Welcome to the World of Outdoor Ceiling Fans
This morning I trapped some pingback comment spam. “Nothing unusual in that for a WordPress junkie” you’ll be thinking. And you’re right!
What is unusual is the irony of the targeted post and the subject matter of the pinging website!
The comment targeted this post: http://str…combatting-wordpress-trackback-comment-spam, and that’s the irony. It’s the actual content and source that has changed my life…
Because I’ve now entered a windless, decadent realm, about which I’ve had no prior knowledge. The realm of the:
Outdoor Ceiling Fan
I truly have never heard of such a thing.
- My first thought, of course, was “where do you hang one, if you are outdoors?” – the moon?
- My second thought is that if I’m outdoors, why would I need one? Surely there’s enough wind?
Checking up on ye olde internete, there are indeed such things. It’s a sorry state of affairs when the natural world needs augmenting with such monstrosities.
The naffest thing is that it’s the definition of ‘outdoors’ that seems to have changed. All the examples I’ve found (e.g. this one here), are actually indoors, but they’ve left the door open! So in a world where millions die from food shortages and malaria, we simultaneously have consumer driven business for a need that does not exist. Some sites even rate these things with ‘value for money’ scores!
Finale
I’ve let the pingback through but taken out it’s SEO URL. It was at outdoorceilingfansite.info, an obfuscated domain. This wonderful place had content scraped websites (mine being one) onto 2205 pages with 8 websites per page, in two minutes! My place in the hierarchy was 16562.
Somehow, it had acquired 9 ‘votes’ in these two minutes. Other scrapes had similar random votes. In fact, everyone had some votes!!! Ha Ha. There were no cheap ads and no redirects. It’s just weird – a waste of everything from any viewpoint to choose.
Now where’s the moon lotion? (I don’t want to get burnt by the moon’s rays, do I?)
Postscript
A couple of hours later I got another one! This time I’m ID 34198. It’s as if the whole thing has been run again. I wonder what their game is…?
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May 31, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I’ve been getting the same sort of thing from that website. They keep targeting a post I made about casting SCUBA lead using a Coleman stove.
May 31, 2009 at 4:01 pm
@DouglasVB
It’s just pointless spam, isn’t it? They must’ve hooked into something in your post.
For now, I’m just trying to think of a connection between Outdoor Ceiling Fans and casting lead for Scuba weights with a gas stove…. It must be the word “Outdoor”!
Douglas! I’ve just read your article. You must be pretty strong to accurately manhandle 100 pounds of molten lead and pour it into little moulds! I think everyone should read your warnings about that….
When I first saw your pictures my first thoughts (having done a lot of camping) were that it was all too draughty and there was too much radiative and convective heat loss.
You mentioned the fix for this in your text but I guess in your excitement you forgot to get a snap off! (yep! Been there and done that!) That would’ve been a good one.
Keep well Douglas.
For everyone, to see what I’m on about, see here:
http://www.douglasvanbossuyt.com/2009/02/24/casting-scuba-lead