Waffle

Overnight, the SpamCatcher plugin on my Movable Type installation failed rather spectacularly, allowing some thirty spams to pass and get published without even getting flagged. Half of these were gibberish comments, which are very difficult to filter, but the other half were "Good site! Thanks, have some spam" comments, which the regular expression filter should have caught, but didn't. In other words, under conditions which apply to a small blog that only a handful of people post comments to, SpamCatcher can not be relied on to work properly. Bit of a disappointment, that. Cleaning up spam takes a lot of time, especially because another misfeature of Movable Type is its resource hogging. Every rebuild of a post here comes close to hitting the resource limits Xepher.net imposed after a spam attack on this very MT installation took down the entire server two years ago. Mass rebuilds such as those I carry out after a spam cleanup hit those limits, causing the process to time out, so that the spam stays on the published site.

I really don't want to close comments, so instead I'll gradually escalate my spam defenses. Step one is raising the junk filter threshold, so that more things will get junked based on the probability of them being spam. This will not reduce the time spent looking over the comments in the backend, as I'll have to fish legitimate comments out of the junk folder, but it will cut down on mass rebuilds. It also won't make the regex-based filtering functional, but it should at least get me rid of the gibberish.

If it doesn't work well enough, I may hold all comments for moderation, or go to authenticated commenters only. Or as a last resort, I may switch off commenting again until an anti-spam system that works can be installed.

I'm even open to switching blog software, though this will also lead to me having to do work that I Really Don't Want To Do. I'm unimpressed with WordPress, because it's a single-blog system that you need to arm-twist and wrangle into doing multi-blogging, but there may be other systems that do what I want a blogging application to do.

First impression of Daleks in Manhattan: not very good. There were some good ideas in there, but the execution left a lot to be desired. The biggest problem was the acting: the BBC obviously has a huge, huge talent pool, but some things are simply too much to ask, and asking an ensemble cast of British actors to perform well while faking American accents is clearly one of them. The problem wasn't so much that the accents were bad, as such, though some were. Compared to Nicola Bryant's attempts 25 years ago, the bar has clearly been raised; the accents were consistent and there were even some attempts at diversification, with the black New Yorkers sounding like (generic) black Americans, the kid from Tennessee having a bit of a southern drawl going, and the showgirl type being from Queens or Brooklyn or wherever those showgirl types always come from. I can't pinpoint her accent with that much accuracy, but I'm sure some people would be able to. However, the effort involved in maintaining these accents hamstrung the performances and many of the characters came across as stiff and unconvincing as a result. This put a big damper on my engagement with the story. The other problem was the reveal at the end, which managed to look even cheesier than the portrait of Dalek Sek's new form on this week's Radio Times.

A bit of a pity, really, because there was a lot to enjoy. There were lots of little filmic references (the corridor in the theatre looked like a shot out of The Blue Angel with the sad clown in it, the scenes on the scaffolding of the Empire State Building looked like classic photographs of working men from the era), there were Daleks using the brains they were cultivated with for a change, and the honest poor folks in Hooverville were painted as people you'd want to know more about. The script had some nice paralellism between what Solomon, the Hooverville community leader person, and Diagoras, the foreman-who'd-become-a-Dalek-stooge each brought back from the Great War, with one of them being ennobled by it and the other hardened and corrupted. This will probably be a setup for the next episode, as we're constantly reminded that the Doctor himself fought in a Great War.

Their names, incidentaly, are possibly significant. Solomon is wise and even hands out a Solomon's judgement (splitting the bread); Diagoras is apparently named after a Greek atheistic philosopher. I got that last tidbit from the Doctor Who communities, by the way.

I do hope next week's episode is a bit better. It's going to be difficult, because being the second part of a two-part story it will likely have the same problems as Daleks in Manhattan, but at least it will have all the mysterious business out of the way and all the players in position for a confrontation. AND there'll be some exterminatin'. That's what we want from our sink-plungered-pals, right?

From IRC, just now:

reinder: http://comics212.net/2007/04/19/afraid-of-cock/
M___ is not going to follow that link from a work PC
M___: In fact I think I'll go crash the server to corrupt the logs just in case
reinder :As far as I've read it, it's safe for work
reinder: Except if you're afraid of cock, I guess.
M___: See, that word ... it's not safe for work
M___: I think you're confused because of being self-employed

He's got a point. I make a point of taking full advantage of my self-employed-ness: I may be permanently stressed-out and one month away from eviction, but at least I can set my own hours and I can read the word "cock" on a computer I also work on.

The article with the word "cock" in it is a hilarious look at cock, specifically, cock appearing in an Alex Ross-painted cover sollicitation for Justice Society of America # 7 and the fanboys' reaction to it.

First and foremost, there's a reason that "Comics Should Be Good" isn't linked from my site, and the above is a good indicator of why. Second, that's what "Queer Fear" is, in case you were wondering. Brian and his 'buddy' Jake are 'creeped out' by a bulge in another guy's pants (artistic or otherwise). The idea that an artist chose to give a character an impressively-rendered package is actually frightening to these fellas, and the idea that his model might've had a good-sized package in real life? And Alex Ross decided NOT to neuterhim for some insane reason? Equally as creepy.

Needless to say, I'm pro-cock. Even as a kid, I found it vaguely annoying that so many comic characters had nothing whatsoever in their pants. It wasn't a showstopper of a flaw, but it did make many characters look more than a bit freaky. And in today's more adult-oriented comics culture, there's clearly been a double standard for some time. Read the article, which is lovingly backed up by reference pictures of male underwear models. Who have cocks. Cock-cock-cockkity-cock cocks. (Via Journalista!)

I found the DVD edition of this in the shops: La Planète Sauvage, an influential, cult, animated movie by French director René Laloux. Didn't buy it because I can't afford any luxuries right now, but I did find that the entire film was on YouTube so I can at least preview it and share it with you. I've only seen the first two nine-minute fragments, but I can tell you it's trippy stuff. I've been told that it gets more disturbing and horrific as it goes on.

Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Update: I've seen the whole thing now, and while there is a lot that's interesting in the film from a visual style point of view, the thing falls apart a bit towards the end, and the supposedly horrific scenes actually look comically cartoonish, at least in the small YouTube window. May be different on a larger screen, I guess.

Also, my French has completely gone to shit and I can't follow half of the dialogue anymore. I need subtitles. So I just might get a copy of this movie if and when my financial situation allows it again.

I'd be remiss in my duties as a Project Wonderful watcher if I didn't mention that since my last post, my Project Wonderful earnings have gone up a bit (though not so much that I can start taking money out of the system, yet), and that I've seen some new advertisters crop up both here and elsewhere. Most notably, I saw an ad for Republican Presidential hopeful Ron Paul on the Clan of the Cats front page. It would be nice to think that the ad was placed there by Congressman Paul's own campaign committee, and in the long run, I can see that happening at least with the lesser-known, lesser-funded campaigns (I had heard of Ron Paul before, mostly in the context of his anti-war stance. But a likely contender he probably ain't). After all, PW isn't all that different from Blogads (now there's a thought - how about a Blogads-style ad format, with text, within the PW system?) as both are inexpensive, turnkey advertising systems. In this particular case, though, it looks more likely that a supporter of Mr. Paul bought the ad on his behalf. Which is a nice enough way to support a candidate.

It would seem that the Project Wonderful sophomore slump is over. I note that for some websites, such as Girl Genius 101, the slum appears never to have happened. Those big-audience webcomics can pull in $ 35 a day minus PW's 25% cut from Project Wonderful advertising. For a webcartoonist, that's pretty good money.

While I'm at it, here's that list of my ad slots again: Buttons on all my webcomics pages, currently going for $ 0.09 each. ROCR front-page only square ad, currently going for $ 0.20. ROCR archive-only leaderboard, currently going for $ 1.80. Square ad on the blog, currently going for the princely sum of $ 0.04. Skyscraper ad on Chronicles of the Witch Queen, currently going for $ 0.30.

Readership on the webcomics pages has been going up steadily, so they may well be better locations for your ads than they were just two months ago.

The Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan team is taking Friday and Monday off to enjoy a long weekend of recharge, relaxation and recuperation. What that means is that I take tomorrow and Friday off before getting back into scripting the next part of the story over the weekend, DFG and Calvin will not be nagged by me for contributions until Monday or possibly later, Mravac will not notice that anything has changed as he hasn't had to endure any nagging from me in weeks, and you will see fillers on the ROCR website on Friday and Monday, and possibly on Tuesday as well. I'm not sure, at this point, about Tuesday. The fillers will have new art in them, by Calvin and others.

There's no more crossing over scheduled for me until the middle of May. Before that I want to do a section that involves my own characters only, fighting off the Nightmare Invasion back in Clwyd-Rhan. I'll end the story with a longish section that's currently being plotted out for me by Geir, involving Duchess Alcydia and the Witch Queen. In all, I'll add another 20 updates to this one, making it 60-odd to 70 updates in total. An average length for a Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan story.

The Crossover Wars have been very hard work for me (not to mention the other Team members), but I got a lot out of it. Most noteworthy is the fact that I got to post 47 new ROCR updates in a row, which may not seem like a lot in the context of the giant archives, but is actually the longest streak of new updates in two years. And, like I said, I'll add some 20 more, assuring that the site gets more new ROCR content added than it got in all of 2006.

Also, I got a significantly greater readership out of it. I'm now hovering around the 1300 unique visitors per day line, which is over 300 more than I got at the start of Invasion two months ago. There are almost certainly some prior readers giving this storyline a miss because they don't like crossovers, but they're definitely in the minority. Of today's readers, only 140 have come directly through a link from a site associated with the crossover, so the rest of the difference between two months ago and now must be made up of people who have been sticking around since the start of the storyline. Welcome to the comic, and thanks for reading!

Finally, I got to do some collaborative cartooning. To be able to do the work, I've had to assemble a team of people helping out with backgrounds and colouring (though there have been days when I've had to do either or both of these jobs myself - unless and until I can pay people to assist me, I can't count on them being available all the time), and working with Calvin Bexfield, Drooling Fan Girl and Mravac Kid has been both a joy and a learning experience. In addition to that, work on ROCR has been done by Stephen Crowley (one guest comic scripted by me), Adam Cuerden, Jeroen Jager (guest comic in which Adam and Jeroen did most of the work) and, Geir Strøm. Finally, I've enjoyed working with the artists and writers on the other side of the crossovers: Hogan, Caitlin Woods, Ti-Phil, Jonathan Oliver, Inemesit Imoh, Gothia and Stephen Southworth (who hasn't technically crossed over with ROCR yet, but he's let me work on his scripts for the sequence he's doing now) and all the others who have been putting in their two cents.

Having said that, the downside was that even with all that help, it still took a lot of time and effort, and in past two weeks, I've been skimping on the art quality quite a bit. I'm overdue for a break. So enjoy the background articles I'll be posting as filler, and see you on Tuesday or Wednesday!

The third episode of the new series was a cracker. Russel T. Davies has written some stinkers - this wasn't one of them. Not a foot wrong from the pre-credit appearance of the American Gothic-looking couple to the Face of Boe's (inevitable) final revelation, which was the predictable one, but it worked. Tense, claustrophobic, and well-paced. I was on the edge of my seat. Wonderful. More of this, please.

The Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan comic for Friday, April 13, will be appearing on the site a couple of hours late. This delay allows me to take another look at the colouring and lettering while also keeping today's comic, and keep the links to the crossover with Life and Death on the front page a little longer. Life and Death has finally updated, with an extra-long comic featuring Kel and Atra, and I've been able to find the permalink for Thursday's L&D comic, so I'll be putting that into the right places right after posting this.

The Dutch Crown Prince Willem Alexander's new daughter is to be named tomorrow. His previous daughters are called Amalia and Alexia, and many observers expect that the third daughter's name will be similar. I for one think Alcydia has a nice ring to it, but there are quite a few other names that might also work. Anhedonia, Arrythmia, Afasia, Anorexia, Ambrosia, Apathia, Anaemia... add your own in the comments (while they still work)!

The keyword blacklisting in Movable Type has one little drawback: it doesn't work. I've added several variants of "Good Site! Thanks!" including "ood site! Thank" to the blacklist but spams containing those phrases continue to get posted. Update: I've boned up on regular expression syntax and the rules for whole-word blacklisting, and it works well now.

Worse than that, because of Movable Type's insane resource consumption, forced mass rebuilds after a spam cleanup sometimes hit Xepher's resource limits, causing them to time out and the rebuild to fail, meaning that the spams don't get deleted from the posted entries (though they do get deleted from the database). This is Not Acceptible.

Worse, the filter's performance seems to be worsening. Spams that automagically get junked still outnumber spams that don't, but not nearly by as much as they did a month ago. I've got bad experiences with learning filters (Opera's, for instance, tends to learn it wrong even though I'm pretty damned dilligent about catching any spam the filters don't, and marking it as such before deleting it); I don't know which part of the setup is failing to learn about spam, but one of them is. Maybe it's not updating its blackhole list.

This weekend, I'm going to beef up the anti-spam defenses, installing Akismet and everything else that I can find that might block it. Until then, don't be surprised if you suddenly find comments closed across the blog. I'm leaving them open on this one in case someone wants to suggest a neat anti-spam trick or plugin, though.

BTW Trackbacks have already been shut off again, probably for good this time. I've switched off sending trackbacks as well, except possibly to the aggregators that Movable Type auto-pings.