Techcafeteria Blog » KrazyPage http://techcafeteria.com/blog Sun, 18 Mar 2012 14:42:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The Years Of The Kat http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/07/31/the-years-of-the-kat/ http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/07/31/the-years-of-the-kat/#comments Sat, 31 Jul 2010 19:47:18 +0000 Peter Campbell http://techcafeteria.com/blog/?p=722
goodhunting

This is a memorial post for Krazy.com, a domain that I registered in February of 1995, back when Network Solutions was the only domain registrar and the annual registration fee was $0. I had recently closed my computer bulletin board system, which was called the Coconino County BBS, after the home of George Herriman’s classic comic character, Krazy Kat. In it’s place, I put up a web site that grew to be the most complete and best known source of information on the now somewhat obscure, but dearly loved early 20th century newspaper strip about a Kat, named Krazy, who loved a Mouse, named Ignatz. This Ignatz found Krazy quite silly, and showed his disdain by throwing bricks at his/her head (Krazy’s gender was never identified). Offisa Pup, the local Kanine Konstable, who was in love with Krazy, arrested Ignatz every time he caught the mouse in the act. And all of this action took place against a surreally fluid landscape of mesas, monuments and moons inspired by Herriman’s love for eastern Arizona Navajo country, with it’s painted desert and monument valley.

pupslept
As my nptech crowd knows, I just got too busy over the years with other things to properly grow and manage this web site. As much as I love Krazy Kat (and my son’s middle name is Ignatz, no lie!), I have to prioritize my current pursuits. I am blessed with the opportunity to do meaningful work at Earthjustice, to blog, and to help out the nonprofit community where and when I can, as a board member at Idealware, a contributor to Techsoup, and a steadfast supporter of NTEN. There are only so many hours in a day.

Krazy.com had the distinction of being a short, catchy, .com domain name, which means that it’s sale value ain’t hay, and, while my life’s pursuits are pretty rich, I’m not. I got an offer that matched what the domain is professionally valued at, and I couldn’t afford to turn it down. It’s a melancholy moment—one of those decisions that isn’t difficult to make, but is sad all of the same, like trading in a beloved car that will cost too much to keep running.

In the more than 15 years that Krazy.com got steady traffic, from visitors that included Herriman’s great grand-daughter and Krazy Kat book cover artist Chris Ware, I built my career, got married, had a child, built a house, and lived a life that continues to be happy and rewarding. Krazy Kat is fond of singing “There is a heppy lend, fur, fur away”. My heppy lend is right here, and I’m sorry that I have to move away from my beloved Coconino County.

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]]> http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2010/07/31/the-years-of-the-kat/feed/ 0 Message to the Krazy.com Spammer http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2005/08/06/message-to-the-krazycom-spammer/ http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2005/08/06/message-to-the-krazycom-spammer/#comments Sat, 06 Aug 2005 20:03:32 +0000 Peter Campbell http://blog.krazy.com/2005/08/06/message-to-the-krazycom-spammer/ Okay, so I understand that you have a lot of time on your hands, and that you choose to, apparently, spend a significant amount of that time trying desperately to post spam advertising gambling and prescription drug websites to the guest book on my Krazy Kat web site. Let’s review:

First, you started posting very large HTML spams to the guest book. Since the guest book is moderated, those came to me for approval by email. My guestbook is set up to email me the post, followed by a link I can click on to automatically publish it. I approve anything that’s remotely on topic, the exceptions falling into three categories:

  • People posting obscenities or other childish, inane comments;
  • Messages that seem to be of a commercial nature – krazy.com is only interested in advocating for the works of George Herriman and entities that directly support Herriman’s memory, such as Fantagraphics publishing, and
  • People doing obvious test posts that have little or no content.

I’m certain that you didn’t intend for this, but the giant, heavily-coded spams that you initially posted had a nasty habit of hanging not only my web-based email client, but also the web server that hosts it (which is not the same server that the site is on). So, after verifying that you are crafty enough to come in from a variety of IP addresses, which rules out simply blocking you, I added a little code to make the maximum post size far smaller than your average post (which is still four times the size of anything that has ever been legitimately posted).

Here’s the thing: At this point, I had no idea that you were so personally committed to poisoning my guest book. I assumed that this was an automated effort going after numerous guest books on the web, and that my size block would simply automate the process of rejecting your spam; you might not even notice. Boy, was I wrong! You actually think the ten Herriman fans or so a day who read my guestbook are the prime demographic for your online gambling and Cialis marketing. Amazing! What do you base this on? Did you pay for this market research?

So you noted the size limit, and then spent, what, about 90 minutes figuring out how to edit your spam enough to fit my restriction? Then you posted two spams, which came to me for approval, and guess what? I didn’t approve them. What a shock to the system that must have been!

So, an hour later, I get a guest book submission with one word: sex. I don’t approve it. Was that you, using the full breadth of your imaginative powers, doing a test? A few hours later, a benign post: “I love Ignatz; I must be Krazy”. Well, that’s on topic! If that one was you testing, congratulations! You passed. I published it.

And today I get yet another gambling spam post, this one cut down to just a few lines. I can only imagine the anxiety you must have felt, waiting for me to review it, waiting to see if maybe… maybe… perhaps, this attempt to use my guestbook as a further voicepiece for offensive spam will work! And now I’m imagining the dejection, the despair, as it becomes increasingly clear that I have used my god-like editorial powers to censor you once again.

So, at this point, I don’t know how resourceful you are. I don’t know how obsessed you are. All I really know is that you don’t make good choices on how to enjoy life – that I’m sure of. If you want to continue, and you come up with some way of making this really annoying for me, then, yes, I’ll shut down the guestbook. You will have succeeded in single-handedly removing the ability for people who appreciate Krazy Kat and want to discuss the strip at the Krazy Kat website from doing so.

You do understand—this is not a business. I make zero money for running krazy.com. I am not going to let it become someone else’s commercial venture, and I’m really perplexed as to why you are pursuing this as vigorously as you are. There are a lot of web sites out there, that get far more traffic than my site. My recommendation, and request, is that you move on. And consider that there are ways of making a living that don’t involve being a blight on the Internet. I mean, what do you do now if you’re out on a date, or at a family gathering, and someone asks you what you do for a living? Do you say, “Well, you know all of those offensive ads for rip-off online gambling and penile erection drugs that you get in your inbox; that your children get in their inboxes? I’m the guy who sends them!”

Self-esteem issues, perhaps? Sheesh!

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]]> http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2005/08/06/message-to-the-krazycom-spammer/feed/ 0 New plan for Content! http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2005/05/21/new-plan-for-content/ http://techcafeteria.com/blog/2005/05/21/new-plan-for-content/#comments Sat, 21 May 2005 21:01:37 +0000 Peter Campbell http://blog.krazy.com/?p=8 Regular vistitors to the Coconino County Home Page know one thing well: there’s not much reason to be a regular visitor to the site. The page tends to be updated annually, as opposed to regularly. This is defensible: I chose my subject matter for a number of reasons, the primary one being my love for it, but the secondary being the relative low amount of updating that would be required. And, as readers of my Site Notes know, my third motivation has always been to just have a web site where I can keep my skills (such as they are) fresh.

So I’ve done a few things to make adding content simpler, taking advantage of the latest buzz on the Internet: Really Simple Syndication (RSS). First, the bookmarks are now managed using del.icio.us, a very powerful bookmark sharing site. I highly recommend it! Second, I’m using RSS to centralize content creation for about four different web sites that I maintain, which will make it simpler to publish to krazy.com.

Over the next half year or so, I will be migrating Krazy.com to a full RSS/blogging platform called WordPress.. Don’t be concerned – the updated content on the site was blog-like long before I ever heard the term, and it will not change dramatically when it’s moved to the new platform. For those interested in the techy details, I will chronicle this more thoroughly in the site notes.Similar Posts:

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