Upgrading my MTA, looking at relayers, and my email address.

The night before last I upgraded my colo'ed mail and web server to a newer distro. Which allowed me to install a much newer mail daemon. Which allowed me to install a "greylist" antispam filter. Which cut the flood of incoming spam down to a trickle. Yay, finally.

What does make it thru, for the most part, seems to be getting in via trusted relays.

Most of it from nic.name. It looks like they don't do any spam filtering at all! So I've set things so that most mail sent to mark@atwood.name goes to a trash folder. Please don't use that address.

The rest gets in via LJ's "forward mail to user". I'm doubly disappointed in them. I'm probably going to turn it off, so that fallenpegas@livejournal.com doesn't work.

The address to reach me at is me@mark.atwood.name.

Bathing in internet signal...

At the intersection of 4th and Cedar in downtown Seattle, there are thirty-four visible wireless access points, about a dozen of which are open.

2nd Annual Seattle SFSFF, my reviews.

I just got back from the second annual Seattle Science Fiction Short Film Festival. Like last year, it was a mixed bag.

Too many authors/scriptwriters see "SciFi" to mean "I can do anything. Consistancy? Who cares!". And the more they claim otherwise, the more guilty of that sin they are.

Under the heading of "Art with a capital A" (which means they otherwise utterly sucked), was Spaceball (I have this really cool lens to play with, but otherwise have no clue), Life Signs, which, if it had been entered unchanged in a contest for music videos, would have fit better, 13 Ways to Die at Home, which won one of the juried prizes, which really lowered my opinion of the jury, and finally Agnieskza, oh so very European, in all the worst ways. Textbook "artistic" lighting and camera angles, uberskinny supermodel actresses in panties and high goth babydoll tops, no dialog at all, and a theme of descruction and decay. Yuck.

For mildly amusing, there was The Incredible Bulk, basically "The Fly", but with broccoli, Atomic Banana, again with "The Fly", only with this time with a scientist, a chimp, and a banana, and The Tragical Historie of Guidolon the Giant Space Chicken, about a 1960s city smashing giant monster being allowed to make his own movie about his life. The best one in the "amusing" camp was Maklar, Anyone?, about a small Trekkie fan club, with a at least one member who really does belong there.

Under "heavy on the romance, lots of expensive FX, but pay no attention to the science", there is Mizar, about an estranged couple on a manned Saturn probe that suffers a mishap. And Face Machine, about a future so polluted that everyone has to wear environmental helmets, but for some reason it's utterly impossible to build a sealed arcology.

For heavily "inspired by Phillip K. Dick", we have Machinations, about a hot rising politico who turns out to be less than he seems, TV Man, something about impossible love and too many tv ads, Project K.A.T., which felt too much like a pitch for a TV show that would have been a natural fit on the bottom half of UPNs roster, and for best in this category, Haunted Planet, about a woman who's convienced that the world is a nightmare that her friend cannot awaken from.

For "the world is different, lets explore how, but not really think things thru TOO deeply", we have F*ck You, Pay Me!, where bad credit rating is a felony. The Un-gone, that tries to be about a creepy varient of scan/construct/destroy teleportation.

The most happy-making and uplifting was Fantastic Fortune, about a poor redneck `roid prospector that makes a First Encounter, that gets smoothed over despite some mishaps.

And for the best in show, there was Transgressions. It was a "world is different, and we DID think things thru", about a very shiny, very clean, very low-crime, VERY torturiously violent future. I was sick to my stomach (and not because of any splatterfest FX), but I gave it my highest rating on the ballot. It did very well both on the audience ballots, and on the jury.