Category: Meta

I’ve been having a bit of an issue with blog spammers hitting my blog. While they fail some of the protection I have on the backend, including getting caught by Akismet, it’s still piling up in my administrative interface and generally annoying me.
Over the next week or two, I’ll be testing a few different anti-spam measures. I’m looking for stuff that presents the absolutely lowest burden on readers while still being effective against spammers. Any suggestions?
I’ve been using YAWASP, which has been moderately successful, but some spammers seem to be adapting, resulting in some spam getting through to Akismet (my last line of defense). I’m a big fan of reCAPTCHA, as it helps a university convert books into digital format, and it has an audio option for those who cannot see. It also is quite effective against stopping spammers, while not being a terrible burden (it uses actual words, rather than the random characters that other CAPTCHA options use). Does this sound reasonable to people?
Update: I’ve installed Bad Behavior as a spam filter. If anyone is accidentally blocked from reading or posting comments, please contact me.

I’m modifying my policy on names used in this blog, such as in descriptions of meetings and other events:

• If you wish to be known under an alias or pseudonym, I will be happy to refer to you as such. Please let me know what name you’d like to be called and I’ll do my best to refer to you as such.
• If I make some sort of mistake in your name, or failed to address you in the manner in which you prefer, please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll gladly change it ASAP.
• I previously referred to people by the first letter of their first name (e.g. “John” became “J”), but discovered that I know several people with names starting with the same letter. Collisions and limited namespace became a problem. As such, I will refer to people by their first names by default (see policy on pseudonyms above). I trust this will not violate anyone’s privacy or identities, as first names are hardly unique.

It’s nearing the end of the semester, and everything needs to be done at once: a lab report, homework, and 200 exams that I need to grade are all due tomorrow…followed by studying for finals.
Forgive me if things get a bit slow for the next week or so.

Akismet counted my 1,000th spam comment this morning.
The dubious honor of being the 1,000th spammer belongs to 200.63.42.136. Evidently times are tough in Panama, as every single one of the nine domains that were posted (and blocked by Akismet) in the spam were non-functional.
You’d think that the spammer would check to make sure their websites were operating before they sent out gazillions of spam comments.
The consolation prize goes out to 200.63.42.141, also from Panama. This individual has repeatedly bombarded my blog with spam for several days now (at least as far as I can tell — normally Akismet silently discards spam on posts >1 month old, but I disabled that feature so I could find out what, exactly, was the 1,000th spam), with a new attempt every hour or so. The fact that none of the posts actually make it to any live page is not any deterrent.
Out of the 1,000 spams I’ve had posted here, exactly two have made it through the filters. These were reported to Akismet within an hour or two, and didn’t make it through the filter again. Many thanks to Akismet — without them, the blog community would be infested with spam.

Things here just got crazy busy. This week and next week will be pretty much spent in the physics building, not really seeing the sun, blogging, or sleeping.
I should probably ask my girlfriend if she’ll still love me if I go crazy.
I’m not sure I have enough scotch…

I just upgraded WordPress from 2.6.1 to 2.6.2.
It was during this upgrade that I decided to make a major change: I had previously done a manual install of WordPress, and thus had to manually upgrade it whenever a new version was released. While not a huge hassle, it was a bit annoying.
Fortunately, Automattic (the folks who make WordPress) maintain a subversion repository, so I can easily install and update WordPress from the command line. As such, I backed up all the content, deleted everything (there was a few minutes where there was no content on the site), and reinstalled from WordPress. After restoring my configurations, plugins, and so on, everything seems to be working properly.
Whenever I do updates, I ask that users contact me if they have any problems. I mean that doubly so this time; if you notice even the slightest problem or irregularity with the site, please let me know and I’ll do what I can to correct it.

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.6.1 — if you experience any problems or issues, please let me know.

Just upgraded to WordPress 2.6. So far, so good. If you notice any problems, please let me know.
Also, please ensure that your feed reader is set to use http://www.arizonarifleman.com/feed/ as the feed address. If you link to this site, please update your links to point at http://www.arizonarifleman.com/ rather than http://azrifleman.heypete.com/ — the latter address (and its associated feed address) will be discontinued in the future.
Oh, and if you link to or read this humble blog, thank you!

The Arizona Rifleman website has changed addresses! Please update your links and feed readers to reflect the new address for this site.
Old website: http://azrifleman.heypete.com/
New website: http://www.arizonarifleman.com/
Old feed address: http://azrifleman.heypete.com/feed/
New feed address: http://www.arizonarifleman.com/feed/ (Enter this directly into your feed reader. At present it forwards to FeedBurner, but this may change in the future. By entering this URL directly, you can keep up with any changes.)
The old website and feed address will be kept operational for some time, but will eventually be discontinued. I will let you know before this happens, but please change things over sooner rather than later.
If you experience any problems with the new address, please let me know. Occasionally there are transient quirks for the first 24 hours.
Thanks!