Other spammers are a bit smarter and compose something that may pass as a genuine comment on a quick glance, like this one:

Hi there, I read this post titled “Rain, more rain, and a BBQ” about a week ago, might have been last Sunday, and thought it was a good point. I’ve been trying for the last few days to find your site again but ended up finding it in Google using the keywords “floor restoration.”. Anyway, I’ve forgotten what I wanted to post last week but I will be returning regularly. Bookmarked the page.

Of course it’s complete bogus, but on sites with high traffic and lots of comments, this could get through. In my case, it’s clear that googling on “floor restoration” will not get you to my website. (Except that after I post this, it may.) It’s also suspicious that this “visitor” read a blog entry from June 14, 2007 just last week. Finally, the comment is so generic that it could apply to almost any post on any weblog—another clear sign that it’s fake.

As long as Akismet does its job, comment spam isn’t bothering me too much. In fact, most of the messages are quite nice. All eight readable messages currently in my spam queue mention how much they like my site or how much they agree with my writing. It’s utter nonsense, but at least it’s friendly nonsense.

I will keep ruudvisser.wordpress.com active for a while to redirect visitors, but this will not last indefinitely. As of now, you are strongly encouraged to visit my site directly at RuudVisser.com. New posts and other stuff will only appear here, anyway. If you want to keep track of my postings, be sure to add my new RSS feed to your news reader.

Apart from the obvious design changes, there are two other new features. The sidebar contains a widget from Last.fm, which shows in near-real-time what music I’m listening to. It contains samples for some tracks (look for a little play button) and if you click on ‘view profile’, you can learn more about my music tastes than you want to know.

The second new feature is the complete integration of my photo albums at Picasa into this site, thanks to a plug-in called kPicasa-Gallery. So, go ahead and have a look through my 2934 pictures (and counting…).

There may still be some bugs in the layout. If you find something weird, I’d appreciate it if you could leave a comment or send me an email.

Oh, and on the topic of comments: I probably have to re-approve everyone, so be patient if you leave a comment and it doesn’t appear right away. After your first time, as long as you continue to enter the same email address (used purely for identification), further comments should appear right away.

Within a week or two, I will have everything (domain, blog and science stuff) in one place. This will have the added benefit that I get full control over my WordPress installation, allowing for more flexibility in design and nifty features.

When the domain is transferred to the new provider, I’ll need some time to set up my WordPress installation and move the blog over. During that time (hopefully no more than a day), RuudVisser.com won’t really get you anywhere. The current version of my blog will remain functional at http://ruudvisser.wordpress.com/ throughout the move.

The current plan is to do the move in about two weeks, around the 22nd of October. If it happens much sooner or later, I’ll put a note here.

The 10th .com result is titled “Everything about Ruud Visser” and the description goes like this:

Do you want to know more about “Ruud Visser”? Find all the information you need about “Ruud Visser” on Exalead Wikipedia.

I’m all for learning more about people with my name, especially if they appear this high on a Google search. The Exalead page contains links to two articles on the French Wikipedia. The first one immediately caught my attention:

Atoms in Molecules
En chimie guil, la proximité immédiate de deux atomes non liés … Why Kinked is More Stable than Straight Jordi Poater, Ruud Visser, Miquel Sola, F. Matthias …
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_in_Molecules

Loyal readers will recognize “Why Kinked is More Stable than Straight” as the (partial) title of a scientific paper based on work that I did in Girona, Spain in 2005. The Wikipedia article cites that paper as one of the criticisms against the theory of Atoms in Molecules. One click away, the English Wikipedia article on AIM does the same thing.

The citations in the English article was put in by user V8rik on June 9th of last year, and user Grimlock copied it to the French version on July 22nd.

It’s been said that you aren’t somebody in today’s world until you have an article on Wikipedia. I’m not quite there yet, but this is a good start.

[Update (November 6th, 2007): Thanks to a quick response by the WordPress.com support people, everything seems to be back to normal.]