After a few weeks of trying to pin down the settings for stopping comment spam, things seem to be working well. For the last week or so all spam has gone straight into the Akismet bin, while proper comments are processing quickly and without any false-positives so far. The problems were due to the wordpress blacklist options. IP addresses in the blacklist caused everything to break, and removing them fixed the problem completely.

Wordpress.com just opened its doors to everybody. If you’re looking for a free blog-hosting service, it’s certainly worth checking out. All the advantages of the wordpress blogging software and Akismet spam filtering, without all that annoying server maintenance gumpf.

Let’s say that one evening I go out, and I wear some tight jeans. I wear a shirt that shows off my bicep muscles. I gel my hair so it looks cool, and I don’t shave so I have designer stubble. It is, of course, my fault if another guy rapes me. What do I expect if I look so damn good?

Does this argument strike you as reasonable? Because, according to an Amnesty Internetional survey, 1 in 3 people

believe a woman is partially or completely responsible for being raped if she has behaved flirtatiously

as well as:

over 25% believe she is at least partly to blame if she has worn revealing clothing or been drunk.

The report itself says that 8% of people think that wearing provactive clothing makes a woman totally responsible for being raped. A disturbing number of women actually believe this.

I really don’t know what to say, other than what the hell is wrong with these people?

Here’s what I hope is a fitting analogy: wearing revealing clothing is to rape as leaving the house is to being burgled. Sure, it might increase the chances, but it’s an entirely reasonable thing to do!

Would these same people say that the house-owner is to blame for going out? That he has to accept some of the blame for the burglary, because clearly he was tempting burglars far too much? We understand why the burglar robbed the house - he wanted the contents and had the opportunity. But whatever reasons the burglar had for choosing that particular house, it doesn’t excuse the actions or shift any blame onto the owner of the house! Some would say that flirting or dressing provocatively is the equivalent of leaving the doors open, but that’s bullshit. If there is an equivalent, it’s probably finding the most reputedly violent brute in the area and promising him sex, and even then the crime is still entirely down to the perpetrator.

Why do people think this? The best I can come up with is:

Men, when flirted with or when they see a woman dressed provocatively, will think about sex. That’s the way it is. They can’t help it, so some men figure that as the woman is the cause, she’s the whole reason for their thinking about sex. They assume that rapists have exactly the same feelings but just far stronger¹ so therefore it’s up to women not to attract the attention of people who can’t control themselves.

Or that could be crap. I’m not a psychologist.

Whatever the reasoning behind it, the women-are-to-blame argument forgets that we all know what is right and what is wrong. If we don’t know, the law is there to tell us. There is nothing that anybody could do that would justify their being raped - surely that’s bloody obvious? It is wrong, and the person committing the crime is entirely at fault.

I feel like I’m not saying this as clearly as it can be said. I wish I could come up with a snappy sentence to elucidate this concept for the 1 in 3 people who don’t seem to understand it.

Finally, I echo Jo’s final sentiment: is it any bloody wonder that only 15% of rapes are reported?

1. which I think is probably untrue [↩]

I give you:

Charlize Theron in Monster
Charlize Theron in Aeon Flux

Bit of a difference, there. Aeon Flux certainly looks interesting, although I’ve seen absolutely nothing about it here in the UK other than a poster in the local cinema. It’s released on 2nd December.

Word of the day is “Houseblingers”. From the BoingBoing story:

Houseblingers are people who celebrate the holiday season by plastering the exterior of their houses with countless Christmas decorations

If I get to Stratford before christmas, my flat’s definitely going to be well blung! No, wait…

Channel 4 have been criticised for the number of adverts shown during my current favourite tv show, Lost. I can’t say I’ve noticed many more adverts than normal, but for a few weeks they did try putting an advert break in after the title sequence, which was very annoying. It’s jarring to put ads three minutes into a programme! The only comment I take issue with is:

Ofcom found that Lost contained about 36 minutes of new material in its 65-minute weekly Channel 4 slot.
…
Each Lost episode contains an average of 42 minutes of material, but up to five minutes of that comprises of credits and a reprise of events from the previous episode.

The reprises rarely last more than thirty seconds, and the title sequence is one of the shortest I’ve ever seen! The credits actually appear superimposed onto the episode, and it seems a little unfair to take issue with that.

I’m currently reading The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray and I don’t think it spoils the plot to reveal that when the mists descend upon London, monsters foul and dark begin to ravage the populace. I was reading this afternoon, and looked out of the window to see this:

It’s mauve! Clearly supernatural. The whole day was pretty misty, actually. Meg and I went walking during the clearest hour:

Today we encountered:

• A man blowing the leaves from his drive while wearing a very smart suit
• A 13-week old labrador puppy who had just been for a swim. He was very sweet, even if he did get mud all over me
• A stream, which Megan liked a lot

Such a treasure
Started writing much too late today, and only finished just after 2300. Passed 40k though, which was my intention.

Am knackered - must go to bed…Night!

Note: Having re-read the below, I have noticed it is possibly the least interesting post ever written by anybody, ever. Pictures of a gate!

Just before leaving for the US last September I picked up a coat. It was £45 from a rather odd shop in Solihull, and isn’t really the greatest quality. In fact, the car keys had ripped open the pocket lining before I even returned from the trip. In the last year it’s degraded to the point where there are no useful pockets and I regularly find objects in the lining¹. Still, it looked fine on the outside, so that didn’t matter too much. I wore the coat most days when walking Meg. This is the exit from the local park:

You used to be able to duck under the left-hand side, until the local council boarded it up. So now Meg and I navigate the awkward gate that requires you to push the rotating bit² away from you, then edge around it and again push it out of the way. Which is fine, but the edge-around-zone contains the Evil Nail of Death:

I’ve caught my coat on that little bastard three times now³, and it’s ripped a large hole in the outside material on the arm. I keep meaning to take a hammer and kill it. Ah well, it’s not like that matters too much. Today, however, I set out for the walk and the zip stayed open as I pulled it up.

I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and get a new coat.

1. sometimes sweets, which is often a pleasant surprise [↩]
2. can you tell I’m writing a novel? [↩]
3. learning curve? Pah! [↩]

Just passed 75% of the novel complete. I’ve got a fair idea of the ending now, which helps The beginning is going to need some substantial editing, I think, but hopefully I’ll have time for that before the month ends. If I hit 1667 words per day, I should finish a week tomorrow.

I know it only happens every November, but it always seems time to renew my DigiGuide subscription. I don’t begrudge the £8.99 really - I use the program most days and it’s far cheaper than getting the Radio Times every week - but I’d prefer it if the annual subscription didn’t come round so damn often!

Large Edit: Just followed my own Radio Times link and discovered they have an online digiguide style service, for free! They’ll even remind you by text that a programme is starting…dammit dammit dammit. I’m going to pretend I didn’t find that.

The two CRT monitors I had on eBay sold this afternoon, and it got messy. I listed them with a quantity of two, and as a result the rules for multiple-item-auctions applied. These are a little complicated, and it took me a few read-throughs to figure it out. What happened with my monitors was the following:

Person A bid £50 for 1 monitor, Person B then bid £100 for both monitors. Because Person A was first to bid £50 on Monitor 1, they won it when the auction ended. Person B only won Monitor 2, despite bidding for both. Person B then got confused, wondering why they hadn’t won both, but after an email or two we figured it out. Under the rules, Person B is entitled to back out of the auction entirely if they didn’t get the items they wanted, although they can still choose to go ahead. Person B didn’t want just the one, so we agreed to cancel.

I expected Person B’s confirmation email to contain some sort of link they could use to cancel their bid, but this couldn’t be found. I wanted to offer Monitor 2 as a second-chance offer to one of the unsuccessful bidders, but this can only happen if the item is either sold or unsold - not in the process of being sold. So after reading through the help I initiated an ‘Unpaid Item Dispute’. This allows both buyer and seller to back out of the auction by mutual consent, so neither receive any kind of penalty. I entered the details, and an email was dispatched to Person B asking if they wanted to accept the transaction withdrawal. Unfortunately they made a mistake and selected ‘decline the transaction withdrawal’ instead of ‘decline the transaction’. The dispute was then, in eBay’s eyes, resolved, and another cannot be initiated.

So I gave up, relisted Monitor 2, and went to email the unsuccessful bidders. When I clicked on their name, however, it said ‘Do you wish to give xxxx a Second Chance on an item?’. Yes, I did. But I’d just re-listed! So I cancelled the auction, returned to the second-chance page, entered the auction number and promptly received ‘Second Chance Offers cannot be applied on multiple item auctions’.

It’s all sorted now, Monitor 2 is back online, and my admiration for people who make money from eBay has increased enormously.

Somewhere around Chicago last year Nod and I were flicking through radio stations and came across The Dresden Dolls singing Coin Operated Boy. The song made us laugh, and then was stuck in both of our heads for at least two days. We searched high and low for that goddamn album, eventually finding a copy two weeks later, in a rather odd retail outlet village two hours drive out of Las Vegas. We listened to it over the next seventy minutes of the drive, and disliked every single song. Except Coin Operated Boy, which is a work of art. I’d forgotten about it until just now, when it suddenly popped up in a search for The Pussycat Dolls on iTunes. It wasn’t available last year as I remember specifically searching, so this was a pleasant surprise. I encourage you to give it a listen

Children in Need just aired the first clip of David Tennant as the new Doctor Who, and he was cool I liked how he could go from beaming grin to unnerving glare in the blink of an eye. Nicely quirky, too. I’m very much looking forward to The Christmas Invasion.

Update: the clip is now available online.

Apologies for the downtime; Textdrive had a couple of problems.

If you’re in the UK, I urge you to head on over to the Children in Need website and donate whatever you can afford. I’ve been too busy with NaNoWriMo to participate as I normally would - sorry about that. The whole of the BBC, as well as thousands of people across the country, will be working for free this evening to raise money for children that desperately need the help. £1 is enough to make a difference, and if you Gift Aid it it’s even more (providing you’re a taxpayer.) So please go give £1, pretty please?

The Superman Returns teaser trailer came out last night. It’s not released until next summer, but I’m excited already! Being a major Superman geek, I’ve been waiting for this all week…I love the Marlon Brando voiceover, and the Daily Planet looks cool! Bryan Singer’s the director, and I have high hopes for this film.