"If you understood everything I said, you'd be me" - Miles Davis
"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" - George W. Bush
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell
"Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government." - Lenny Bruce
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" - Homer Simpson
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we" - George W. Bush
Utility Fog Banner

  Maintenance
Comments will be down for a bit while I upgrade Pollxn.

Update: That took all of 2 minutes. My new branch version of Pollxn from Víctor A. Rodríguez (Bit-Man) includes a Captcha feature that I hope will stymie the comment-spammers.



  I'd Better Get Funnier

Utility Fog Blog is the #1 result for the Google search for "funny blog entries"



  MultiFoggingMedia
Let's see what my YouTube embedded player looks like:
Pretty swank.

  I'm Naughty
R blog rating

"This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

  • pissed (2x)
  • kill (1x)"
What's My Blog Rated?
Via The Slog

  Slightly Freaking Out
Last Sunday I noticed that my free hit-counter from Webstat wasn't working. It turns out that Webstat's free accounts are limited to less than 20,000 hits a month. Which is fine, they are doing this for free, and they've worked great until now. So I got another free hit-counter that doesn't have a limit. And now that it's been running since Sunday a few things have become very apparent: UFog Blog is getting 800-900 hits a day (and may be climbing), and 99% of the hits are coming by way of Google Image Search. This, kids, is why you should always put something in the alt field of the img tag.

Some of my highest ranking Google Image Searches:

(periods added to search terms to avoid muddying the waters)

But one statistic pops the party balloon: 90% of my visitors spend 5 seconds or less at the Ufog Blog. Ah well-fame is fleeting.

  I'm Crafty
I've added IP-address logging capability to my Pollxn comments-engine. The next step is to add IP-blocking of comment spammers.

  Tinker, Adjust, Fiddle, Repeat
I think I've managed to get the Internet Explorer and Firefox rendering of Utility Fog Blog to look pretty much the same on both Windows and Linux. It certainly helps to set Firefox so that it doesn't override the way the page wants to be displayed.

  Woohoo
Sometime in the last hour Utility Fog Blog passed the 100,000 hit mark.

  Big Wind Bad
Why was Utility Fog down since sometime Friday (12/15/2006)? Well, it seems that the Pacific Northwest had some weather problems . Thursday night there was just a teensy bit of torrential rain followed by record winds early Friday morning. The result was your basic minor apocalypse, minus the cats and dogs living together and any appearance of giant marshmallow men. Over a million people were without power (and heat), traffic has been a nightmare due to dark signals and downed trees and gasoline has become scarse because of so many powerless stations. And somewhere in the middle of all this something bad must have happened to my ISP, hence no blog (or email).

  Testing
test picture
Short Url
test picture
Long Url
Test

  The Web Knows
A little Internet research turns up 2 explanations for comment spam that contains invalid links or even no links at all:

1: Some comment systems record the IP address of the commenter and use a sort of "karma" system to combat spam. Leaving a lot of linkless comments could give an IP address enough good "karma" to then deposit spam.

2: Spam with bogus "number" links (like "www.865425.com") could be trackable "scouts". The spam-robot deposits a comment and then checks back later to see if the spam is still there. The numbers let the robot keep track of where and when the spam was deposited. If the scout spam has survived then the real spam will be left.

PS. I'm making invisible links on the bottom of the blog to any e-mail addresses I find on sites that spam me. The idea is that email-address harvesting web-robots will find the links and then start spamming the spammers.

  My New Hobby
More happenings on the Comment Spam front:

1: Friday I got my first batch of Chinese spam. They think big in China-these buggers had around 100 links apiece. Only 3 spams though, so it was hardly a major onslaught.

2: Sunday seems to be THE day for spam. I had nothing all week, but just like last Sunday, here they come again. Today's spams are puzzlers. They have links, unlike last week's, but the links are to non-existent addresses like "www.561383.com".

  Comment Spam Redux
If you left a comment yesterday (July 31) I'm afraid it got deleted in my latest round of mass deletion of comment spam.

Now riddle me this: Why would someone (or something) leave comment spam that doesn't have any links? Or any commercial reference at all, just "random" words?

  Out, Damn Spam
Utility Fog Blog got slammed with over 250 comment spams yesterday. Adding a few words and an internet address to my homebrew blacklist seems to have stemmed the tide.

  FireFox Fun
I installed the Java Runtime Environment plugin successfully- Yea me-I'm such a small-time hacker stud. Now if I could only figure out why Firefox bounces between having one and two rows of bookmark toolbars. Oh well, it's not like it's a life threatening problem.

  Aha!
How to subscribe to a YouTube user's RSS feed with Bloglines:

YouTube says a user's feed follows the form:
feed://www.youtube.com/rss/user/username/videos.rss
Unfortunately, Bloglines finds no valid feed at this address.

But the template
http://youtube.com/rss/user/username/videos.rss
works just fine.

  Testing
Nothing to see here, officer.


  Blush
bookofjoe calls Utility Fog Blog "One spectacular website". He's on the blogroll now for sure. His site isn't too shabby either.

  Click At Your Own Risk
This page crashes my Firefox version# 1.5.0.2 browser running on Linux.. I saw this before with Mozilla (with another page) but not for some time. The browser crashes with Greasemonkey, Adblocker, Javascript, and Autocopy disabled. Other similar Wunderground pages, like the one for the state of Virginia and Danville, Virginia don't crash Firefox. FF 1.5.0.2 on Windows XP doesn't crash.

Update: It just stopped. Another one of life's mysteries.

  Success
Utility Fog's comment system now rejects the chuckleheads who have been spamming me with crappy prescription drug ads. It only took a half-hour, even with my almost nonexistent Perl skills, so it will be easy to revamp if the problem reoccurs

  Fiddling about
If the Utility Fog comments system doesn't work it's because I'm hacking it to reject some comment spam. Wish me luck

  Damn
I got more lame comments spam-clearly changing the comments link to a button had no effect. Looks like it's time to try hacking Pollxn.

  Unwanted Attention
I've had a little bit of comment spam lately so I've changed the "Comments" link into a graphic button. Mayhaps this won't be found by Russian gambling internet spyders.

  My Horn I Toot
Utility Fog Blog has passed 50,000 visitors. My mind, it is a boggling. But judging from the overwhelming theme of the search terms in my site logs, once Lost ends I'll go back to the depths of obscurity from whence I came. Oh well, it'll be a sweet ride while it lasts. Now onto the clues hidden in Kate's freckles....

  Neato
Why didn't anybody tell me that triple-clicking in Firefox selects a line of text? I was using left-drag, but this is cleaner.

  Fixing Bloglines w/Greasemonkey
I've always been annoyed at posts in Bloglines that are wider than than their frame, forcing me to scroll sideways to read them. But I've found a fix. If you use Firefox, there is a Greasemonkey script to fit posts within the frame. You can go to Max Width and the mutant GreaseMonkey to read more and get the script.

  Brute Force to the Rescue
After a week of struggling to transfer files by network from old computer to new I gave up. I went with Plan 2: transplant old hard drive into new machine. Worked like a charm-I think it took longer to copy the files than to move the drive. Downloaded Thunderbird and on installation it found my old profile and loaded my old mail and connected to my ISP's mail server without any fuss. Life is good.

  Happy Happy Happy
This broadband thing just might catch on. I've only had the new Linux box hooked up for less than a week and already I've effortlessly collected some Sun Ra, Nino Rota, Springsteen live bootlegs, and rare 70's psychedelia to listen to, all from Mp3 blogs.

  It's Alive
Transfered my first file from the old computer to new over LAN. It's 3AM so I think I'll just bask in a nice broth of accomplishment and leave it at that.

  The Big Leap
I've got Kanotix installed. No big problems yet. Copied bookmarks from XP/Firefox easily. Connecting to Comcast took a bit of fumbling around but really only involved clicking "configure network card". Waiting for something to bite me on the ass. I'm very stressed.

P.S. full kudos to Ted for noticing the funky entry in my Bloglines blogroll that was screwing up the blog appearance bigtime.

  Progress
I've finally booted the new computer with a Linux LiveCD (Knoppix 4.0.2) that painlessly connects with Comcast Broadband. Life is good. Next up: Network the old and new machines.

  Busy Busy Busy
Sorry about the lack of recent postings. I have a spiffy new computer that is demanding a lot of attention. This is the first post from the new machine. I still have lots to do: make sure I can access my new broadband connection from Linux, install a linux distro so as to make new machine dual-boot, transfer files from old machine to new via lan. Walk in the park.

  Cue Mad Scientist Laugh
As promised, I've finally written my own plugin for Blosxom, the program that runs this blog. If you look over to the left you'll see a sidebar block with links to the blog posts that have the 10 latest comments. I'm inordinately proud of this, especially because it means I can add all sorts of all-blinking, all-dancing cgi goodness to the Utility Fog Blog.

  Meta/Comments
My apologies to everyone who left a comment in the last week or so-I finally got around to paying attention to you. Thanks again for posting.

  Housekeeping
    Three new features in the left sidebar:
  • The navigation array now has button-links to all the blog-post catagories.
  • My Old BlogRoll has moved to it's own page and been replaced with a list of my Bloglines Feeds.
  • The Blosxom plugin "referer" shows a list of all referring URLs. Apparently I get a hell of a lot of hits from people looking for pictures of Ligers, all because of a single post.


  Holy Donuts
Utility Fog Blog has passed 20000 hits. Posting a lot about a certain hit TV show (with a strong interweb presence) has almost tripled my hit-rate. Who would have guessed?

  No Future Slash-Dotting
Now that I've told everybody I know about the possibilty of my humble blog being swamped by Lost fans if the "black smoke" is explained as being a Utility Fog I find out that there are no nanobots.
Oh well, back to playing the Lotto and knocking over liquor stores.

  This Could Get Ugly
It occurred to me yesterday that there exists the (admittedly remote) possibilty that someone on Lost might utter the phrase "utility fog" in connection with the mobile "black smoke"- let's say, if they ever get around to explaining what the hell it is. And since this site is ranked #1 in the Google search for "utility fog" and lost I would then be in for some interesting times, traffic-wise. Accordingly, I'm thinking about adding GoogleAds. A blogger can dream, can't he?

  Monetize


My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

Via Boing Boing

  Blogging Software

Reviewed by The Guardian:
Blosxom
20Six
b2/Wordpress
Blogger
iBlog
LiveJournal
Movable Type
Radio Userland
Typepad

  Oops
I discovered today that my recent addition of subdirectories to my main blog-entry directory broke the comments system. But now I can report that everything should be fixed-at least I haven't found any new problems. I won't bore you with the arcane technical details, but it was a pretty simple fix.

P.S. Thanks Walt!

  Housekeeping

It seems my RSS feed has been kaput for at least a week, maybe two. My apologies, it should be fixed now.

  Milestone
Utility Fog Blog has officially passed the 10000 hits mark. And to celebrate here are July's Top 20 Search Keywords:
1. gert jonnys
2. utility fog
3. nipple
4. ATHF sound bytes
5. utility blog
6. \"gert jonnys\"
7. Sabine Ehrenfeld
8. site:blarg.net
9. sabine ehrenfeld
10. aqua teen hunger force sound bytes
11. \"lava sledding\"
12. \"psycho cheerleaders\"
13. satan lesbian
14. Anodyne therapy real or fake
15. Gert Jonnys
16. nestea commercial laundromat
17. Sabine Ehrenfeld PORTFOLIO
18. mp3 \"Alan Moore\" \"Brian Eno\" \"Chain Reaction\"
19. Mcdonald\'s parody Eyebeam sex with burger
20. reports about fast erection


  Self-Referential

It would seem that my hit-counter/referrer log provider, Hit-O-Meter has gone belly-up. I really can't expect much from a free service, but a warning e-mail would have been nice. Now I'm trying out WebStat. Maybe they can explain why I've turned into "Gert Johnnys" central.

I also signed up with Technorati. Now if I can just figure out what it's good for.

Technorati: Technorati

  Testing Wikieditish
I've added the Wikieditish plugin to my Blosxom blogging suite. This is a test, only a test.

  Web Geekery
I installed the Greasemonkey and Platypus extensions to Firefox. Right off the bat I was able to modify Bloglines so that the frames are resizable. No more (or at least a lot less) text running off past the side of the frame. Now I'm wondering if I could set it so the text wraps around, because that would be a lot more elegant.

  Oops
Amy, if you read this post, I've fixed the link to my art.

floater computer art
"Floater" art

  Eureka 2

I've succeeded in creating a page using Bash-CGI that gives links to all blog posts that have comments. It's really neat to create a program that generates HTML on the fly. I'm wondering what else I could do with this.

  Eureka
The one thing my comments system ( Pollxn ) lacks is a way to let me know if someone has posted a comment. I can check via ftp but that's inelegant and it doesn't provide a way to read the comment or the associated post. So I've written a Bash-CGI page to do the looking for me. The next step is to do some parsing so that the links open the blog post.

  Housekeeping

The News, Search/Reference, Science-Fiction, and Strange links pages have been cleaned of dead links, updated with new links, and redesigned. Woohoo!

  I Can't Even Think Of A Word That Rhymes
I got a e-mail invitation to go to a dinner with Dan Gillmor. I don't know which is more eyebrow-raising; that the Seattle Times is even vaguely aware of my blog, or being referred to (along with about 40 others) as a "great local blog". Whew

  It's The Little Things
I have another subscriber at Bloglines! This makes 2, one of them me (got to keep an eye on the old RSS feed).

  Useless Knowledge
I used Linklint to scan my bookmarks for dead links. And I have lots, almost 300. What I really need now is a way to take the html list of bad links that Linklint generates and automatically strip those URLs out of my bookmarks. I couldn't find a solution on Google, so I may be forced to write another frankenscript.

  Hit-O-Meter
Hit-O-Meter is back up, and back at the bottom of the page.

  Damn
It looks like Hit-O-Meter is down. When I went to check Utility Fog Blog after making some changes a login form popped up, which should not happen. I thought it was strange that the form just said "Enter username and password for "" at www.hit-o-meter.com" so I tried their homepage with the same result. So it looks like the problem is on their end. I've commented out their script for the time being.

  It's Like They're Psychic
Utility Fog Blog's fluffy kitten name is Knucklehead Tubbybottom.
Link
Via Generator Blog

  New Art
Floater Art

  Bad Grammar
From a recent e-mail phishing attempt:
"In a view to stave off illegal and fraudulent using your ATM Card our Security Department introduce new security standards.
Modernized AntiFraud technology will provide security and high-quality level of service to manage your money.
Our theft-prevention solutions will take effect urgently."
Mangle those tenses much?

  News Flashes
I've got my first outside comments-release the hounds!

Pete and Peteis out on DVD.
Via Follow Me Here

  Cold Comments Action
There ain't nobody leaving comments.

  Hot Search Action
Using Hit-O-Meter to count hits and gather statistics about visits to my site has taught me a number of things:

1: I get about 20 hits a day. This is more than I ever imagined, which gives you some idea of how ambitious I am.
2: People search for some weird-ass shit. No, really wacked out weird shit.
3: People searching for weird shit are either;
A: Not too bright, because it's pretty clear from even the short preview result that my site hasn't got what they want, or
B: Really easily distracted.

Here's a selection of search terms people have followed to me, with snide comments:

gilmore vs ashcroft Barbwire cage match!

weird burger king commercials

chris masterson porn Use the word "porn" and they come out of the woodwork

dressed in drag Am not! Panties don't count

"free enterprise action" What, not "Hot Free Enterprise Action"?

turning tithes in on taxes Feel free, but I need every penny

nude female blog Dude, you went looking for porn and you came Here? that is so sad.

gert jonnys Gert Jonnys Rock!

female amputee blog Move along, buddy

www.firstchop.com Do I look like a restaurant?

busy neighborhood street

lift gate cargo van

cordelia/faith fic If you find some good stuff, let me know

reality based fighting ohio As opposed to fantasies about fighting Ohio

"deep links" rape I don't even want to know

"deep links" rape Crap, he's back for more

state of florida litter control symbol - You are so lost

"deep links" rape - I sense a disturbance in the Web

cheap dvd porn squirt - This would make a good t-shirt

ALJAZEERA.COM ARPC

pokemon sex episodes - Oh yea, these really exist, but you can't get them outside of Japan

ultaviolet examination money bill - I hope this doesn't mean I misspelled "ultraviolet" somewhere

nude female blues blog - I understand, I've had the nude female blues too

suehirocho station tokyo - I'll be damned

"fred durst" porn hacker blog

peter Lorrie - All right, a kindred soul. Peter Lorrie was the man

duck dodgers theme song - As sung by Tom Jones, possibly the coolest man alive

fog machine and greenhouse - Sounds like a good start for a party

Marilee & Bill Reality - Who?

lesbian - That's it, just "lesbian"? How many links in a search for "lesbian" did this schlub click on before he hit me? How many after?

resin leopard "toilet seat" - Now that you mention it, that would be pretty cool

hidden disney tunnels - You know that's where Bin Laden is hiding

lovely little lolitas - My brain hurts

blood filled paint balls - You would have to use a decoagulant to keep the blood liquid, but I like the way you think

nuclear bomb footage - Blew up real good

broog trading company qatar - I'm opposed to the trading of Broogs

courage the cowardly dog sound bytes - I wish I had some now

paul cellucci asshole - I swear I've never referred to our ambassador to Canada in such a rude fashion

worst+traffic+in+america - Some people say Houston, some opt for L.A., but my vote is for Boston

con seatbelt wearing - Kids, even felons should wear seatbelts

"gert jonnys"

hurricane modification vietnam - I suppose a hurricane would modify Vietnam, but not for the better

home for sale

kelly buffy spike blog - Who the hell is Kelly?

aqua teen radioactive bill quotes

United States Secret Service Dropkick - Utility Fog does not recommend anyone dropkicking the Secret Service

VIRIDIAN ROOM online complete guide

VIRIDIAN ROOM online complete guide

'Hey Lama, hey...how about a little something - I got your little something right here

lolitas little porn galleries - So sad

gert jonnys

graffiti pac

Lyle lovetts - I like the idea of plural Lyle Lovetts

the filming of Saving Private Ryan
Barney dinosaur gay?

Barney dinosaur gay? - You have to ask?

"stepping stool" handles

meadville tribune school porn - Talk about a niche fetish

donald rumsfeld soundbites france accordion - What a mental picture this conjures up

mike rorex - According to Google I'm in the top ten for the "Mike Rorex" seach. Who knew?

strange weapon - Great

neddal ayad

timothy mcvie

daily camo planners lots of pockets - Got to have lots of pockets

miguel ferrar home page - I wish

coldk

naked breast

FUN WITH UTILITY FOG - That's what we're here for

asian porn
hardcore asian porn

"made out of babies" - They were better when Viva was still in the band

"nudist Priest"

bagration deception of army group center

"Cumberland, MD" blog

"aqua teen" transcript

beer chan

bushã??mungoã??blog - gesundtiet

coldk graffiti

a gallery of coconut from wikipedia - Maybe you ought to just go to Wikipedia?

a gallery of coconut from wikipedia

live feed nude - I've got live feet nude

adopt blog geisha - You can adopt Geishas?

billionaire mailing addresses - Because billionaires want to read your letters

dynasty trust crummy powers

"american library association" "anne coulter"

COL Tim Madere

COL Tim Madere

Rat weapon - Shoots 40 rats a second

iragi mud wrestling - Oh crap, did I really type "Iragi"?

iragi mud wrestling

boycott France effects 2005 Parisienne review

swiffer on howard stern show - Because Howard is really down on dust

kid rock duet

barbara dare - mmmmmm, Barbara Dare

timberlake money utility

under the wagon nlog - Nlog want Barbara Dare under wagon!

jennifer lien porn - Great, now I want some too. Even her voice acting for the MIB cartoon was hot. I need help

X-26(R) STUN GUN

"aqua teen hunger force" frat aliens quotes

science journal "sylvan goldman"

science journal "sylvan goldman"

barnyard animal pez - That is just sick

fcc antisex campaign

site:home.blarg.net france - It's true, the word "France" appears in this blog.

AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE SOUND BYTES - I obviously need to add some ATHF sound bytes

John F. Timoney Tapped for Homeland Security Post

betrum russell quotes - Try "Bertrand", you chucklehead

Gert Jonnys shirt - Scares the children and womenfolk

Lyle Lovetts

timothy Mcvie

Break wind toons

+brownback +"Sun Myung Moon"

anodyne therapy lawsuit

mcdonalds 81 year old women burn

juicer make

Air show? Buzz-cut Alabamians spewing colored smoke from their whiz jets to the strains of Rock You Like A Hurricane? What kind of countrified rube is still impressed by that? - Whew

male underwear"transparency"

"but you can't have a beer" book - There's a book?

aqua teen hunger force meat zone quotes

TBTM pro tools

utility fog and dragons - But none of those pansy unicorns, hell no

The Scarecrow Movie from Disney for sale - Not here, try Ebay

mantis shrimp receipts - This one is a real baffler

mantis shrimp receipts - They're shrimp, they don't give receipts

Schools and their rules about hoodies

military clip art oh-58d

naked breast

joe camel nose penis