Category: Toys & Tech

INN-DARA SMS Spammers deserve to die

I use text messaging on my mobile quite sparingly, as is the case with voice calls as well, since my life has become devoted to babies. So it’s a real irritation that some stupid fucking Thai celebrity news service called INN-Dara has been spamming me with 15-20 messages every day for the past two weeks; it’s basically caused me to stop checking messages altogether.

I’m on DTAC, and all the other people I know receiving this spam are also on DTAC. However, calling DTAC to complain has proved unhelpful – they simply say that this is a “service” that will cut off automatically after 15 days if we don’t subscribe.

DTAC and INN-Dara, please take notice: NOBODY LIKES YOUR FUCKING SPAM! PLEASE CHOKE ON FETID RAT DROPPINGS AND DIE HORRIBLY, SLOWLY, AND PREFERABLY AWAY FROM THE VIEW OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN (and don’t let us know about your funeral by text message, either – nobody wants to go).

UPDATE: Of course, within seconds of publishing this post, I received a new message from INN-DARA. Aaaaaaaargh!! Karma’s a bitch, bitches!

UPDATE: I’ve found out how to unsubscribe from this irritating as hell service (a tested solution). From your DTAC phone, dial *74852 and press the call button. You should receive a final message that you have unsubscribed. If you are on another mobile carrier such as True Move or AIS, or are subscribed to another “service” perpetrated by the spammers at INN News, refer to the chart below (I’m keeping it on my server so as not to send these fuckers any traffic). What really gets to me is that DTAC won’t tell you how to unsubscribe; it’s quite obvious they are getting paid to allow this spam on their network.

Dropbox vs. Google Docs for document backup

Hey, that rhymes, yo.

Before Dropbox came along (I actually tried 3 or 4 similar services, but Dropbox was the best), I was backing up all of my Office documents (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint) in Google docs, which replaced the time-honored practice of e-mailing documents to myself… As it turns out, I was better off doing just that, because I recently discovered that a lot of the formatting in the documents (particularly tables and tabs) were being corrupted by Google docs, whereas I haven’t had a problem with e-mail attachments for many years.

But all of that is moot now because Dropbox has largely replaced both e-mail backups and flash drive transfers (for “small” files) between all of my PCs. Don’t get me wrong, I still use Google docs on a regular basis and prefer it to any other Microsoft Office alternative (although not to Office itself), but for pre-existing Office document backup and fidelity, I prefer Dropbox.

Chris Pongpitaya’s Supercar Knockoffs

…Because nothing says genuine 911 like a spoiler the size of a Cessna wing (and judging by the height of the hood, front wheel drive as well).

(thx Mark)

This video intrigued me so much, I had to dig around a bit. Here’s the juicy bits:

UPDATE:
Here’s some alternate contact info I found; I have no idea if it’s correct.

Chris Pongpitaya Schoenes Co.
229/3-4 Soi Akamai 7, Sukhumvit 63
Bangkok 10110 Thailand
Phone +66 2392 4177

Deleting Gmail Trash

Today is Mother’s Day in Thailand since it’s the Queen’s birthday, and the Queen is mother to all Thais. Nam and Max went to Khon Kaen with my mother-in-law and I spent the day watching Mina. She basically slept on me all day, only waking to feed and put everything within reach in her mouth before throwing it on the ground.

While she slept, I trashed several thousand mailing list messages in Gmail that I’ve no longer got time or interest in keeping up with, and hit the Empty Trash Now link. The following message ran across the status ticker thingy up top:

Oops… the system encountered a problem (#793) – Retrying now…

Gmail continued to suffer from Excedrin headache #793 for a few minutes, after which the beautifully empty trash page appeared with this message in the middle:

No conversations in the Trash. Who needs to delete when you have over 7000 MB of storage?!

Cheeky.

—

On a related note, I don’t really like the new Gmail interface (mainly, the Compose mail button sticks out like a wart), but I can live with it. If you can’t there’s a way to switch back to a much older version of the interface, albeit without Labs support.

WordPress: Configuration and Find & Replace

I’ve basically decided to break all hyperlinks from the past 7 years and am now publishing to the root of this site instead of the /blog directory. Screw it. It ain’t money to me, and everything going to /blog is getting redirected to / now. To be honest, I can’t be bothered with URL matching from my old MT blog to this new WP one. Like I said, screw it. Google can play catch up with their invincible green nanosecond cloud, and all the hotlinkers (some of them using my pics in their forum sigs for nearly seven years) can suck my /.

It was curious to see that there is no native Search and Replace tool in WordPress, but I found a couple plugins to do the job immediately:
Search and Replace (This one worked just fine for me.)
Search Regex Plugin (You can apparently use regular expressions with this one.)

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the complete absence of spam for the time being. It feels like 2003 again:

100% of my love...

Fuck Six Apart

Once upon a time there was a great hunk of code called Movable Type. It was a powerful tool for self-publishing on the web, unmatched in both flexibility and utility. It was the premiere blogging platform, for many good reasons – new users and developers were infected with joy spread by the more experienced. This was the golden age of MT, and its roots seemed to be spreading far and wide.

And then, tragedy.

After several key mistakes, Movable Type’s developers decided that hosted services were the wave of the future, and concentrated on feeding their new cash cows. Once king of the barnyard, MT was neglected for years, to the point where it really should have been taken out behind the barn and shot, but instead, its owners let it starve and waste away. Then they fired the keepers…

You know what? A parable is a horrible way to end a 7-year relationship. What I really mean to say is: FUCK YOU, SIX APART.

You made your vox, now go sleep with it.