nyquil.org (Entries tagged as advertisements)

I don't like the Coppertone of your voice, young man.

nospam@example.com (jer@nyquil.org) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 14:18:45 -0800

Hey, look: I’m distributing child pornography.

Child pornography that’s been seen in print in thousands of conservative magazines over the last 40 years.

Neat, huh?

Junkbuster Compromised?

nospam@example.com (jer@nyquil.org) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:13:02 -0800

After discovering that the G1 had a hidden proxy configuration that allowed all internet traffic to be routed through a proxy of your choosing, I decided to dust off the old Internet Junkbuster, an Adblock predecessor from 1996 or so.

Like Adblock, Junkbuster allows one to specify via regular expressions a list of URL conditions to treat as advertisements, replacing them with 1-pixel transparent gifs before they get to your browser, effectively blocking any sort of unwanted intrusion into your web experience.

I tracked it down, compiled it from source, and got it running on my Dreamhost account. After configuring the G1 to use it, I found that it worked amazingly well. I fed it the current snapshot of the community-maintained “filterset.G“ blocking rules, and banished ads virtually entirely from my phone. Awesome.

Until, that is, Deamhost’s Abuse Department dropped me a line asking if I was aware that copious amounts of spam were being sent by my account, and notifying me that they were able to track all of the spam messages to my running Junkbuster installation.

I haven’t yet investigated to determine whether Junkbuster itself has been compromised by spammers or whether it’s just badly coded so as to allow this sort of abuse, but the discovery of my active installation and subsequent spam messages that were resultant from it happened within hours of me turning it on. Startlingly fast, in fact. I’m not sure there’s really any explanation other than Junkbuster itself now containing malicious code, but I’ll be looking into that shortly.

Either way, finding that the tool you’re using to remove the spam from your web surfing is, in fact, resulting in spam showing up in the email of strangers is delightfully ironic.

McDonald's Needs Someone To Proof Their Ads

nospam@example.com (jer@nyquil.org) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:37:09 -0700

I recently saw a huge McDonalds billboard that said “Fresh Cracked Eggs.” Not “fresh-cracked” or “freshly cracked.” Regardless of the freshness of the eggs, I’d prefer if they weren’t sitting there with cracks in them.

Now today I saw a sign for Happy Meals depicting a tower of carefully stacked Chicken McNuggets that proclaimed “Food To Grow On.” We all know that crap makes people fat, but it seems like somrthing they’d want to avoid inadvertently pointing out to us.

I can’t be the only one seeing these unfortunate wording choices and thinking they reflect more negatively onMcDonalds than positively.

Unlocking the Unused Potential of Your Brain

nospam@example.com (jer@nyquil.org) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:13:00 -0700

On the way to work this morning I heard an advertisement for a new miracle system designed to unlock the unused potential of your mind. This secret will allow you to “read 10 books in the time it takes your friends to read just one.”

In the interest of saving you some time and money, I’ve decided to share this secret with you for free. Don’t tell anyone else, though.

The secret is pretty simple; just read shorter books.

Monetizing? I say "Yes!"

nospam@example.com (jer@nyquil.org) — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:01:06 -0700

Because so many of the blogs I read have been “monetizing,” or raking in loads of essentially-free money, I’ve decided to take steps to do the same myself. People seem to enjoy reading about other peoples’ money-making ventures, so I figure this in and of itself will ensure that I attract new readers, which will then bring me more money, which I will write about, which will bring me more readers, which will…

Whoa. Stuck in a loop there…

Anyway, the problem I’m facing is that I think advertising is inherently evil. I use AdBlock in conjunction with a community-maintained list of blocking rules such that I never ever see any ads. To me, simply putting ads on my site would be evil; putting them there while I myself block them would be hypocritically evil. Or evilly hypocritical.

So, with that in mind, I did some emailing around and ended up hooking up with an underwriter that I’m pretty happy with. They provide me with money, I never talk about what they get in return. Talk about a perfect relationship…

Lest you worry that things will change as a result of this new financial focus, I’ll make this pledge to you right now: You the reader won’t notice any difference as a result of my newfound financial support; I’ll just be able to afford more Heinz^™ Yellow Mustard — which, if you ask me, is the finest yellow mustard money can buy. If your local grocer doesn’t carry Heinz^™ Yellow Mustard, then you owe it to yourself to ask them to stock it.

Photoshop Fun?

nospam@example.com (jer@nyquil.org) — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:35:45 -0700

I just saw defective yeti’s post about the “ashtray mouth” campaign our tax dollars are supporting and was immediately struck by how awesome the picture he linked to is. I decided that I’d go ahead and quickly clean all the branding and text off the image so that creative individuals might put it to better use.

Click for full size

What that better use might be is anyone’s guess, but I look forward to seeing what kinds of new captions people might put on it.

Photoshop Fun Day

nospam@example.com (jer@nyquil.org) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 21:41:04 -0700

I’m a bit late on this, but I enjoyed participating in the little meme game Marcus invented.

Here’s my entry:

To see everyone else’s, head on over to his livejournal. There’s some really good stuff in there.