The Diary of A Simple Man

I installed the new Google Chrome browser a couple of days ago (the day it was released). As always, one of the first sites I checked was my own RuneQuest site; I wanted to see how it looked. And what do you think was the result?

Well, I kind of gave it away with the subject. Google blocked my site, and said it was infected with malware! I checked it out, and sure enough my index.html was infected with a script exploit. I cleaned it and replaced it. Then I found that index.php was infected too. I couldn't clean it, so I just deleted it. It doesn't seem to have affected the functioning of the site.

Unfortunately my site seems to have been added to a list of bad sites in the meantime. So not only is it blocked by Google Chrome (you have to check a box affirming that you know the site is infected if you want to see it in Chrome) but it's now blocked by my work, too!

I've requested a review by Google. I'm hoping I got all of the infection. I downloaded a fresh copy of everything on the site tonight (after making the fix and deleting the bad file) and ran a scan with AntiVir; everything came up clean.

And that's it. Good night!

Has anyone else noticed that the amount of spam coming through on Gmail has increased enormously over the past week? I've gotten over a dozen spams in just the past two days - that's more than I'd received in the past six months!

Somehow I've ended up on Askville, over at Amazon. It's kind of fun - people ask questions, and you can answer them. The answers are rated (you can choose to post an answer in a discussion area instead, in which case it can't be rated), and you gain virtual gold coins and experience points for good answers. If you gain enough experience points you go up in level and gain new powers. Yup, they're using D&D-style mechanisms, although only in a general way.

You can also send or receive compliments. It's definitely an interesting place; a little bit like Advicenators, perhaps, except that it's run by Amazon instead of a lunatic. Plus in general the questions are far less juvenile. They cover a much wider variety of topics, too.

And of course the web design is far superior.

Here's my Askville profile. You can list all sorts of stuff in it; you can even add new categories (I added "Favorite Roleplaying Games").

I'm home today, and rather bored. So I'm taking the opportunity to clean up some of my old bookmarks. In the process, I discovered something odd: Irony Games seems to have partly disappeared. Their main page is now some sort of snarky political website instead.

But their online die roller (a wonderful tool) is still there. Does anyone know what's going on?

Incidentally, is it just me, or has LJ been totally dead for a while now? I'm almost tempted to do a "Peter is dead" post just to get a response!

Of course I'd never really do that. I'd expect (and deserve) to lose too many readers if I pulled shit like that.

The New York Times website has been dead all morning. For a little while I could reach the main page, but every story I tried to read timed out. And yet no other site (including the Boston Globe, Salon, Slate, etc.) is having problems this morning.

Now I can't even reach the main page.

My RuneQuest website guestbook and Chaos Project are based on free services from Alxnet. For a long time they worked well. Spam came in sometimes, but it was killable.

Then recently some bastards who've been spamming my books off and on for the last couple of years attacked again. These guys are particularly obnoxious, because they put an entry in each of my books that totally hijacks them; go to my guestbook or any of the three Chaos Project books and you are instantly transferred to their porn site. I suspect their site also attempts to hijack the viewer's home page settings, etc.

Alxnet automatically emails a copy of every entry in any of my books to my main address. These include a way to delete that entry with a single click, without logging in. That's kind of convenient, although it would be nicer if there was a way to block spammers more effectively instead and save me the trouble of deleting all those spams.

So the porno spammers hit all four of my books recently. But Alxnet never sent me their entries for some reason. And when I tried to log into my Alxnet account directly, I wasn't able to; they're transitioning to a new system, requiring everyone to set up new accounts and move their old books over, so maybe that's the problem.

But I couldn't log in to my old accounts, and when I set up a new account and tried to move my books I wasn't able to - the account is "still being processed", and has been for the last four days.

I found a way around it; go to an old email for an entry that has already been deleted and click on the instant-delete link. That takes me directly to the administration page. But those pages are going to go away in a month anyway, along with ALL of my entries (thousands of them) if I can't get the new account to work.

I'm seriously considering grabbing ALL of the entries manually and setting up new books using the tools that my host, Fuitadnet, supplies. But it would be a lot of work, and I wouldn't be able to transfer my entries. I'd have to make some sort of archives, I guess.

What a pain in the ass!

(This is a sketchy re-creation of my original post.)

Once again I have ventured unto the murky and dangerous waters of online lyrics sites, returning to bring warnings and a rare word of praise.

Roster of Shame
lyricsxp .com
songlyrics4u .com
lyricsdepot .com

All three of these sites weren't satisfied with trying to pop up multiple windows - no, they had to try to install some scumware for my browser, too. Avoid!

On the other hand, the next two sites didn't try to pull ANY fast moves; no sneakware, no popups, and I didn't even notice any excessive advertising. Plus the lyrics were nicely presented. Kudos!
DrL Lyrics
Lyricz

Lyrics sites are the worst. I can't believe how &^#%ing bad they are. Seems like almost every one of them tries to install spyware, adware, trojans, you name it.

I'm looking for lyrics for Public Image Limited's "Disappointed", and since my system is being assaulted by so many sites I thought I'd leave a record for myself of sites to AVOID.

In order to avoid giving these bastards any sort of link-boost in Google, I'm deliberately crippling these links with an extra space.

• www. oldielyrics .com - tried to install two plugins.
  
• www. lyricscafe .com - popups. Not too bad, Google successfully blocked 'em.
  
• www. vlyrics .com - also tried to install two plugins
  
• www. lyricsbox .com - As far as I can tell, didn't try to pull anything! But didn't have PIL lyrics, either.
  
• www. poplyrics .net - two plugins again

Okay, that's enough risk for me. I'm getting nervous!

I read a few things online every day, the Boston Globe was one of them. This week, though, their site was completely redesigned, and it really, really, REALLY sucks.

So I wrote them a letter. Here it is.

I have no way of knowing if this will reach its destination, because the new Globe website doesn't list email addresses for the ombudsman. I'm guessing that "ombudsman@globe.com" might be right, but the site isn't helping to confirm my guess. Even a site-search for "ombudsman email" turned up literally nothing.

Nor does the new site list email addresses for editors, or anyone else - at least not in any obvious way. And I'm relatively experienced with searching websites; what chance will readers have who are less comfortable with the online experience?

I'm sorry to say that the redesign also fails to provide useful news in a readable and dependable format, as the old site did.

Please note that I am *not* decrying the loss of a beloved font or layout. This is not a matter of some minor detail. The new site is simply unreadable; many of the links to articles are broken (the Aquarium article today, for example, which I would have found interesting), and the layout in general is extremely confusing and difficult to read. This is far and away the worst online newspaper or news site format that I have ever seen, bar none.

The feedback link goes to a generic webform for boston.com, with no contact section listing email addresses for various departments of the Globe; why, exactly, are you choosing to hide from your online readers?

I could guess why, but in any case it's insulting. A newspaper should be responsive to its readers, and that requires openness - not a virtual barricade.

I have read the Globe online daily for years, but thanks to this atrocious redesign I'll be removing it from my reading list.

->Peter
------------------------------------------------
Peter Maranci peter@maranci.net

Yet another archive of a Yahoo post.

Speaking of which, those posts are deleted after a while...what happens to them? It's interesting that millions of online conversations take place on privately-owned (mostly corporate) websites, which places huge amounts of often stupid and pointless but sometimes vital and important dialog in private hands.

CNN used to have a HUGE message board area, with literally millions of posts, but one day they simply all disappeared without any explanation. I'm still not sure why it happened, although I'd noticed that they tended to delete threads that got too critical of George W.

I wrote to Salon suggesting that they do an article about it, but they never wrote back.

Oh well. Here's the comment. The subject was an article about a new advertising campaign by the Ask Jeeves search engine, which is currently ranked a very low fifth in popularity.

Why doesn't anyone use Ask Jeeves?

Simple: it sucks. Maybe if they took some of that ad campaign money and built a decent search engine they'd get some respect...but Google beat them to it, so they're screwed.

What American business needs today is a sort of modern-day version of Bushido. There are a lot of top executives who make really boneheaded decisions, or just plain greedy ones. We'd see a huge improvement in our economy if all of those executives were required to atone for their failures and shame by eviscerating themselves.

Preferably on national TV.

---

Yeah, I'm pretty cranky today. Had about the worst weekend imaginable, barring a car accident or surgery. One of those weekends that's so awful that if I'd known in advance, I'd have stayed at work. Plus I've got a massive headache to boot.

Life sucks.