Salut!

Expat life: the end

It is a week of farewells. My columns will no longer appear in The National, though I will continue to write for the paper. This sort of thing is not uncommon in newspapers. Tastes change, other factors come into play. I've enjoyed writing East/West, renamed Expat Life here, and My Word (Mark My Words to you). Since I have already touched on the demise of My Word - the final column appears on Saturday - this is the second of three farewells ...

A little over two years ago, this column made its debut with a whimsical account of the assorted struggles I have faced in the world of credit cards.

From then on, each week without fail, I have maintained a steady flow of words, offering at first my reflections on life in Abu Dhabi and later some snapshots of life beyond Abu Dhabi.

Cannes: it's raining rain

The Cannes Film Festival opens on May 12. I sincerely hope the Stones and Tim Burton and all the other stars heading our way fare better than we did: non-stop rain or drizzle reminiscent of, well, St Tropez a couple of weeks ago.

There are places I would sooner be, and not only on May 12, than Cannes. Overpriced, smug, even a bit twee and with silly little poodles and terriers pacing the Croisette wearing absurd cloaks on their backs and held on leashes by carefully manicured Cannoises d'un certain age.

We found a pleasant sheltered terrace chez Maître Renard, on the lower slopes of the rue Saint Antoine in the old town. All the restaurants on the upper slopes were closed.

A special lunch deal brought us a two-course meal, 50cl of Béatrice rosé and coffee for €68, not extortionate and certainly not cheap.

The slightly soggy chips - a single portion served as an extra with the main course of veal brochette with shredded cabbage and carrot - cost 10 of those euros. The butter (for the toast that accompanied my salmon starter) and the olive oil and vinegar, for the salad engulfing my wife's goat's cheese en croute, took a while to arrive. But the service was friendly enough.

But it was interesting to note that like any seaside town in England, Cannes looks just a little sad when it rains.

(Andrew A) Sailer, stop your roaming - and spamming

Salut! and Sailers just don't get on.

Actually, we know little about Mr Andrew A Sailer beyond what can be found by trawling through the 1,200,000 results to a basic search on Google.co.uk or Google.fr

I am not sure how many of those mentions would relate to the spam that Mr Sailer - or the computer program masquerading as a real person of that name - dumps on websites the world over. We probably haven't enough time left on earth to find out.

Expat life: owning up to liking Jacques Chirac

There, said it. With those three words, Philip Delves Broughton, my predecessor as Paris correspondent of The Daily Telegraph (and where's that copy of your new book you promised me, Philip?), began a highly entertaining piece of nonsense about the supposed awfulness of French food. Now I've had a "there, said it" moment of my own ....

This is something an Englishman is never supposed to admit. But I feel a sudden, overwhelming urge to say the unsayable: I like Jacques Chirac.

Dust to ash: one man's volcano-defying journey home

For days, Jim Minton made slow but determined steps in his attempt to defeat Iceland's most famous export and get back to London from Lagos, where he often works. His regular bulletins entertained fellow subscribers to an e-mail group bringing together a disparate band of football supporters (of Sunderland AFC, not strictly relevant but essential to understanding certain references if, as Salut! believes, his account of the odyssey cried out to be repeated)...

Thursday:

Well, I am stuck in Lagos - probably one of the dustiest cities in the world - because of some nonsense in Iceland. I shall tell mum quite definitely NOT to go there in future. (Iceland, I mean, not Lagos). Any crack (about the football) for Saturday yet, anyone? I hope I am out of this sweltering airport by then, at least!

Sabine Weiss and the power of black and white

As I moved from one example of Sabine Weiss's black and white images to another, I was able to point out with great confidence which ones had been staged and which were spontaneous.

Le Lord assassiné: up late with France 2

Buried away late in the night, as almost all watchable French television seems to be, the latest edition of Faites Entrer L'Accusé had a cameo role from a certain British journalist.

Slow food, fast food and two French saints

A certain time of year, a certain part of France and and you just know you're going to see it.

This year, I have first spotted it in St Raphaël. It's that juxtaposition of utterly distinct types of people wandering along the seafront: those in light summer clothes, their skin becoming pink (if it started off as white) and those wrapped up in multiple layers to insulate against the bitter cold of spring.

Expat life: dodgy prawns, perfectly fried wasps and flies in soup

Good restaurants: places to go for glorious food, fine wine and, now that even some of the better ones have become less stuffy, a welcome for the patter of tiny feet. But how tiny? ...

For my most extravagant night out in the UAE, I checked into a fancy hotel and booked a table for two to enjoy the special (and suitably expensive) Valentine’s Day dinner.

The quality of comfort and service was superb, as was, so it seemed, the food. Unfortunately, something on the menu disagreed fundamentally with my wife, producing the nastiest bout of food poisoning she had ever known.

My Dish, smelly feet, loose belly fat: the everyday life of spamming folk

Last week, I defended news aggregators such as newsnow.co.uk against charges of being web parasites, since they send genuinely interested readers to the homes of original work (newspaper websites, blogs etc). But I haven't quite finished with the real web parasites ...

Whose e-mail address is [email protected]? Or [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] and [email protected]?

What is My Dish? Who runs the wonderfully misnamed http://loose-belly-fat.org (assuming that loose fat, ideal for attaching to the stomach, is not what the service provides at an appropriate price)?

Has anyone ever seen a programme called Curb Your Enthusiasm? Is Erin Andrews nude a good subject for family discussion? Would you use the Chase Internet Bank, or stop your feet smelling by wearing Kinoki Foot Pads.

For the writers among you, make what you will of the chance to become one of the international family - 268,938 strong when I checked today - of "expert authors using EzineArticles.com:a matching service bringing real-world experts and ezine publishers together"? And if you and your ex-partner cannot agree on child access, why not turn for advice to the Child Custody Attorneys site?

NB In the case of Ezinearticles.com, I am happy to report that this organisation is wholly innocent. "Please note that EzineArticles.com does not spam any sites, nor do we condone this type of behavio(u)r," they tell me and I accept this entirely. With any luck, one of those "expert authors" may be about to become a "former expert author", at least as far as Ezinearticles.com is concerned.

So let's start with the e-mail addresses. They're bogus. But the products and services appear to be genuine.

What brings them all together, with a host of others, is that whether or not those responsible for them know it, they are being promoted with the help of moronic spam spattered around the internet.

Perhaps because Salut! Sunderland attracts many more hits that Salut!, sometimes approaching 2,000 a day, it has become a target for these web parasites who, it can be safely assumed, have no interest in the performances of Sunderland AFC.

That may make them feel very fortunate indeed, which is more than I felt last night and this morning as I cleared 20 or 30 of this mindless bumf from the comments fields of assorted postings.

Seasoned spam spotters see them a mile off. The comment begins in an apparently pertinent, grown-up manner, often laced with flattery:

* Thanks for the update on...

* This was a great read

* I was just talking with my friend about this yesterday ...

* This is my first time to visit your blog ...

Even without the occasional lapse into mangled international English, it soon becomes evident that the whole exercise is a sham. The "person" posting the comment has not, of course, read the posting at all and may be not a person at all but a computer program. But does it become evident to all?

There may be no criminal intent, but in all other respects it is difficult to see how it differs so greatly from phishing scams. The essential tactic, after all, is much the same: imply familiarity, hoodwink the reader.

So what exactly is in it for those who, wittingly or not, have their businesses and sites championed in this way? Can't we just treat the comments as trash and ignore them, depriving the parasite of any benefit? No, we can't. For the process involves placing a clickable link in the comment or signature.

I am not entirely sure how this works, but if the link is undetected and remains in place, it may improve the Google ranking of the relevant site. So more people are likely to be drawn to My Dish recipes, Kinoki foot pads and the opportunity to do something about that loose belly fat (or acquire some if it's for sale).

It is all in the great tradition of Andrew A Sailer, who/which came our attention when he/it posted the following message to an affectionate tribute to a murdered man.

“TVI Express Is A Great Home Based Business -TVI-GAT TEAM.”

Try looking up the name. With quotation marks around it, produces 1,290,000 Google hits. You find that his/its cretinous contributions pop up at numerous sites - and also - surprise. surprise - that someone of that name seems to be something of an authority on ways of developing web traffic. The activity is called search engine optimiz(s)ation and I have written to the one linked to the My Dish site to ask whether it is any more than spamming - and whether it is now considered a legitimate business practice.
It goes without saying that Salut! Sunderland regards each and every one of the sites mentioned as entirely innocent victims of this phenomenon (that sentence was dictated by our in-house lawyers). Why, some of them are so concerned about this curse of the internet that have anti-spam tools of their own installed at their sites.

Our pages are open to the people who run any or all of the services concerned to share with us their thoughts on how they came to be associated with such dubious practices.

One e-mail address among those used to post these supposed comments, or rather one among those I had time or inclination to check, did not bounce bank. So if you are real, [email protected], set the ball rolling and let us know whether you had the consent of Child Custody Attorneys to place this piece of fluent gibberish as a comment on an article about well-known supporters of Sunderland:

I was looking for in regards to selecting a "http://www.child-custody-attorney.org family attorney.

Is there an effective way - beyond simply marking offensive rubbish as spam, and blacklisting the IP addresses used to send it - to combat this web pollution?