Comment spam DNA icon art |
Paul wonders if comment spam is down lately:
Did the spammers take Easter off? Have they lost interest in this blog considering none of their spam’s get through? Is it simply a lull in the storm?
I decided to check the comment spam numbers for this blog over the last nine days:
| day/date | # of spam | # characters | # words |
| Sun 4/1/07 | 908 | 71,764 | 8,116 |
| Mon 4/2 | 680 | 81,359 | 8,933 |
| Tues 4/3 | 925 | 108,250 | 11,288 |
| Wed 4/4 | 1254 | 102,545 | 9,820 |
| Thur 4/5 | 927 | 116,466 | 12,120 |
| Fri 4/6 | 829 | 89,667 | 9,040 |
| Sat 4/7 | 693 | 85,446 | 9,200 |
| Sun Easter | 742 | 116,439 | 12,585 |
| Mon 4/9 | 765 | 104,003 | 11,231 |
| 7,723 | 875,939 | 92,333 | |
| Average | 858 | 97,327 | 10,259 |
Doesn’t appear to be much difference in the overall comment spam flow here, Paul.
Tracking spam and creating spam art
One of my recent weird science experiments in the Hmm Labs has been to take all the comment spam this blog receives each day and computer generate 16×16 icons based on the spam. It’s a completely automated program that runs via cronjob nightly. I’m also tracking some other statistics about the spam partly in an attempt to understand and analyze different patterns and the overall spam DNA. Here are the spam art generated icons since I started the experiment:


















I realize it kind of looks like nonsense but I’m thinking that 100 or more days together might form some type of spam art mosaic. I’m definitely not the first person to try and make spam art, but I couldn’t find anybody else out there making comment spam icons. If this project is something that would be of interest to you, let me know in the comments below.
Maybe a social spam art mosaic? If you are wondering why, then ask yourself why not? Maybe we can turn something ugly into art.
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Maybe I’m just lucky this week!:)
Spam ART! I like it! Maybe you could sell it as modern art and make some cash on the side
Comment by Paul OFlaherty — April 10, 2007 @ 10:06 am PST