300 was one of the most anticipated “must see” movies on my mental list, but it took three attempts at going to the movie theatre before I finally saw this movie. My jaw was on the floor much of the time. So much has been said about the movie, I won’t repeat it all here, but if you’re the kind of person who’s heart starts pumping when the action starts, this is a movie for you. There are movies that re-define genres, and in the same way that The Matrix re-defined the cyberpunk action movie, 300 sets a new high bar for old school, hand to hand combat movies. The plot, while not thin, isn’t overly complicated either. There are no real surprises here, though all parts are acted out ably enough. The real gem in this movie is the cinematography, special effects, and choreographed fight sequences. It looks like the graphic novel is was pulled from. The movie has the touch of true mastery, where nothing is out of place and everything is executed with a perfect clarity of vision that is lacking from so many movies. I don’t say this often, but I may very well go see this again in the theatres, and will certainly be picking it up on (hopefully) HD-DVD when it is released.

I’ve been getting the following spam, one per day, over the past several months:

we email advertise your charity web site to 7,500,000 people. free.
http://www.emailsolutioncorp.com

I was receiving spam to the address I had on file with GoDaddy for my domain names, so I changed it, and included “nospam” in it, hoping that the spamming software would filter it out as being invalid. The very next day I was receiving spam to the new email address from this same spammer. Amazing. I know there are privacy options for domain registration, but it would cost me $500+ per year given the amount of domains I have, so it’s not really an option.

So what about local blocking of the spam? The problem is that the header is constructed in such a way that there’s no sender information whatsoever. Check this out (I’ve purposefully broken the email address used):

Return-path: <87[34@jasondunn.com>
Envelope-to: 87[34@jasondunn.com
Delivery-date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:49:51 -0600
Received: from [70.113.28.110] (helo=cpe-70-113-28-110.austin.res.rr.com)
by rampart.thoughtsmedia.com with smtp (Exim 4.63)
(envelope-from <87[34@jasondunn.com>)
id 1HUQU3-0000fR-3s
for 87[34@jasondunn.com; Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:49:51 -0600
To: 87[34@jasondunn.com

Outlook 2007 can’t spam block it because there’s no sender email address or domain. I also can’t create a rule because the email has to have a subject or sender. That IP address traces back to the Road Runner network, meaning it’s someone’s PC with a cable modem, likely infected by a bot and sending out spam without the user knowing (people like that should be blocked from accessing the Internet at all until they’ve fixed the problem).

Other than pressing the delete key, I’m out of ideas. I’m just thankful there aren’t more spammers out there doing this!