September 29th, 2004
Ah - they joys of spam….
When I ran MovableType the comment spam was rampant - when I installed MTBlacklist (and auto-updated the blacklist) it was a bit better. MT was a bit of a monoculture - most people ran it - so it became a worthwhile target for spammers.
Then I moved to WordPress - and for two months not a single spam. A couple of days ago it started again - and this morning there were three new spam comments. I’ll take that as an indicator of the success of WordPress as a blogging solution.
I’m afraid that I’ve made it so that comments must be authorised by me - and I’m looking at using the WordPress Blacklist.
(Incidentally - Poker seems to be the new Viagra as far as spam goes.)
{Edit - }
I’ve had a go with some plug-ins for WordPress - and comments now will not appear until I have moderated them as OK.
Also - here is the source for a file I just hacked to generated an RSS feed for unmoderated comments - just put it in your WordPress Root (and get rid of the .txt extension)
http://www.diggory.net/grazing/wp-unmoderatedcommentsrss2.php.txt (This is for WP version 1.2)
September 7th, 2004
Mac users get Vodafone 3G data access
Nice to see 3G finally coming on stream in a useful way…
The Economist also has an interesting article on 3G Economist subscription required - (not sure if bugmenot works with economist.com)
Alas - 3G is stupidly expensive: “Subscriptions vary from £75 a month to £127, with bundled data totals from 5MB to 450MB. Roaming is extra.” Yikes!
July 2nd, 2004
Tiger
TomP and Danny O’Brien have made the same observation about Tiger’s new version of iChat - which means obligatory Genral Zod link.
The torrent fairy left me a copy of the Developers’ Preview - and am busy digesting it. The thing that impressed me most was the ease of developing Dashboard Widgets. I’ve never been a big JavaScript nut - but I managed to hack a web JS insult generator into a widget faster than I thought I would.
HDLoader
Another bit of software, but this time for the PS2: HDLoader. I bought this recently - and it’s quite impressive - you bung a normal hard disc into your PS2 (check compatibility here) and it allows you to rip games to the HD - turning your PS2 into a games jukebox. Load-times are improved as HDs can read faster than optical drives - but there are two down-sides:
1 - The HD is formatted in some HDLoader-specific way, which means that the HD cannot be used as a “normal” PS2 HD. Since the official HD hasn’t even been released in Europe this is not such a big deal.
2 - The more annoying downside is that On-Line components of games will not work — this is because when they connect they use Sony’s Dynamic Network Authenication System (DNAS) which checks the validity of the disc in the PS2 at network login. Of course you can always boot from the original disc when you want to go online - but that rather defeats the point.
PCI Express
Ars has another great article that explains hardware in a way that mere mortals can understand - this one’s about PCI Express.
April 15th, 2004
Argh - I’ve got into a blog-lag: I’m going to have to dump a lot of links to get going again:
Vodafone have launched their 3G service in the UK - alas just like GPRS it’s very expensive. A friend recently switched to 3 - the other 3g operator in the UK (they’ve been going for about a year) - and I discovered something very odd - they don’t do data at all! just voice (and video calling) - that astounds me - what a waste.
I had a real retro gaming moment recently when I stumbled across a working copy Carrier Command on the web - ah…. reminds me of the 80’s and the Atari ST.
Good news - someone’s writing a remake as a hobby (yay!)
It’s true - the fat record labels are forcing up the price of downloads to match CDs - they still don’t get it, do they… Why do I get the feeling that when iTunes Music Store finally launches in the UK the prices will be self-defeatingly large. Quick Note to record label Bosses - you are competing against free downloads - increasing prices won’t work.
Shards of Metal and Glass
Burnout 3 video - oooohhh…
vs.
The top Video on this page. (Evil MS - boo!!! )
The new NextLink bluetooth headset. Yikes! we’re living in the future - it’s only a matter of time before someone makes one that you can surgically implant…
The N-Gage QD has been released. Also - Nokia’s handset targetting mistakes have cost them
MT-BlackList Updater - uses RSS to update your Movable Type spam blacklist.
A friend of mine swears by LaunchBar - and I’m now hooked on QuickSilver - which is freeware, and deeply useful.
England beat the West Indes 3-0 in the Test Cricket series - Yay!
Phew, right - that’s all.
April 1st, 2004
Someone has done a large-scale test of BlueSnarfing.
Read the PDF here.
Scary results if you have a Nokia 6310(i) - luckily The P800 seems immune.
October 30th, 2003
Mail in Panther has great support for Encrypted and Signed mail.
See Here for a great article on how to implement it using a Free (email-only) Certificate from Thawtes.
n.b. when applying for your cert. don’t forget that the email address is case-sensitive - so you have to use exactly the same case for your email address in Mail.app as is in the Certificate - foo@bar.com is not equivalent to Foo@Bar.Com
n.b. You will need a fully-fledged Mozilla Browser to actually get the Cert - Mozilla Firebird won’t do.
September 11th, 2003
Credit Card companies have relied on a magnetic strip combined with a signature for security for years. That’s not really good enough - and it hasn’t been for years.
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