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re:PocketMod – DIY Tiny Paper Organizer

I’m not giving up my Treo 700p as my regular organizer, but there are times when I recognize the advantages of paper. re:PocketMod is a site with a Flash application on it that lets you lay out and print 8 pages of information onto a single 8.5×11 sheet of paper. Properly cut and folded, the final size ends up fitting in a bifold wallet (slightly larger than a credit card, but I can put it in my wallet’s cash area, or in another pocket behind my work ID). If you lay out the pages with to-do lists, calendars, or other time-sensitive information, you might end up printing one of these each day. If you lay out the pages with less time-sensitive information, you could keep the one organizer page around for quite a while.

Oy. Not 3 minutes after I post this the first time, it gets Pingback spam from some jackass’s site because the above paragraph contains the word “paper”.

Free PGI Visual Fortran Compiler for University Students and Faculty

Free as in gratis, not free as in libre. But this may be good for home use. Go here to register and wait for your confirmation email to arrive.

DIY Planner style TTU Campus Map

A user over at diyplanner.com posted a simple campus map and course information template for college students. I thought it might be useful to make one for TTU.

So here you go:

  • PDF version, ready to be printed onto two side-by-side pages. Not sure why the fonts didn’t completely translate over.
  • OpenOffice.org version, ready to be edited.

If The Title of This Post Contains the Word “Tennessee”, Will It Attract Human Spammers?

As noted before, I do love Spam Karma 2. 4000+ spams eaten over the last 18 months or so, and it’s nearly perfect as far as I can tell.

But it didn’t catch a couple of… terse… commenters on this post about a presentation I was about to give. One commenter seemed rather irritated, and posted a malformed link to some addiction recovery place or another. A second commenter appeared to be much friendlier, and posted a few words mildly relevant to the presentation, but also added a link to another treatment center. And it’s just happening on this one post, as far as I can tell.

And this isn’t the garden-variety spam I’m used to seeing in Spam Karma 2’s reports. Which means it’s not getting caught with their Javascript test, their “Flash Gordon was here” test (comment posted just a few seconds after page load), etc. The comments contain one link, nothing formatted with BBCode, no unformatted links, and there are complete sentences attached to them that are just barely related to the post content.

Of all the posts I’ve got here, and all the opportunity for spam it provides, why this post, and why these spammers? The only thing the post and the spams have in common is the word “Tennessee”. Spammer 1 tried to link to an addiction recovery site with the word Tennessee in its URL. Spammer 2 successfully linked to a treatment center with the word Tennessee in its URL.

So I wonder, did I include the word “Tennessee” in this post enough to attract these folks’ attention? Will they post more spam here? Because if they do, what Spam Karma 2 doesn’t catch, I will. Word of advice, guys. I don’t get an enormous volume of comments here. In fact, I get few enough to where I’m normally able to look at them within minutes of their arrival. If they’re spam, they’ll get deleted. If you’re getting paid by the hour, I guess it doesn’t matter. If you’re getting paid by number of valid links left after some period of time, you’re better off spamming elsewhere.

Where’s MarcoPolo for Windows?

MarcoPolo, “context-aware computing for OS X” appeals to all three great virtues of the programmer: Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. It makes me want a Mac notebook. Unfortunately, Pro/E, ANSYS, and other necessary tools for my regular work would mean I’d end up dual-booting the Mac all the time. And I’d miss my port replicator and its enabling me to have one connection to the monitor, keyboard, mouse, network, etc.

So, why not build a MarcoPolo for Windows? I’ve not yet found one, but I’d be more than happy to be proven wrong there. In the meantime, I’m working on a Python/Windows proof-of-concept that could be the groundwork for a Windows analogue to MarcoPolo.
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