Messages

Well, that is the most obvious explanation, except that I don't see forged "from" or "Reply-to" headers in the returned messages. It's still entirely possible that the messages were sent with a forged whatchamacallit - SMTP envelope? Or simply with a forged bang path leading back to orca.xepher.net, but while we're being paranoid... something doesn't match the pattern of what I've seen on other occasions when the same thing happened at other addresses. Mainly the short, sharp bursts in which those thousands of emails bounce back to my email address.

In short, while I don't think it's obviously the case that the spammers are using our email server and pretending to be me, I'm not 100% convinced that they're not. So could you keep an eye on that email server?

I'm getting several thousand "Undeliverable email" messages each week on my Xepher email adress. I see them because I don't have my spam filters on, but the fact that so many are sent to me in the first place (all of them in Portuguese, from email servers in Brazil, with the vast majority apparently warning me that the returned message has been flagged as spam) may be worth investigating.

I'm a bit sick and not in any mood to answer questions in great detail, but...

What I need: webserver, PHP, MySQL (though Mithandir is working on database abstraction to allow WillowCMS to work with other SQL descendents), FTP, SSH and maybe some libraries to support my Gallery installation although I'm thinking about phasing that out and moving the contents to WillowCMS. I don't use the email stuff currently supplied by Xepher at all.

I'm somewhat concerned by the idea of a backdoor being open and will take measures to back up my contents. One problem is that WillowCMS adds random strings to the names of images uploaded through it, so the database itself if useless without an exact copy of the images as they appear on the website. Hmmmm...

Ha! That just proves that it happens to the best of us.

I haven't used the Xepher forums to promote and as they don't seem to offer an obvious place to do that, I don't think I'll make a habit of it. But I'm very proud of the new storyline that just started on the website today, so just this once, I want to give you all the song and dance in the hope that you'll take a look at it:



The Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan story The Green Knight's Belt has ended and, as promised, the follow-up is a new story that I've been working on since the end of November. Headsmen has started today. I hope people like it - it's very unlike a typical webcomic in that I've really worked hard to give it some production value. For the first time in a year, I'm publishing a freshly-drawn webcomic in colour!


Headsmen is set just days after the events in The Green Knight's Belt, with Kel taking a different role from the one we've seen so far. In the stories from the 1990s, we saw Kel as a surly, put-upon character, but considering what we learned about her background in stories like The Rite of Serfdom, she must have initially considered being with the Gang as a step up from working for the Green Knight. Also, she can't have had much of a notion how the human world worked in those initial weeks in the forests near Dungil Fens. This story, then, is intended as a bridging chapter between The Green Knight's Belt and the stories that follow it. I'm having a ball making it; I hope you'll enjoy reading it.

I just posted this on the Keenspot forums, so I might as well cut and paste it here:
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The list on my webcomic's front page is overdue for an update, especially with some Graphic Smash/Webcomicsnation-hosted comics I read in Bloglines, but here it is:

Alice!
Chasing the Sunset
Christmas at Blocksberg (declaration of interest: this comic is translated and edited by me and hosted on a Webcomicsnation site run by me as part of a joint project between myself and the two guys who wrote and drew this. I like it a lot though, otherwise I wouldn't be putting in the effort)
Clan of the Cats
Count Your Sheep
College Roomies from Hell
Dangerous and Fluffy
Digger
The Double (See declaration of interest for Christmas at Blocksberg, above)
Elf Life
El Goonish Shive
Fallen Angels Used Books
Fight Cast or Evade
Filthy Lies
Flick
FRAMED!!! (hasn't been updated in a long time, unfortunately)
Get Medieval
Liliane, Bi-Dyke
Loxie and Zoot
Magellan
Narbonic
The Pantheon
Poepoe (Dutch-language experimental/stripblog thing by one of the Netherlands' top one-panel cartoonists)
Questionable Content
Scary Go Round
Schlock Mercenary
Something Positive
The Tenth Life of Pishio the Cat
Wapsi Square

I've got Google Talk... I'll try and configure Kopete  (linux-based client) to use it at home.