Invisible People

October 09, 2006 by Eric Richardson

I don't know about you, but I'm skeptical of people these days if I can't find references to them online. Maybe not always in the general case, but particularly if said person is connected to some sort of website or business.

If I go to search for someone and can't find anything on them I start to ask myself what's going on. Is it a pseudonym? Is it a scam? If you were going to fake a person you would think you could at least plant some references around the net.

Obvious this assumption that anyone can be found is a very new thing. Whether it's a healthy thing or not remains to be seen.

A Spam Free Morning

October 03, 2006 by Eric Richardson

It was a huge plus to wake up this morning and have no spam on either this site or blogdowntown. Typically I've been getting up and deleting 20 or 30 comments each morning, then maybe 10 or 15 through the course of the day. The new system I put in place yesterday seems to be doing the trick. In fact I've gone ahead and disabled the two other mechanisms I was using: banning selected words and maintaining a blacklist of IP addresses URLs weren't allowed to point to.

The failure notices for both blogs end up in the same log file so I can't tell you how this breaks out, but 344 comments have been denied since midday yesterday.

In figuring out how to attack the problem I really wanted to make it transparent to the commenter. captchas and things like that are ok (and are much better than requiring logins), but I'm not a fan.

Relying on the idea that spam scripts aren't running a javascript engine probably isn't future-proof, but it'll get the job done for a while. And if they were to add a JS engine your options for fighting get a lot wider.

Of course my spam-free morning ends the first time I open up my email. There it's a good 40 - 60 spam that have made it through Apple Mail's filters each morning. And that doesn't count the 100 or so that do get caught, plus the hundreds that get bounced by the greylist. Yuck.

Still Alive

October 02, 2006 by Eric Richardson

You wouldn't know it by my posting here, but if you've followed blogdowntown, our wedding site, my flickr photo stream, or the launch of Cartifact's new website you probably guessed that I was still alive. If so, you would be correct.

I've also had comments disabled / intentionally broken since July. I just implemented a new solution to fighting comment spam, so I've re-enabled those now. Hopefully my theories on spam are correct and those will be vanquished. You can read a little more of a description over at blogdowntown.

I do intend to make a few posts around here, I promise.

A Temporary Desk

August 18, 2006 by Eric Richardson

Would you believe Kathy and I have been back and moved into our new apartment for over a week now and I just tonight set up my computer? I really just had nowhere to put it. Now that we're starting to get some things settled into place I cleared out a corner of our second bedroom to use for a workspace. Problem was, I didn't have a desk. What to do?

Why, build a desk of course.

This temporary desk is made out of two tray tables and seven redwood slats that had been used in the bed I built several years ago. I had a couple little pieces of scrapwood lying around from furniture that had been delivered, so I fastened two bottom pieces to keep the slats from sliding apart.

Eventually I'll want something better (and want the tray tables back), but this'll certainly do for now.

qwet keboad

July 30, 2006 by Eric Richardson

So Kath\/ and I a.e in the G.and .apids ai.po.t, headed to Kauai, and I just pulled out m\/ laptop to discove. that a numbe. of ke\/s a.en't wo.king.

To wit:

1246-
qwetuiop[]\
asdfghjkl;'
zxcvbnm,./

Unfo.tunatel\/ this means I can no longe. log in to Linux, seeing as both m\/ name and .oot a.e on the no-t\/pe list.

Hmmm... MacBook?