Today I learned about a new thing: Referrer spam.

The idea is that you get your referrer URL put into as many web sites' logs as possible, since those logs are sometimes visible to web spiders. The referers are usually presented as links, so, say, googlebot will pick them up and rank the referrer page as being linked from many sources.

Tricky, insidious, wasteful, and kinda clever. :-)

Solutions include modifying .htaccess and/or adding a rule to mod_security.

There's also the Awstats vulnerability, which someone with a North Korean IP is trying to sniff out on my server. Good thing I don't use Awstats.

Picked up the new Jon Hassell CD today... 'Maarifa Street.'

'Maarifa' is Arabic for 'wisdom,' and the title was inspired by a war report from Iraq.

This album is a sort of back-to-the-roots expedition through Hassell's earlier work. Imagine a best-of album where all the tracks are mashups of old songs, and you begin to get an idea what's going on here. The album is subtitled 'Magic Realism 2,' alluding to Hassell's mid-80s album 'Aka Darbari Java: Magic Realism,' which is a sparse, quiet collection of almost unidentifiable samples from traditional musics and Hollywood musicals. 'Maarifa Street' goes a step further and folds Hassell's previous material back into what's going on now in his musical life.

Should I be worried that when I try to go to the National Archives web site, I get a 'File Not Found' for the Declaration of Independence?

(Ahh... here it is!)

Well golly... I go to look at the drupal web site and it turns out there's a conference in Portland at the beginning of next month.

Any excuse to go to Waddle's. :-)

That Waddle's link, by the way, is to a 'blog by a guy who created a software company called Panic. Panic is hiring. If only I was cool enough...

I've been trying to get a reliable answer on using CVS to backup my digital images to a linux box on the LAN and/or an external drive or RAID array. I'm certain there are more than a few solutions, but I have yet to find them.

What I have found is Using Digital Still Photography Devices with GNU/Linux, which has lots of info about mounting USB devices and media readers onto your linux filesystem.

This is all in preparation of my move into a larger room in this house, where I'll be able to set up my linux box. Right now it l

Computer Darkroom is a decent collection of tutorials dealing with digital photography. Including a bunch of good info about Photoshop's File Browser.

I find it interesting that there are former ammo factories in, say, Belarus, which have been converted into plants for making photographic lenses.

The lenses are cheap and of decent quality (most of the time), and perfect for a good-enough-ian such as myself.

I don't have any of these things, but here's a review of the Peleng 8mm/3.5 fisheye lens. I'm interested in this lens because it's a relatively cheap way to get into immersive QTVR without taking a zillion overlapping pictures.

Also many links from that page to other articles about this lens specifically, and the Russian lens phenomenon in general.

Out West magazine kept this list of great burger places updated until 2001.

See if your favorite place is on it. Mine's not. Sigh.

The guy that runs Out West is living my dreams:

Aboard his 24-foot motorhome-newsroom, Woodbury set off down lonely two-lane roads seeking out great burgers, teepee motels, roadside trading posts, jackalopes, offbeat museums, towns with odd names, and folks with fascinating hobbies.

Yesterday, M and I hiked up Porcupine Creek from Rainy Pass to Cutthroat Pass, in the North Cascades area of Okanagan National Forest.

[img_assist|fid=38|thumb=1|alt=Looking West From Cutthroat Pass|caption=Looking west from Cutthroat Pass down Porcupine Creek valley. North Cascades area, Okanagan National Forest.]

The trail we covered is a 5-mile segment of the Pacific Crest Trail, and the area really should be part of a wilderness preserve or national park.

The hike is mostly a moderate but insistent climb up through the valley, with a number of wide switchbacks at the eastern end. Each switchback seems to get steeper as you climb up to the pass, which connects the Porcupine Creek watershed to the Cutthroat Creek one.

Discovering groundglass.ca, which is a pretty spiff photoblog.

See this, and this. And this. And the rest of it, too.