Monthly Archives: June 2013

The Unfortunate Importance of Honey Traps

First off, let me apologise for being AWOL lately. I’ve been dealing with a little bit of Internet drama that I feared was going to be the end of my little blog here. Last month a bot from IP address 198.199.124.41 tried to access a page on my blog and encountered a ‘404 Not Found’ error. It was unsuccessful, so it tried again and again and again and again…25,209,286 times. Yea, that was 25+ million times. Eating up 24,987,720 Kbytes of data and netting me a £417.82 bill for bandwidth overage from my provider. That’s $656.10!

Yeah fuck you and your bot Digital Ocean, Inc. of 270 Lafayette St Ny, NY 10012. That’s essentially my blog’s budget for the next five years. I am, of course, negotiating with my hosting company to try and reduce the cost since they are apparently charging me roughly 50X as much per MB for over use as regular use, (Seems a little high doesn’t it?) but so far no luck. I feel like I’ve been robbed twice. First by the bot (and how futile is it to get angry at a damned bot?) and then by the hosting companies predatory overage charges. I imagine this one is going to Trading Standards before it’s over with.

So, here’s what I learned out of all of this. Honeytraps are important. Sad but true. I didn’t even know what one was before this. We (i.e. my blog, my husband’s computer skills) followed Michael Langley‘s directions on how to set one up. Apparently the idea is to create a ‘forbidden’ area  that lures the bot and allows it to sneak in, gives it some trash data so it thinks it has done it’s job, logs it’s IP address and summarily blocks it. The list of blocked bots grows at a surprising rate after that.

I knew there was a lot of bot traffic on here by the difference between the hit counter (which discounts bots somehow) and the unmitigated number of hits a day. But it never occurred to me that they could cause me any real harm. Imagine my surprise. So, here’s my advice people. Get yourself protected. Especially if, like me, you don’t understand all that much of what make the whole system function.

 

 

Book Review: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, by Nagaru Tanigawa

The Melancholy of Haruhi SuzumiyaDescription from Goodreads:

Haruhi holds the fate of the universe in her hands; lucky for you she doesn’t know it!

Meet Haruhi—a cute, determined girl, starting high school in a city where nothing exciting happens and absolutely no one understands her.

Meet Kyon—the sarcastic guy who sits behind Haruhi in homeroom and the only boy Haruhi has ever opened up to. His fate is now tied to hers.

Meet the S.O.S. Brigade—an after-school club organized by Haruhi with a mission to seek out the extraordinary. Oh, and their second mission? Keeping Haruhi happy—because even though she doesn’t know it, Haruhi has the power to destroy the universe. Seriously.

Review:

I’m pretty sure this is the first Japanese Light Novel I’ve ever read. Heck, I wasn’t even sure what qualified as a Light Novel before yesterday. I do now. I’m probably a bit old for it, but having seen the anime and read a few of the manga volumes, I snapped up the chance to read the novel that sparked the revolution when given the chance. The plot is almost identical to the anime, so if you’ve seen it, you’ll know what to expect. But it’s still worth reading the book so that you can experience Kyon’s sarcastic narrative. He is wickedly funny, as well as all the hormonally charged things you would expect a normal (albeit polite) 16-year-old Japanese boy to be. I did think Suzumiya came across a little crueler here than in the anime or manga, but still a lot of crazy fun.

It was occasionally difficult to tell who was speaking, and sometimes it was hard to decide what was meant to have been spoken out loud and what was just Kyon’s internal dialogue. (Is it a monologue if you’re talking to yourself?). All-in-all, though, the narrative style was easy and made for a quick, fun read. I’d be up for more.

mia banner

Book Review: Mia, by J.A. McCorkle

This is a replacement post, as the original seems to be missing. I believe the author, J.A. McCorkle, sent me a copy of the book.

mia cover

Mia Harrington’s life as a wealthy socialite is changed forever when a duo of deadly vampires attack her home in the middle of the night. Lucas Bradshaw, the handsome and powerful leader of a vampire clan, rescues Mia from the evil clutches of her attackers and vows that nothing will ever hurt this woman again. As Mia is exposed to the vampire world that she never knew existed, can Lucas really keep her safe? Especially when his clan is being threatened by the same vampires that attacked Mia?

As Mia recovers from that violent night, the attraction to the mysterious vampire leader grows. Will Mia be able to handle the intense attraction she shares with Lucas? Will he share more with her than he ever has shared with anyone before?

My Review:
Mia is just what it claims to be: a vampire erotica. Mia is a strong-willed protagonist who is easy to like. Lucas is every bit as powerful and sexy as you would want him to be. The uncharacteristic vulnerability he shows Mia endears him to the reader. There is no lack of steamy sex between them. The bad guy, Blair, is truly evil, and this is made abundantly clear by his cruel domination of the women around him. When he was around, the book often read like a cautionary tale of sadism and misogyny. I didn’t care for this, but that is more of a personal preference than an indictment of the book.

My only real complaints are the frequent tense changes and that Mia and Lucas have an instant, almost visceral reaction to each other that sets in motion the events of the book. But you never really find out why. Similarly, Mia has a fairly drastic change of opinion at the end of the story with no identifiable instigator. Despite this I would still suggest giving it a read.