If you were having some trouble accessing this blog last night or this morning, there’s a reason: the server on which Zone38 is hosted was running so low on disk space that it was unable to fetch the blog entries from the database in order to display them. The problem’s been fixed now, and the site’s back online once again.

For those of you looking for a web host, I highly recommend JaguarPC (www.jaguarpc.com); I’ve been using them since I started my site, and I’ve been quite pleased with the experience.

Here’s the actual text of a spam that I’ve received several times over the past several days:

We supply high quality medications by mail order at very competitive prices and provide a professional, convenient and affordable means of purchasing your prescription medicines online %RND\_AD\_2 Plus: %RND\_ALL\_OTHER\_MEDS No waiting rooms to increase your chances of getting sick. No waiting rooms. Here.. Use Microsoft Internet Explorer to view the following website: www.%RND\_HOST. Please copy and paste the URL on your browser's address field. %RND\_PHRASE %RND\_PHRASE %RND\_PHRASE %RND\_PHRASE

I wonder if they’ve realized yet why they aren’t getting any hits? 🙂

Well, I’ve finally gone ahead and made the switch from MovableType to a different blogging system, namely WordPress. You’ll probably notice that the template looks a little different (though I tried to keep most of the design elements from the old layout), but there’s a lot more that’s new here than just the look and feel. The comment system’s completely new (obviously, since it no longer uses MovableType), the URLs are a bit cleaner, and post formatting is a bit easier and more automatic on my end as well.

And yes, I know I haven’t posted here in quite a while. I’ll try to change that, too. 🙂

If you encounter any problems with the new blog, just drop me a line at blog @zone38.net letting me know where the error occurs and I’ll try to fix it as soon as possible.

It seems that our favorite clueless spammers have fired up their bulk mailing software once again. I’ve spotted these choice pseudonyms in my mailbox in the past several days…

“Paunchiest V. Transported”
“Laudanum H. Harness”
“Spotty M. Wealthy”
“Pollinating M. Rebate”
“Cloudbursts P. Rending”
“Needful C. Canticle”
“Mortification K. Overshadowing”
“Wombat J. Jodhpurs” (I find this one particularly amusing, for some reason.)
“Phonemic L. Transit”
“Accelerate O. Pansy”
“Donning A. Praiseworthiness”

The latter two, incidentally, sent mail with the subject line of “Hey, Klely hree! I just read youre profile”. Poor girl desperately needs to hire a proofreader– especially since, as the body of the message reveals, her name is Kara…

Hah! I always thought Nickelback’s latest hit sounded suspiciously like their first… well, I’ve found some definitive proof that I wasn’t just hearing things.

Ooh, this is interesting: Wikipedia’s list of company name etymologies. Find out where such trademarks as Apache, Corel, and eBay originated. (via Languagehat)

An ode to old-school computing, found via Fark.com: Hey, Hey, 16K

Oh, how I remember the old VIC-20, TI-99/4A, and of course the TRS-80 CoCo I used so much as a kid… Yeah, I know, I know, I was a geeky child. 😉

Is it just me, or were the alternative rock charts so much better seven years ago than they are now, in terms of variety alone? I was just thinking about this earlier today while listening to the local alt-rock station when they played a few ‘retro’ tracks… some of the songs on the charts now are so repetitive and have just gotten so tired, whereas I could listen to most of the alt-rock chart-toppers from ’97 for hours on end even back then.

Then again, it also doesn’t help that the aforementioned station is owned by Clear Channel…

Now this is cool: Darren Stone has ported at least some of the modules from Jamie Zawinski’s XScreensaver from Unix to Windows. Gotta love open source– especially when it’s used for utterly pointless desktop toys like these. Though it doesn’t include any of the text effects (probably due to font rendering issues) or some of the more recent hacks such as AppleII or Wormhole, it does include the excellent GLMatrix, BlockTube, Flurry and Sproingies.

Speaking of screen savers, perhaps the best fireworks simulation that I’ve seen is Skyrocket from ReallySlick, a Windows screensaver which has also been ported to Unix.

Oh, yeah, and exams are finally over for me this semester. I’m moving out tomorr– uh, well, technically today…

Oh my. Pointed out by LiveJournal user mindme, a very embarrassing typo, in huge letters, embedded in an image, from the Democratic National Convention home page:

I wonder how long it will take before they finally fix the image on their site?