I Am Awesome » douche

Dear Piano Spammer

conigs — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:33:10 +0000

Chances are, if you run a Wordpress blog, you’ve seen this message, or one like it in your trackbacks or comments:

GrandPiano…

Hello I bookmarked this site. Thanks heaps for this!… if anyone else has anything, it would be much appreciated. Great website Super Pianoforte Links http://www.en.Grand-Pianos.org Enjoy!…

So here’s the deal… Mr. Piano Douche (as I’ve now dubbed him, though his real name is Tomasz Michalowski¹ according to his WHOIS lookup) seems to post everything from the IP 93.89.194.8. So if you want to block him, goto Settings:Discussion. There’s a blacklist at the bottom enter that IP on one line and “grand-pianos.org” on another (just in case his IP changes).

Oh, and Mr. Piano Douche, if you’re reading this, go to hell with all the other obnoxious spammers!

And according to Google, there may be many people with this same name.

There’s Gently Encouraging Sharing, and There’s Whoring

conigs — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:36:10 +0000

I ran across this article about iPhone 3G tips/tricks on Hongkiat. All-in-all, an okay compilation of random how-tos… But that’s not what this post is about.

Now, I’m all for having social-network links in blog posts. Hell, you’ll notice them below posts on this site. I think these links should be there if you need them, but pretty unobtrusive. I like to think they’re pretty subtle here. Hongkiat, apparently, has a different opinion:

This is what we call whoring. That image is only slightly narrower than the content column. The thing was (relatively) huge! At least it wasn’t an insane list of sites a mile long, such as Real Tech News a few years ago. (The image was made for a fark post a long time ago. They’ve gotten much better since then.)

Remember kids, Sharing is Caring™, until you force the diabetic kid to eat a Twinkie because you think it’s good for him.

Twitter Following

conigs — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:09:27 +0000

A recent CNET article on Twitter is wrong. The thesis: follow everyone who follows you. Here’s my own process when someone follows me on Twitter:

Now, I really don’t think I’m ruining the Twitter community by not following spammers, people who don’t share my interest, and addicted Twitter-ers.

Also, about the interests thing, CNET-Twitter douche says:

I simply don’t see how users get more value out of Twitter by following a select group of people. I’ve tried it and it was disastrous. More often than not, that grouping is filled with co-workers and friends that probably share many of the same interests. If you ask me, that sounds more like a big, private chat room than a social network where you can communicate and interact with people from all over the world.

A.) Few of the people I follow are coworkers or friends. B.) Yes they share the same interests. I don’t really want to tweet (or read) about American Idol, nuclear physics, or how to repair lawn-mowers. C.) Since when was shared interest strictly determined by geographic location?

Now, you can use Twitter however you want. I won’t tell you how to live your (Twitter) life, unlike Mr. Reisinger (aka CNET-Twitter douche). Just don’t be surprised if you tweet every 2 minutes only about your latest blog post on how to tweet or blog and what you ate for breakfast.

[Update 1/14, 10:19am CST — Fixed a few typos on the chart.]