Day: June 1, 2010

How quick could you build a MakerBot?

I assembled mine over the course of about a week – but that includes priming, painting, getting a few miscellaneous parts, and a fair amount of hesitation as I fretted over an unfamiliar building process outside of my expertise.  If I were to start over again, and I were skipping the priming/painting I figure I might be able to assemble one in about 8 hours or so.

Bre recently posted someone’s time lapse build video.  (Have I mentioned how much I love time lapse build videos???)

Bre wrote he could put one together in about four hours.  That’s amazing!

It’s actually pretty easy.  Since I own my own domain, in this case MakerBlock.com, all I have to do is tell my server that I want all mail that would normally bounce to be redirected to a default address.

The upshot is that I can make up ANY e-mail address I want, and be assured the resulting e-mail will come back to me.

How does this help me avoid e-mail spam?  Easy!  When I give my e-mail address to a website, in this case Ponoko, I make sure the e-mail address is sufficiently descriptive so that I’ll know who gave out my e-mail address.  Suffice it to say, I’m receiving a fair amount of pharma/romance related spam to an address I gave Ponoko.  Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they didn’t sell my e-mail address – but either their server, database, or someone’s address book was compromised.  This is only a mild consolation.

However, this just tells me who is sending me spam.  To shut it off, all I have to do is set up a filter for that address or shut it off at the server.   Turning it off at the server is a little more work, so I usually just create a mail filter that tosses everything to that address into my junk/spam folder.