awmperry

Got a new one today, with the heading "wow gm gift to you" - which is nice.

Hello
Congratulations! Your world of Warcraft account to receive compensation.This is Blizzard Entertainment's apology
We acknowledge a mistake, for you to lose the World of Warcraft account in order to recover our losses
We will give you 50000 gold coins free of charge and rare mounts (Dark Phoenix), I hope you can restart the game
Login here to authentication, 48 hours you will receive compensation
Description: test account and permanently disabled can not compensation

Now, there are a number of interesting things about this one. The world's largest game, with support staff who clearly have little grasp of English? 50,000 gold and a mount as in-game compensation for an administrative cockup? "I hope you can restart the game"?

It's just weird, and brilliant.

Got a rather clever phishing mail today. A couple of the usual "we're not quite professional" typos and the traditional "dear Paypal member" giveaway, but a nice, sneaky approach:

( Dear Paypal member... )

In the last few weeks I've played all three of these, and friends have told me that this one's rubbish, while this one's great, and so on. So I decided to compare them myself.

( First things first: all three owe a lot to <i>Call of Duty: Modern Warfare</i>... )

Last night, laboriously typed on the dismal keypad of my dismal Sony Ericsson Satio, I posted the following (http://community.livejournal.com/sheldon_penny/1238384.html) on the Sheldon/Penny LJ Comm. If any BBT fans read this, perhaps it'll be of some interest.

( This evening, Tasha and I caught up with the last few episodes. And, well, I'm about to give up on this show... )

( There's something that's been bothering me for a long time now... )

It's like buses; you wait and wait, and then two good 'uns come along at once. At least this one went to the trouble of setting up an email account that matches the character, even coming from a proper .co.za domain. Thing is, though... Zuma isn't a Zimbabwean-white-farmer name. It's the surname of the South African president, but he's a Zulu, so I don't think that counts.

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
FROM DAVID ZUMA
JOHANNESBURG
SOUTH AFRICA
TEL:+27-73-465-5139

Dear Sir/Madam,

My name is MR.DAVID ZUMA, the eldest son of MR FRANK ZUMA,of ZIMBABWE. It might be a surprise to you where I got your contact address, I got it from the South African Information Network Online (SAINO)/South Africa Trade Centre.And it is coming to you with good intention. During the current crises against the farmers of Zimbabwe by the supporters of our President,ROBERT MUGABE to claim all the white owned farms in our country, he ordered all the white farmers to surrender their farms to his party members and their followers.

My father was one of the great and best farmers in the country and knowing that he did not support the president’s political ideology, the president’s supporters invaded my father’s farm burnt down everything, shot him and as a result of the wounds sustained, he became sick and died after five days. And after his death, I with my younger brother decided to move out of Zimbabwe for the safety of our lives to South-Africa.

BUT, before he died HE WROTE HIS WILL, which reads "(MY BELOVEED SON ,I WISH TO DRAW YOUR ATTENTION TO THE SUM OF ($18.5,000,000=00). MILLION U.S DOLLARS WHICH I DEPOSITED IN A BOX WITH A SECURITY COMPANY IN JOHANNESBURG (SOUTH-AFRICA). IN CASE OF MY ABSENCE ON EARTH CAUSED BY DEATH ONLY". You should solicit for reliable foreign partner to assist you to transfer this money out of SOUTH AFRICA for investment purpose.

I deposited the money in your name and it can be claimed by you alone with the deposit code. your mother has all the documents. Take good care of your mother and brother."
From the above, you will understand that the lives and future of my family depends on this money as much, I will be very grateful if you can assist us. I with my younger brother are now living in South-Africa as POLITICAL ASYLUM SEEKERS and the financial law of SOUTH-AFRICA does not allow ASYLUM SEEKERS certain financial rights to such huge amount of money .In view of this, I cannot invest this money in South-Africa,hence I am asking you to assist me transfer this money out of South-Africa for investment purposes. For your efforts, I am prepared to offer you 20% of the total fund, while 5% will be set aside for local and international expenses and 75% will be kept for me and my family .

Finally modalities on how the transfer will be done will be conveyed to you once we establish trust and confidence between ourselves. Looking forward to your urgent reply .For detailed information, Please contact me on my direct line + 27-73-465-5139,or my e-mail address.

NOTE: THE KEY WORD TO THIS TRANSACTION IS ABSOLUTE CONFIDENTIALITY AND SECRECY. THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% RISK FREE. YOUR URGENT RESPONSE WILL BE HIGHLY APPRECIATED.

All the best,

DAVID ZUMA

(FOR THE FAMILY)

Aaaah, I enjoyed that one. :-)

Current Mood: cheerful

It's been a while since I had a really good scam mail, but this morning I found this in my Junk folder. You'd have thought Ban Ki-Moon could afford a secretary who, y'know, knew some English.

*Attention, Beneficiary

*
*Due to the petitions received by the UN, I Secretary-General Ban ki-moon
from all over the continent in regards to the fraudulent activities going on
in the West Africa sub-region with security's agent and diplomats who has
been delaying people's funds, consignment and valuables in their custody and
demand outrageous fees to get their consignment released to them. *
*We have been having meeting for 7 months which ended days ago with the
former Secretary-General (Hon. Kofi Annan) to the UNITED NATIONS. However,
We went to the African head quarters in NIGERIA on the 15TH JULY 2009 and
set up this committee with sole aim of settling all these anomalies and due
to that we are contacting you today in that regards *
*This email is to all people that have been scammed in any part of the
world, the UNITED NATIONS have agreed to compensate them with the sum of US$ 1,300,000.00 This includes every foriegn contractors that may have not
received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished
transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government
problems etc. *
*We found your name in our list and that is why we are contacting you,
these have been agreed upon and have been duly signed. *
*Therefore, we are happy to inform you that an arrangement has perfectly
been concluded to effect your payment as soon as possible in our bid to be
very transparent. *
*However, it is our pleasure to inform you that your ATM Card Number; 90210500 1100 4432 has been approved and upgraded in your favor. *
*Meanwhile, your Secret Pin Number will be available as soon as you confirm
to us the receipt of your ATM CARD. *
*The ATM Card Value is $1,300,000.00 USD Only. You are advised that a
maximum withdrawal value of US$4,000.00 is permitted daily. *
*And its is duly inter-switched and you can make withdrawal in any location
of the ATM Center of your choice/nearest to you any where in the world. We
have also concluded delivery arrangement with our accredited courier service
Company to oversee the delivery of the ATM Card to you without any further
delay. *
*Be informed that your response would be by telephone or through email
Only. *
*Any further delay will be the pleasure of the UNRC to use your fund to
help the people who have been displaced in Darfur, Sudan Africa which you
can see it in this site www.savedarfur.org and the Tsunami's victims in
Asia. So you are hereby advice to forward to this office Director ATM SWIFT
CARD Department Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone
number/your correct mailing address where you want him to send the ATM to
you. *
*Contact Person Apostle (Dr.) Idris amadu immediately for your *
*ATM SWIFT CARD: *
*Person to Contact Apostle: (Dr.) Idris amadu *
*Email: dr.idris_amadu@yahoo.com
** We are working according to the constitution binding this *
*committee as well as helping the less privilege through this means. You
will be required to contact the above mentioned institution via telephone or
email. Hoping to hear from you as soon as you receive your ATM *
*1.YOUR FULL NAME ................ *
*2.PHONE AND FAX NUMBER............... *
*3.ADDRESS WERE YOU WANT US TO SEND THE ATM CARD............... *
*4.A COPY OF YOUR IDENTITY ATTACHED TO E-MAIL. *
*Regards, *
*Mr. Ban Ki-moon *
*Secretary-General (UNITED NATIONS)

Awww, bless.

As Tasha said - "Is there anyone who actually believes this horseshit?"

Just found a little widget that analyses one's writing, so I thought I'd try it out with a few different fics.

The Plasma Implosion Experiment

I write like
Jack London

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

A Treatise on the Perils of Excessive Involvement in the Reading of Fiction
For the prologue, where I was trying to get the style to fit the Harry Potter books:

I write like
J. K. Rowling

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

And for the main chapter, where I was trying to emulate J M Barrie:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Which isn't far off, I suppose.

Hollywood Or What?
Aiming for a Harry Potter style:

I write like
J. K. Rowling

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

STEAK

I write like
Arthur C. Clarke

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Honey, I Ate The Neighbours

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

The mind boggles.

Fairytales And Inkwells

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

See, now that's interesting. And quite satisfying.

Finally, for a selection of my more recent blog posts:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Once again I entered the NYCMMM Short Story Contest. It was trickier this time; I checked my prompt, and found this:

Heat 18
Genre: Mystery
Subject: An Astronaut

...yeah.

I got one idea first, just an image of an astronaut waking up to find himself alone on a spaceship with no sign of his crew. That quickly morphed into a Mars landing gone awry, with a CIA base and all sorts, but the writing never really went anywhere; there were too many plot holes.

Then it was going to be a number of mysterious disappearances at Kennedy Space Center, seen through the eyes of a KSC SWAT officer. I gave that up after half an hour, when it became apparent that it was a bollocks idea.

But then! At nine PM on Saturday, seven hours before the submission deadline, I had an idea. It didn't have to be a big mystery, did it? So I started thinking of small, mundane mysteries. Mysteries about little things that could flummox someone for a short while, like forgetting where they've put the car keys or finding a missing sock.

The result was this:

STEAK

He'd had meals that were out of this world.
Now all he wanted was a steak.

( Is there anything you'll miss during your stay on the ISS, Doctor Wishart? the lady from Fox News had asked me... )

Current Location: Stockholm

Tasha - my rather delightful girlfriend - is from South Africa. She once encountered snow, on a holiday in Austria when she was seven or so. This Christmas she came to join me in Sweden for one of the coldest and snowiest winters we've had in at least a decade. Naturally, I had to get my old Snow Racer out. ( Read more... )

Just watched The Tale of Despereaux - well, watched bits of it - and was going to put my review in an LJ-cut, but... well, it won't take much space.

The basic premise is this: a rat falls in some soup, causing a queen to have a heart attack and die. As a result, the king bans soup. And rats.

Obviously.

Anyway, as any halfway competent student of the natural sciences will predict, this causes clouds to blanket the skies and a severe drought to plague the land. For several years. As it does.

Then some stuff happens, a rat appears, a Dumbo sort of mouse turns up, and some more stuff happens. I kind of tuned out.

Plot-wise, it's a mess. It's all over the place, and the narration is both patronising and largely redundant. OK, so it's for kids, but that's no reason to make it simplistic. In my experience, kids will tend to try to understand things unless you tell them they don't have to try.

Anyway, it's pretty (although the human characters are more My Little Pony than Uncanny Valley), but then everyone will have said that, so sod it.

In the end I got bored rigid about 30-40 minutes in. I can't believe I wasted a couple of weeks of Tesco DVD Rental getting round to watching the blasted thing.

In summary: Dull, pretty, condescending and slapdash. Watch the trailer, though, it's got all the good bits in it.

Read some interesting news this afternoon.

Apparently the Viagra fan club is doing very well - they're reporting 40,000 active members.

It's been a while since I posted some dreadfully bad spam, so here goes:

( 'Dear Email Account User, )

It's brilliant, isn't it?

Current Mood: Diggin' the groove
Current Music: You really can't guess?

Watching the Eurovision on iPlayer, so thought I might as well jot down a few remarks.

( Read on... )

Now, I don't even like "Total Eclipse Of The Heart". But on Så Ska Det låta a few weeks ago, Molly Sandén sang it.

Now, most of you aren't in Sweden, so you've probably never heard of her. And she's seventeen or something, so I haven't a clue where she gets her voice from. The point is, listen to these two clips. I could listen to that voice all day, almost without particularly caring what the song is.

Molly Sandén - Total Eclipse Of The Heart
[Video expired - you should be disappointed you missed it.]

Of course, when the song happens to be Ain't No Other Man... Well, a nice James Brown-style funk groove, being sung by one of the best young singers around? What's not to like?

Molly Sandén - Ain't No Other Man
[Video expired. This one was even better.]

(NOTE: Clips expire mid-June)

Current Mood: Diggin' the groove
Current Music: You really can't guess?

The Star Turtle Embarkation

Title: The Star Turtle Embarkation – Chapter 3: Things Take Flight
Spoilers: None specific, but may be mild general spoilers through season two.
Rating: PG-13 (Future chapters may sneak up to R for Mildly Mucky)
Word Count: 1733 (Ch 3)
Disclaimer: The Big Bang Theory is property of Warner Brothers and CBS, Discworld is property of Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All other IP property of their respective owners, no challenge is intended or financial gain made. The story is fictional, but some of the people aren’t entirely; I’d like to say no resemblance to people living or dead is intended, but you can’t have everything.
Summary: When his other friends drop out, Sheldon is stuck taking Penny to the Discworld Convention in England. It may not be the first time Penny’s made Sheldon blue, but definitely the first time she’s been so literal about it...
Part one at http://awmperry.livejournal.com/34629.html
Part two at http://awmperry.livejournal.com/35117.html

She decelerates rapidly, and her face stops less than an inch from my own; had our noses been aligned it would certainly have resulted in epistaxis and severe pain at the very least. But instead, almost continuing her motion from the fall, she locks her gaze with mine for a couple of seconds, then briefly closes the distance to my mouth and aligns her lips to it and –

Gliiiip.

* * *

( “Danger! Danger!” )

The Star Turtle Embarkation

Title: The Star Turtle Embarkation – Chapter 2: And Then There Were Three
Spoilers: None specific, but may be mild general spoilers through season two.
Rating: PG-13 (Future chapters may sneak up to R for Mildly Mucky)
Word Count: 2100 (Ch 2)
Disclaimer: The Big Bang Theory is property of Warner Brothers and CBS, Discworld is property of Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All other IP property of their respective owners, no challenge is intended or financial gain made. The story is fictional, but some of the people aren’t entirely; I’d like to say no resemblance to people living or dead is intended, but you can’t have everything.
Summary: When his other friends drop out, Sheldon is stuck taking Penny to the Discworld Convention in England. It may not be the first time Penny’s made Sheldon blue, but definitely the first time she’s been so literal about it...
Part one at http://awmperry.livejournal.com/34629.html

( ”Penny. You’re still here.” )

Just watched this film yesterday after it arrived from Tesco DVD Rental. The surprise was that it wasn't as bad as I'd been led to expect - or indeed as bad as I had perhaps hoped.

Personally, I've never really understood why Uwe Boll has such a poor reputation. Granted, his computer game adaptations pretty much dance a merry polka over the source material, and the scripts typically have more ham than my local pork butcher's, but the films aren't really badly made. They're not great cinema by any stretch, but... how shall I put this? They're good enough to show the badness. There's a sense of missed potential, rather than the gleeful through-and-through bollockicity of things like China O'Brien.

The script is dire, of course. You've got Saruman (sorry, "Gallian") building an army of super-orcs or uruk-hai (sorry, "krug") in his lava-lit volcanic domain of Mordor or Orthanc, I'm not sure which, while the king's long-lost son has to come back to remove a pretender to the throne... It's not bad per se, but it's terribly derivative, and doesn't really stand up when Lord Of The Rings did it so much better.

In terms of casting, Boll does his usual trick of getting big names; Statham, Sobieski, Lillard, Loken, Perlman, Liotta, Burt Reynolds... even John Rhys-Davies, who can salvage any film just by being in it. Many of them put in decent performances despite the rather pedestrian script (although why nobody picked up on the fact that the dialogue wobbles at random between middle English and California 2008 continues to elude me), and then ham it up utterly for other parts. It really is terribly uneven.

Visually, though, it's rather more impressive. The special effects aren't always great - the magicians' travelling spells are about the only bits that really work well - but the photography is often very nice indeed.

So on the whole, not bad. Not great, but not bad, and if you just want a mostly brainless LOTR knockoff to kill a couple of hours, you could do worse. Just don't expect greatness.

In a rather larger surprise, I watched the BBC's series on oratory, The Speaker, and found myself nodding and agreeing with Jo Brand. Normally I can't stand her, but on The Speaker, talking about public speaking in a professional capacity, she really knows her stuff.

In other news, it's a terrific series, much more interesting than things like Pop Idol and whatnot, and I find myself really hoping that either Irene or Maria pull through and win. Very pleasant voices, measured tones, a calm and easy air about them while still being able to access the enthusiasm and interest to make their speeches work... There are many of the contestants that I'd like to see go far, but those two in particular have, I suspect, very interesting futures ahead of them.

(Crossposted to the Sheldon_Penny LJ community at http://community.livejournal.com/sheldon_penny/173520.html)

Well, here's my first attempt at a BBT fic.

The Star Turtle Embarkation

Title: The Star Turtle Embarkation – Chapter 1: A Trio Down To Two
Spoilers: None specific, but may be mild general spoilers through season two.
Rating: PG-13 (Future chapters may sneak up to R for Mildly Mucky)
Word Count: 1093 (Ch 1)
Disclaimer: The Big Bang Theory is property of Warner Brothers and CBS, Discworld is property of Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All other IP property of their respective owners, no challenge is intended or financial gain made. The story is fictional, but some of the people aren’t entirely; I’d like to say no resemblance to people living or dead is intended, but you can’t have everything.
Summary: When his other friends drop out, Sheldon is stuck taking Penny to the Discworld Convention in England. It may not be the first time Penny’s made Sheldon blue, but definitely the first time she’s been so literal about it...
A/N: Teaser takes place mid-first season; remainder late second season.

( “All righty then,” said Sheldon, hitting a series of keystrokes that would send the confirmation page to both the printer and the PDF archive on his external admin drive. )

Comments very welcome. Incidentally, if anyone wants to help me beta the rest of the story, please drop me a line - I'm running a bit low on ideas to string the scenes together...

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Växeln Hallå - Lasse Holm

Found this one on Facebook just now. And, well, I've got nothing better to do just now, so...

Now, I know nothing of this list's provenance; it's apparently a list of 100 books that the BBC thinks everyone should have read, and that most people won't have. I've rejigged the markings a bit for clarity.

( Book list... )

So, what about the rest of you? Knowing some of you, there's bound to be someone with 100/100 out there...

Current Mood: Bored
Current Music: Så Ska Det Låta 2009-03-06

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awmperry

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Recent Entries

Here's a good 'un

Oooh, sneaky...

A Comparative Review: CoD Black Ops, Medal of Honor, Battlefield Bad Company 2

An Ex-Fan's Reevaluations

A Random Rant at Night

Oh wow, two in one day...

Aaaah, all is right with the world again

I Write Like... perhaps

NYCMMM Short Story Contest 2010 - Round 1

The wondrous tale of Tasha and the Snow Racer

Review - The Tale of Despereaux

In Other News...

Comedy spam, again

Eurovision thoughts, because I can

Så Ska Det Låta - Molly Sandén

FIC: The Star Turtle Embarkation (Chapter 3)

FIC: The Star Turtle Embarkation (Chapter 2)

REVIEW: Dungeon Siege: In The Name Of The King and The Speaker

FIC: The Star Turtle Embarkation (Chapter 1)

Random book-based meme

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