Honest Trailers - Star Wars

With less than a month to go before The Force Awakens, the folks at Screen Junkies has provided us with an Honest Trailer of Star Wars "...the first one..."

From everything I'm hearing, The Force Awakens will reboot the whole Star Wars franchise.  That is, a lot, if not all the material in the "expanded universe" (EU) will be null and void.

Attempting to reconcile Breakout from Bongolaan and the Redshift Chronicles with whatever direction The Force Awakens will take Star Wars, will be far too difficult for me. 

(I know this blog looks dormant, but I assure you I am working on posting content--I'm just moving at glacial speed--thank you for your patience).

So this tiny Star Wars niche will be some alternate reality.

In the meantime, I hope The Force Awakens meets, or exceeds our hopes and expectations.

Of Spammers and Derelict Sites

(Image by Seraphmx)

My apologies for this late post. 

Thanks to a Google-search, I discovered the sources of the spam I mentioned a few weeks back.  I posted the results on my Stern Rake Studio blog, but forgot to do so here on the Redshift Chronicles.

Here's what I found out:

 Last week I discovered the Reading List on my blog's administration page was overrun by Indonesian gambling sites. 

In response, I changed my password and filed a complaint with Google, who owns and runs Blogger.

The gambling spam was still in my Reading List the following day, so I fired-off another complaint to Google.

On the morning of the third day, the spam was gone, so I thought my problems were over.

But then a couple days later, I discovered two spam posts from the same Indonesian gambling sites.

This time I Googled "Spam found on Blogger Reading List."  Fortunately, I found a woman who had the same problem two years ago.

The first person to respond told her that the problem wasn't her blog, but one or more of the blogs she had on her reading list.  Spammers hijacked one of the blogs she was following and was using to spam other blogs.

It was like facehuggers infesting a derelict spaceship.

(Image:  The derelict ship in "Alien," found on Electric Shadow)

The recommended solution was to find the infected blog and delete it from her Reading List. 

I was following over 100 blogs.

Was I reading them every day?

No, of course not, but they were blogs I was interested in and would check out some of them when the mood struck me.

So I scrolled through my list.

I found five that were infected.  

However, I didn't just delete the five infected ones--I deleted over 40.  Some of them were from close friends and family.

These blog owners hadn't posted in anywhere from 1-5 years.  I figured sooner or later, these "cyber derelicts" would be too inviting for facehugger/spammers.

There were some I hated deleting, but I didn't want to run the risk of being spammed, or worse, passing along viruses.

(This Halloween-appropriate image found on The Richest: The 10 Most Dangerous Computer Viruses Ever)

Now I scroll down my Reading List every day I log on and scan for facehugger/spammers.