THIS BLOG HAS MOVED - click here for new site!

A new high point in PayPal-money-request audacity:

What, you might wonder, does “Login and Learn” have to say for themselves in the money-request message?

Note from merchant:
Please make payment in full. All sevices will continue once payment is made. A dynamic new innovation for helping thhe less fortunate.

This guy tried a strange sort of attenuated advance-fee-fraud bait; “Login and Learn” appears to have a similar strange strategy, but based around… a bogus educational charity, I guess?

I wonder if I’ll ever get one of these weird requests for an even larger sum than this.

(Now you jokers’ll all be sending me trillion-dollar invoices, won’t you?)

"Omni wheels" are wheels whose rims are made out of rollers, installed with their axles perpendicular to the wheel's axle.

If you install the omni wheels so their axles point out diagonally from the vehicle's chassis, as is the case in the above Lego construction, you get full 2D maneuverability, unexciting drive efficiency, and a vehicle that won't roll sideways down a hill.

If you install the omni wheels parallel to the sides of the chassis, then the vehicle will want to roll sideways down a hill. But you may be willing to accept this, in return for something that handles like this demented little beastie:

(Note the camera car, also made from Lego!)

It's called "Metal Grudge" (on account of having the same cartoonish proportions as the tanks in the Metal Slug games), and it's basically just a skid-steer machine, like a tank or "Bobcat" loader.

Plenty of motor power and those crazy flailing omni wheels make it a lot funnier than standard skid steer, though.

Metal Grudge was made by prolific Lego builder Peer Kreuger (so was the slow omniwheel platform).

He's here on Flickr, and here on YouTube.

A piquant little spamlet to ring in the new year:

To: dan@dansdata.com
Subject: Ad Request…
From: Jami
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 21:07:50 +0700 (ICT)

Good Day,

Our company is interested in placing the below employment ad with your Newspaper today. We want you to get back to us with the cost to run our ad= for 3 weeks in Newspaper and print.

OUR AD COPY AS TO BE PLACED:

WE ARE SEEKING DYNAMIC RECEPTIONIST ORIENTED INDIVIDUALS WITH GREAT COMMU
NICATIONS AND
TYPING SKILLS NEEDED TO WORK ON BEHALF OF COMPANY THIS SERVICE REPRESENTA
TIVE WILL EARN UP TO
$2000 MONTHLY ANY JOB EXPERIENCE NEEDED.EMAIL US AT: resume20111@hotmail
.com IF INTERESTED

Also, let me know if you do print category such as Yahoo Hot jobs, Monster,Carrier-builder OR ANY JOB SITE you have.Do you accept Visa or Master Credit Card, identify the type you accept.

I await the above quotation asap.

Best Regards,
Jami Erickson

I’ll be sure to pass this on to my Carrier-building friends, “Jami”! They’ll get back to you very soon about conventional versus nuclear power, aircraft complement and so on.

The only real question in my mind is whether this spammer and his how-dare-you-suggest-it-might-be-stolen credit card number is really trying to place these dodgy job ads, or whether it’s just another attempt to get suckers directly, by waiting for replies that say “actually I’m not a newspaper, but boy, that job sounds sweet!”

Could be both, I suppose. Either way, the jobs themselves will surely turn out to be the usual money-mule or “deposit this fake cheque and then send us some real money” sort of scam.

The “if you do print category” word-salad also reminds me of the odd use of the word “do” in many African spam-scams, such as the immortal “and if you do accept credit card“.