Spammers are resorting to anagrams in their mail subjects to try and get round spam filters. While looking through the emails that had been marked as spam at work, I came across this little gem:
use only pfrseosional sfotware, be prsoefsional
This one still got marked as spam. Will they ever give up?

My cousin and my dad have spent the last few (several) years compiling our family tree, and augmenting it with lots of pictures. Pictures of people, pictures of headstones, scans of birth, marriage and death certificates….. the only thing we don’t have is little audio files of people saying “Hi!” Our family tree photo directory currently stands at 223Mb…… ouch.
However, we also like to share the family tree with other distant relatives. And yes I do mean “distant” in both senses of the word. We’ve tried emailing photos to people, sending them through Yahoo Messenger and ICQ, setting up FTP servers and so on, all with varying amounts of success. The latest thing we’re going to try is a little program called Hello, a picture sharing program that lets you share pictures and chat about them. That’s it, nothing else.
I gave it a try earlier tonight and all I can say is “works for me!”

I’ve no idea if there’s any truth in the following statement, but I thought I’d post it here anyway (it’s a “slow news day” here!)
Does the statement,”We’ve always done it that way” ring any bells?
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.
Why did “they” use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the twist to the story. When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass.

I’m beginning to wonder whether putting the word “download” into the title of my little blogette here was a good idea. Of course it’s a cool name, why wouldn’t it be, but it does mean that every (Peeping) Tom, (Private) Dick and (Dirty) Harry looking to download something off the webnet ends up getting my site in their list of search results. According to my site statistics, here’s a sample of what people are looking for. I don’t know if an appearance on this list merely means that my site turned up in the search results, or if people actually visited my site as a result of searching, but here goes: (my own comments follow some of these in (brackets) (do I use too many brackets?))
singing in the rain vw advert download (very popular one, this)
brain bullet download (if you want a bullet in your brain, start by visiting a gun shop, not the internet)
squirt babes (I have used both these words in this blog. But not together)
puzzle donkey answers (I got the questions honey, but not the answers)
download classic british comedy
ebay normal brain scan (who wants to buy a normal brain scan? Everyone’s got one of those. Give me an abnormal brain scan any day of the week)
how to make bose speakers (only Bose know how to make Bose speakers)
after much deliberation jenson button will begin the 2005 f1 season with (isn’t this a bit too specific?)
honda singing in the rain advert download (it’s for a VW mate, not a Honda)
download picasso videos (I think he predated the video generation, although I could be wrong)
sex with sheep (again, probably used all these words on here, but in a different order)
sheep brain plates (I’m sorry, I can’t think of a comment for this one)
very untidy house pics (how does Google know I live in a very untidy house?)
does isambard have a mum (he must have done at some point in his life)
2005 updated email addresses of uranium manufacturers (Dear Sir, I wish to purchase a small quantity of your product for a little experiment I wish to conduct. Please contact me with a price list and delivery schedule as soon as possible. Yours, Saddam Hussein)
gmail download (is that like a Hotmail download?)
www.latest technic for brain surgery.com (I think you meant to look for www.i want to donate my brain to a kebab shop.com)
westlifes personal address (yeah, like they’ll really post their real addresses on the internet)
wicca baby naming ceremony (someone else is interested in this as well??)
eating a spider (mmm, tasty. But not a lot of meat)
kylie minogues bottom pictures (can’t fault this one. Looking for pictures of Kylie’s bum on the internet is what it was invented for. But why did my site come up in the results?)
This may or may not turn out to be the first in a series. Depends on what sort of mood I’m in when I look at my web stats.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back onto eBay…
Here’s the text from the page:
“You are bidding on my daughter’s monster. The monster only likes to come out when my daughter goes to bed. When he does, boy does he scare her! She can hear him growling, eating the toys, and whatever else he can get his claws into under her bed. I’ve spent many hours with her trying to help her fall asleep and when she finally does, it’s normally not long before he’s got her up again. My sleepy little angel tells me all about how he woke her up and made a big mess in her room. And she’ll refuse to go back in there. But who can blame her, I’ve never personally seen hi, but from what she’s told me, he’s scary! I promised her that I would catch him and my trap would get him out of our home forever! My daughter being as sweet as she is, didn’t want him going out in the cold all alone, so we decided together, after he was caught, to find him a good home to go to. Well, we finally did it! After many nights of trying to trick him ( and believe me it was hard), we caught him in this bag. My daughter wanted him to have this nice soft cloth to sleep in (how great is she? After everything this monster’s done to her, she still wants him to be comfortable). Btw, I caught him using a trail of breadcrumbs leading him right into the bag with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich inside. I snatched up the bag and zipped it closed. Now that he’s full (I don’t believe there’s any sandwich left, sorry) and has no one to terrorize in there, he’s fast asleep. My daughter drew a picture of him so you have the best idea of what he looks like. Whoever wins this auction will receive the bag, the cloth he’s sleeping in, and my daughter’s personal drawing of him. This way if you don’t want to let him out, you don’t have to. Please, I’ve warned you about the problems this monster causes (extra messes, missing clothes/toys, and more than enough “bumps in the night” to keep you awake). Thank you in advance for taking this monster off our hands and out of my little girl’s room.”
Apparently eBay pulled the auction. Spoilsports.

I was going to post a couple of wacky ebay auctions here, like the guy who was selling a genuine Texas snowball, or the “two invitations to a wedding I don’t want to attend”, but it looks like someone else has cornered the market as far as collecting weird ebay auctions goes. Better luck finding a new bandwagon next time.
Changing the subject completely, it looks like Paris Hilton’s mobile address book has been hacked into. I found a page yesterday which listed all the numbers, but it’s not there any more. I did, however, manage to save the page before it got taken down, so if anyone out there wants Christina Aguilera’s or Eminem’s phone numbers, let me know.
Maybe I should put the phone numbers on eBay?

Fed up of linking to my site using the boringly short and staggeringly obvious www.danielfreedman.co.uk? Use this link instead:
http://hugeurl.com/?ZWQ5NDVhZmJjMjE4ZjE0NDVlOWQ4YTk4MDJiODRk
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MVYxWnRlR0ZXYkZKV1ZXNUtVVlZVTURrPQ==
Courtesy of hugeurl.com

Is there no end to the number of age-old pastimes that have been hijacked by the internet? Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to get out your virtual scissors and paper, hop over here, make your snowflake, and then let me know which one is yours
I’ve made a start. Not a very good one, but a start nonetheless.

Someone’s hacked into SCO’s web site this morning, with “hilarious results”, as they say in tv-sitcom-land. For those that don’t know, SCO are trying to get payment from all Linux users as they claim that some of the code used in the core Linux kernel is actually theirs. And for those that don’t know what Linux is, either google it or ignore this post. Thank you.

Someone keeps stealing my letters – Multiplayer fridge magnet letter type game thing!
Ten by Ten – Automated most important words and images of the hour thing!