Archive for the ‘Behind the scenes’ Category

Spam, spam, spam, spam

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

I’ve just deleted 691 spam comments, all but three of them identical – same name, same email address, same IP address, same (long and link-filled) body. I realize that spambots aren’t as intelligent as people, but surely they can avoid putting that many comments to the same place in less than 24 hours?

Not that I’d want them to be more intelligent, really. I’m just frustrated at how long it took to delete them all. Too bad WordPress couldn’t recognize all of the duplication.

This is a test

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

I’m seeing if I can post from my phone, preferably with a photo. If I’m lucky, then (and you’re not, perhaps), there’ll be a cat photo below this.

Skelly at rest

Ah, I see that I’ll have to be careful with orientation of the camera with cellphone photos I want to upload. Good to know. I also don’t get a scrollbar on my categories list, so anything that I post from the phone may not have the correct tags.

Too much of a good thing

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

Wireless networking is good. Wireless networking is convenient. When you have around a dozen-and-a-half wireless networks in close proximity, it becomes harder to connect. That’s my situation at home these days. I was fine until about a week ago; I guess whoever started up a new home wireless network was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I’ve moved my wireless to a different channel to try to avoid some of the interference, and it only helps a little. The Wi-Fi Analyzer on my Droid says I should switch to channel 13 or 14. Unfortunately, my wireless router/DSL modem can’t use any channel higher than 11, which is overpopulated locally.

C’est la vie. It looks like my best method of operation at the moment is to log in from my laptop from within the same room upstairs as the router, following which I can maintain access in the living room downstairs. I can’t log in from downstairs, though, or I wouldn’t be complaining.

A professional of thesis sample

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

I’ve been getting a bit of spam comments on the blog lately, all for the same sort of services. They usually appear on a fairly old post, start off with a compliment, then promote the service. Personally, I wouldn’t trust them unless I wanted something written in their native language, and likely not even then. Given the execrable grammar shown, there’s no way I’d trust anything they wrote in English. Take a look:

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Yeah, no way I’d buy a resume or essay from any of these people, because I want to be free from discredit that my work was done by essay writing services.

That’s odd …

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

The two preceding posts show up normally when I look at them using IE – the photos are sized to the page, but a friend looking at the site sees the photos at full resolution, so that she has to scroll around to see what I intended to be visible at first glance. She’s also using IE, and even the same version.

I’m not certain what’s going on … I’ve seen this behavior once before, but I couldn’t figure it out then. It seems likely to be some sort of configuration option, but I have no control over how anyone visiting the site has those set.

Update: I’ve uploaded smaller versions of the photos – they should display better.

I don’t have a lot in common with Sarah Palin

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

But I do have some moose in the freezer (click the photo for a larger image):

Moose in the Freezer

Not good

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

I wanted to download an Apple Dashboard widget and watch one of their tutorials this evening, but every time I try to go to their website, I get redirected to the Washington Post website’s 404 page.

Someone has a messed up DNS entry somewhere.

I know the urge

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Zombyboy scored 5.2%, and feels the urge to write a post to get his number up.

The Blog-O-Cuss Meter - Do you cuss a lot in your blog or website?
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Think how I feel.

I missed it!

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

On April 4th, 2003, if memory serves, I made the first post on my previous website, “Off In The Tall Weeds.” Portions of that site can be found at archive.org, but not that first post, which I remember was a profound essay on the order of, “Hello, is this thing on?”

That site, like this one, was largely a “shiny things” blog, but it had a bit more in the way of essays than this one has had.

I produced the site with a PC desktop CMS called CityDesk, which is no longer an active product. It served my needs at the time, though, and had the benefit that all of my posts were in a database under my control.

I’ve had occasion to browse through the old site a few times in the last year or so, and there are a number of posts that have suffered linkrot. I wonder how much linkrot the older posts on this site have suffered. I didn’t have comments on the old site, and I haven’t had too much trouble with comment spam on this one (probably because I haven’t had too many comments, period). Almost all of the comment spam is on post #100, but I doubt that’s significant.

Ah, well. I don’t feel qualified to do political analysis and commentary (I go elsewhere for that), so I doubt I’ll ever have the big traffic numbers. And that’s just as well – if I had to devote significant time to moderating comments, I suspect I’d resent having to spend the time.

It’s too late to have a drink to celebrate the anniversary tonight – I’m overdue for bed. I’ll take care of it tomorrow (actually, later today).

Starting from scratch

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

I’ve gone all-Mac at home, replacing my broken WinXP laptop with a MacBook Pro (as I mentioned earlier). I’ve also put Leopard on both systems, but I didn’t wipe the iMac before I did that. Maybe I’ll do that next time. However, for the laptop, LifeHacker has a post on what to put on a bare Mac.