Bellingen-ites – don’t miss this fantastic group exhibition, opening at Infusions on Saturday July 3. Ceramics by Nicole Stenson, Jennifer Chadwick and Annette Rogers, paintings by Beth Gibbings.

Here’s some shots of Annette’s work from this morning’s photo shoot. (Had to get some pics before they all get snapped up!)

Another kooky type of spam I’ve been getting a bit of lately is blog comment spam. This is where comments are left on a blog in the hope that they’ll be published and will then leave a link from the commenter’s name – which will always be keyword-heavy, something like ‘cheap viagra’ – to their dodgy website.

By writing meaningless, vaguely legitimate sounding and usually mildly flattering wording (“You write very well”, “I’ll add you to my favourites”) in their comments these spammers try to trick comment spam filters like the excellent Akismet (34, 769 spam comments caught on my eeny little blog in the past six months).

Here’s a sample of some of these spam comments left on this blog recently (all caught by Akismet). Of course I’m not going to publish the links but I will put the names left with each to give you an idea.

I read blogs on a similar topic, but i never visited your blog. I added it to favorites and i’ll be your constant reader.
singulair generic

Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.
cipro side effects

There’s a wealth of information here. I’ll be back again.
Business Man

Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!
physical therapist

If he doesn’t know what he is doing, mutual fund is the way to go. That might be counted as cheating in the class though.
reports from CEO

and my favourite so far:

Terrific work! This is the type of information that should be shared around the web. Shame on the search engines for not positioning this post higher!
School Grants

These are so transparent, lacking in imagination and clumsy in their attempts at flattery that I kind of like them. Sometimes a new one will come through in the spam comments list and give my day a little lift. Sad but true.

After a recent discussion with a friend about the film of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road – which we’d both seen recently after reading the book – I recommended she read McCarthy’s excellent Border Trilogy novels (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain).

I admitted in a text message later that when I find an author, musician or director I like I can often succumb to a kind of pathological need to track down their entire output and consume it in some obsessive kind of frenzy.

Tragic, obsessive, the best way to live life!

she texted back, making me feel like I wasn’t quite so weird.

It did get me thinking about how often I do this and have done since childhood. To prove it here’s a heavily edited list of highlights of some of the artists for whom I’ve had ‘periods’ (as in ‘my Scorcese period’). In roughly chronological order:

Authors

• Tom Wolfe
• Hunter S. Thompson
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Aldous Huxley
• Roald Dahl
• Peter Carey
• Tolkien
• (E.) Annie Proulx
• Andrew McGahan
• JK Rowling
• Ian McEwan
• Jasper Fforde

Musicians

• The Beatles
  This was definitely the first time I got obsessed with something from popular culture. I got this one early, around the age of eight, and it’s stayed with me to this day. (In the 1970s, before internet or even video, it was a lot harder to meet the needs of an obsessive – my main strategy revolved around checking out the record collections of any house we visited).
• Metallica
  For a few years in my teens I was a metalhead. There, I’ve said it. My friend at school introduced me to Metallica and, in a bizarre twist, within two years I ended up working at a metal magazine and interviewing drummer Lars Ulrich on the phone a couple of times during the making of their Black Album. I’m over it now, thank you very much.
• Hendrix
• Black Sabbath
• The Stooges
• The Rolling Stones
• The Ramones
• Sonic Youth
• Velvet Underground
• The Pixies
• John Spencer/Blues Explosion
• PJ Harvey
• You Am I
• Johnny Cash
• Jonathan Richman/Modern Lovers
• Holly Golightly
• The Magic Numbers
• Dylan
• Detroit Cobras
• The Shangri-Las
• The Drones
• Teenage Fanclub
• Dolly Parton
• Hoodoo Gurus
• Dirty Three
• Neko Case

Directors/TV

• John Waters
  When you’ve seen Pink Flamingoes you can hardly stop there, can you?
• Kubrick
  Ditto A Clockwork Orange
• Woody Allen
• Coen Brothers
• Mike Leigh
• Tarantino
• Scorcese
• Monty Python team
• David Chase
  Had to watch the entire Sopranos in chonological order
• Alan Ball
  As above with Six Feet Under

I can see that at least one of my children has inherited this disorder. Not sure whether I should be proud or worried..?

I grew up near Swindon, a humble town about 120km west of London in the UK. Actually, I grew up in Wroughton, a village just out of Swindon but when you live on the other side of the world – as I have since the early 1980s – and people ask what part of England you’re from you say Swindon. (If that draws a blank you zoom out a bit and go for “sort of near Stonehenge”).

Even as a child I suspected there was something fairly unspectacular about Swindon. I don’t mean that in a nasty way – I just knew it didn’t have the exoticism or historical monuments or tourist drawcards of other parts of the world. For example, for a long time the most interesting things I knew about it were

• The town’s most favoured son is Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a 19th century railway man. Isambard was important enough to have the shopping centre name after him.
• There is a crazy ‘multiple roundabouts’ roundabout in Swindon locals call The Magic Roundabout. Family lore has it that Nanna used to take the long way around town to avoid it. It was apparently voted ‘the fourth scariest junction in Britain’ in 2009 (putting it’s tagline in the same class as The Flight of the Conchords’ ‘fourth popular folk parody duo’).
• Kind of well-know 50s and 60s actress Diana Dors was from Swindon
• Something whacky and complicated happened with Swindon Town Football Club in the 1990s that saw them move up and down the divisions in the league

In recent years however this has all changed. It seems that no matter where I look in popular culture Swindon’s there, giving me a “and you thought I wasn’t cool” kind of glance.

One: The Office

It started with comic masterpiece The Office. In the Season One veiled references were made to the Swindon branch. In Season Two the branches are merged and the Swindoners become part of the team. Neil Godwin who becomes David Brent’s superior is heaps cooler than Brent. (That’s Swindon blood for you).

Two: Jasper Fforde and Thursday Next

Not long after this I started reading Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series of novels. For those who are unfamiliar the five novel series (The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten and First Among Sequels) are a bizarre mix of comedy and fantasy peppered with literary and other high- and low-culture references. They’re set in an alternate history version of today’s world. No prizes for guessing where most of the action takes place – the books are full of locations in and around the big S. Like Fforde’s books his website thursdaynext.com is a world unto itself, and includes a section called The Seven Wonders of Swindon.

Three: The Curious Incident

My third random brush with Swindon in an unexpected context – and the inspiration for me writing this post – came when I read Mark Haddon’s excellent 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time a few weeks back. Yep, set in Swindon. In a pop will eat itself bonus the main character Christopher even discusses another literary reference to Swindon to add to the list – in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Boscombe Valley Mystery Sherlock Holmes apparently stops for lunch in Swindon town.

Where it all happens.

Feel free to add to the list in comments below.

I noticed this morning that yesterday someone had left comments on a number of posts on this blog, all regarding directory scams (both the Who’s Who In Australia and the World Business Guide scams).

In the space of five minutes yesterday Hector Schmidt left four comments either supporting these scams or putting down other commenters.

At 12.58 on More Fax Spam…

Not one person mentions the countless positive pages online. Just a bunch of individuals that are complaining about receiving an advertisment. No one who actually has a problem with the service, just problems with receiving a fax. This product has worked wonders for me. This site is a bunch of bloody rubbish.

then 1pm on the same post…

And why is it a hoax…. Because lots of people received it? Makes no sense what you folks say. You all sound like a bunch of whining teenagers. Grow up. If you don’t want the service, don’t respond.

then 1.02pm on World Business Guide – another fax spam directory scam…

And why is this a scam?????

and finally at 1.03om on More on the Who’s Who fax spam

YOu souns like a rocket scientist michele.

(Michele had offered the opinion that these types of organisations were trying to trick people into paying for information that’s already freely available, that these people often use fake names and that trying to opt-out may put you on another list).

All good – I want your views

Which is great – I encourage the sharing of opinions on this site. And given the number of people who’ve been vocal in their condemnation of  these types of ‘offers’ it’s good to see some different perspectives.

In fact at the end of last year I spent quite a bit of time following up with Shane Mundy who’d signed up for one of these deals to present his side of this debate.

I can’t help wondering though

What made me curious about the recent dash of comments were the similarities between Hector and Brian Green, who was a regular commenter on this site over the course of a week in late December 2010 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), commenting on most of the same posts with similar opinions and tone.

A quick lookup of the IP addresses from which the comments were left shows them both to be from the same Internet Service Provider. Now I know that this ISP probably has thousands of customers but still, I can’t help wondering if Brian and Hector work from the same location/for the same organisation or are indeed the same person?

Again, I’d love to hear comments on this from readers, particularly Hector or Brian.

Another great directory spam came through on the fax today, this time from World Business Guide.

Always read the fine print

This one is even more blatant than similar fax spam (more), in that although they note at the top nice and clearly

To update your company profile please print, complete and return this form (UPDATING IS FREE OF CHARGE).

you need to read between the lines a little. Updating may be free of charge, but placing the listing is going to cost you €2985 – around $AUD4300! Buried at the bottom in the fine print, in all capital letters to make it hard to read, is

THE VALIDATION TIME OF THE CONTRACT IS THREE YEARS AND STARTS ON THE EIGHTH DAY AFTER SIGNING THE CONTRACT. THE INSERTION IS GRANTED AFTER SIGNING AND RECEIVING THIS DOCUMENT BY THE SERVICE PROVIDER. I HEREBY ORDER A SUBSCRIPTION WITH SERVICE PROVIDER INTERNATIONAL DIRECTORIES LTD “WORLD BUSINESS GUIDE”. I WILL HAVE AN INSERTION INTO ITS DATA BASE FOR THREE YEARS. THE PRICE PER YEAR IS EURO 995

I’ve bolded and underline what I’d have to describe as the ‘key points’.

(Fine print, click to zoom in)

Oh, but hang on – they’re not totally mercenary. After being hit with your first bill you do get the chance to cancel

THE SUBSCRIPTION WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY EXTENDED EVERY YEAR FOR ANOTHER YEAR, UNLESS SPECIFIC WRITTEN NOTICE IS RECEIVED BY THE SERVICE PROVIDER OR THE SUBSCRIBER TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE EXPIRATION OF THE SUBSCRIPTION.

So if you fill in the form based on what you’ve read at the top and miss the fine print it’s really only going to cost you around €995/$AUD1500. Nice.

Here’s the full World Business Guide fax (pdf, 78 kb).

Who is behind the World Business Guide?

The fax lists their address as P.O. Box 3079, 3502 GB, Utrecht, The Netherlands but their website suggests otherwise.

The World Business Guide online is product of International Directories, a corporation organized and existing under the laws of BVI.

BVI is tax haven the British Virgin Islands. Like Jack and Meg said, I think I smell a rat.

“Realistically, this figure is likely to be the tip of the iceberg – given people can be embarrassed about reporting that they have fallen victim to scams and lost money in the process” said ACCC deputy chair Peter Kell.

‘False billing (advertising, directories, domain names)’ came in as the 5th most compained about type of scam for 2009, with the report noting

Scammers continued to target small businesses in an attempt to trick them into paying for a listing or advertisement in a magazine, journal or business register/directory. A common example is where a small business is sent a subscription form disguised as an outstanding invoice. This is an attempt to trick the recipient into signing up for unwanted advertising services.

It’s interesting to note that the ACCC have initiated legal proceedings against one such organisation, the European City Guide.

Although Australia has a  and a Spam Act which regulates unsolicited email and sms messages and a Do Not Call Register to which (private) fixed and mobile numbers can be added there is no legislation which covers unsolicited faxes at this stage.

At the time of writing, according to The Australian Communications and Media Authority’s website

The Government has recently announced its intention to expand the Do Not Call Register, to cover both business numbers and fax numbers. When this is implemented, it may reduce these types of calls being made where people register their numbers.

Again!

And I thought that these guys were narky with me! Back in December after I received and wrote about my first Who’s Who in Australia fax (and followed up with more information) Brian Green – who claimed to be behind the mystery organisation that sends these faxes – left several messages on this website, which ranged from

We are asking you, business man to business man to please remove this site. It may be exciting to you because of all of the hits your getting from our marketing efforts but it is truly huring us and our over 50 employees that count on our great company to make a living. It also makes our happy customers question our credibility. So we ask you to please remove the negative press as We are clearly not a scam, just agggressive good marketers that provide a great service. Thank you in advance for you cooperation. We can help you get major traffic to your site with out hurting our company if you like. Please.
(Dec 11 2009)

to

These comments are from non-customers and a bunch of Rubbish. I don’t see any paid customers complaining! Just Non responders that don’t like our marketing letters. No Scam at all here, just a great service that puts peoples businesses on the map in search engines and generates business for them. But all of you have a nice day. Maybe you’ll come around someday. Good Day Mates :)
(December 16, 2009)

and

We have great products and tens of thousands of happy customers. This site is a compilation of a bunch of synical non-customers so here is what we are willing to do to change that. THE FIRST 10 PEOPLE That leave their contact details on here, we will provide them with free services for 1 year to prove the validity of our product. That is only if they come back and publish the great things that our services do for ther business.
(December 17, 2009)

I guess despite all my negative press ‘the Director’ still thinks I might make ‘an interesting biographical subject’. After all ‘achievement is what Who’s Who is all about’.

An open letter to Brian

As you’re still so keen to keep in contact with me Brian I have a few questions I’d love to ask you. As in the past I’d welcome the opportunity for you to have your say and will be happy to publish your responses in full.

1. If you are, as you claim, a legitimate organisation, why don’t you supply your real business name, ABN, phone number, email or street address on your marketing material?
2. Why don’t you provide an opt-out mechanism for people who don’t want to receive your faxes?
3. Does Jennifer Crowley really exist?

Hot on the heels of the Australian Who’s Who fax scam I’ve been writing about I one of my co-workers got this email spam from Continental Who’s Who informing him that

You were recently chosen as a potential candidate to represent your professional community in the 2009-10 Edition of Continental Who’s Who.

We are please to inform you that your candidacy was formally approved November 23rd, 2009. Congratulations.

The Publishing Committee selected you as a potential candidate based not only upon your current standing, but focusing as well on criteria from executive and professional directories, associations, and trade journals. Given your background, the Director believes your profile makes a fitting addition to our publication.

There is no fee nor obligation to be listed. As we are working off of secondary sources, we must receive verification from you that your profile is accurate. After receiving verification, we will validate your registry listing within seven business days.

Once finalized, your listing will share prominent registry space with thousands of fellow accomplished individuals across the globe, each representing accomplishment within their own geographical area.

To verify your profile and accept the candidacy, please visit here [link removed]. Our registration deadline for this year’s candidates is December 31, 2009. To ensure you are included, we must receive your verification on or before this date. On behalf of our Committee I salute your achievement and welcome you to our association.

Sincerely Yours,

Frank Williams
Nomination Committee Secretary
Continental Who’s Who
33 West Hawthorne Ave
Valley Stream, NY 11580

My colleague is most definitely a fantastic and professional worker but could ‘the Publishing Committee’ from this shonky organisation really know know all about his ‘current standing’ and his reputation from ‘professional directories, associations and trade journals’ ?

Um, no. Just another one that’s been doing the rounds.