Greylisting spam
I've been reluctant to implement greylisting as a form of spam prevention on my server. It basically works by rejecting all mail with a temporary "I can't handle this right now, resend later" error. The mail system is designed to be robust and this is perfectly acceptable... senders are required to deal with it by the the standard that defines how mail works. But spammers don't bother. So if you just say, "Resend later," the theory is, spam disappears.
We use it at work, and I have encountered annoyances with it before, when I'm on the phone with tech support and they say, "Let me email you a new license key" and I can't receive it while I'm talking to them because their server only retries every twenty minutes. I receive so little spam at work that I've put myself in the whitelist so that my mail doesn't get greylisted.
But at home I've gotten tired of updating my personal spam filter rules every day, skimming a couple _hundred_ subjects in my spam folder for false-positives every day. (I've had the same email address for over ten years, and I've never kept it hidden... every spammer in the world knows me.) So I decided to try implementing greylisting just on my personal account.
My spam count has dropped from a couple hundred a day to between 20 and 30 a day. And I've only had one or two slip past SpamAssassin in the last week, instead of ten a day.
I don't know how long it will last... the spammers can get around it pretty easily, though at a cost of speed, as they'll have to send every mail twice. But for now, it's working better than I ever dreamed it would.
You took a picture!
I think I'm going to start a "You Took a Picture!" badge award for Flickr. I'll start the "Pictures" group go to with it. The rules for posting to the group will be "You must have taken the picture to submit it to the group. For every picture you submit, you must award the 'You Took a Picture!' badge to every photo you view."
It's just as meaningful as any other award, isn't it? When ordinary snapshots get ten awards in the first day they're up, it's obvious that the awards don't mean anything at all. I see photos that I would be embarrassed to post in my public photostream, let alone submit to a group, getting all kinds of awards.
This mutual back-patting for simply having taken a picture isn't helping anybody improve their work. One photographer I know who has only been shooting for awhile does some really great stuff... but the good stuff and the snapshots get nearly equal praise, because this photog submits every photo to over 100 groups and gets showered with meaningless "awards" every time.
Papa needs a brand-new bag
Since 1999, I've carried what's more or less a man-purse. It started out as a Day-Timer cover... basically a cloth cover for a binder with handles, a detachable strap (which I never used, because that would have made it look like a purse), and pockets on the front for pens and stuff. But I quickly ditched the Day-Timer binder and just used it to haul stuff around. Man-bags weren't quite acceptable in the US yet, and I just called it a "satchel" as it was far too small to be a briefcase.
After a few years of carrying it around, I got frustrated by its small size... it wasn't quite large enough to hold an 8.5x11" book, which is a typical size for roleplaying books. And it didn't have enough places for "bits". So I switched to a cheap messenger bag I'd gotten as an award from my employer. This is where I discovered that I don't want a typical messenger bag... I want something I can hang over my right shoulder on my right side and fish stuff out of. The big flap gets in the way, the strap designed for cross-shoulder use doesn't hang well if you don't wear it cross-shoulder, and it had far too few organizational pockets. And I found the lack of a handle problematic... I carry my bag by the handle as often or more than by the strap. I didn't use it for more than a couple of weeks.
So a couple years ago (April 2006, according to eBags.com), I bought an Ogio "REM" messenger bag... that wasn't a "messenger bag." It was more of a soft-side briefcase design with zippered top access and a large zippered accessory compartment attached to one side. I really like that feature... there's a main compartment where I can throw books and papers, and this separate, smaller side compartment with pockets and whatnot. It also has a mesh water-bottle holder, which I thought would be useless, but that's where my sunglasses live for easy access.
I spent a lot of time looking... but just two years ago, there weren't many bags suitable for a man that weren't true messenger bags that I could afford. I have lusted after a WaterField Designs small "Cargo" since then, but over $150 is just out of my price range.
Here's the problem with my current bag... it's huge. 11x17x8" (about 5" in the main body and 3" in the attached compartment). I haul it around mostly empty and it's a bother. What I want is a bag that's just big enough for that 8.5x11" book and my little bit of gear (flashlight, medicine bag, journal, pens, markers, spare batteries, business card cases, maybe my phone and MP3 player). One thing I specifically don't want to put in my bag is a laptop, which is what a lot of bags are aimed at. I have a laptop (via work) but it doesn't travel a great deal... when I want it, it has its own slim case. I don't want to haul around a bag big enough for it when it would only be in there 5% of the time. (And part of the reason I want a smaller main bag is when I do carry the laptop, I'm carrying two laptop-sized bags at the same time. Throw in my DSLR camera in its holster case and I've got bag overload.)
The small "Cargo" mentioned above would be perfect at 10x13x4. It has top handles as well as a strap. It has a front flap, but small... not the boat sail that typical messenger bags have. Lots of pockets, and just the right size. But it's over $150, which puts it at around three times what I'm willing to pay for a bag. If I knew it'd be perfect and I'd use it for years, then $169 plus shipping might do it... but I don't know that I want to take that risk.
But looking elsewhere, that 'just over 9x12"' range is pretty rare... there are a lot of bags just too small to hold my book, and then lots of bags way too large, but very few right at the size I'm looking for. Which kind of surprises me, because I'd think folks wanting a bag big enough to carry file folders and just a little more would be more common.
That size is more common in vertical bags, which two years ago I was avoiding... it's hard to look "manly" in vertical. (And impossible to look manly with patent leather.) But nowdays, there are more vertical bags suitable for a guy.
I'm trying to decide if the Clive "Merger II" is manly enough. It gets listed as both a men's bag and a women's bag by different retailers. It's just about the right size at 12x9x3.5"
In a bag similar to my current one, only smaller, The North Face "Base Camp" small comes pretty close to what I want... it's a bit larger at 12x12", and it's starting to push the limits of my budget at over $75. If I knew this was the perfect bag, that wouldn't be so bad... but $75 is a lot to risk on a bag I might use for a year and get fed up with. (The Ogio was under $30 on clearance, so I didn't do too bad using it for two years.)
I'm slightly tempted by the DaKine "Depot". Another vertical bag, 12x10", so it's barely larger than the "Merger II", but it has limited interior pocket space. It's cotton canvas instead of the typical nylon, which I think is kind of cool, though I don't know if I'd go with black or olive.
You wouldn't think that buying a bag would be so difficult. Karen and I have both been seriously tempted to design and sew our own.