image: Bloggo - The Non Blog
by Keith Fenske
January 2009 to March 2010		 main Bloggo page
August 2007 to December 2008(no following archive)

This archive file contains the following stories that first appeared in "Bloggo - The Non Blog" between January 2009 and March 2010:

Stories are in chronological order from oldest to newest.  You may go to previous archives by clicking on the left arrow in the top right corner of this page, or to following archives by clicking on the right arrow.  You may return to the main Bloggo page by clicking on the caveman icon.

The presentation here differs from the original because this file makes less use of cascading style sheets: font sizes and spacing are relative to the defaults chosen by your browser.  The contents are copyright © 2009, 2010 by Keith Fenske with all rights reserved.

"Everybody has an opinion.  That doesn't mean those opinions are of value to anyone else."  (Keith Fenske, January 2009.)

A Hundred Times A Day

Saturday, 28 February 2009
by Keith Fenske
My Java programs are being downloaded about 100 times per day.  Total traffic is around one gigabyte per month.  That's nothing compared to the estimated 200,000 daily downloads of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (at 58.1 MB each), but it's still nice to see.  My top eight programs are now utilities, up from the top five last year, followed by games.  Utilities are a steady business.  Even if people don't really like them, if the programs do the job and do it correctly, people will continue to use them and recommend them to friends ... especially if they are free.  In rough categories, the downloads are:
20/day Character Map
8/day Compare Folders, File Redate Rename, Icon Editor
5/day File Checksum, Find Duplicate Files, Font Rename, Hex File Editor
3/day Reversi or Othello, Tic-Tac-Toe
Of these, the biggest surprise to me is Icon Editor.  When it was first released, it was rarely used.  It is better than several other free icon editors (that is, it actually generates correct files), so the awkwardness of running a Java program must be outweighed by its perceived value to the users.

Wednesday, March 11th.  Two nights of record cold temperatures.  Monday was -32.8°C, down ever so slightly from -32.2°C (or -26°F) in 1897.  Breaking a record by half a degree is nothing special.  Breaking Tuesday's previous low of -33.3°C (1904) with -42.7°C is very unusual: a drop of 9.4 Celsius degrees!  As the old joke goes, below minus forty, it doesn't matter if you're measuring Celsius or Fahrenheit; it's still damn cold.  In March?  This is January weather.  Officially, we had record lows on three different days, but that's only because a cold night is cold on both sides of midnight, the magical dividing line between official days.

Steal This Free Program

Wednesday, 18 March 2009
by Keith Fenske
There are web sites that offer "cracked" versions of my Java programs with "keygen" installers.  Me being a small fish in a big pond, they no doubt offer unlicensed versions of everyone else's programs too.  Cracked means that the security protection has been defeated; keygen means to create fake serial numbers that the program will accept during setup.  However ... most of my programs are as free as the GNU General Public License.  There are no serial numbers.  Anyone stupid enough to download an unknown "installer" from a random web site in a foreign country to steal an otherwise free program deserves what they get: adware, spyware, viruses, or worse.  Some sites even charge money for such nothingness.  The number of these sites and their similar nature make them a concerted trap for the unwary.

This is in addition to dozens of web sites that claim to be directories of downloadable software.  They aren't.  They take information from legitimate sites, repackage it along with advertisements, and often don't have working download links.  They may force you to register your e-mail address (spam alert!) or trick you into installing "setup" software of questionable content (malware alert).  Please stick to genuine sites.  In my case, that's my own download page, the many-months-broken CNET Download.com site (don't ask), or the Softpedia Linux, Macintosh, and Windows sites (same programs, different editors).

As has been said many times before, there are none so gullible as those who think they are getting something for nothing.  Greed kills.  Once you convince yourself that stealing is okay, the whole part of your brain that tells you to stop and be careful seems to shut off.  Bang, bang, you're dead.  Killed by the very thing that you tried to steal.

Real life is the dog barking in the back yard, someone knocking at the front door, and then the telephone ringing.  (Keith Fenske, April 2009.)

Friday, April 10th.  Late evening thunderstorm -- very unusual for April around here.

Following statistics blindly will lead you to the longest branch on the highest tree ... and from there, you open your eyes and fall.  (Keith Fenske, April 2009, origin unknown.)

Spam Surge

Tuesday, 28 April 2009
by Keith Fenske
My e-mail is now over 95% spam: garbage messages from people I don't know on topics I have no interest in.  At the beginning of April, I was receiving about 30 spam messages per day.  Last week, it jumped to 80 per day.  This week, there were 121 on Monday and 163 on Tuesday.  Many people receive much more spam than this, but my figures are from an e-mail account that I no longer use.  I keep it around only for historical reasons ... and to measure spam.  The volume is now sufficiently high that I make little effort to find "false positives" in the junk mail.  There are a few people that insist on sending to my old e-mail address, in a style that looks like spam (no subject line, badly written content, etc).  In the past, after kicking one of these semi legitimate messages loose from the spam filter, I would explain why they should take more care in what they write.  They haven't, they don't, and now their mail gets deleted unseen.  Too bad.

Most of the spam is coming from compromised machines whose owners don't even know they are sending spam, or that their computers are infected with spyware or viruses.  They are called zombie computers and are controlled as part of a larger botnet.  Some botnets are reputed to have millions of machines under their control; sizes in the hundreds of thousands have been confirmed.  Since these machines are spread throughout the world, and the commands to send spam are delivered outside of the normal e-mail protocol, tracking down the original sender of any given message is futile.

The spam count slowly dropped throughout the week.  Wednesday 149 (five times normal).  Thursday 130.  Friday 83.  Saturday 49.  Sunday 51.  Monday 53.  Tuesday 73.  Wednesday 61.  Thursday 63.  The new daily annoyance level now seems to be about 60 spam messages ... and remember, this is on an unused e-mail account!

Tuesday, May 5th.  The final test version of Windows 7 called "Release Candidate" is now available.  Yes, it's better than Windows Vista.  Yes, it will replace Windows XP.  Don't go upgrading your old computers, 'though.  There's not enough difference between Vista and Windows 7 to be worth the trouble, and hardware from the XP era may not be supported.  Do buy Windows 7 on new computers when it becomes available later this year.  As much as we may be accustomed to Windows XP, those days are ending.

Until Further Notice

Tuesday, 30 June 2009
by Keith Fenske
All changes to this web site have been suspended until further notice.

August 2007 to December 2008 This portion of "Bloggo - The Non Blog" is copyright © 2009, 2010 by Keith Fenske.  All rights reserved. (no following archive)