The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Blog Admin

  • Comment Spam Redux

    Just a few days ago I made a quick posting about comment spam, and how I don’t get much.

    Aha! “Speak of the Devil”, and all those other phrases leap to mind. I have been biblically deluged with comment spam since that posting. Probably about 300 or so in the past 24 hours.

    Those of you who have already been commenting on the Eyebrow won’t be affected, but if you happen to be a new commenter (which requires an intiial first approval by me) I apologize if you get lost in the tide. Send me an email and I’ll make sure I don’t delete your comment twice.

  • Comment Spam

    I don’t get much comment spam that I have to directly moderate. Most of it is picked up by the wordpress-default comment spam eliminator Aksimet. I get some, though, and the majority is linking to (allegedly) prescription drug or (definitely) sex sites.

    One in particular has been hitting my moderation queue in the past week. It’s Asstraffic.com. For some reason, that URL amuses me. I get a bit of a chuckle every time I see it. That doesn’t keep me from depositing it in spam purgatory, though. Maybe Asstraffic.com is something I can talk about on Talking Traffic?

    Maybe not. I don’t think it fits the theme.

  • Random Podcast!

    This is a random sound posting. Don’t listen to it. It’s boring. I’m doing this out of pure ego. I recorded my voice, therefore I must share it with the world.

  • Ten Things Not to do on your Blog/Website

    I think I’m only doing two of these things that Binary Moon says shouldn’t be included on a website. Of course, I don’t have any advertising, which eliminates the possibility of me screwing up numbers 1-4, which means I’m hitting two of six bad-things-to-do. Well, a 66% is almost passing in the US High School education system.

    (for reference, I’m not calling out the time of my posts in the post header, and I don’t bother with an Author, because it’s just me so far)

  • This Week in Traffic…

    …is no more. Make sure you check over at the sister blog TalkingTraffic.org for the traffic item tidbits. There were some interesting ones this week.

    First PodcastAlso, I think I’ve settled on a once-every-two-weeks podcast distribution schedule. That should work out fairly well with the rest of the things I’ve got going on. I could do it faster (in fact, episode 2 could have gone up two days ago) but I’ll stick to a regular posting, which should keep me on track. Look for them on Mondays, over at Talking Traffic, or on Itunes.

  • Splinter Blog/Podcast

    You may have noticed over the past few months that I’ve been alluding to a new project. That project is now live and in color. It is called Talking Traffic and is a podcast/blog site designed to bring some clarity to the confusion that often arises when I talk to people about what I do for a living.

    The reason for this is two-fold: One, I think it’s useful for people to know some of the basics behind transportation engineering, as the topic is often featured in the media and political debates. Two, maybe (just maybe) someone who listens to the podcast will come to one of the public information meetings I am present at as a consultant and I won’t have to ever-so-nicely disagree with them over a point of engineering. Instead of educating them there, I can educate them here (well, over at Talking Traffic)

    This blog, The Evil Eyebrow, will revert to being more of a personal endeavor, divorced partially from my professional life, which has been notably featured in the This Week in Traffic postings and other essays about infrastructure. Of course, I won’t be sending all of the random postings I do concerning highways, bridges, railroads, and airports to Talking Traffic; some of it won’t belong there. And you can expect to see some crossposting back and forth from both sites.

    Hopefully everyone who reads The Evil Eyebrow will enjoy both this site and the new one.

  • You May Ignore This Post

    This is a test post. I have another website coming online soon, but it’s having…issues. This is a debugging tool. Feel free to enjoy the music, though.

    EDIT: Music gone. Still debugging.

    EDIT: Podcast UP!

    [display_podcast]

  • End of Drought?

    I was going to apologize for not posting anything (barely) for about two weeks, but then I remembered that apologizing-for-not-posting is a total n00b thing to do. At least I thought I remembered, so I went looking for that half-forgotten “10 things not to do on blogs” posting I read many moons ago.

    While googling, I found this diatribe, describing why blogs suck, or at least why they are not legitimate writing.

    I also re-realized that I am a poster boy for at least half of Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Blog Design Mistakes.

    Then Crazy Bob reminded me why apologizing for not posting is a waste of your audience’s feedreader.

    And, of course, I found that I was helping to contribute to the downfall of American Journalism.

    I never did find that old article instructing me to never post an apology when going through a dry spell, but stuff should be popping up on a more regular basis this week.

  • New Sidebar Option

    Observant readers may note that I removed the “What am I reading” part of the sidebar. I hadn’t updated that since March, and didn’t have any desire to keep it, so it’s gone. In its place I’ve incorporated a Recent Comments and Trackbacks plugin that should add some useful information to the blog.

    Occasionally I’ve gotten comments on some of my older postings, especially the Lost post, and I realized that the only way for people to see those comments is to go there. There’s no way for my readers to know that a new comment has appeared without some additional information from me. Therefore, the new plugin. Hopefully, it won’t break.

  • Happy Birthday, Evil Eyebrow!

    Evil EyebrowToday is the Eyebrow’s 2nd birthday. This entry was posted to the minute of my first blog post ever. Yay for the Evil Eyebrow!

    Since it’s its inception, I’ve bumped up the frequency of postings a bit. We’re averaging about 10 or so a week right now. That may drop because there are plans to expand on another front which would divert some of my energies. Watch this space for more details. I expect that these “other plans” will fruit sometime in the next few months.

    Well, happy birthday, blog! Let’s keep it rockin’…