Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - November 2000
A hard man is good to beat
Summer gradually becomes late summer, the trees drop their yellow, gold and red leaves, and at the end of the month comes the sad moment when the clocks go back (in Europe) and the days suddenly get a lot shorter..
Galleries added this month.
There's a new Bookshelf, for John Grooms.
Stories added this month.
Nothing much new.
Movies added this month.
Some new programmes were added this month.
I replaced the server that was doing audio (Vicky), and the one that was running The Valkyrie Channel (VTV01), with a single server to do both (also named VTV01, the old VTV01 will get reused somewhere). At the same time, I think I've fixed the problem that was making it necessary for people to give their RealVideo a kick to get it started. Since I did that, I've stopped getting emails asking about it, so I guess it must have worked.
Anita has crashed a couple of ties, but it's a lot quicker to get her back up than Vanessa was. Also, I've installed an alarms system, that checks the servers every five minutes, and plays the "Dead Parrot" sketch if one of them doesn't reply.
I thought you might like to see a picture of the servers here. From left to right, they are Ethel, Queen, Clara, Ingrid, Video and Irene. On the extreme right, you can see the packet switches; on the left you can see the monitor that connects to all those servers. Ethel is where most of the web site menus and thumbnails are prepared, before being uploaded to the servers that you access. This happens every night, in the small hours.
A few people have asked me for a zip-download feature, so I've done one. What you do, is you navigate the NewsThumbs as usual, but each picture you want to download, you check the checkbox next to it. Or you can check a box to get everything on the page. This builds up a list of files; when you've checked all you want, then you tell it to make a zip file for download.
Narella springs into action. The first thing she does, is eliminate duplicates, so that even if a file had two different names and was in two different newsgroups, you'll only get one copy of it. She tells you which files she's de-duplicated. Then she lists the files that she's going to zip, then she creates zip files and makes links to them. There's up to 100 files per zip, and you can have up to 20 zips. When you've downloaded all those, then you can do more.
When the zip files have been up for a few hours, Narella deletes them. And she also deletes the list you made. This means that when you do another lot the next day, the old list isn't still there.
But if you want to make another list before Narella gets time to delete the old one (maybe you've done one lot of downloads already), then you should delete the old list first, otherwise you'll have the old files still in your list.
It's all explained here
The picture count is about 4 million now.
To be precise the current figure is
I've added a new video of Elena Sieple. Look for video number 023 or 123.
We currently have seven running; Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Sheila Burgess, Christine Envall, Sarah Dunlap, Marilyn Perret and Julia Santana.
Andrulla won the lightweight Ms Olympia contest, and everyone is very pleased about that! We've been sponsoring Andrulla since 1998, and we were her first (and only) sponsor. Hopefully she'll get more sponsorships now.
Julia won the Cal State bench press champs and got 2nd in the Cal State Powerlifting champs
by Andrez de Tijuana
Your Uncle Andrez always has his feelers out, scouring the Web for those risk-free, low-hassle income opportunities. The "paid web surf" programs (see last month's article) were, in a word, frustrating. Let's move on. A week ago I discovered a search engine which will PAY YOU three US cents for each web search you do. The URL is:
http://www.epilot.com
It's the epitome of hassle-free. No download is required in order to use it (they do have some sort of optional taskbar available for download. I didn't download this).
Simply register, select your username/password and use the search engine right away. Your username and earnings balance appear in the upper lefthand corner of your monitor. Type in a word or phrase and hit "go". 5-10 seconds later your list of links appears and your earnings balance grows by 3 cents before your very eyes.
I know what you must be thinking, and no, you WON'T be paid for every web search. They require it to be a "legitimate" search. Type in gibberish (wj5#$^cc&^drw@) or a subject (valkyrie) and hit the "go" icon over and over and over again and you won't be paid for this obvious goofing around. With each goof-off click of the green "go" icon you can watch your balance grow by leaps and bounds, but at 2:00AM every day, the web site's "bullshit filter" kicks in and your revised REAL earnings are posted the next day.
If you're good at typing meaningful words, hit the "go" icon and cause the page to refresh with your new links - and do this every 10 seconds, hey, you'll earn $10 per hour. Not a bad little parttime job.
They do have a referral program and I am a current user with a username but I won't divulge it here because using Di's newsletter to fish for referrals would be the height of gauchery. I probably won't be paid for these referrals anyway (see last month's article).
When your balance reaches $20, they say to contact them and they'll send a check in 30-60 days (Maybe. Again see last month's article).
The quality of ePilots search engine is so-so. I entered "valkyrie" and got a bunch of sites for the Honda Valkyrie - but no Diana! Only after I enter "Diana the Valkyrie" do I get a link to TheValkyrie.com.
I entered "Zsa Zsa Binks", the floppy-eared Star Wars character, and only got alot of sites for "Zsa Zsa Gabor". Any good search engine will give me at least one site for Zsa Zsa Binks.
I give this site six months and it will fold. The advertisers want people with money to spend and this site only attract those without money. Also, any good computer geek worth his/her salt could write an automated whacker program to conduct web searches 24 hours a day.
If I were you, I'd jump in this opportunity NOW and earn some extra Christmas spending money because I don't suspect this site will be around forever. :)
Hugs, smooches, etc.
Andrez
Valkyrie notes: it's good that someone is checking out these things and telling it like it is. My guess is that a couple of months from now, Andrez will be telling us why it was that he didn't get a dime out of this ...
I'm trying out a new despammer, and first indications are, it's quite good. It's called Spam bouncer, and it's free.
It doesn't block spam, it sorts your email into folders. I have :
Block incoming. That's getting the messages in (for example) Chinese, which I think are all spam, but even if they aren't, I can't read them anyway.
Bulk incoming. That's for an email discussion list I'm subscribed to. I don't *have* to read that, it's just a discussion that I might sometimes add to.
Spam incoming. These are readable, but for one reason or another, it's fairly obvious that they're spam (for example, they aren't actually addressed to me).
Inbox. That's my normal email.
I can still read all the spam (if I want to), it's all there. But it'll make dealing with my incoming email a lot faster. And if after a while I find that the spam folder doesn't ever get anything worth reading, then it'll drop down low on my priorities for reading.
I'm using it with Linux (which is what I mostly use these days), but there's similar software available for Windows.
Would you like a computer for $69? What you get is a rather obsolete and slow Pentium 75, made by Dell. You'll need to add a monitor, mouse and keyboard if you want one (not really needed if you're going to use it as a web server), plus you might need a CD Rom, and an operating system (Windows or Linux).
I've bought stuff from these people before, they seem to be very good, but you do need to know what you're doing before you buy something like this.
Or maybe you want a notebook? Look here for one for $220, made by IBM. Obsolete, yes. But five years ago, it was top of the range, and it's just as fast now as it was then.
And with your cheap computer, you'll want a cheap operating system. You can get Linux for $3.49, and that comes with a browser, text editor, email, games, web server - all included in the price.
By Wessex Man
SYDNEY, Nov 1st -- Deborah Compton, aged 39, has been one of Australia's most strikingly elegant and muscular female bodybuilders for many years. And as a single woman with no children she's free to live life to the full and explore new horizons.
At around 150 lbs in weight and with 16" calves and biceps she attracts plenty of attention and knows how to use her opportunities.
"I always get stared at on the beach of course when all I'm wearing is a bikini -- and anywhere when I'm just wearing a crop top or shorts," she told me in an interview. "....I realise that sometimes it's better to wear a baggy top or jacket if I want time out."
Deborah's remarkably lithe and supple lines indicate an athletic background, as a former squash champion, as well as her succession of Australian and world bodybuilding awards since 1990. Her stated interests include meeting new people and she's casting around for fresh challenges right now.
Ms COMPTON LOOKS TO THE FUTURE
"For 2000 I'm not competing as I'm tied up with work commitments and plans to take off overseas next year," she explained. Deborah is looking at the possibility of promoting a bodybuilding show but recognises the financial risks.
"I've often thought about getting involved in running a show as I get older, but I've not ventured into it at this point and one needs great sponsors to make it work."
"....Hopefully now that they have changed the women's judging criteria of late (the sport) will attract more competitors and keep the female competitions alive." Here she's referring to the shift towards the lighter muscular physique as opposed to the extreme ultra-muscular look that was emerging on the Ms Olympia stage through the 1990s.
Deborah's been a corporate professional as well as a weight trainer and Queensland state amateur squash champion. At one time she was a top Personal Assistant working for directors of the Sydney Stock Exchange and the Sydney Futures Exchange. Currently she lists her occupations as fitness trainer, wrestler, reservations officer and customer service representative. Her energies need plenty of outlets.
HOW A WOMAN SHAPES HER BICEPS
Deborah's biceps routine demonstates her world class standards. "Actually my arms are one of those areas which just seem to grow and I only used to train them twice a week. I did a lot of high rep work in the first few years and did a lot of drop-sets. I believe that's why I achieved great definition. I then added a combination of heavy and light to increase the size without losing the definition."
Her published regime, "Bicep[s Training with Deborah", demands the following:
Begin with two warm up sets of around 12-15 reps. Then get serious with four sets of standing barbell curls, three sets of standing alternate dumbell curls, three sets of EZ bar preacher curls and finally three sets of standing cable curls (to hit the bicep peaks). Here Deborah is curling with up to 60% of her bodyweight. Her reps with the heavy sets range 8-12.
"I'm very lucky that I'm blessed with biceps that respond very quickly to any kind of exercise and therefore I do not have to train them as often as other body parts," she says in her arm training tips on internet.
SISTER KATHY RECRUITS HER TO BODYBUILDING
Deborah's bodybuilder sister Kathy, about two years older, was the one who tempted her into the sport. "In 1988 I started weight training due to an injury I sustained while playing in the finals of a squash game. Kathy recommended I do some rehabilitation so I could be ready for the next season."
"I never went back to squash and welcomed a new sport in bodybuilding. Through the expert advice of my sister and the fact that I put 100% into this new sport, as I had done with squash, I surged ahead in the bodybuilding arena. I won my first (Australian) national competition 15 months later."
"Then came a string of titles one after the other and finally (NABBA) Ms World and Ms Universe and the overalls in both competitions in 1993."
Deborah's competing career went quiet in the mid-90s, but she resurfaced to gain 4th place in the 1999 IFBB women's world championship. Kathy, for her part, had held Australian and world titles in the 1980s. Both these girls were born in Yorkshire, U.K., and have lived in Australia for around 28 years.
WILL DEBORAH BUILD MORE MUSCLE ?
I asked Deborah if she plans to put on more muscle inches. "To me it was never really about how much mass I could gain but mainly a combination of quality muscle, definition, symmetry/proportion to height (5' 3"), condition and of course remaining feminine."
"....I do believe I could achieve a lot more mass if I wanted to, but I have always had a vision in my head of how much muscle I wanted to carry and how I want to present myself as a female bodybuilder."
"I have always felt sexy and feminine even at my biggest because of the way I express my package."
SHE EXPLAINS THE NEW FEMALE WARRIOR
We also discussed why women are developing prominent muscles really for the first time in history. Photos from the later 19th century show the beginnings of the cult of the muscular female, in the circus ring and the fair ground. But there was no worldwide excitement until the last 20 odd years, or even less. The late Kay Baxter, one of the first exponents to become famous, was flexing her biceps publicly in the 1970s. Earlier 20th century muscle women were essentially obscure.
"I'm not sure of the reason for this but I think it's partly because females were always considered the weakest sex and wanted to prove that if they pushed themselves hard enough they could achieve results which a man would never have dreamed possible for a female..."
"...(bodybuilding) made them feel more in control of themselves as individuals who could also be looked up to. If you look at the corporate industry it's no different -- women have slowly climbed the ladder and are now running major corporations as managing directors instead of staying home being full-time mothers."
Now women have proved themselves, she said. "..They can take it all on, Career, Sport, Motherhood. Wow we really are WARRIORS !".
END
I taught Clepsy a new language - she can now speak Baseball! I observed the language carefully before teaching it to Clepsy, and it seems to have a fairly simple syntax. Where in English you have "subject, verb, object" with the object being optional (not needed for intransitive verbs). In baseball, the syntax is "player, opinion" or "team, opinion". You can also have "player, team, opinion", but that's less common. The opinions, of course, can be anything at all, because all opinons are equally valid. That's democracy at work. So now, when people start to discuss baseball in the chatroom, Clepsy will chime in, giving her two cents worth to the debate.
Member | Posts |
| gaily304 | 7236 |
| boomer444 | 2978 |
| Blast222 | 2860 |
| mike1965 | 2761 |
| jabb6328 | 2738 |
| ginny2442 | 2711 |
| mit19237 | 2185 |
| rdhdpwr150 | 2182 |
| lpdorman69 | 2150 |
| tre1313 | 2088 |
| 007tko | 2024 |
| Diana the Valkyrie | 1898 |
| stone001 | 1826 |
| TwoPossums | 1762 |
| TomNine | 1760 |
| 000wlt | 1728 |
| new453 | 1640 |
| april069 | 1553 |
| dgt321 | 1297 |
| Peggy.Schoolcraft | 1250 |
And it's Gaily in a big way this month, with more chat than any two other chatters combined!
Violet's message board gained a new function - it's now Vi's Versailles Salon.
Most posted Board of the month | Poster of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Scooby's board has taken back it's old place at the head of the league, although TomNine isn't far behind. Andrulla's board got a boost from her first place at the Ms Olympia, while Boomers board gained from the recent baseball game in New York, and the "Politics, Economics and session economics board" has been carefully covering a possible political scandal. | Jabber is by far the most prolific poster on the Message Boards, possibly this explains why he got knocked so far down the chat table. |
Mavis is counting the number of times the message list is checked for each board, and the number of times that a posting is read. This gives a very different picture from the one above. The chess board seems to be write-only; it's being posted to, but not read.
Most listed Board of the month | Most read Board of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| TwoPossums TV and pictures is the most read board, thus proving that there's still life in the legacy media. TomNine's Tenement is somewhat behind that, with Scooby in third place. | Another Grinchless month! I think I've solved that problem. |
I'm planning to get a robot arm, and see if I can connect it to the internet, and control it over the web. And I can put a web cam onto watching it. So, this month's competition is for suggestions about what I can do with a robot arm on the web. Yes, I already thought of FUFME type activities. Also armwrestling. If it works well, I can also get an arm mounted on a wheeled chassis, which opens up all sorts of possibilities!
Anyway - let's hear your suggestions - post them on my message board
I checked the site statistics. that Sandra counts up each night.
At the end of October 2000, there were about 293,000 pictures (14.4 gigabytes), 38 gigabytes of video, 4100 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 53 gigabytes.
On Anita, the Newsthumbs server, there's the NewsThumbs, which is another 3.8 million pictures in 232 gigabytes and 5.3 million text files, a total of 244 gigabytes.
