August 2006 Entries
One of the main reasons I had to upgrade the blog software was blog spam. You might have noticed I shut down comments entirely about a week ago. Well, I was getting up to 100 blog spam posts per hour. I had implemented database triggers that I found via NetNerds.Net, thanks Chrissy. But they were no match for the relentless assault I was enduring.
As I just mentioned, I'm now on Subtext and they have implmented ReverseDOS from AngryPets. The way it works is you have a file full of regular expression keywords and their DLL gets hooked up as...
This blog started life out as .TEXT 0.95. The people who made it decided to turn it into Community Server, a blog+gallery+forum package and released version 1.0, oh about two years ago I guess. I tried at the time to upgrade then, but there was a number of problems with 1.0 and I decided to wait. CS is now a mature product, but the .TEXT migration is an afterthought for the developers at this stage. The deal breaker for me was not being able to easily keep the same URL format. I absolutely did not want to break links that...
Remember the whole episode when Sinead O'Connor tore up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live? During the performance you can tell watching it now she knew more or less there was a shit-storm ahead of her. She performed the Bob Marley cover War acapella and she's clearly nervous, breathing heavily throughout. But the thing is there are moments of greatness in the performance. And better yet, there is a low-bitrate copy out on the net of the rehearsal version that captures a better, more relaxed Sinead. It remains one of my favorite one-off songs. Here's the video of...
Newsgator manages 396 RSS feeds for me. I have been using Newsgator Outlook Edition from back when it was the only product they had, at least a couple years now. I had always been happy with my workflow with this setup, I was able to set up Outlook search folders to group things in clever ways and streamline my reading. Everything was neatly searchable, flags and categories worked across email and RSS, fantastic. However, with the aforementioned issues with Outlook 2007 beta, plus a couple of new ones involving our ancient corporate proxy servers, it was taking me too long...
I mentioned a while back I mentioned that I was using Office 2007. I have also mentioned that I use Plaxo to keep all my tasks (and calendar and contacts) in sync between home and work and laptop. Seems Plaxo isn’t 100% compatible yet with the new task style in outlook 2007, and who can blame them, it is only in beta 2 at this point and there are still many rough edges.
So as a temporary measure, I decided to try an online todo list, and via TechCrunch I tried Ta-da Lists, found it lacking, and then went for Remember...
Something has been irking me during this heat wave. My office is always a little too warm, 79 degrees at the moment according to my desktop thermometer, it has been known to hang out around 82 in the afternoons. Because of this, everyone has those little desktop fans going full speed constantly.
Let’s revue what fans actually do, a) they blow air from a cool part of the room to another warmer part, which does not apply at all in our situation since we’re all sitting in the same air and b) air blowing on you feels cooler because of...
Traveled with Emily as her assistant on a magazine shoot. Assisting means schlepping incredibly heavy and bulky camera equipment through the airports, and trams, and buses and cars, and a few minutes of following “set up the light here” orders.
First stop was Phoenix Arizona. Did one of those sit on the tarmac for three+ hours, go back to the gate, no more flights until the morning, leave the bags at the airport, take a cab home, sleep for a couple hours, and come back deals on the way there, but it was smooth sailing from then on.
Have you heard...