a picture can be worth a thousand words.

Vocabularium

Label it as you will, but this sounds a lot like everyday political discourse.

besmirch (be·smirch): / bi SMURCH /
transitive verb

(1) to sully; to bring shame or disgrace on someone’s honor; to detract from someone’s good reputation
(2) to make dirty; to soil; to tarnish or discolor

[From English ‘be-‘ + ‘smirch.’]

Usage: There’s something pathetically tragic about the way she tried so hard to besmirch everyone who disagreed with her.