And now...Stupidest Spam of the Intertubularities Award for June 2012

Of late I've been able to ignore most of the spam that my email accounts receive because of pretty good spam filters. So I haven't been getting annoyed enough to go off the deep end about it.

However of the spam that does make it through, there are two kinds that make me sad:

1. Accidental spam. Someone somewhere has an email account that has the same address as mine, if you ignore the punctuation character. firstname.lastname is thus equivalent to firstnamelastname. The Lady Sue, for she is indubitably one, is very much into lady-like pursuits; quilting, knitting, pressing flowers and cooking...(Everyone who knows me, is now chortling, knowing I am not the delicate lady at question)...Lady Sue has subscribed to many of these sweet girlie-interest email lists and websites, bless her.  And yes, the dolts who provided some of these organizations with their registration web pages (or possibly the dolts who program the database backend) has somehow got the algorithm wrong. first.last became firstlast, and I get these lovely offers to quilt my cat or weave my woof etc.

No problem, you say. Just click on unsubscribe. Ah, but there is the difficulty, dear reader. The unsubcribe button asks for my email address, and whether I enter first.last or lastfirst I get an error message saying that this address is not subscribed. Now I might be an old developer put out to pasture in her declining years™ but I can tell that there are actually two problems here - two or more application pieces that both probably call up the same or similar database code, and I bet that there's a regular expression at the root of the problem.


The old adage in CompSci circles was 'Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.' It is not my point to explain why these have been such a thorn in the side of the body of software development, suffice to say that they are a geekish delight and a trap for both the godly and the ungodly. Worse in person-millenia-wasted than the 'Array Index from Zero' problem, and 'A Character String is Just an Array of Characters' problem.

It is not unmanageable, or particularly vexing, just very sad. These mistakes and the lack of adequate testing have made two persons unhappy. The lovely fragrant Lady Sue (your customer!*), who is not getting her email newletters on hot topics in the World o' Quilting, and me.

The interesting thing is that this has been going on for years, and there's no way of stopping it from my end short of creating an email filter on the word 'quilting' or somesuch and ignoring it. This only works because I am not a lady who uses quilting-type words much. The sources of the emails vary widely, as email lists and website frameworks are shared, dipped in batter, deep-fried, wrapped in newspaper** and sold to anyone who wants one.


Intractable problems of this type, while not terribly serious in the example above, were normally ascribed to sclerotic bureaucracies in the horrid old days before the internet was a gleam in the eyes of the sainted Al Gore. Clearly, we now live in an age where you cannot even find a person to complain to and there is no mechanism to fix it. An example of the free market working its special magic.


2. Spam from Social Networks. Now this is real spam. Not malware-type installing nasty poo on your computer spam. Irritating, but not malicious. I believe that there will come a time when we will all regret the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Orkut, and other forums that we are subscribed to using a prime email address as a key data item. I predict that, as the hunt for non-existent revenue from these sites gets every more urgent, these things will get nastier and stupider.


I have a confession. I got onto Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia etc. just to be the first on my block to play with these. I am such a show-off. And to get the username SueW or SuW. I was interested in the technical side (yeah right). And I crafted a lovely wiki Simple English article about...never mind. 

I do not use these sites as tools in my daily life, so I have set them to email me every time someone sends me a direct message. Same with comments on this non-blog, or replies to comments I make to other people's blogs. 

So I got 15 messages in one day when everyone said Happy Birthday to a friend on a FB group. Fine they're important. I got over 100 spread over four days when another person (who has hundreds of 'friends', is not a noob and should know better) asked all her FB friends to 'Like' something so she would win a contest. Ow. OK. Delete all like this.


Now it gets stupid to the point of nasty. A while ago there was a story about LinkedIn having 'lost' about 6 million passwords. (The fact that they were storing passwords that could be unencrypted easily is bad enough, to actually lose them looks like carelessness***.)


Yesterday I got am email from LinkedIn, who have recently taken to spamming with an eager weekly email entitled LinkedIn Toady :-) or (Things You Stupid B-School Turkeys Need to Know to Advance your Careers) or somesuch. Yesterday the email was entitled: How to Check if Your LinkedIn Password was Stolen...

I mean WTF! If you bxggers have lost my identifying information and password, I`d like a personally addressed, grovelling apology! 


So, LinkedIn, you are the lucky recipient of the first Stupidest Spam of the Intertubularities Award. Just drop dead, guys! I mean that most sincerely.




Regrets, I a have a few, and most of them are Social Media...****

 
* or, at least, your customers' customer. 
** This is a joke, who the heck has any scrap newspaper around the house these days? My lovely and talented life companion uses a 1996 copy of the Globe and Mail Business section to catch bits when he trims his beard, but otherwise the only newspaper in my house is stuffed inside the walls.
***Stolen joke alert. O. Wilde prop. 
****Fair dinkum use, Paul Anka. 

Spam; the sorrow and the pity!

Dicks are decimated! (OK, OK, reduced by two thirds, which is actually worse than decimation.)

I was wrong...Crikey! This is what I get for taking my eye off the er..balls...(it's been a year since my last spam survey) and the number of come-ons associated with erectile dysfunction is sadly drooping. Indeed it no longer form the largest category in my spam filter! For shame! Come on dicks!

Anyway, I was right in the obvious prediction that the coming - now continuing - hard times would produce exciting new categories of spam especially those associated with financial difficulties. Indeed, the winner this year (taking over from Viagra previously at 11%) is the new category of cheap, easy loans, also at 11%. As if the public hadn't already gorged itself on too much credit. A sad note is that many of these 'loans' are aimed at veterans who are apparently perceived to be the new stupid or desperate poor.

Associated is another category of credit and bankruptcy fixing at 4% this year, a little down from last year's 5%. This includes a ingenious twist: proposing to tell us who is doing background/credit checks on us.

Another shocker - posh watches are at the low, low level of 1% of spam down from 6% last year! Their place as desirable consumer commodities has apparently been taken by cut-price iPads, MacBooks, Dysons and Kindles (5%). Yes I know, the Dyson is a vacuum cleaner, but it is as excessively overpriced as the others and hence appears desirable. I do know people who collect fancy watches. It's like stamp collecting. You kind of keep buying them and then you sort of...just, have them, right?* Whereas iPads, Kindles and Dysons have more practical uses of viewing your pr0n collection or vacuuming up the cat hair covering your carpets.

The biggest single subjects of spam over the last ten years, ED and fancy timepieces, are just fading away. In all the number of categories is up 6% to 53 from 50 last year. More fragmentation. Considering that email as an application has been practically killed by spam (although mobile apps are the biggest nail in the coffin), I hope the senders are choking on piles of fake Cartiers. As if.

Now all this could be relative to the recipient. I have told Facebook that I am 92-year old female and I now get 'old lady'-related spam. They've given up pushing the incontinence products, thank goodness, but the seniors homes, home care, seniors' dating sites and electric scooters are all on offer, amounting to 6% of total. Thanks fb.

A new category, purports to be from lawyers who are trawling for business in class actions against drug companies, including the Nuvaring which is a contraceptive I didn't know before. (It's an education doing this job). This amount to 4% of my spam - implying the senders think there are many people who would be prepared to lie to a jury. Why not? People are clearly happy to help cheaters cheat, and think they will not be cheated themselves.

As an illustration, one of the old favorites, the venerable advance fee (Nigeria 419) scam has emerged from the mists of time with a spam email, purporting to be from a Capt. Anita George US Army. This poor woman was forced to bury just truckloads of American cash in Iraq in her hurry to leave. Now, finding herself a bit short of ready money she is appealing to you (You!) to help her repatriate the poor mistreated MIA currency with the promise of an ill-gotten share for you as well...She is somewhat more fluent than the proverbial African princes of old, though.

The categories related to financial distress (FD) amount to 61%. I would claim that most get-rich-and/or-educated-quick schemes and crazy discounts fall in this area.

Anyway, with no further ado, here is the full list:

11% Cheap/payday/military loans - one promising offering: "Quick relief from financial aches and pains". FD.

7% Famous (often misspelled) U.S. store brands at cut prices. Would like to claim this for FD, the usual urge for thrift while still owning enviable stuff.

6% Dating for seniors, facebook users and one, poetically titled, 'Love can be yours'

5% Cheap iPads, MacBooks, Dysons, Kindles. This has gotta be FD.

5% Senior Care. Get granny out of the house!

4% categories:

• Cheap car insurance. FD.
• Nuvaring/heart surgery drug/other drug injury attorney. FD.
• Erectile dysfunction. Sad days indeed when men cannot be relied upon to worry about their lacklustre willies!
• Universities of Nowhere offering useful sounding courses, including special "GI benefits". FD.
• Credit rating/background check. FD.
• Craft supplies - omg, will it never stop? The goddamned quilting, knitting, crocheting, crafty spam. Spawn of Satan! Not FD, unless you think knitting your own socks is a Sign of the Greater Depression forthcoming.

3% categories:

• AARP membership. Might be legit in light of my admitted age on fb. However, I am not American. Yankee go home.
• Did you know your home is at risk? I assume they mean of foreclosure not lightning, UFOs or meteorites. FD.
• Take survey for money. They don't pay more than about $2 an hour (and they don't often pay up) so I assume this is FD.

2% categories:

• Men's Big & Tall Apparel. Nothing to see here. I'm not a man and I'm not big and tall. Well I may be big.
• Lint lizard clean your vents - the day I get a reptile in my dryer vent is the day I live a long way south of the snowline. Nice idea though.
• Car warranty - as I previously remarked, the car is man's best friend, and you want to ensure the health of your best friend don't you?
• Credit cards - OK this is FD. Anyone who hasn't got enough credit cards is probably already bankrupt.
• YouCalendar 2 please click not Spam. Hmm? No. Get lost.
• Cheap life insurance - curious category. Probably from the WNPU Insurance Company Inc.** FD.
• 1 step acne treatment - probably aimed at teenagers. Very little spam is, because teens these days have better things to do that use email.
• Low cost health insurance "Amazing coverage starting at $99/mth." $1200 per year is not "low cost". Seems this is for 'mericans. Get lost you sick bastards! Everyone in Ontario pays $750 per year for full coverage. You in the U.S are being gouged. FD
• Train to be a massage therapist/xray tech. FD. Similar to University of Nowhere.

1% categories:

• Posh watches - the mighty are fallen.
• Airline tickets - right...give me something for nothing...again.
• A hapless friend has her email list stolen and I get spam. You know who you are.
• Norton Anti-Virus - are these guys still in business? Crikey. Perhaps my friend above should use one.
• 'Sneaky' Golf trick to add 30+ yards. At first I thought this was an innuendo-laden ED missive. Shame on me. I am a sick bastard.
• Grocery coupons. Target: poor buggers on food stamps, imo. FD.
• from FBI - Important message (from fbi.gov) Crikey! They're telling me about spam!
• The Economist $1 an issue - Oh right...
• Cheap Canadian pharmaceuticals. Look, I live in Canada. I get my pharmaceuticals at prices way cheaper than yours. Call your Congressperson. FD.
• Casino gambling - if you're too lazy to get off the couch and go to the casino, you're going to lose all your money, for certain.
• Blast your belly fat - nah, sounds too painful. I'd rather caress it lovingly until it flees in horror.
• Fresh home mag - lame. I don't buy "reno and lifestyle" mags, unlike pretty well every other woman I know. I can't abide looking at pictures of rich people's homes which are universally free of scum, cat excrescences, pet and human hair and general untidiness.
• Learn a foreign language in 10 days...and I have a waterfront lot in Florida to show you.
• Grants to help you pay for college...Free money! We're giving it away because we're crazy! I shouldn't be so scathing. The desire to be educated is confused with the desire to be rich (i.e. employed) and the difficulty that many have in getting a good education is shameful. Didn't you realize that compulsory education was the main publicly-funded social program that allows upwards social mobility? And you still screwed around in high school! So did I. FD.
• Travel clothing. Not sure why anyone would think I'd be compelled to buy overpriced polyester garments that make one stand out as a wealthy foreigner, only lacking a pith helmet to look like a total fool. I just stuff in jeans and tee-shirts like everyone else.
• Penny auction site. Selling other people's distressed property. FD.
• Foreclosures. Selling other people's distressed property. FD.
• Elder products scooter. Now this I think is a fine idea.
• Congressman Tom Rooney State of the Union - what do you think? Yankee go home. Please do not bomb my country. You mad bastards.
• Cheap used cars. FD.
• Michael Feilds Gift Shop. (sic) I guess the poor person that typed this email thought they were home free when the had overcome the atypical spelling of 'Michael' and just plain forgot the "i before e" rule.
• The Genie Bra. I dream of Genie. Oh just stop it.
• Academic Association. Unique invite with badly formatted letter saying you're a god to some unspecified academic world as recognized by peers. You're not.
• Webby Awards - possible false positive.
• Replacement pieces - what is this?
• Need roof replaced? Not at present dear, but call me in 10 years.
• Job offer - Yes, you're going to give a couch potato a job for just clicking on a spam email link. Good. FD.
• Capt, Anita George Iraq Money - Crikey! Just like old times. FD.

* Stolen Joke Alert! Dave Barry, prop.

**The We Never Pay Up Insurance Company Inc. Represented by the law firm of Sue, Grabbit and Runne (Stolen Joke Alert!)

Spam served fresh every day

Forgive me, I have sinned. It has been 2 years since my last spam survey in January 2009. What can I say, time flies when you’re having fun, sanding off the bottom paint and removing the marine sanitation system (ew).

However, my predictions have borne fruit. In the face of a swelling thrust from many new and exciting categories, penis enlargement spam has been holding its own. It’s still at 11% of the total, but that now represents the leading category overall. Dicks are solid!

My other prediction was that the poor economy in the USA would result in a swathe of new, exciting categories. Hard Times when we’re faced with rising bills, bankruptcy, foreclosures, expensive tarts, no skills, and no work. There are now nearly 50 distinct categories up from 15. Crikey!

The fragmentation of the spam target audience, as defined by the subjects targeted is showing some interesting trends. Away from the interests of the young (posh watches, hot deals and handbags) and tending to the concerns of the older netizen (wrinkles, health concerns). Presuming the aged are joining the ‘net in droves. This I hadn’t specifically predicted in ‘09, but now that everyone’s mother and grandmother are on Facebook, this is gonna be the biggie. More of this later.

Big losers? The on-line pharma category has lost most over time, down from 56% to 19% to 2% now. On-line software “deals” that were steals are gone, from about 15%. The fake watches are in decline, down more than 10%. And diets have shrunk to almost invisible proportions. Perhaps no-one feels like dieting when the economy is depressed.

Here are the raw results*, with commentary. Remember the nasty things in your spam filter can be hazardous to your health, wealth and self-esteem. We risk ours so you don’t have to.

• 11% Viagra with discounts of 86%, 85%, 84%, 82%, 78% - all from same address on successive days. Presumably eventually it will either keep declining then drop off or shrink to nothing. Another missive has a mysterious (but true) statement, “They say impotence is a punishment for wrong deeds men do.” Indeed. Drinking, smoking, drug abuse...all help to keep your masculine personhood pointing down for sure.
• 8% Auto insurance...this must be a “Hard Times” category. “The insurance is too high!” Remarkable amount of it though. Man's best friend is his car.
• 7% Fake medical certification (pharmacy assistant, nurses)...obviously you can fake it and ca$h in! You’re a dolt for not doing it sooner, clearly. And look at all the free drugs you can steal!
• 6% Posh watches. Bewilderingly popular. Wear a $25 copy of a $25,000 watch that is not worth, er, $2.50.
• 5% Credit/bankruptcy fixing. I thought we’d have more of these, US economy being as it is. Nevertheless a respectable showing.
• 4% Russian wives. Another economic sign of the times in both USA and Russia. I guess interest in renting cheap tarts for 3 years has been aroused in the former. Probably a cross-promotion for cheap Viagra.
• 4% Laser eye surgery (throw away your glasses). Oh yes, I’m gonna use cheap lasers to fix up my eyesight. Might not need glasses at all after that. And worse things happen.
• 4% Extended car warranty...your most treasured family member might have a serious illness, act now!
• 4% Drug or other damages settlements. So you think you might wanna sue Big Pharma or the asbestos industry? Give us money first.
• 4% Film/photography schools in your area. Coming soon. This seems aimed at the sad geeks in anoraks. Usually a way for men to look closely at lightly clothed women in my experience, what with poking their light-meters in yer erogenous zones.
• 3% Satellite TV. Never pay for HD Sports again. TV is for non-participants in the game of life, apparently.
• 3% Work from home - divorced, broke, single? Sit on the couch crying, and make money fa$t?
• 3% DirectBuy complimentary visitors pass. Must be one of those new private prisons.
• 2% Replacements/”Pieces” - ambiguous replacement pieces for your things, presumably.
• 2% Life insurance. One promises, “No Waiting”. Hmm...so, if I insure with them, I’ll die now? Not a great prospect. I guess it’s all about timing?
• 2% Codeine/Hydrocodone. For heaven’s sake, get help if you’re thinking of buying pain killers on-line. Or perhaps get one of those pharmacy assistant on-line certificates.
• 2% Hybrid cars. Going for the upper-crust gullible yuppie here. C’mon...not gonna happen.
• 2% Gambling - you play, we pay. This has got to be the most unlikely promise. Except for all the other ones..
• 2% On-line Auctions. Send money away to strangers and in return...you’ll be sorry. Guaranteed.
• 2% JC Penney wants me to text him. Probably some weirdo stalker American. Pass.

Now we'.re down to the one-offs.

• 1% Cruise deals. Perhaps this should be in the Golden Age section. What’s 900 feet long and smells of urine? Answer: A line dance on a cruise ship. Stolen joke alert!
• 1% Scrapbooking...probably a false positive, it’s so...wholesome.
• 1% House of White Bitches - CLEARANCE...woo!... oh...on second reading that's Birches. Sadly this is actually about quilting and also probably a false positive. Thought I’d found my place on the intertubularities** for a moment there. I feel malignant now. Good name for a website though. Or a song.
• 1% Social Security Disability - or How to Cheat a Bankrupt Nation of Monopoly money. I’m not in the US so I can say, “Get back to work and pay your taxes, ageing slackers!”
• 1% gapkids deals from 2 for $12. Look, at this price, I’ll order a hundred and send them to the First World. There are people there “trying to have babies”. They might welcome the relief from the pressure, time of the month, temperature testing, shagging to a schedule, lack of restful sleep, crying jags when kids are present etc. They’ll definitely get more sleep now. Promise.
• 1% 2 years of quilting patterns. Gosh darn, that’s seriously too generous to pass up. Gotta be false positive?
• 1% Coupons to chain fast food restaurants. Get your obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease at the lowest price possible!
• 1% Discover your body mass...whoa...I just put my hand “down there” and I discovered it! Yay!
• 1% Sign up for email jokes. No need of that. Almost all of my email consists of jokes, actually. In the 3 days this spam survey covers I got exactly 5 other emails, including one from an 18-year old Ghanaian admirer via Facebook, also spam. So I do not lack for humour in my life. Seriously.
• 1% Free psychic readings. I didn’t see this coming. What a dolt.
• 1% Health test. OK, you tested positive for Magrathea***, which is caused by a fat wallet rubbing against your thighs. Causes incompetence, incontinence and impotence. We can help.
• 1% Country Store. Far too...nice to be evil, surely?
• 1% “Is this still your email?” Yep.
• 1% Bathroom remodelling. Let’s say a few percent of people are doing up their bathroom. Most of the rest are fixing a broken toilet or sitting on it reading “Great Expectations”. Niche market surely.
• 1% “Have a look at this website from my friend Jamie.” Well he might be your friend, but he’s not mine. Last Jamie I heard of was a character on Dr. Who.
• 1% “Focus on what's right.” Is that “right “ as in correct, virtuous, libertarian or conservative? This probably belongs in a category called “to sad, puzzled persons”.
• 1% re: I hope you understand. No, I didn’t send an email hoping you would understand. Understand?
• 1% Abs diet. White meat only presumably. Food nazis, I fear. Or would that be the pecs diet? Er...
• 1% Home security. From break-ins or foreclosures I wonder?
• 1% Gap card. Card with a hole in it? Surely false positive.
• 1% Grocery coupons - could it be genuinely aimed at the kluless koupon klipperz?

Then there’s the stuff I call the Golden Age categories. Now the first boomer is turning 65 I predict a serious future for this group.

(I think I get most of these ‘cos I told facebook I was 90 years old and their security is about as useful as a proverbial silk stocking condom. They’re all about selling their users anyway. On fb I get ads for incontinence products, wrinkle removers and retirement homes. All good reasons not to go there.)

• 3% Erase wrinkles/dark circles. Hack no...I earned those b’tards. I intend to take them with me to my grave. Although in honesty this could be aimed at persons of any age after puberty.
• 2% Power wheechairs(sic) - clearly we’ll need these to whiz around the mall. Unless we have our incontinence pads on.
• 1% In-home care. Well what with the power wheechair stunt accidents I’ll probably need it.
• 1% Walk in tubs - ‘cos we can’t get a legover anymore, not even into the bath.
• 1% Dance schools. Old geezers, wheeing and wheezing along to Beatles and James Last.
• 1% 50 plus singles - that is code for “over 70’s hot to meet babes”. Using protection in these relationships presumably means the aforementioned incontinence products.

Update: In contemplation of all this, and in talking to a few not-so-computer-literate types, I think that it is obvious (as any fule kno****) that there are a lot of spam messages about older folks' concerns 'cos that's where the naive users are now. It's not hard to imagine my 80-year old mother clicking on a bunch of links promising quilting patterns. Well in her case, it is, but you get my drift.

So a lot of the main categories (e.g. ED) are probably mostly aimed at wrinklies.

* In the interests of Science, I should declare my methodology.

1. Open my gmail email spam folder.
2. Read the summaries of the latest 100 declared spam.
3. Count ‘em.

** Stolen joke alert! Pharyngula started it, afaik. After some beastly US legislator said the ‘net was just a bunch of ol’ tubes. Sauce! I spent much of my working life down these particular rabbit holes...

*** Also stolen.

**** Also stolen.

Chocolate truffle tart for Erin

Credit goes to Lucy Waverman for the idea in a Globe & Mail food column.

I brought this evil dessert along to the rowing club pot-luck supper yesterday. It's the single simplest and most impressive uncooked dessert that I know. The basis is ganoche which is heated cream with chocolate whipped in.

For 7 inch pan:

10 oz dark chocolate
1 cup whipping cream
2 tbsp liqueur (optional)
2 tsp grated zest of orange/lemon (optional)
1 cup cookie crumbs or nuts (e.g. ground almonds)
2 oz - half stick - butter
Decoration.

Prep time: about half hour plus time to set in fridge - 2-4 hours.

Use a 7 inch spring form cake pan to allow the dessert to be removed easily (but you can make this in any container as long as you line the pan with silicone paper or something like that). This dessert is very sticky at room temperature, but handles well once frozen. If you are taking it to a party you can cut it up when frozen and either serve frozen or thawed.

Method:
Make a crust with your favorite cookie crumbs mixed with melted butter (1 cups crumbs to half stick of butter). Or use half ground almonds instead of the cookie crumbs. Mix the crumbs and the melted butter and press into the bottom of the pan.

Heat cream to just about boiling. Remove from heat break the chocolate into pieces and addto the cream to melt. Stir well until smooth. Sir in the zest and liqueur. Pour over the crust. Leave to set in the fridge. Remove from pan and decorate as you like.

Stored well wrapped in a freezer, seems to keep well for 6-10 months. I find that if I make several at one time and keep them for special occasions it saves on mess and work.

Decoration suggestions.
I find taking the cake out of the pan painting it with orange marmalade and then sticking on sliced almonds looks nice. Add a few curls of chocolate or dried apricots or frozen raspberries...
At room temperature you can shape the dessert, so even if you have an accident, drop it off the plate onto the kitchen counter like we did on one memorable occasion, it can be repaired. Orange slices, mandarin segments, whipped cream...

Variations:

• You can build up layers of different flavoured ganoche, once the first has set. Adding a can of sweetened or unsweetened chestnut purée to the ganoche makes a nice contrasting colour. Or use different chocolates; better quality chocolate is expensive but worth it; milk or white chocolate can look stunning as layers.
• If you are covering the cake with nuts then just pour on the different layers and allow to set. Gently swirl them if you are not covering the with nuts so that the swirls show a nice effect.
• Different fruit toppings or swirl in something like gently crushed raspberries from Dentz farm. M-mm!
• Different liqueurs: orange is great. There's a really nice inexpensive orange flavoured drink from the LCBO called Monsard Orange & Brandy. This won't break your budget at $24, and it's nice to drink as well. Forget that over-priced French stuff...although remember "Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder.*"

Depending on the depth of the pan you can make this tart as deep as you like. Hmm...a deep tart...sounds like we could craft some kind of joke around that as well.

* - Stolen joke alert!

Book Review - A Liar's Autobiography by Graham Chapman

A review on the jacket blurb promises this to be "An intercoursingly good book...". While interesting and worth reading, it really isn't really all that good. I remembered it more affectionately than I think of it now. Perhaps I have better intercourse now than the Evening Standard had then.

I read this way back in 1980/1 and have just re-read it again. Unfortunately I find the lasting impression now is just one of sadness. Chapman's life up to that time was a total mess and he spent most of his time drinking hard and creating havoc for friends and family.

There is, thankfully, a lot of silliness to elevate the rather lame narrative but I found myself reacting from the point of view of friends, family and bystanders - is there anything positive about this behaviour?

The brilliant writers he worked with (apart from the Python team) included Marty Feldman, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Barry Cryer. They evoke a memorable time when mainstream British humour was disrupted by a new generation raised on the Goons. However the constant interruptions by shrill excerpts from "Biggles Flies Undone**" by Capt. W.E. Johns do rather spoil the contemplative mood of the book. Quite a lot of the better bits appear to have been ghost-written by Douglas Adams - the style is unmistakable.

Not a must-read for Pythonistas, but a could-read-with-a-wistful-thought-for-what-this-man-might-have-been-if-he-hadn't-been-so-intercoursed-up. Although that may be the reason he was funny.

As always, it's the song not the singer. He left a brilliant body of work and great friends who loved him.

** - stolen joke alert!

Where there is no shower

Funny thing, I often almost feel like not giving away the secret that many North Americans haven't discovered about getting clean where there is no shower. I mostly resist it 'cos nobody likes a smartipants. However, I have been asked by some younger sailing women so here goes.

When water is restricted, whether you're sailing, camping, or just in the office after a lunchtime run and there is no shower available it's a simple matter to have a refreshing washdown of the body with the old-fashioned simple tools:

• a towel,
  
• washcloth (I like the gant de toilette mitt-type),
• soap,
  
• bottle or jug of cleanish* cold or hot water (about 1 litre - 2 pints - will do) or water tap,
  
• small container, empty bucket, jug or bowl (or washbasin),
  
• if the floor is dirty, a plastic sheet (or bin bag) about the same size as your bath towel

Most washrooms in North America have a disabled cubicle, which is ideal for this performance because it has most elbow room, but any private space will do. The average aircraft or train loo is perfect.

In addition, you can do this in a more public place, like a campsite or a beach without removing all your clothes at the same time, although people might look at you funny.

Lay down the towel on top of the plastic sheet. Take off your clothes and step on the towel. Put half the water in the bucket. Wetting the washcloth and wringing it out in the bucket, wipe yourself all over rubbing vigorously. This gets most of the dirt off (although not the grease nor all the smell). You might have to get fancy to reach the middle of your back by holding your washcloth at both ends, or asking for the assistance of a friend.

Wet the washcloth again from the "dirty water" and lather the cloth up with a little soap. Rub the cloth over the smelly parts first, then over the rest of your body. Wring it out and wet it again with fresh water. Wipe the soap off yourself.

You are done! You are clean, almost dry, feel refreshed and once you have practiced a bit, you can do this with very little water, so that the 2 litres daily allowance that the BFH** captain has allotted will be enough to have a wash every day or so.

And because your bath towel is not that wet it just needs airing out. The washcloth is a lot easier to hang up to dry.

When you're sailing in the tropics, this technique is infinitely preferable to being in the hot humid bowels of the boat trying to juggle the shower and slowly melting in the steamy heat and humidity of the head compartment. You can do your first washdown and soaping with salt water (or take a swim).

Hair washing is a different exercise. If you have really short hair the above technique will be enough. Long hair needs about 2 pints (a litre) more water and a larger bowl or bucket to lean over. It is best done seated (or kneeling on your towel) leaning forward over the bowl. Pour about a pint (500 ml) of water over the back of your head so that it runs into the bowl. Scoop the water up and do it several times so that your hair is moist. Then rub some shampoo into your hair. Use only a very little shampoo - about a teaspoon or 5 ml - less than half of the recommended amount of normal stuff. (Some people swear by using shampoo*** for both body and hair washing as it saves backpack space - there are concentrated types in tube form).

You do not need to get a lather in your hair - if you do, you are using too much shampoo - the lather represents "unused" detergent that is foaming up and you will need to use extra water to wash it out. Just rub shampoo all over the hair and leave it on for a minute or so. Then start by wringing out your hair and pouring water from the bowl over your head repeatedly until the shampoo feels gone. Wring out your hair the best you can, then run a dry washcloth over it to get it as dry as possible. Comb it through and let it air dry.

Some women (and increasingly men) have a routine of using hair conditioner after shampoo. This is fine, but once again use less than half of what you normally use and rinse repeatedly using only a half litre of water. Or try using a tiny amount on a comb and combing it through your hair without washing it off. Or try going without once in a while.

* you can use river or lake water if you are camping, or non-potable water like that from plane or train washroom taps.
**Bastard from Hell: you know who you are, Bligh-woman!
*** Stolen joke alert! Best to use shampoo, the real stuff stinks.

Sufficiently advanced technology 2

I am impressed with the advances in relatively cheap cameras, the software to use and manipulate images and the ease with which a total noob like me can make pictures that are really quite pleasing.

I asked someone recently, "What is left for the professional photographer to do?"

The story goes like this: when I was young (about 100 years ago) most families owned cameras and would take "snaps". There was then the process of taking the sealed film container to the "chemist's" for processing and printing (for some reason, many pharmacists seemed to do photographic processing, probably to do with inhaling dangerous chemicals.) Then one waited, singing: "Someday my prints will come!"* The pictures were good quality although expensive. There were also camera shops where you could get more expensive processing and better film, if you were interested. When colour film and processing came along, the price increase was so large that many people resisted the change for a surprisingly long time.

There were many professional photographers. From the guys who would stand around at seaside resorts taking quick shots of passing holidaymakers, to the wedding album specialists, all the way to the professional photographic artists. There must have been many, many corner store-type processing labs and darkrooms. Mostly this was because the equipment was expensive and the training to use it properly was not that easy. If you were a serious enthusiast (like my forgettable first husband), you could buy the tanks, solutions, washing lines, enlargers etc. and do a reasonable job, but it took a long time to get good at it and it was tedious. Not for people like me who are into instant gratification.

When I was a teenager there came the mail-order photo "lab" - you sent your film away, and in 2-3 weeks colour prints came back and, they gave you a free replacement film! This impressed so many people so much that they didn't notice that the processing quality was low, the printing was poor and the results pretty awful. What mattered was that it was cheap, half the price of the alternative. 35 years later the pictures have turned a funny orangey colour, when 60 year-old black and white shots are unchanged. The processing and printing was largely automatic and centralized - the equipment was hugely expensive.

The corner store labs died. Some photographic stores went upscale, most closed down. When automatic processing machines became cheaper, some stores bought them and continued working, however the hyper-marchés (big box stores) now built photo labs in their premises. There was still residual send-away processing from small shops in small towns, but the war of technology had reached the clipper-ship of film: I take my film to a person who inserts it in a machine and a few minutes later out come the prints. My prints will come a lot faster these days...ahem.*

The professional photographers were now the wedding and portrait guys, news photographers, and the artists. Considerable training was still required to guarantee results - you had to capture the shot right there and know that it would work.

Then came digital cameras. Film has largely died. Most people have moved to using lightweight, forgiving and cheap cameras, putting the pictures on a computer and printing them only if really needed. The machines are doing the work now. It takes next to no knowledge or training to understand how to use one, especially in the context where many people have some computer access. And you see the results immediately. If it doesn't work, you do it again. A gifted amateur can do a very decent job of taking wedding photos or portraits. A professional will do better, but not so much that one is actually needed. The barrier to entry in this field is much lower. I suspect that most of this kind of photographer had better have a second source of income.

News photographers are probably the next to feel the pinch. When the camera-phone becomes ubiquitous, the price paid for that unique shot is going to be lower, especially when the shot can be cleaned up using software. Completely apart from the threat that comes from decline of print media.

Most artists have probably always struggled. The technology may lower the bar to the actual making of images and software manipulation does make it a lot easier to implement a vision, but the vision is still unique. We will get many more gifted photographic artists as a result. Competition will make it harder for anyone to become a full-time artist, but the ones that make it will probably be better.

Update - Some interesting photographic artists (no particular order):

• Chris Jordan
• Robert & Shanna ParkeHarrison
• Riitta Paivalainen
• Tim Heatherington
• Sandra Critelli

* Stolen joke alert!

Sufficiently advanced technology

Borrowed the Don's camera to take pictures in the back yard. Crocuses, crocuses and more crocuses (with bee). It not only took great shots but the darn thing puts the pictures' meta-data all rolled into the jpg format. More information than I can shake a stick at anyhow. Isn't technology wonderful? No more working out "Well that must have been the Thursday before Easter..." or burning a digital date on the "film". Next thing you know they're going to have GPS co-ordinates* as well.

Probably already have...to quote Ian Dury "There 'en 'alf bin some clever bastards!"

Only a few years ago you would have needed huge amounts of money, time and an assistant to carry all the gear to get shots like that. Not to mention taking the "film" down to the pharmacy (chemist's) and singing that old, old song:

"Someday my prints will come!"**

Poor old thing, I think it's magic. We're standing on the toes of giants.**

* Don't tell me. I'm roughly 45N 75W...the boat's in the barn and the GPS is firmly turned off...
** Stolen joke alert!

Update:
Geotagging photos