Author Archives: dontai

Evil Rice Weevil

Rice weevil found in my Rooster brand fragrant rice. Imported from Thailand. Photo by Don Tai

Rice weevil found in my Rooster brand fragrant rice. Imported from Thailand. Photo by Don Tai

Appearing in our fragrant rice, these rice weevils. I saw a dead one in recently cooked rice. This one was alive as I was scooping rice out. The are 2mm long and crawl.

We buy Rooster brand jasmine rice, or fragrant rice, from Thailand. Apparently they can survive for up to 2 years, but are killed by heat of 60C for 15 minutes, which my rice cooker certainly does. Apparently they are harmless.

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Imperial Deluxe Zig Zag User Manual

Imperial Deluxe Zigzag sewing machine, front view, Powell River, BC, Canada

Imperial Deluxe Zigzag sewing machine, front view, Powell River, BC, Canada

As the self-appointed custodian of Imperial sewing machine information on the Internet I have had the pleasure of meeting so many like minded nice people that would also like to help others. This is how the internet should work: To reach out and help others learn what you know. A reader has sent me his user manual for the Imperial DeLuxe Zig Zag sewing machine, and I thank him for his contribution. It is free for your download.

This is a preview of Imperial Deluxe Zig Zag User Manual. Read the full post (573 words, 7 images, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

ilpuntoantico.blogspot Referrer Spam: Research, Ban

ilpuntoantico has to do with former point, Italian openwork needlepoint. Hosted by GoogleUserContent.com, I have tried to contact Google network-abuse@google.com for help to stop this referrer spammer (2016-Sept-29) but they have not replied. I have also contacted GoogleUserContent.com (abusecomplaints@markmonitor.com 2016-oct-19) for help in banning this hotlinking of images. This group of sites burns up a lot of bandwidth every day.

Conclusion: Filed a DMCA equest to Google. Awaiting their response.

2.33.130.129
2.33.130.129
2.33.130.134

net-2-33-160-7.cust.dsl.teletu.it 2.33.160.7
net-2-33-160-7.cust.dsl.teletu.it
net-2-33-160-7.cust.dsl.teletu.it
net-2-33-160-7.cust.dsl.teletu.it

net-2-35-34-88.cust.vodafonedsl.it
net-2-35-34-88.cust.vodafonedsl.it
net-2-35-34-88.cust.vodafonedsl.it
net-2-35-34-88.cust.vodafonedsl.it

net-2-36-2-24.cust.vodafonedsl.it
net-2-36-2-24.cust.vodafonedsl.it
net-2-36-2-24.cust.vodafonedsl.it
net-2-36-2-24.cust.vodafonedsl.it
net-2-36-2-24.cust.vodafonedsl.it
net-2-36-2-24.cust.vodafonedsl.it

2.41.88.145
2.41.88.145
2.41.88.145

5.90.4.169
5.90.4.169
5.90.4.239

This is a preview of ilpuntoantico.blogspot Referrer Spam: Research, Ban. Read the full post (374 words, 0 images, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot Referrer Spam: Research, Ban

tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot is a persistent referrer spammer. They use a huge amount of Ip addresses that do not repeat the third octet. It has similar strategies to kosmetik-freaks.blogspot, in fact sharing identical IP ranges. They are sister referrer spammers. Both are not banned by the HTTP_REFERER in htaccess. If you kill one you kill the other, a nice double prize. As with the sister, this spammer runs out of Indonesia.

These are the referrers:
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.ca
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.co.id
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.com
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.in
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.my
tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot.sg

This is a preview of tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot Referrer Spam: Research, Ban. Read the full post (499 words, 0 images, estimated 2:0 mins reading time)

hvvc.us Content Scraper: Research, Ban

There are some scrapers and there are others that are ridiculous. I just got scraped hard by 209.133.216.182, 209-133-216-182.static.hvvc.us, with 105 server entries and 7 unique user agent names. Excessive, to say the least.

Here are the UA’s used:

Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9900; en) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.346 Mobile Safari/534.11+
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; heritrix/3.3.0-SNAPSHOT-20160721-2308 +http://www.exif-search.com)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.2) Gecko/20110201
Opera/12.02 (Android 4.1; Linux; Opera Mobi/ADR-1111101157; U; en-US) Presto/2.9.201 Version/12.02
UniversalFeedParser/3.3 +http://feedparser.org/
Windows-Media-Player/11.0.5721.5145

209.133.192.0 – 209.133.223.255 209.133.192.0/19
NOC4Hosts, HIvelocity Network

I have sent an email to their ISP, abuse@hivelocity.net.

Permanent link to this post (102 words, 0 images, estimated 24 secs reading time)

kosmetik-freaks.blogspot Referrer Spam: Research, Ban

This kosmetik-freaks.blogspot is a referrer spammer that has been harassing me for quite a long time. I have tried to ban them with an HTTP_REFERER ban but this does not work. My ISP, Site5, will not help me. They are predominantly out of Indonesia. They are pret103.47.135.43
103.47.135.50
103.47.135.7
103.47.135.72
too sophisticated to evade my detection for so long.

The sister referrer spammer is tanyadokterkeluarga.blogspot, which uses the identical method and largely shares the same IP ranges. When you kill one you kill the other. Almost all these UAs are mobile devices, leading me to believe these are mobile customers that have downloaded the same spam app.

This is a preview of kosmetik-freaks.blogspot Referrer Spam: Research, Ban. Read the full post (1077 words, 0 images, estimated 4:18 mins reading time)

kwpublisher.com Referrer Spam: Research, Ban

kwpublisher.com is a long-time referrer spammer that I would like to remove. I have tried to ban them with an HTTP_REFERER ban but this does not work. My ISP, Site5, will not help me. This guy seems to have a similar method to kosmetik-freaks.blogspot. They seem to be out of Pakistan mostly, but have gone to Indonesia and China. I am now tracking them closely.

Conclusion: Tracked down the code hotlinking to my site. Complained to their domain names provider. Them they disappeared. Goodbye.

39.42.52.98 x 4 39.32.0.0 – 39.63.255.255 Pakistan Tel

45.32.48.27
45.32.48.27
45.32.48.27

This is a preview of kwpublisher.com Referrer Spam: Research, Ban. Read the full post (213 words, 0 images, estimated 51 secs reading time)

What Beats Beats? Beets

Beets clearly beats Beats, especially if you like to eat sweets. Beets, or 甜菜 tiancai, in Chinese, are obviously a sweet (the chinese character 甜 means sweet) vegetable.

I nuked a couple for 8 minutes, peeled the skin and they were sweet. The water is blood red.

Beets, bookending a fake copy of Beats. Photo by Don Tai

Beets, bookending a fake copy of Beats. Photo by Don Tai

Permanent link to this post (59 words, 1 image, estimated 14 secs reading time)

Htaccess Shows Host Names not IP Addresses

Apache, the server and not the Indian tribe, is a fickle mistress. She is more than a little unpredictable, or at least it feels this way on Site5. While I realize that Apache is a web server, a computer who should be very logical, often times I notice very odd behaviour. Maybe it is the server setup, caching, or even traffic volume, I do not know. I do know that if you have some error in your htaccess file, the Apache server will then display a combination of ip addresses and host names. Once you fix the error, which no one can point out and there is no error message to go by, you will be back to only ip addresses.

This is a preview of Htaccess Shows Host Names not IP Addresses. Read the full post (905 words, 2 images, estimated 3:37 mins reading time)

iPhone SE vs Sony DSC-H2 Shootout: Zoodles in Pasta Sauce

Don Tai and his Sony DSC-H2, Zoodles and Meat Ball Pasta Sauce, Toronto, Canada. Photo by Don Tai.

Don Tai and his Sony DSC-H2, Zoodles and Meat Ball Pasta Sauce, Toronto, Canada. Photo by Don Tai.

Compare, we are, of Big Weed’s new iPhone SE vs my 2009 Sony DSC-H2, shooting in the same light, location, time, date and subject: Zoodles in Meat Ball Pasta Sauce.

Yesterday I had cooked beef meat balls in a tomato pasta sauce. Today I spiralized zucchini into pasta, hence the zoodles shootout. Making zoodles literally takes seconds and you need not cook them. BTW both of us thought the uncooked zoodles and pasta sauce, heated in the microwave for 50 seconds, were a great wheat noodle substitute.

This is a preview of iPhone SE vs Sony DSC-H2 Shootout: Zoodles in Pasta Sauce. Read the full post (259 words, 5 images, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)