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!)

Has anyone else noticed an increase in Skype spam via instant messaging  of late? I’m getting lots of instant messaging Skype spam now as opposed to the calls/contact requests that seem to have been the first generation of Skype spam.

What I’m talking about is unsolicited Skype chat messages that pop up offering links to the usual types of spammy websites – viagra/cialis/wonder herbs, ‘male enhancement’, stock market stuff, porn, dating.

The penis enlargement/sexual stamina spammers often make use of Skype’s animated chat emoticons to, um, ‘enhance’ their spam.

There’s not a great deal you can do to stop getting spammed on Skype but if you do I recommend you immediately click  ‘Block’ and then tick the ‘Report abuse from this person’ checkbox to stop the person from contacting you again.

(More detailed instructions for both Windows and Mac versions of Skype is available on the Skype blog).

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.

From 2005-2009 I played guitar in a cool band called Brut 66. We were a bunch of thirty- and forty-somethings who’d all ended up in the same country town and discovered we shared similar – some would say impeccable – musical tastes and had played in similar bands in our younger days.

What’s in a name?

When we first started playing and went through the usual brainstorming process bands do when they need to come up with a name we ended up settling on the quite unique – or so we thought – Brut 66. I can’t remember who came up with it but I do remember that at first it wasn’t taken as a serious contender (unlike some others: Dead Leg, The Nits and Red Motor, um hello?). It didn’t take long though. For me personally it was a great choice because it was stupid and kind of clever at the same time and had three big selling points:

1. It referenced the famous blues standard Route 66, famous to me via Chuck Berry and the Stones. Aside from being a great song I’ve always loved the song because of the several layers of meaning between the lines of it’s favourite lyrics. I knew that it symbolised the dream of a better life in utopian California for many poor black Americans who travelled it (check out Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath) and that it “celebrate[d] the romance and freedom of automobile travel” (Wikipedia).
2. It also referenced the ubiquitous and totally cheesy Brut 33 aftershave that was a part of life (and found under many a Christmas tree, chosen by hapless Aunties) for any male growing up in the 1970s and 80s.
3. It was a great bit of wordplay that mashed these two great pop culture references together. Puns, especially ones like this, have long been a favourite of my bandmates.

So anyway, off we went. We wrote some songs, practised them in Greg’s shed, played to our friends and families and occasionally ventured further afield. We recorded a couple of CDs. We didn’t change musical history but we had lots of fun.

Our style? We had dollops of 60s garage and Detroit rock, a bit of Australian underground in there. We were loud and messy, usually in a good way. As well as our originals we did some covers by the likes of The Sonics, Ramones, Patti Smith, God.

What 66?

Our name was often misspelled and that was part of the fun. On posters done by other bands we played, occasional newpaper ads, the memorable cover of a street press magazine and blackboards outside dodgy pubs we were sometimes ‘Brutt 66′ with two ts, at least once ‘Brute 66′, sometimes ‘Route 66′. It was fitting that for our very last gig at Sydney’s Lansdowne Hotel the blackboard announced ‘Brut GG’.

At the end of 2009 our singer moved away and the band ended.

The plot thickens

A couple of months later an email landed in my inbox

hi there,
played in a band called Brut 66 from Düsseldorf-Germany in the late 80´s.
sounded maybe like 70´s english styled punk rock or something else.
released only one 7 inch on a small local label called Teenage Rebel Records.
have a few copies left. if you are interessted i can send you 1 or 2.just for fun.
see you on tour in düsseldorf!
Michael

I nearly fell off my chair. Another band with exactly the same name had existed well before we thought of it. Their musical style even sounded not a million miles away from ours. I know that it’s hard to find a unique band name these days but hey, Brut 66?

Yesterday a package arrived from Michael with four singles from the ‘other’ Brut 66, recorded in 1988 in Düsseldorf. They look very young and – as I did in those days – eager to look as tough and hard as possible. In keeping with releases from the pre-digital age the single includes a photocopied A4 sheet with some cut and pasted pictures and typewritten lyrics. After the band members names it says “No thanks to anyone”.

Looks we’ve been well and truly outpunked!

(I’m ashamed to say that my record player is out of action right now so I haven’t been able to listen yet).

Pics of old and new Brut 66 singles and CDs below.

Stay tuned for the dual Brut 66es Germany and Australia reunion tour in another 10 years…

Since Google’s Chrome browser was released for Mac in late 2009 it’s become my default day to day browser, mainly because it’s so fast. It’s fast to start up and it’s fast to load pages and that’s what we all want for browsing the net.

For developing though it’s not quite up to Firefox‘s standard in a few key areas and I almost always find I have to switch back when working on sites.

Like many people I’ve long been a Firefox user and like many people, I’ve noticed Firefox getting slower and slower and choke on loading things that Chrome seems to breeze through. However there are still so many things it can do that no other browser can match right now – partly by its design and partly to the myriad of extensions available. Remember life before Firebug?

So why isn’t Chrome there yet as a developer’s browser? Here’s my list of niggles…

1. Chrome’s status bar isn’t wide enough to see full urls

This is incredibly frustrating! It looks like the status bar has a maximum width of around a third of the browser window. So with a browser open to an average width of 1000 pixels or so you just don’t see full urls of anything over 50 characters or so. To the average user this may not matter but to anyone who’s developing not being able to see where a link is pointing without having to go there is soooo frustrating.

Status bar in Chrome truncates urls

Status bar in Safari (top) and Firefox shows full urls

2. Chrome doesn’t show full page titles

This is a similar issue in many ways – perhaps Google’s aim to keep the interface clean has driven both of these? You only see each page’s title on its tab, which is not very wide (even if you only have one tab open). This means you can never  see a pages full title, and when you’ve got a number of tabs open at once (which let’s face it is is how things always are) you’re lucky to be able to read the first word. Firefox and Safari show the full page title above the tabs.

Page titles in Google Chrome are only shown on tabs and are truncated

Full length page titles shown above tabs in Safari (top) and Firefox

3. Chrome doesn’t have some of Firefox’s useful menu options

Being able to right-click and choose ‘View Image’ or ‘View Background Image’ and get an image in a tab with the filename, type and dimensions in the title bar is so simple browser makers should be forced to include this feature. Safari and Chrome doesn’t. Yet.

4. Firebug (lite) in Chrome has scrolling issues

Firebug is such a useful tool, particularly it’s ability to allow live css changes to be tested on a page. Firebug Lite was released for Chrome on mac early in 2010 and was the the one thing I was waiting for before making the switch. There is a small issue with scrolling though, in that you sometimes can’t scroll to the bottom of a page with Firebug pane turned on.

I understand this is something that is currently beyond the control of the Firebug developers but it pretty much makes it unusable right now.

5. The Chrome icon in my dock looks too similar to the Firefox icon

Maybe it’s habit but I just can’t help clicking the wrong icon because they’re quite similar. I’ve moved them away from being side by side but it’s not helping.

OK, this is stretching it…

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.