Spammers Go Away Wednesday 2007-01-24
Yeah, they really should disappear. I have Akismet installed for the benefit of my blog and my occasional readers. During the fairly long time I had it installed not a single spam comment has slipped through. Hurray for that!
It is still annoying, to have to log in to the admin page and delete spam messages on a daily basis.
Yes of course I’m spoiled. Just came to think about it. What if the wizards behind Akismet hadn’t done such an ingenious work, my gosh! I would have waded in spam comments spread out all over my blog, even contaminating old posts, that I had already given a good cleaning. Now I find them gathered in Aiksmet’s own container, and can select to browse them or kill them on sight.
Until this day Akismet has caught 8999 spammy messages, after todays record amount of 218.
I’m really happy about this neat and effective catch and destroy tool.
Most common fake comment lately is
Actually i am not an active serfer, but this this site is really great, i will spread it through my friends.
No, whoever you are, you are not a “serfer” at all. You are a dumb program sending dumb messages from fake adresses to make my blog unreadable. You’ll not succeed, but as the unnecessary piece of code you are, you don’t care. So what am I doing here, talking to evil code somewhere. Here endest that silliness 
[Edit 01-27] Oh, I love inventions, don’t you? Today I got a really nice spamment, which wasn’t caught by Akismet, because a machine would find it reasonable.
It goes like this:
I always have terrible trouble with comment-related plugins that require me to put some line in the comment loop; I can never seem to find the right spot. Can anyone tell me where I should put the php line in my comments loop? I haven not modified anything much, and I would be very grateful. Thanks!
I certainly could have been tricked into letting it through from my second defense line, the moderation queue. If it hadn’t been for the stupidity to send the same comment to three different posts. Then again I’m not that good at PHP anyway.
Your Words Travel the World Thursday 2007-01-11
By automatic syndication and by your loyal subscribing readers, the words you write, will travel far and wide. And fast! They may meet and influence people of different age and sex and from different cultures. Manuel Amador of weblog tools collection has written an interesting essay, “The wonderful journey of a blog post“, on this very subject.
It is humbling, and it makes you think ( again ), on your own blogging efforts. Is what I write about interesting enough? Would anything of it offend someone? In short, do I care about my readers enough?
Well, I promise to try. For now, I’ll say no more. Read the article and get amazed!
Futurist Programming? Monday 2006-12-04
In clear disagreement with the dogmatic way programming is taught to would-like-to-be programmers today, Paul Haeberli and Bruce Karsh wrote the “Manifesto of Futurist Programming“
Let me just cite a bit from the “Futurist Programming Notes“, that accompanies the manifest:
How would you wash a window?
Suppose we were asked to wash a window and we chose to do it the same way that software is developed. We’d get things like:
- How to make really nice customizable buckets and squeegees.
- A system for classifying window shapes. and materials, including of course, window materials and shapes that might be developed in the future.
- An analysis of how well a window washing technique scales from windows the size of a bee’s wing to the stain-glass windows in the largest cathedral.
- A commitment for a full design review BEFORE starting any implementation.
- A consultant to write a user’s manual.
- A promise of compatibility with the new Window Washing Standard from MIT.
- Plans for a set of meetings to discuss a schedule for developing user training to teach users to wash windows the modern way.
Who would you rather have “solving” this problem for you, a computer “scientist” or a professional
It’s said that information wants to be free. But how free? I’ll leave the judgement to you, dear reader.
Yet Another Sandy Celebration
Yes, it’s celebration season. Not only because it is December. Here in Sweden it’s hard to believe, by the way. The temperature is well above zero, that’s centigrade or Celsius, as we use to say The grass is green and my mothers roses are still developing flowers.
The long awaited 1.2 version of the Sandy 3D library was launched as a public beta today ( oh, it’s late, it was already yesterday ). Lots of enhancements and bug fixes from 1.1. exciting stuff if you’re into 3D Flash programming.
You can get it here at the Sandy Forum, and don’t forget to fetch the examples too.
Sandy Tutorial Celebration Friday 2006-12-01
I’m quite happy to announce the 7:th Part Celebration of the “Using Sandy…” tutorial.
Hey, you might say, what’s so good about seven? You’re right, it may be premature. Maybe I should wait for the tenth part. On the other hand why not seven. It may seem odd, and mathematically it is.
On the other hand, seven is a magic number and deserves a little celebration. Another good reason is that I don’t know what next to write about. It may be how to use the free MTASC SWF ActionScript compiler or maybe how to use light and filters in Sandy.
Another cause for celebration is that Davide Beltrame ( whom I don’t link to yet, because his site is under construction ) has translated, or rather transposed, the tutorial into the Italian language and mode. Soon to be published. This is exciting indeed, and I’m just a little bit proud.
More on the proceedings later, and kÅ·dos to Thomas, the author of the library and Davide, my hard working translator! You know it takes a lot more words to say something in Italian, and I am wordy to start with.
You can visit my tutorial here.
The Duke of Java is Finally Free Monday 2006-11-13
As rumors buzzed as flies for the last couple of months, Sun has finally announced that it releases its Java implementation under the GNU GPLv2 license.
The Duke is free, free at last. But what does it all mean?
For a long time during the first successful years of Java, many developers urged SUN to submit Java to one or the other of the standards bodies of the world. The intention was to make sure that Java, the platform wouldn’t crash into the non standards diversity, that would make it unusable. But SUN stood firm and demanded that all additions to the platform, and all its implementations should follow the “pure Java” standards set out by SUN.
Microsoft, who licensed Java from SUN, wanted Java to be seen as just another programming language, and made additions to it, that it thought was missing. They did this in violation of the license and after a long legal battle had to pay dearly.
As Java has developed and matured over the years, many Java experts has grown comfortable with SUN:s firm grip on the language and the platform, and have come to believe, this is the way for Java to survive .
So what now? What will happen when Java is GPL’d ? Will it turn as wild as JavaScript or CSS and other web technologies, with a plethora of small differences between implementation, that will drive developers nuts ?
Read this ZDNet article by Martin LaMonica, for more!
Edit Your Photos Online
One of the characteristics of the Web 2.0 era, is the fast emergence of net top applications. Making good on the old SUN slogan, “The Net it the computer”, these applications run on some server anywhere on the globe, and only its user interface shows up on the client machine. No need for installation and immediate access from any personal computer or workstation.
One of the more nifty net top applications I’ve run across lately is the pixer.us On Line Photo editor.
It works like this: You upload an image to the server through their client GUI, and when it shows up, you can start editing away to your hearts content. You may crop and resize your image, and you can adjust its color balance, contrast and lightness. You can make it B&W if you like, and you can apply some artistic filtering to make it look like marble or an oil painting.
You can undo your last change or revert to the original, if you do mistakes. Once you are satisfied with your changes, you click the Save button and download the resulting image. You can choose the image format by clicking a button for JPEG, GIF, PNG or BMP.
The application GUI is beautiful and very intuitive, so the learning is shot to none. Before you join pixer.us, you can work with a test image. Go ahead and test the pixar.us Online Photo Editor. I had great fun testing the application. From the test image I cropped out one of the girls, saturated the colors a bit and applied the oil painting filter.
The original photo
WordPress Updated Sunday 2006-10-29
In the anticipation of the 2.1 version of WordPress, here comes the bug fixed and polished 2.05 version.
If you don’t use the WordPress blogging tool, you should just download this version and follow the install instructions.
Chances are, that you already run the 2.04 version, and in that case you’ll get away cheep Mark on WordPress has put together a page with a Changed Files List, and what’s even brighter, he have made a diff file, containing all files that has changed since 2.04. You can download it in a ZIP archive from the same page, and just upload them to your old installation. You should the run the update script to get everything running again. If you don’t however, you will be reminded and offered an update link. Just click and you’re on the air again!
Really nice job Mark!
Återbäring
Hösten, eller är det vintern har slagit till helt plötsligt och med den Ã¥terbäringen. Nyss var det sensommar efter en fantastisk varm sommar, nu är det höst med kyla regn och stormar. Nyss var det skördetid och skördefest pÃ¥ solens och vindarnas ö. Striden pÃ¥gÃ¥r om det nyare epitetet “Sveriges Guldkant” som nÃ¥gon turistkonsult pÃ¥ västkusten kläckt för hundrafemti tusen, och som konsulten själv vill ta patent pÃ¥. Nu är det kyla och regn och blÃ¥st som bjuds. Turisterna har flytt, butikerna har stängt och träffar man pÃ¥ en mänska utomhus efter klockan nio pÃ¥ kvällen, blir man glatt förvÃ¥nad.
Man kunde tro att denna öde bygd alls intet har att bjuda de härboende, att denna lantliga bygd vore renons på all förmåga.
Förvisso icke så. I denna kalla oktobernatt lyser som en flamma Höstrock på Strand. Plötsligen uppstår på denna enda punkt, medan staden i övrigt ligger mörk och tom i regnet, en fest med värme, rockmusik och mycket öl. Musikerna är lokala och geniala och stämningen varm och vänlig. Kvalitén på musiken är förstklassig och skulle gå hem i varje tänkbart sammanhang. Otroligt nog skapas den av fritidsmusiker, som sällan hörs och sällan eller aldrig lämnar ön för framträdanden någon annanstans. Man blir perplex. Hur är det möjligt? På sommaren, då mängder av turistande svenskar och eouropéer från alla håll strömmar till Ön, kunde man förstå att artister av klass dras till Robinson och Strand och andra coola ställen i Borgholm och till Köpingsvik och Rälla, ja vart som helst. Öland vimlar av glada och penningstarka semesterfirare och kommersen lever upp.
Men nu i återbäringens tid, då vi just i natt skall återfå den timme vi förlorade i på försommaren - nu då kylan, regnet och tomheten insveper vår kalkstensklippa i havet?
Det är något surrealistiskt att i en stad med tomma, kalla och öde gator, kunna finna en oas av rockmusik, värme och glädje på det fula Strand Hotell, där människor fylkas, lyssnar, dansar och dricker i gemyt.
Allra mest förvånande är den höga musikaliska kvalitén. Som om en flik av Las Vegas eller New Orleans av en tillfällig slump landat i denna gudsförgätna håla för ett par korta timmar.
Sen är det allt. Livet i Borgholm återgår till sin vanliga vintriga lunk i väntan på våren och förberedelserna för nästa turistiska säsong. Vad som återstår är minnena av en rockig värme och en från våren till vintern återlämnad timme.
Den får man sova på.
Nordea under attack Tuesday 2006-10-24
Tillbaka i Borgholm efter en tuff sejour i Los ‘Holmos. Jag undgick att bli ordförande i min bostadsrättsförening
Resan med Silverlinjen gock lugnt och prydligt. Direktbussen var mer direkt än vanligt och rymligare. Fler reste söderut från huvudstaden denna söndag och man körde två bussar, en till Kalmar och en till Öland.
Skönt med “egen kuppe” - man kunde breda ut sig i en flygplansfÃ¥tölj och portföljen i en annan.
Rubriken? Jo via hela tvÃ¥ mejl idag blev jag erbjuden att delta i ett lotteri som Nordea vänligen syntes bjuda sina trogna kunder. Thunderbird sa sig genast uppfatta erbjudandet som “scam” och klickade jag ändÃ¥ pÃ¥ länken som medföljer, skickade Ã¥skfÃ¥geln upp en extra varningsskylt. Jovisst, mÃ¥nga av just Nordea’s kunder har utsatts för bedrägeriförsök pÃ¥ senare tid, sÃ¥ det är bäst man passar sig. Snyggt och prydligt mejl, och lätt att luras av om man inte har postläsare som larmar. sÃ¥ här ser det ut.
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