NOTE: I updated this script on June 2 so that it now pulls out all (?) of the URLs embedded in the selected spams. The code listed below is updated, but not my comment about it not doing what I just updated it to do. So to speak. (The version without the wordwrap issues has also been updated. But what you really want is this pure text version, suitable for copying and pasting.)

I just received 200 comment spams. They each listed a different URL and came from a different IP address,which means the invaluable MT-Blacklist (thank you, Jay Allen) has to be told to delete each one, one at a time.

Instead, I cobbled together an Outlook script — yes, I use OL on my desktop machine, although I’ve been happy with Thunderbird on my laptop — that looks through the messages you have highlighted in your inbox and builds a list of the URLs that people listed in the URL field of the comment. You then paste these into the text box in MT-Blacklist’s “Add” tab. (It also shows a list of the IP addresses, although I don’t know why I bothered.)

Here are just some of the caveats you need to take very seriously: I am fumbling around in the dark when it comes to VBA for Outlook. And, there’s almost no (= NO) error checking in this little program, so you could end up banning your mother; you must carefully inspect each of the URLs to make sure you really want to delete the comment that contains it. Further, I don’t really understand how MT-Blacklist works. And there are probably some bad line wraps in the code below which will totally break it. Finally, this does NOT find any of the URLs in the body of the message because that’s too hard. Well, finding the beginning of the urls isn’t hard, but figuring out when they end is.

So with that warning (WARNING: read the warning!), here’s the script:

Sub FindURLStoBAN()

‘ walks through selected

‘files to find bad urls

Dim objApp As Application

Dim objSelection As Selection

Dim objItem As Object

Dim ipstr As String

Dim urlstr As String

Dim ips As String

Dim  us As String

Set objApp = CreateObject(“Outlook.Application”)

‘ get the selected msgs
Set objSel = objApp.ActiveExplorer.Selection
x = 0

For Each objItem In objSel

If objItem.Class = 43 Then ‘ 43=mailitem

msgtxt = objItem.Body ‘ get msg text

‘ Is this msg from mt-blacklist?

p = InStr(msgtxt, “MT-Blacklist”)

If p > 0 Then ‘ yes it is

‘ get the ip to ban

p1 = InStr(msgtxt, “IP Address:”)

p1 = p1 + 12

p2 = InStr(p1, msgtxt, vbCr)

ips = Mid(msgtxt, p1, p2 – p1)

ipstr = ipstr & vbCr & vbLf & ips

‘ get the url listed for the name

p1 = InStr(msgtxt, “URL: “) + 5

p2 = InStr(p1, msgtxt, vbCr)

us = Mid(msgtxt, p1, p2 – p1)

urlstr = urlstr & vbCr & vbLf & us
‘ —-‘Get urls in the text

udone = False: prevp = 1

‘u ppercase it because I’m lazy

msgtxt = UCase(msgtxt)

While Not udone

u = “”

‘ get next a href

p1 = InStr(prevp, msgtxt, “<A HREF=”)

‘ get end of href

p3 = InStr(p1 + 1, msgtxt, “”>”)

‘ find end of href

If p1 > 0 And p3 > 0 Then

‘ get /a

p2 = InStr(p1 + 1, msgtxt, “</A”>”)

‘ if it has an end /a

If p2 > 0 Then

‘ extract the string

u = Mid(msgtxt, p1 + 9, (p3 – (p1 + 11)))

‘ note where it ended for next loop

prevp = p2

‘ is it already in the string?

If InStr(1, urlstr, u) = 0 Then

urlstr = urlstr & vbCr & vbLf & u

End If

End If

End If

‘ are we out of links?

if p1 = 0 Then udone = True

Wend
End If ‘ if p > 0 msg from mtblacklist

x = x + 1
End If
Next
‘ Fill the two textboxes
mtblacklistfrm.iptxt.Text = ipstr

mtblacklistfrm.urltxt.Text = urlstr

mtblacklistfrm.Show

Set objItem = Nothing
End Sub 

(Here‘s a version that shouldn’t have word-wrap problems.)

To make this work, you have to create a form called mtblacklistfrm and stick into it a text box that you name iptxt and one that you name urltxt. Set the text boxes’ scroll bars to on and make sure that they’re set to multiline.

If you don’t know how to stick a script like this into OL, then you shouldn’t. If you do, then you could have done this better yourself.

Warning: Do not trust this script! It undoubtedly is embarrassingly wrong and dangerous. Have pity on me. I’m a humanities major.

Thank you.

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I did a 4 minute interview this afternoon on WBUR’s Here and Now show. The topic was spyware. [SPOILER:] I’m against it.

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TigerDirect is advertising Seagate 120GB drives for $59.99 after the rebate. Applying my unique math skills (i.e., I’ve never done a calculation correctly), I think that works out to $511.91 for a terabyte of storage. Why, that’d be enough to store an entire blog, with room left over to download Tetris!

Peter van Dijck tracks storage prices over the years. At this rate, you’ll be able to get 15 petabytes for $120 in the year 2020.

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This issue has had me on the verge of tears for days. And sometimes I’ve gone over the verge. Why?

The feeling is immediate. I don’t have to think myself into it by imaginging that I’d been prevented from marrying my wife for 25 years. The feeling isn’t connected to any particular friends who are getting married. Yet it’s got a direct line to my heart.

The best I can figure, it’s about hope. Here is something I never thought would happen in my lifetime. And it isn’t just an issue like legalizing marijuana. This is about a deep cultural prejudice (IMO) against one of the forms love takes. With the bang of a gavel, it’s done. A set of people have been embraced by the law and will, I believe, be embraced by our neighborhoods as well.

All that I hope for is finding expression in this one moment of liberation. If gays can marry, who knows what else is possible? What other freedoms might we grant? What other ways might we find to accept love?

I think that’s why today I’m crying at the weddings of strangers.

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               in just

     in Just-
spring      when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman

whistles       far       and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles

far       and       wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and

        the

                goat-footed

baloonMan     whistles
far
and
wee

— ee cummings

[Thanks to Zephyr Teachout for pointing out how apropos this poem is.]

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A flautist and violinist played Baroque duets (“Music courtesy of the Brookline Music School”) in the front corner of the lobby of the Brookline Town Hall. “Let me get rid of that for you,” said a woman wearing an orange GLAD t-shirt, taking an orange rind from the tiny hand of a four year old on the shoulder of one of his fathers. GLAD was there to hand out roses, serve pastries, and applaud. There were no crowds of anonymous well-wishers, unlike last night’s festival in Cambridge, just clusters of couples with their family and best friends.

Terry, the mother of one of my son’s best friends, was there with a corsage pinned to her. She was invited by the parents of a boy a year ahead of ours in our local school. They were chatting with a small group of friends and relatives, waiting for the clerk to call their number. The clerk, a man in his 70s, stood outside the inner office, called out the couples’ numbers, and warmly congratulated each couple on the way out. By 9:30 this morning, fifty couples in this town of 50,000 had been granted marriage licenses.

When I left, I saw a media person videotaping a meter maid ticketing a motorcycle with a sidecar — B-roll for the “life goes on” message the news will use to frame today’s events. Yes, of course life goes on. But so far in Brookline, a hundred neighbors have had their love a acknowledged in a way that they probably thought would never happen in their lifetimes. So, life goes on, but as of May 17, 2004 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, life is better for all of us.

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“We’re giving them the street.” So the police officer said as my daughter and I arrived at Central Square in Cambridge at 11:30 this evening. The police pulled back the restraining fences and the crowd packed Massachusetts Ave. solid where we watched couples enter the Town Hall — the first same-sex couples in America to be issued marriage licenses fully legal according to state law. (Oh, stop your quibbling! We’re the first state to do it right and I’m going to enjoy that.)

WOOHOO!

The crowd was enormous. We were crammed together from the street all the way up the long steps to the very entrance of the building. The protestors across the street (“God hates fags” read one particularly charming sign) were outnumbered and totally ignored; by midnight, they’d left.

Songs rippled through the crowd: “Going to the Chapel,” and “America the Beautiful” and “This Land Is Your Land.” Every couple that went up the stairs was cheered and applauded by all of us. “It’s Woodstock,” I said to my daughter. (“It’s the Summer of Love,” I thought.)

Then, at midnight, people threw rice, clapped, shouted, cheered. At least one of us laughed and cried at the same time. A chant began further up the hill and I couldn’t tell if it was “We are equal” or “We are legal,” but, well, that’s the point, isn’t it?

I’m proud of my state and I’m happy tonight.

I’ve posted my photos here.

28 Comments »

Fascinating article by Seymour “Next Pulitzer a-Comin'” Hersh in this week’s New Yorker. It alleges that the abuses at Abu Ghraib happened because a “special-access program” established by Rumsfeld to authorize quick-response kill/capture/interrogate operations took hold there. Hersh does not allege that Rumsfeld knew of or authorized the particular abuses, only that his program of secret, rough interrogation enabled them.

But it’s a far more nuanced article than I’m letting on. And, of course, it’s well-told.

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Ian Brown writes in Canada’s Globe and Mail about how Abu Ghraib looks to someone immersed in The Iliad. It’s impressionistic — at one point, it’s Europe that’s sulking in its tent, and at another Donald Rumsfeld is the modern stand-in for Achilles — but it’s also splendid.

I, too, have been reading the Robert Fagles translation, which is both muscular and lyrical, and it’s hard not to see the Iraq war through its lens. Homer does something that our accounts of our war have not: He conveys the sweep of the war by showing, one at a time, what happens when a spear strikes flesh encased in thin armor. The descriptions are vivid and concise. After telling us that someone’s “limbs went loose,” Homer will often remind us of where the soldier — each with a name — came from, what used to bring him pleasure, who will cry for him. Not for Homer the stupor of the cinematic long shot.

If our own journalists had shown us more of what war means to the soldiers and civilians who are fighting, dying, suffering, our shock at the photos at Abu Ghraib would not have been so great, although our outrage might be the same. We back at home aren’t even allowed to see the caskets draped in honor, much less the corpses of our dead warriors. The photos from Abu Ghraib were one of the first glimpses we’ve had of what war brings us to. We citizens are being treated as if we’re moral cowards, as if we can’t face the suffering of war.

Where is the reporting that is unafraid to embed itself in reality? Where is the story of the broad sweep of the war that proceeds by talking of people, each of whom has a name? Where is our Homer?

A: On the Simpsons. D’oh.

27 Comments »

An autism institute apparently is interested in using Half-Life 2′s facial animation capabilities to help teach autistic children how to recognize expressions, according to PC Gamer magazine.

While we’re on the subject, can someone explain to me why having your code downloaded illegally can delay your product development by a year. Sure, you’ll want to change it sufficiently that online play can’t be hacked. But a year??? Half-Life 2 better be durn good!

And here’s an unrelated tip: If you want to discuss Aspberger’s Syndrome with your thirteen year old, try pretending it’s pronounced Frenchily, as in Ahz-bair-shay. Otherwise, I can promise you that you won’t get past the syndrome’s name.

Walt Mossberg at the WSJ takes the ButtKicker for a ride. It sends vibrato through the seat of your chair whenever the notes get low enough, including when you’re firing your shotgun at zombies. How long ’til Chanukah?

And speaking about How Long, Hiawatha Bray [link breaks soon] reports from the E3 convention that Half Life 2 is approaching cinematic quality, at least in terms of the graphics. Of course, he was watching the 15 minute demo video, which might possibly have been rendered by a server farm.

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