Winterbells

So far, my high score is 45,744,940. What's yours?

Winterbells, the game. Happy Holidays!

Puzzling

The past few days I have been endlessly distracted by a new puzzle. It was sent to me by a former co-worker, who I am convinced was trying to sabotage my chances of getting a new job.

I had been trying to do the New York Times crossword puzzle as a stimulus for the mind, but this turned out to be that and so much more.

The puzzles are known as Weffriddles and they are created for a more modern audience, as the answers to clues turn into the URL for the next puzzle. So, you can only continue if you have the correct answer to the puzzle. It's an interesting way to puzzle in our new technological world. It's also leads to obsession and hundreds upon hundreds of 404 error message screens.

Luckily there is a Weffriddles message board that is filled with people bashing their heads against their screens (as they will prominently display in their signatures and posts). I'm not sure if I would have scratched my way through "batch 4" without some nudges from other "Weffers" along the way, but now that I am (temporarily) finished, it's nice to not have nonsensical words like NURLO and GORP running thorugh my head.

Since the holidays are coming up and you may have more time on your hands, I gift to you Weffriddles. Just make sure you start after the family obligations are over.

Another puzzle that I got into a while ago and finished the first round of is a Japaenese laser puzzle, by Hawkpeng79 (whoever that is). If you get through the first, there is a second level (at least). I had to cut myself off, but if you're into it... please enjoy. (Knowledge of Japanese not necessary, but it sure would be nice to know what it says.)

Hello, operator?

So, let's say you're reading the New York Times, and you come across an article about how once again Dick Cheney is caught in the middle of his own dicotomy... being a Republican and having a gay daughter. And you're just about to say something about how crazy it is that there still isn't equal rights for all... and then you look at the photo. Do you see what I see?


Look again. Go ahead and click on it to look closer.


Is that really a rotary phone? Is that the best communication technology our tax dollars can provide? Is there an ice box in the kitchen and an eight track in the residence as well?

Good thing they stripped the fake wood paneling off of the president's limo. That was starting to look out of style. We wouldn't want anyone to think that the administration wasn't up to date with the rest of the world.

Just for the record...

I am from Connecticut.

Spam 2.0

According to a New York Times article, Spam is on a come back. How do people really profit off of spam e-mail anyway? I've always wondered. Well, that's for another time.

I started noticing a few months ago that I was getting a really large number of messages that were not being picked up by my spam filter. I'd cycle through them, marking them as junk, but it didn't seem to matter. They were still getting put in my Inbox.

Then I came up with a way to virtually eliminate them from my Inbox, sending them where they belong - to the Junk Mail folder. Today, I share that method with you.

The method works well for a few reasons. First, I am using an Apple computer, running Tiger (OS 10.4). You may have a way to do what I am about to show if you are on some other machine or operating system, but I'll be going through the Apple way.

The second reason the method works for me is that I keep a very good address book that is integrated with my e-mail program. Apple makes it easy by calling these programs "Address Book" and "Mail" but most e-mail programs integrate the two (Entourage, for example). Keeping a good address book allows you to really keep spam low, because e-mail sent from someone in your address book is e-mail you know.

Apple already has a great junk filter that learns what is junk by what messages you mark as junk. It's a process that in the beginning can seem tedious (going through every e-mail to find junk messages and marking them as such), but it quickly gets easier. What surprised me was that Apple's junk filter was not learning that some e-mails I was marking as junk, were in fact junk... because they kept arriving in my Inbox.

So I took a look at the e-mails and I noticed a pattern. Most of them were not text e-mails. They were e-mails with embedded images, made to look like text. A lot of junk mail filters will learn to look at the text of e-mails for irregular grammar, but these e-mails had no text... well, at least no text that the computer could see because the text was part of an image.

The junk filter was also not picking up on any pattern of the sender's e-mail address, because these messages were coming from everywhere. Judy and Elsa and Warren... the names and e-mails were all unique and never duplicated. However, they do share one thing in common. They weren't in my address book!

So, in Apple's Mail program there is a wonderful section called "Rules" (Go to Mail > Preferences > Rules). In Rules you can set up processes that automate things you want to happen in your e-mail. For example, I have my fiancé's e-mail always show up with a purple color highlighting it in the list. This allows me to easily see if I have a message from her.

Awww, too cute? Okay, well using Rules is also how I get most of this new junk mail moved to my junk mail folder as well. Rules uses a series of conditions, and the way I have it set up it looks like this:


Let's go through some of these conditions:

1 - Make sure you set the action to respond only if ALL of the conditions are met. Otherwise it might send a lot of your regular, good e-mail to your Junk mail folder.

2 - We are looking for messages that use image attachments of the file type .GIF This is a standard image file type. Many of you might say that you don't want to do this, because then when people send you pictures they'll get put in your Junk Mail folder. Well, most pictures are saved as JPEGs or .JPG files (as they should for pictures) and that is why we have set the condition to look for senders in your address book and previous recipient lists. Same goes for people who have signatures with their e-mail that use a .GIF image. If you are getting e-mail from these folks, they should be in either your previous recipient list or your address book. If not, put them there and you'll be fine.

3 - I have the rule set to move (not copy) the message to my Junk Mail folder and also flag it. You don't need to flag it, but I did so that I could see how many of these Junk mail messages I was actually catching. It turns out that they make up 48% of my Junk Mail folder!

So, yes it was really helpful to set up this new Rule or filter to manage the new wave of spam. Hopefully it can be helpful to you as well.

Politics for a moment

One of my friends commented that she was surprised that I hadn't commented on the recent win by the Dems in the midterm elections.

I haven't in part because I am scared to be too happy about it. There's a ton of pressure on the Dems to now perform in only two years time (which in political terms is probably like 200 or so days). No doubt that it's better to have Washington D.C. set up with actual checks and balances, but I do wonder what will really get done in the end.

I recently finished Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, and there was something he brought up which I think may be the most overlooked part of this midterm election. At the time the book was written, one of the biggest topics in Washington was the filibuster and the "nuclear option" (or a change in Senate rules that would essentially eliminate the filibuster as a minority tool). What if the Republicans had gone through with their desire to destroy the filibuster? Where would they be now that they have assumed the role of the minority? I'll be most interested to see if any Republican uses the filibuster in the near future and what kind of press it will receive.

Now, on Barack Obama. He seems to be getting ready for a run at the presidency. After reading his book, I'm still not sure he should run (basically because he doesn't have a deep enough Senate record to run on), but he sure is a candidate for whom I would vote. In reading his book, he successfully communicated his humanity and his aptitude for interpreting the Constitution.

That's perhaps the biggest reason I would vote for him. Not only is he a great speaker, committed to strong ideals, and open to compromise - but he is a constitutional scholar. He isn't just a politician for politician's sake. This guy loves the Constitution and really understands it's multiple interpretations. I just don't see anyone else out there that is as adept in that area.

So, if you are looking to find out more about Barack, I'd suggest reading his book. It's too long-winded, but I think you'll see what I am saying.