Every day now, at least a few spam messages get through, sometimes with recurring types or themes–for example, spam with email addresses that read “???@???” with absolutely no message, or a very specific address pattern, like “12345@12345.br”, with only the repeating number changing. Seems like once I identified these as spam, Eudora should be able to filter very similar ones in the future, but no, they keep getting through.

Today, I just got a new spam that Eudora absolutely should have gotten. The Subject line of the email read,”Spam from Vasya.” That right there should have been a small clue for the spam filter, one would think. The message read,

Hi my diar friend!

This is the spam message for you.

Vasya

And there it ended. Now, I know that the filters look for specific tricks and stuff, and this was a simple message with no images or links or anything, but still… OK, so I sent it to the Junk folder, where it automatically won a spam score of 100%, supposedly “teaching” the spam filter how to recognize it in the future.

Five hours later, the exact same message, with a different “sender,” sailed right past the spam filters. So, if the spam filters don’t learn to keep out addresses and they don’t learn to keep out content, then what the hell do they learn? Or do they not “learn” at all? In which case, what the hell good are spam scores?

On top of that, most messages from new writers that are authentic wind up getting shunted to the spam folder.

And this just a few days after I praised Eudora for the Mac after having dealt with the Windows version. I might just start looking into Apple’s Mail program. I passed it up a few years back when it was still young. Maybe it’s gotten better since then. I mean, I very much like Eudora’s flexibility, plentiful preference settings, and the powerful search capabilities, enough to overlook some of it’s warts (persistent small cracks in the interface, and the inability to search and check mail well at the same time). Maybe I should be somewhat satisfied that 98% or so of the spam is getting filtered out, but I think Eudora needs a serious refresh in that department. In the meantime, I’m looking into options.

I was walking by Howard’s Glen the other day with a friend to show them Howard when I noticed… several Howards. I hadn’t gone by for a while since I had gotten my fill of Howard pictures, but it appears that the Green Pheasant population of the glen has increased somewhat. First, my friend and I spotted at least two or three females in various places, and in addition to Howard, there was a new male–probably immature, as this one had no significant tail feathers to speak of (though I can’t find any mention of this variation through a brief search). I went back today with my camera and saw just two–a female and the new young male.

The female, of course…

After landing in the brush… more on that below

Howard’s competition

Not a good image, but it’s the best that shows the lack of tail feathers; compare with Howard’s

The two new birds were also a bit flighty–neither one stayed in sight for very long, unlike Howard, who is relatively tame. The male (let me call him “Henry”), in fact, came into view right under me from beneath the overpass, and then quickly ducked back after spotting me overhead. I was only able to get him later after he came out when I was momentarily elsewhere.

The female (call her “Henrietta,” a name my mom came up with a while back) was also shy. I got the second image of her, though, just as I was packing up to leave and noticed movement of branches in the brush. I’d never seen a pheasant anywhere but the ground before, but Henrietta had flown up into some low brush and was actually perching. After sitting there looking around for a minute, she walked along the branches to go under the leaf cover and disappeared–presumably to a nest or a night perch. Just a few minutes before, Henry had disappeared behind a small construction embankment and had similarly not come back out, probably also settling down.

In any case, I’ll have to start coming back to the glen more often to see who’s running around down there.

It had to happen, of course. “Weird Al” Yankovic has produced a song, complete with animated video, that parodies the whole RIAA anti-piracy battle, titled “Don’t Download This Song.” Of course, in true Weird Al style, the song is downloadable from the page, in MP3 format. Not being too hip on major releases (or pop music in general), I don’t know if the song is an original by Yankovic or if it’s a parody of someone else’s, though it does seem to smack a little bit of one of those “We Are the World” kind of songs.

Yankovic hits on the RIAA and their legal tactics in these lyrics: “You don’t want to mess with the R-I-Double-A; They’ll sue you if you burn that CD-R; It doesn’t matter if you’re a grandma or a 7-year-old girl; They’ll treat you like the evil, hard-bitten criminal scum you are!” He later makes fun of the relative minor infraction of downloading versus the huge amount of money artists make, though in truth, that should be targeted against the fact that downloads hit not the artists (who make more money from tours), but the even more ludicrously rich recording labels, who are themselves parasitic on the artists.

I love the ending, especially each line’s after-shout, as the song fades out:

Don’t download this song (No, no no no no, no no noooo!)
You’ll burn in hell before too long (And you deserve it!)
And buy the CD (Just buy it!)
Like you know that you should (You cheap bastard!)
Oh, don’t download this song!

I won’t ruin the rest of the song for you, it’s pretty good. Just listen–and do download that song! And remember Tommy!

This statement by a candidate for Senate in Florida almost makes me want to support only allowing agnostics to gain office:

If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin. They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is alright. They can vote to sustain gay marriage. And that will take western civilization, indeed other nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don’t know better, we are leading them astray and it’s wrong. …

Why agnostics? Because they’re the only ones who can be depended upon to never try to cram their belief system down your throat.

Of course, then again, one has to remember that the candidate who spoke the above words is Katherine Harris, who seems congenitally unfit for office.

A 21-year-old college student was caught with half a stick of dynamite in his luggage, and:

In Houston, KTRK-13 quoted law enforcement sources as saying that the man had a blasting cap, a homemade fuse and a quarter-pound of ammonium nitrate, in addition to the dynamite.

Now, you tell me–in the middle of an orange alert for airlines, how dumb do you have to be to pack dynamite, ammonium nitrate, a fuse and a blasting cap on an international flight? His father explains:

Fish’s father, Howard, said he is certain his son, who bought the dynamite while visiting a silver mine while traveling in South America, intended no harm.

“It’s a 21-year-old kid not paying careful attention to the press and thinking it would be cool to have a piece of dynamite,” Howard Fish, of Old Lyme, Conn., said Friday night.

Okay, I think that nearly getting struck by lightning is pretty cool, so maybe I’m not the best judge here, but how out of it do you have to be to not be aware of the whole air travel safety thing? And even if you’re not, even in the safest of times, it still comes across as one of the dumbest things you can imagine. Especially considering:

Houston Fire Department Assistant Chief Omero Longoria said Fish told authorities he works in mining and often handles explosives.

Now, in my opinion, that doesn’t make things better, it makes things worse. If I were in the mining industry, I don’t think I’d want to hire someone that incautious around explosives.

It’s Monkey Tuesday! Okay, it’s not. It’s Saturday. But with the Penn Jillette Show, in a way, it’s always Monkey Tuesday. That’s a little tradition that they came up with. Every Tuesday, people call or write in with Monkey stories. They’ve already mined out the flinging and simian self-pleasuring stories, apparently, and now want mostly stories that end in violence. But they get all kinds, and they’re usually funny.

If you listened to the podcast before and noticed that it stopped a month or two ago, just go to this podcast, where you’ll find fans have kept the podcast alive, and still without commercials. I find myself disagreeing with a lot of what Jillette says, but his presentation makes it very easy to listen to and enjoy–and that’s a very strong quality.

Despite Microsoft’s attempts to sound like they’ll be on time with Vista, beta testers don’t think so. As predicted, the current release, Beta 2, is so buggy that none of the testers could believe that MS could move on to a “first release candidate” before a third beta release gets most of the plague of vermin purged from the system. Anti-virus software still won’t work with Vista, and the OS alone still requires a mammoth 700 MB of RAM (down from 1 GB, but still way too high).

Meanwhile, most companies don’t plan to switch to Vista until more than a year after its release, and many don’t plan to move there at all. Certainly for home users, Vista has few if any real advantages, and a lot of disadvantages–such as requiring major hardware upgrades, as well as MS’s new “Genuine Advantage” “feature” which is an advantage to software vendors only–as for you, it assumes you’re a thief and essentially forces you to prove that you didn’t steal your software. Why anyone would want to make the switch is beyond me.

In short, don’t buy any Microsoft stock anytime soon.

A week ago, I reported that we had 12 planets. Now we’re down to 8. Either the Death Star is hard at work out there, or astronomers keep changing their minds.

As cool as the former explanation would be, it’s the latter. Now, Pluto, Ceres, and Xena have been demoted from the “planet” category, and are now classed as “dwarf planets.”

As much as I would have preferred more planets, I can see the sense to this. The question is, is this really the last word? They seem to be saying so now, but then again, they seemed to be saying so last week, too.

Good to their word, the Apple Store got my Powerbook back after 5 days in the repair shop (they said three days to a week, none of this “working days” crap). The new screen is in, and it works beautifully (though I haven’t had time to heat-test the screen area darkening yet). Not a stuck or dead pixel on it anywhere–which is a step up from my previous screen, which had a single pixel with a dead green element, though it was off to the side. I have the feeling that with another computer maker, the complaint (which could not even be demonstrated well in the store, I had to use digital camera pics to show it) probably would have been refused and a free repair not given–even within the warranty, where Apple allowed me to get a repair three months later so long as I reported it within the warranty period. As usual, Apple gets high marks for service.

Being off the Mac does make me appreciate it over the PC more, though a good deal of that has to do with software versions. Qualcomm’s Eudora email software, for example, is very good on the Mac, but it sucks big time on Windows. Alert sounds especially were impossible to control well, and I couldn’t find a way to set auto mail check intervals for each account separately.

Also, generally, Windows apps work within a single window, whereas Mac apps can split tasks of a single app between several windows, if necessary. Like in MS Word on Windows, if you have more than one document open at a time, they can appear within one main window, and then a sub-window appears inside that has its own window buttons (minimize, maximize, close) just below the main app’s buttons. If there are no docs open, a gray pane persists. On the Mac, each doc has its own window, with toolbars and palettes free-floating. Maybe it’s just personal preference, but I like that better–it allows for freely sizing each window and allowing for overlaps. Less constricting, less crowded that way.

In any case, I’ve got my security blanket back. Yes, it’s pathetic, I know. But we all have things we’d rather not do without for long periods of time. What’s yours?

I like wasabi. I love wasabi snacks. Wasabi sembei (hard, dry rice crackers in a wide variety of forms), and wasabi-flavored potato chips are great. But wasabi peas are the best. The only problem is, I can’t usually find them. In Karuizawa (where apparently wasabi is produced somewhat more than elsewhere) they had some wasabi stuff, including the peas, so I bought some–the larger package shown above at left.

Now, there is a wasabi peas snack sold more widely–that would be the two smaller triangular packs on the right. The only problem is, half the packages are wasabi peas, which are great, and half are wasabi lima beans, which are okay but less desirable.

If you haven’t had these before, give ’em a try. They’re great. And if you know where to get the peas only in Tokyo, drop a comment and let me know.

This is one of the fun things about blogging–you never know what’s going to click with people, and sometimes it’s just plain weird. Like my fourth blog post after starting this whole shebang was an offhand remark about my eyelid twitching, and suddenly people swarmed to it. Even today, three years later, I still get several comments a week on a subsequent post on eyelid twitching, and it’s up to almost 900 comments so far. That one post is my main draw from Google. Go figure.

But that’s what blogging is like. You make long, arduous, well-thought-out posts on serious subjects, but then your stats show people crowding to read your pithy comments on errant bodily functions. With a blog, you never know what people are going to want.

Just before heading off to Karuizawa, I wrote a post mainly consisting of whinging about whether or not I should get my Powerbook screen replaced, and then a short recalling of the Apple store people giving me a big bag to protect my backpack from the rain. After getting several useful comments with advice on the repairs, I forgot all about the specific post–only to later notice a big spike in visitors around that time. For some bizarre, unknown reason, the Mac news aggregator MacSurfer.com picked up the blog post (usually someone has to recommend it), and then two other Mac sites (like this one) picked it up under the topic of “Opinion,” without comment. I gotta figure that they just automatically, mechanically pick random stories from MacSurfer, because the post is pretty ditzy, to be quite honest. But hundreds of people came just for that. I always hate to think people have come to my blog and have left disappointed, but then, people are still raving about my eyelid twitching thing. Maybe I’m just not that good a judge of what people like.

Sorry if I was late in getting the comments approved over the past few days, but I was in Karuizawa from mid-Sunday to late-afternoon Tuesday, and did not have Internet access in the interim. Either they don’t have Internet cafes in that resort town in Nagano, or nobody could point me to one. I had to get yesterday’s blog entry up remotely, and couldn’t really do much more (thanks to Shari for the help!).

Karuizawa was one of the locales for the ’98 Winter Olympics (remember the hot spring-enjoying monkeys?). It’s in Nagano prefecture, more of less in central Honshu, but is located closer to Tokyo than most of the district. The skiing in Winter and the moderate climate in summer bring a lot of tourists.

While there with a friend, we rented bicycles (a big thing in that town, apparently–tons of bike rental shops) and cycled around the city. We figured the whole course we took was about 25 km., a good deal on slight hills, so it was quite the workout. But there’s some lovely scenery there. The cool climate and abundance of tall trees makes the perfect setting for moss, and a large part of the city has a lush green carpet of the stuff–very pretty. Quite a few very nice summer homes up there, on large parcels of land for Japan.

There’s also a bit of European influence there; a lot of hotels and restaurants with British, French, and German themes (one taxi driver actually complained about it, saying he didn’t know what most of the names meant). Apparently, over the past 100 years, starting in the Meiji period, a lot of foreign visitors to Japan visited or even stayed for long periods in the city.

The hotel we stayed at (“La Colonia,” which I had to translate for the taxi driver) was a great last-minute booking–about $375 for a 3-day/2 night stay, including breakfast and dinner for two. That’s a lot cheaper than most places in the area, and the cooking was fantastic. If it wasn’t for the bike ride, I probably would have gained a few pounds. Each meal was four courses at least, and every dish was top-notch. In a Tokyo restaurant, I would have expectd to pay at least $150 for such a dinner for two, maybe more. So all in all, a good deal.

The weather could have been better, but we just ducked in between the rainstorms, until the very end, at least. There was good weather for the bike ride, but not so good for the morning and evening before and after. And just as we were enjoying a last-minute lunch before getting back on the bullet train to Tokyo, a heavy downpour started, as evidenced by these people running for cover from the park adjacent to the eatery (click for a larger view):

Our cafeteria was part of a large shopping mall just south of the station–with a 100- to 150-foot uncovered distance between the mall and the station. We waited as long as we could before risking missing our $50 reserved seats on the train, but the rain didn’t let up–so we rushed for the station, and got only partly soaked.

But all that notwithstanding, it was a fun trip. I usually don’t post photos of myself on the blog, but here are a few from the trip (for the most part, having fun with hats):

me partly soaked from running through the rain

If you don’t know the Mac, you might not get this. Nod to TUAW.

Nationalism in Japan, like fundamentalism in America, is often over-represented relative to its actual popularity. The black loudspeaker trucks and vans tend to stand out. They are way over-represented in government, with the ruling party tending to go along their lines. Newspapers often tout their agendas (though the Yomiuri is now doing an about-face).

But there is evidence of a different point of view among actual Japanese people. One small point of evidence: a new anti-war film, called The Ants (Ari no Heitai), is drawing large crowds. It is only playing in two small art houses–bigger chains would not dare to bring this out themselves, at least not until it’s wide popularity is proved–but it is getting record attendance. A small piece of evidence, to be sure, but it will be interesting to see if this gets wider attention and a broader release.

It’s always been my observation that most Japanese simply don’t know about what happened in WWII–too many simply never heard of it, not just because they didn’t want to. I recall back in the 80’s when I was tutoring a private student, a high-school girl, and discussion came around to the subject of Japan’s actions in the war. She told me that her high school History teacher only covered material up to the end of the Meiji period (when Japan was modernizing and growing in international stature)–then said that there was “not enough time to cover everything,” so they jumped ahead to the firebombings of Japanese civilians by the U.S. and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A jump which conveniently glossed right over Japanese militarism and aggression at its worst. Since then, I have spoken to several Japanese people from different parts of the country who report the exact same gap in their teachings.

As a result of this and the whitewashing in the media, many Japanese, though aware something is wrong in this area, have very little actual knowledge of what happened outside the revisionist retellings of what went on, usually focusing on how it was the Japanese, and not others, who suffered.

Like the people of any nation, many Japanese will defend their country when challenged with the facts, but it is my impression that most are not like that. When they discover what Japan did during that period, most Japanese I know accept it and are very disapproving. Now, that is certainly colored by the fact that many of those I see in this reaction are young people, and often students who have chosen to study English. But even in light of that, my general impression remains the same, so I would not be too surprised if The Ants were generally well-received if it were to enjoy a wider release. The news would probably be focused more on the predictable reactions of the minority nationalists, protesting such a film.

And although I see a general trend towards nationalism in Japanese politics, I am far from convinced that this is also true of the Japanese people.

Does anyone have experiences or opinions to the contrary?

The IRS, going after rich people? During the Bush administration? Couldn’t be! But it is–and it makes sense when you take into account which rich people are being targeted: the Hollywood rich.

As the Bush administration pulls out all the stops to give wealthy people tax breaks and fired its lawyers who give audits on estate taxes, naturally they would find a way to target liberal rich people specifically. Despite not having enough manpower or funding to audit rich people, the IRS apparently has enough willpower to go after those who attend the Academy Awards ceremonies. 200 select hosts and attendees receive a “goody bag” which includes “iPods, resort vacations, coupons for laser eye surgery, jewelry and high-priced lingerie,” reportedly worth as much as $100,000. As a result of these audits, the AMPAS is dropping the whole practice.

Of course, I have no problem with the practice being stopped or with it being taxed (so long as they find a way to tax only the actual received items, and not to treat coupons as gifts until they are redeemed). I only have a problem with the incredible selectivity of the IRS in whom it targets, which appears fully and completely focused on the likely political orientation of the person in question–like when the IRS threatened to revoke the tax-exampt status of only liberal churches, and not conservative ones, which were involved in politics to some degree, even when the conservative churches were far more egregious in their politicking.

So I went in to the Shibuya Apple Store for a Genius Bar consultation about my Powerbook. The screen gets dark around the bottom after it’s been asleep for a while, and sometimes on startups.

I took it in a few months ago in June, and they told me the same thing they did yesterday: we have no idea what that darkening is, we don’t see it, but let’s replace the screen for you. The warranty ran out in June, but because I told them that I needed the computer for my work until August, they gladly extended the warranty for me (screen only). So now it’s August, but I’m still on the fence.

First, it’s not so bad. The darkness goes away in a few minutes, and after a while, I don’t even notice it. But, and this is a big “but,” the cause is unknown and so this could get worse over time and cost me a few thousand bucks in a year or two, if it goes bad.

Second: this screen is okay as far as dead and stuck pixels go. There’s only one pixel with a dead green element (only shows up when white or greenish images hit the pixel), and it’s way off to one side. A virtually clean screen. If I have the LCD screen replaced, I could be stuck with a screen with dead and/or stuck pixels, up to maybe a half dozen or perhaps more, and maybe in the middle of the screen where they’ll stick out. (Apple will not swap out your screen for stuck or dead pixels unless they exceed a certain number, which they won’t tell you.)

And third: I have to do without the computer for a week. Yeah, I know–I’m an addict. I’ll get by on my PC and an antiquated iBook from work, but it’s surprising how dependent I’ve become on this machine.

So I’m on the fence. I sat at the Genius Bar for twenty minutes, asking questions and getting advice from a very helpful guy (who spoke English). In the end, I decided to be indecisive, and wait it out a little more. But I am now edging, at maybe 55%, to bring it in early tomorrow to be serviced.

Unless anyone out there has any advice… ?

So, why “trapped”? Because when I left the store, a sudden torrential downpour had hit Shibuya. Fortunately, there were banks of computers connected to the Internet right there, so I checked the TBS weather site and saw that the rain could continue for an hour or two. Well, I was riding my scooter, and though I had my rain slick with me, my backpack would get soaked along with everything else in them. What to do?

Well, I asked an Apple store employee for a trash bag. (No problem finding help, they were all around and available to help despite the store being crowded.) Instead of a trash bag, they gave me one of the very nice, very large Apple bags. I asked for a pair of scissors, and was given a box cutter. I put the Apple bag over the backpack, cut two holes for the shoulder straps to poke through, and put the thing on–perfect. Another Apple store employee kindly tied the drawstrings to the bag at the bottom of my backpack, and I was ready to go.

One thing Apple knows, it’s service.

The way CNN is reporting it, Lieberman has vaulted ahead in a super-duper surprise twist in the polls. Though he lost the primary, CNN is astounded that now Lieberman enjoys a 12-point lead in the polls (53% to 41%).

Apparently they don’t know the difference between a Democratic primary where only Democrats vote, and a general election where Republicans are included. Since Bush and RNC chairman Mehlman have refused to endorse their own GOP candidate in the race and at least in spirit heartily endorse their fake patsy Democrat the independent candidate Joe Lieberman, and since the GOP candidate is running in single digits (4%, down from 9%) in the polls, Lieberman is picking up the large majority of Republican votes, enough to give him that apparent lead.

The real surprise is that Lamont, always a long-shot dark horse candidate, now has 41% of the votes, after winning only 52% of Democrats in the primary. Lieberman was ahead in universal polls, that was never in question. But now the news services seem content to run with the “Lieberman surge” angle to the story.

And I betcha the press is going to give this one a bye, relative to stories of more vital importance, like the 598th consecutive re-hash of the JonBenet Ramsay case.

In short, a federal judge ruled the Bush eavesdropping program to be clearly unconstitutional, but more than that, said that the program:

“violates the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”); the Separation of Powers doctrine; the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and the statutory law. … The president of the United States … has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders as required by FISA….” (PDF of Ruling)

Now can we use the word “impeachment”?

Clearly, it takes an unelected official to have the guts to state the glaringly obvious fact that President Bush without question violated the constitution and broke the law, whatever distinction you may draw between those two. It’ll be interesting to see what fallout this has, if it emboldens the Democrats, what seeds it may plant if the Democrats win and want to begin investigations, and how this may be handled on appeal.

But for the moment, I have to wonder if even this will stop the spying on American citizens. My bet: no.

That’s the one that got me, officer!

Okay, not the same one. A lightning storm started a while ago, and I got lucky and captures a few nice images. Not easy, when your camera spends 20 seconds processing a 15-second exposure. You have to be lucky about when the lightning strikes, and where.

Here’s a close-up of the bolt:

I just love this stuff–raw energy coursing through a dark sky. Less entertaining when it actually hits you, but hey.