Anti-Spam
Posted: Mon 13 June, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 6 Comments »Over the week we were away, d4d™ got hit by a bundle of comment spam. As in about 300 comments-worth of spam. It’s a pain in the arse, but it all got deleted on Saturday night.
Anyway, I did some research, and it turns out that the anti-spam tool I was using (Kitten’s “Spaminator”) was broken by WP 1.5 – it had worked in 1.5 beta, but was deeply duff in the full 1.5. Which, in fairness, explained quite a lot. So today I’ve done a bit of a search using the (thanks Gordon) nice new WordPress codex to find new anti-spam stuff.
So now I’m running Spam Karma v2. I had problems with the previous version of Spam Karma, but I thought I’d have a bash with the new, improved version. Also, it’s got an extra plug-in that means I should be able to resurrect any comments that SK has decided were spam even when they weren’t really. However, if your comments don’t appear, drop me a line and I’ll see if I can sort something out.
Oh, and I had to upgrade my installation of WP from 1.5 to 1.5.1 to fix some bugs and so on. Now, Gordon’s been on at me to say that now all the codex etc. is in place, the documentation is better etc., and that I should stop sniping about it. Well, I would, but during the upgrade my WP installation still got confused and went tits-up for about ten minutes. So no, it’s not perfect yet. Luckily this time I was paranoid, and backed up everything before doing owt, so I could resurrect files that WP had decided to “upgrade” to a version that didn’t work with my own intricate noodlings.
I won’t say that WP is necessarily all to blame, because I’ve done a fair amount of work under the hood of d4d™ which WP doesn’t really know about, so it tries to over-write it. But it still bugs me that a “simple” upgrade can then lead on to fifteen extra minutes of fixing the stuff the upgrade has broken…
Technological Messaging
Posted: Mon 13 June, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »While I was away, it turned out that having email access from my phone was an absolute god-send. I’ve not used it that much ’til now, because it was easier to access the stuff from work or home, but having the ability to look at it via another medium is brilliant.
As it was, I needed the email access as I got details of my new job through during the week, and there were a couple of questions and alterations that needed doing. And I could do it all (with the exception of downloading the Word document of the contract, which needed an internet cafe) through the ‘phone. It made life a whole load easier, and with a lot less hassle – if I hadn’t had that access, I’d have been having to check daily on my web-mail from an internet cafe, and while it turned out there were plenty of them, it was much easier to do it all when the time suited, rather than getting to a new town/ city, and trying to find internet access every time.
All in all, it turned out to be a fantastic development, and one I’ll probably use again at another time, should the need arise. But use it every day? No, there’s no need for that.
DVD Memetic thingy
Posted: Sat 11 June, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Reviews(ish), Thoughts 1 Comment »Oh fark, as soon as I get back, Lori has given me a challenge…
- The total number of DVDs, videos, and films I own.
Oooh, that’s not good. First of all – do I include box-sets as one or as the number of discs? I mean, there’s things like Alien Quadrilogy, which is 9 discs on its own. But (I’m upstairs, and can’t be arsed to count ’em precisely) I’ve probably got about 150 DVDs at the moment, although if you count all the discs, it’s probably double that, what with West Wing box sets and the like… - The last film I bought.
Does it have to be a film? Last DVD I bought was West Wing S5 Box Set, which I’ve been amazingly good and not watched yet, due to waiting for S4 to make a re-appearance and get viewed before I break into S5 properly. Which is frustrating.I may even end up just getting a new copy. And then charging the person who’s still got the box set.– UPDATED : Apparently it’s been posted, and is on its way back. - The last film I watched.
Ah, well, on DVD that’d be Chronicles of Riddick. Well, some of it – I hated it, so I didn’t get to the end. On TV? Last Kiss Goodnight. - My favourite five films of all time, ever.
Oooh, tough one. Let’s think… In no particular order…- Aliens
- Ghost Dog:Way of the Samurai
- Blue Juice
- Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
- Tootsie
and finally *hangs head in shame*
- Tag three people and have them blog this.
Weird Spam
Posted: Fri 3 June, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Weirdness 3 Comments »I don’t normally read my spam mail – but this one just made me go “Eh? What?”. It definitely wins my prize for weirdest Spam of the month…
Hello,
advice, sir, you’ll not hunt me again. I think I am unlucky to you.was towards him, and she was moving in the same direction. Hefreedom of the ship, and bidden to dine at the Admiral’s table; norin a state of panic. He quieted her cluckings with a word ofAnd in the stockade, all was likewise in readiness. Hagthorpe, Dyke,was because Don Miguel perceived their obvious value. He receivedWhy, nothing sinister, Colonel. Although ye deserve nothing lessWell, well, maybe he’ll not find me quite so easy to grasp as heBlood was startled.a man as Blood. Almost I marvel that he doesn’t marry her and takeher object, the Victorieuse had loaded her starboard guns again,rail, and thence slipped without sound down into the waist. Twothe articles were drawn up and signed that very day. The buccaneersThe saints preserve us now! Are you quite mad, Levasseur? Firstsame time served, not indeed the Stuart King, whom he despised, butThy sacred duty, sayest thou? Fury blazed out of him again. Good
And that’s it. I have no idea what it’s about, or why it’s been sent.
WP Delays
Posted: Fri 3 June, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky Leave a comment »As I’ll be away next week, I’ve been planning on doing some delayed posts. However, over the last few days I’ve noticed that WP seems to get hung up on these, and they stay at “waiting to be published” once they get to one minute before publishing.
Has anyone else noticed this?
And is there a fix for it?
Twat
Posted: Mon 23 May, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 1 Comment »We’ve had a problem with a program since moving office. The program needed to import files and do something to them, and because it was on a new PC, we’d moved all the program data over on a CD.
The error that was being given was that it couldn’t delete a certain file it had created.
After three weeks of hassle, I’ve finally got it working. It’s taken me, Twunty Manager™ and the support team from the original suppliers of the program to get it sorted. And neither TM™ nor the support team spotted it.
In fairness, I should’ve sussed it ages back too. But equally, no-one else spotted the problem either.
Turns out, if you copy stuff from a CD, Windows automagically makes it read-only. Which means that files created in this environment couldn’t be deleted either.
A simple change to the file and folder properties and lo, the program worketh.
I feel like a bit of a twat for not sussing it out sooner, but nowhere near as twattish as the other two lots, who didn’t suss it at all.