I was going through my referrer listings (it’s early in the month, so it’s much easier to catch any referrer spammers). Thankfully, there were very few, now that I’ve blocked referrers with the words “sex”, “porn”, “viagra”, “cialis”, and so on. Anyway, I came across this referrer that had no page views and plenty of hits – an almost sure sign of hotlinking (or it could also be RSS readers, forum threads, which are legitimate).

So I checked out http://cristal.inria.fr/~yakobows/, and almost thought I was viewing the wrong tab (it happens sometimes when you use tab-browsing) and was looking at my own blog. Of course, upon closer inspection, I realized it wasn’t my site but a rip-off of the current site’s design and layout. The CSS is identical, even the favicon.

I wasn’t pissed – rather, I was flattered (as this entry’s title indicates). But I’m sure I want this Boris to quit using exactly the same design as mine. I kinda like what I have now (because Bart Noppen said he liked my color scheme, and I’m a big fan of Bart’s design skills) and I want the blog to be (somewhat) unique.

Boris, appreciate the honor, but please try to make it less of a rip-off would you? Thanks.