Mazblog

I decided to get back into the whole blogging thing (there must be thousands of blog posts that start exactly like that), I think partly ’cause of Trevor revitalizing his. I was not expecting to have 8,000 spam comments awaiting moderation when I logged in for the first time in a long time, though. So, after picking out a new theme and all that (how do you like it?), my first chore was to manually go through all my comments, 25 at a time, and mark them all as spam. No small task, and not really a fun one, but what was unexpectedly awesome were some of the fantastically weird titles that some of these comments had. I’ve decided to share the best ones with you, in no particular order:

• Freey Tranny Sex Thumbs (I’m guessing this refers to thumbnail images, and I really hope I’m not wrong…)
• Penis (this one gets points for being direct)
• Fifi and the Flowertots
• Boob Hanger (this conjures images of either a storehouse for enormous breasts, or a prosthetic storage accessory)
• Black People (a reference website for people who live in Minnesota, maybe?)
• Prozac Sex (together at last)
• Yugoslavia Information (I’ve been waiting so long for a robust website with exactly this sort of Eastern European information)
• Car Sex Story (sex in a car, or some sort of bizarre machine fetish fantasy?)
• Utah Prairie Dog (why would anyone click this?)
• Meatholes (speaks for itself, I think)
• Hot Grannies (I’m not making this one up. There evidently is a website out there dedicated to GILFs.)
• Noogies (This one cracked me up so much, because it’s as if a 5 year old wrested the controls of the Spam Comment Generator from the normal, sex-obsessed conductor.)

All these are hilarious, but the Grand Prize has to go to:
Lesbians Lactating. It has everything a terrible spam email or comment should have, with the exception of prescription drugs: lesbians, sex (implied), and breasts. But it implies so much weirdness. If they’re lactating, these lesbians presumably just gave birth, correct? (I’m a little hazy on the details.) Is this really about lesbians breast feeding?

If you’re curious about how long it took me to get through all these spam comments, here are some statistics:

• Time to delete 25 spam comments: 2.5 seconds (approx.)
• That means 10 deletions per second
• 600 deletions a minute
• Total time to delete 8,000 spam comments: 13.33 minutes

That should be a strong enough case to convince the WordPress folks to add a Delete All Comments Awaiting Moderation button…

I’ve just discovered the best show ever! It only ran for 6 episodes on the BBC back in 2004, but it’s this hilarious spoof of 1980s sci-fi / horror shows, sort of like Quantum Leap or Dr. Who. It’s intentionally low-fi, with awful acting and writing, but in a brilliant way.

You can watch the first episode online over at the Sci-Fi channel’s Web site, and I found the second episode on YouTube, too. Sci-Fi is apparently airing all the episodes late at night on Sundays, too. So check it out and thank me later!

UPDATE: Just found episodes 4, 5, and 6 on Google Video!
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6

Andy Rutledge has a great post on his Design View blog today about the damage done by these Web site eye-tracking studies done by non-designers.

The gist of the post is that these people are making gross assumptions of what “works better” on Web sites based on what really just amounts to people’s surfing habits. An example of a mistaken conclusion that they arrive at is that, “Users spend a good deal of time initially looking at the top left of the page and upper portion of the page before moving down and right-ward.” This may be true, but only because it’s become a Web design convention, and designers often choose to direct viewers’ eyes there.

Andy makes the great point that a competant designer should be able to lead the eye of the viewer in whatever direction he chooses, and it’s foolishness on the part of these studies to claim that certain areas on a Web page are inherently “more effective” than others.

Check out his archives, too. There are some great articles where he discusses the design problems of major Web sites like Amazon, eBay, and Google.

I’ve been playing around with some of the neat web app kind of things that have been floating around the ‘net lately. I’ve had a Flickr account for a dang long time, but never really got around to using it. I’m sure you’ve heard of it or used it way more than I have, so I won’t go into more details than to say that it’s a neat way to share and find photos online.

The other site is called ma.gnolia, and I think it was started by Zeldman and those guys from HappyCog. It seemed pretty buggy to me tonight, but we’ll see if they get the wrinkles out. Ma.gnolia is to bookmarks/favorites what Flickr is to photos. It’s a way to share and find cool links and find stuff related to what you’ve already posted.

-Peace