Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - June 2005
A hard man is good to beat
I always find it wonderful how fast everything grows and blossoms in May. But there's a downside to that - when I go out on a country walk at this time of year, the footpaths tend to be very overgrown and nettled. But that the same time, it's still wet enough that the bridleways are churned to mud by the horse traffic.
Galleries added this month.
Stories added this month.
Nothing new
Movies added this month.
Running smoothly. I did the every-two-months server swapout, because the servers had accumulated about a terabyte, but I don't think most people would notice this swapout - with the software I put in last year, that's all pretty much invisible.
I replaced a few failed drives. More importantly, I've got nine servers ready for taking up to Watford, to replace nine servers there that are either failed or obsolete. I'm in no hurry to get up there, though. I try to visit twice per year, so my next planned visit is June.
As part of a fairly routine update, I screwed up part of my email.
The Stonecoldmail server, is called zelia, and zelia is also used for catching mail to a few dozen domain names that I manage, and for forwarding it to the address it's destined for. I also use it as a sink for spam; quite a lot of spam falls into zelia and is never seen again.
On May 20, I added another domain name to the list that zelia accepts email for; I added thevalkyrie.com. I didn't think this would really have much of an effect ... but it did. No, what I really mean is ... I didn't think.
Because zelia thought that anything for valkyrie@thevalkyrie.com could be delivered to the valkyrie account on zelia, it did exactly that. This meant that anything emailed to me from zelia, didn't reach the account that I actually read. And that meant that people with Stonecoldmail accounts, were emailing me and I wasn't seeing it.
It took me a couple of days to work out what was going on. At one point, I found an email account that I had, with 59,360 emails going back two years. All those emails were system generated automatic emails telling me about this or that minor problem - I deleted all those, and continued to search for my lost emails.
Eventually, I found them, on the account valkyrie@zelia.thevalkyrie.com. As soon as I saw them there, I realised what the cause was, undid the blunder I'd done a few days before, and now things are working again. Working through the 150 emails that had accumulated there didn't take very long; most of them were spam. Email to my main account, goes through a spam filter, which sorts them out into "probably not spam" "Almost certainly spam" and a couple of other categories. I expect you use a spam filter too.
It turns out that it can be really difficult to reconfigure routers and firewalls to allow the video data to be pulled out of the webcam computer by my servers. So I turned it around, and now the webcam computers push the data out to my servers.
To do that, I had to completely rewrite the software that runs on the webcam computers, so I decided to do it in java, which is something I'm starting to rather like. The nice thing about that, is that the software runs inside the browser. So, in order for performers to start up the webcam software, all that they have to do, is visit the login page on my server.
Another nice thing about doing it that way, is that the software comes from my server. So, if I improve the video data capture software, I only need to change it on my server, and all the webcans will be using the new version.
I do think it's important not to simply ignore spam. Despammers can nevr be 100% effective. You've probabbly noticed that some spam gets through whatever despammer you're using, but maybe you didn't realise that the despammer makes the other mistake - it wrongly flags as spam, some email that isn't spam.
I'm currently frustrated by one of these. Someone is emailing a query about his membership, but every time I answer, my reply is grabbed by his despammer - I have no idea why. From his point of view, I'm rudely ignoring his emails. From my point of view, there's nothing I can do. So - don't just delete all spam unseen. At least run your eye down the summary of who it's from and the subject line. And if the sender is valkyrie@thevalkyrie.com and if the subject is "Valkyrie web site", then it wasn't spam, it's from me.
There's another kind of spam filter that I'm seeing more and more of, the "CAPTCHA". That asks you to read a word, and type it in, thus validating that you're a real live human being. You're only asked to do that once - after that, your email goes straight through. I'm not sure how well it works, though. It's trivially easy for the spammers to get through - all they need to do is hire a bunch of very cheap labour to do the initial word recognition.
But there's another problem. Will people actually go to the trouble of doing that validation? I don't know. I do know that I have a blind friend, who would certainly need an audio alternative to the graphic that you have to type in.
A new video from Kasie Cavanaugh, "Rondom Plant"
None
I don't make these up, although the comments on the spams are mine, of course. These are actual spams sent to me, which just strike me as funny. I don't include their contact details - go find your own spammers!
By the way, if you're using StoneColdMail
(which is free to web site members) then you won't see most of these spams, they'll be delivered
into your "Spam" folder.
i crossed 3 hours yesterday
Well done!
Hi there. My name is Julie, I am half british half scotish. I know its a weird
mix
It certainly is weird. That's like being half New Yorker and half American.
Overstock sunglasses at no charge.
Why is it always sunglasses?
Hello, do youfrom surprise to surprise. want to spend Iess on your drrugs?
The PHARMACY-BY-MAlLyourself the Admiral of the Navies of the Catholic King? We
shall SHOP present at the coming ashore of the great buccaneer.offers you a
great deaI
Vsecond, and yet when the third night descended upon them they hadlAGRA VALbe
sent aboard one of the ships of the fleet. He pointed to thelUM than the torments
Nature would here procure a man in Pitt's condition.ClALlS case may be equal to
more than the whole in the other.LEVlTRA and many other.
With each purchaIt would be humiliating to send for me if you treat me like an
enemy.se you get:
Great even when Don Miguel opened fire on him. Observing the Spaniard'sPrices
Top Royal master and the French nation. That which I think will bequaIity
HomeThen he knelt to his task, ripped away doublet and underwear to deIivery
TotYou will be merciful with him. You will spare him all you can foral
confidentiaIity
TSunderland despair of solving this vexatious problem by ordinaryry us and you
will not be disappointed!
I do enjoy Napoleonic era sea stories. Hornblower is the classic, of course.
Yeah it's a sp@m :)
That's very honest of you.
Most of the sponsorships now are by giving women server space and bandwidth, so they can operate their web sites without having to pay these fees. There's also photoshoots, which gets some revenue into their hands, as well as the traditional direct-funding sponsorship.
I've launched gift memberships.
Make a friend happy with the gift of a month, a few months, a year or a long term membership to this web site. Ideal for someone you know who is difficult to buy a gift for. Perfect for a birthday present. Great for Christmas. It's the same signup as per usual, but you also tell me the email address of who it's for, how long the membership will last, and you write a message that will accomany the gift. It's something I thought of last Christmas, but I didn't have time to do it then. Since in most areas, Christmas starts in late August these days, I thought I'd get my strike in pre-emptively.
Sign up here for the gift that lasts and lasts
Member | Posts |
| tre1313 | 4533 |
| TomNine | 2625 |
| madman3579 | 2228 |
| boomerflex | 1856 |
| buffy18976 | 1635 |
| tk000 | 1493 |
| hiram2000 | 1399 |
| sprds825 | 1321 |
| mit19237 | 1240 |
| jcc115 | 1193 |
| Jerroll | 1152 |
| Diana the Valkyrie | 1141 |
| gaily304 | 1114 |
| rainer0000 | 909 |
| lpdorman69 | 887 |
| shad349 | 703 |
| Brian1958 | 689 |
| Storm | 510 |
| Praetorian | 500 |
| country01 | 491 |
Tre still dominates the chatroom.
This month we had 2310 posts to the boards.
Most posted Board of the month | Poster of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| You can see from the above that this web site is Sports chat, politics and a few other bits and pieces. | Steve and Zig are the big posters this month. |
Mavis is counting the number of times the message list is checked for each board. This gives a very different picture from the one above.
Most listed Board of the month | Most read Board of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| It's all about FBBs, movies and mixed action. | The Grinch didn't get the stats! |
Next month is the 100th edition of the monthly newsletter. Do the math - more than eight years!
I checked the site statistics that Sandra counts up each night.
At the end of May 2005, there were about 748,000 pictures (49 gigabytes), 159 gigabytes of video, 9300 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 209 gigabytes. There's over 140 million pictures altogether in Newsthumbs.