It's been a long time, huh?

I have to admit that during the last few years I've been concentrating on my french blog (and even there I've only been posting sporadically). If you are interested in Music, you should have a look at it, since I'm posting video clips of artists that I appreciate on there and I definitely won't post those clips here too. Why? Just because I never wanted to become my own translator and say roughly the same things on several blogs. There are some videos though that would better fit on here and I'll try to post them from time to time, such as videos where Letterman speaks with various guests, or some videos of Bill Hicks. Stay tuned!

New Epinions review

Writing for Epinions had been quite an adventure.

I wrote my very first Epinions review back in august 2000. It was about a quite obscure Ryuichi Sakamato album and a few reviews later, I was hooked. Back then, it was quite amazing to see the pennies added to one's counter every time a member read a review.

Later on, the money (especially for music reviews) was drastically reduced, but like many others, I stayed for the community. Where else was it possible to write reviews about Tuxedomoon, Can, Bob Mould, etc. and get comments from people who actually knew what you were talking about?

Of course, I've been reading lots of reviews too, learned a lot (especially some vocabulary) and become interested in many bands.

Anyhow, the small amount of money that I earned for my reviews and the amount of 100$ that every writer outside the U.S. had to earn before being allowed to redeem made me realise that I certainly never would see a single Penny from Epinions.

And even the hits and comments weren't enough to keep me motivated on the long run.

Nevertheless, I just managed to write a new review for Epinions, the first one since more than a year. It is a review about Bluejeans and Moonbeams, a more than 30 year old Captain Beefheart album, that I have discovered only a few days ago.

I've got no idea if this will remain the only Epinions review for 2008, or even my last review for the site, or if I finally managed to start all over again.

I guess that time will tell.

How to add a Recent Comments column to your blog

Many bloggers complain that they don't get enough comments.
At the same time, the comment section is not quite prominent on most blogs, at the end of the post or even hidden in a link.

That's why a Recent Comments section can

• motivate your readers to comment
• make your blog more interactive.

Convinced? Well, here's an easy way to add a Recent Comments section to all Blogger templates, without using any JavaScript, Third Party Elements, Flash or whatsoever. It is all done with RSS and Blogger Page Elements.

Just go to the Page Elements tab and choose Add a new element. Then choose Feed. The feed name will be http://myblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default (replace "myblog.blogspot.com" with the URL of your blog). Then determine how many elements you want do display (up to 5) and if you want to show the date and author of each element.

Name this column Recent comments (or whatever) and move it where it should be.
That's all.

(This procedure only works for blogs that use the Blogger platform and the new version (anciently called Blogger beta).

You can check out the result on this blog. And, feel free to comment :)

Notice: This Blogger feature doesn't seem to be working correctly at this time. You can use instead this Javascript widget.

Update:
This Blogger feature is working again.

pdf spam... what a great idea!

Spam has been a nuisance since spam exists.

Fortunately, we can find great anti-spam tools like bayesian filters integrated to popular free e-mail software such as Mozilla Thunderbird or Foxmail. These filters can identify easily 90% of all incoming spam, sometimes even more.

That's why the spammers have come up with a new trick, pdf spam.

In case of empty messages with an attached pdf file, even bayesian filters have problems to classify them as spam or non-spam, since there isn't anything to analyze.

On the other hand, why should I even waste my time clicking on a pdf file that fjkjkjkmdjf@perfecta$$hole.com is sending to me?

And supposed that I really have nothing better to do, why should I believe anything that a guy using a bizarre (and probably fake) e-mail adress is trying to tell me?

How many investors in the whole world really could be stupid enough not to see the difference between a fake investment alert and a real one?

I guess there might be more stupid spammers hoping to make big money with dirty little tricks than stupid investors...