This whole time, I’ve been very careful with my email. I never gave it out easily, never register to any shady website, never displayed it in public space, I never risk my email. Why? Because I love my current email. This is my professional looking personal email. You know, the one using the [email protected] format. It’s not those embarrassing old email addresses like [email protected] or [email protected] kind of email (which looks cool back in 2000, the ‘matrix’ age). I love this email address and I don’t want it to be ruined by the spam, so I take precaution when giving it out.

Do you know that Gmail have this nice feature where you can have unlimited aliases for your email address?

Using an address alias

Gmail doesn’t offer traditional aliases, but you can receive messages sent to [email protected]. For example, messages sent to [email protected] are delivered to [email protected].

You can set up filters to automatically direct these messages to Trash, apply a label or star, skip the inbox, or forward to another email account.

I’ve been using this trick for awhile now. For example, when I register on vimeo, I use [email protected]. At wordpress I use [email protected]. Its bit tiring, especially when I forgot the password for those site, I have to guess what plus word did I use when registering. Its usually the domain name, but sometimes its not.

This morning I found out that my precaution is paying off. I got this email from [email protected] claiming to be from the best drug store in Canada. Off course gmail spam filter correctly identified it as a SPAM, but still, its very annoying. I always check my emails first thing in the morning, and spam email is not fun (I check my emails every morning while having breakfast, reading about a d*ck enlarger drugs really kills my appetite). Now I have to waste more time checking the SPAM folder for any false positive. Because even gmail spam filter is not perfect.

I was ready to say goodbye to my spam free inbox until I checked the email details. Turns out it was send to [email protected]. Wow! I never thought seesmic would stoop so low as to sell my contact information to spammer. A quick googling reveal that they’re not that low:

Over the weekend, we were informed through Twitter that some users received spam to their email accounts specifically used for the TeamSeesmic newsletter. After working directly with certain users - collecting and assessing the information - we contacted our email newsletter provider, Aweber, to help us investigate and address this issue.

Yesterday, Aweber released this statement on their blog:

http://www.aweber.com/blog/uncategorized/data-compromise.htm

In essence, Aweber was a victim of vulnerabilities, and the issue was limited to areas where subscriber email addresses were stored for all their clients.

Hm.. Okay. Seesmic is not guilty. What about my email? Well, simple. I just create a new filter with this rule:

If sent to [email protected] move to trash

There. Done.

PS: This post have been sitting for a while in my draft folder, somehow I forgot to hit the publish button :P

This post is a part of series post I write to cover my experience in building a cheap, emergency gaming computer.

Building a gaming box is not that hard, given you had enough budget. But for a broke, cheap ass guy like me, the current top of the line gaming PC is simply unaffordable. The only choice left is to build a cheap ass PC as a temporary rig, and hopes that sometime eventually, I can save enough money to upgrade it.

So first thing first: Processor. My previous processor is an AMD Athlon 2400+ and an AMD Athlond64 3000+. Never had an Intel processor. Not because I’m an AMD fanboy, no sir. I chose AMD because the price per performance ratio of these processors, at the time of buying, is sweet. Now for my new processor,my target is a sub-$100 processor. The processor that quickly pop up in mind was Athlon64 X2 7750 (again, not a fanboy :P). But after doing a little research on current processor available on the market, Intel E5200 quickly grab my attention.

Here’s a couple review I’ve found on the processor.

techgage.com review of E5200:

The fact is, the E5200 is an $80 offering, and at that price, it’s about $30 less-expensive than the E7200, which it competed nicely with. Being a Pentium model, it lacks the SSE4 instruction set, and comes bundled with less cache, but as we’ve seen, that makes little difference in the majority of tests. Where those two adjustments will make a difference is with multi-media specific scenarios, especially those that use SSE4 when available.

tomshardware.com review:

Clocked at 2.5 GHz with 2 MB L2 cache and running on an 800 MHz front side bus (FSB), this dual-core 45 nm Wolfdale doesn’t offer the same stock performance as the Core 2 Duo E7300 used last month did, but currently at a $43 cheaper price, it offers tremendous value and performance for the overclocker on a budget.

Reading all the professional reviews above, I still had a doubt. After all, I never had an Intel processor before (Okay maybe I am a little bit fanboyish). But after reading customer review (nice reviews they have there) at newegg, I’m sold. Yes, its no quad core. It’s just a dual core running at 2.5GHz. But 70$ for a processor that can run at 3.32GHz on stock fan and voltage (In case it’s not evident enough… that’s a 50% overclock) is awesomely cheap! So for me, E5200 it is.

My PC is broken. No PC means I have to put up with what they show on the television. So what do you expect when you turn on the tv on prime time? SINETRON!

Wikipedia’s definition of Sinetron: > Sinetron is a limited-run television soap drama in Indonesia. The word is a portmanteau of Sine, short for cinema, and Tron, short for electronic. Sinetron are essentially soap operas in miniseries format. While most English language soap operas can continue indefinitely, almost all Sinetron run for a predetermined duration. They usually air five or six days a week and run for an average of 120 episodes.

Some of the longest soap opera i can find on the net:

• (The) Guiding Light (1952-????)
  > at more than 15,000 episodes (and still going), it is also the longest-running non-news program in U.S. television history.
• As the World Turns (1956-????)
  > After more than 13,000 episodes, the world is still turning, and this soap is still going strong.

Wow! See that? And here I though sinetron have an absurdly long duration! No people, no, sinetron is the most sensible form of soap opera! So next time you think sinetron is soo bad because of the long duration, think again!

PS: Yes, I do consider soap operas as the lowest form of acting. But they’re funny because they suck :P

PPS: I don’t blame the actor/actress though, it’s the director and the scriptwriter responsibilities :D

PPPS: And yeah, don’t forget the producer! Punjabis, I’m watching you!

Telkomsel Flash speed today is 25KBps. It used to get no higher than 15KBps. Don’t know why, but lately Telkomsel connection has been awfully good to me ;)

Maybe its because the other customer switching to Indosat M2? Well anyway, glad I’ve stayed with Telkomsel :)