So I didn’t even realize that blog spammers existed. But now I do. And they can all go rot in hell. They can rot in a hell ten times lower than the e-mail spammers.
Anyway, blog spammers are kind of easy to get rid of. You can set up all kinds of stuff like making the user look at an image and then type the number into a box in order to post a message. Or you can do it Engadget style and make users confirm by e-mail. But this blog is powered by a small perl script called blosxom. And the posting of comments is done via a smaller plugin perl script called “comments”. So instead of re-doing my entire blog in a different system I modified the comments plugin to not accept any comment in which the checkbox isn’t checked. My friend Steve came up with this temporary hacky fix. Originally I thought it was a hacky fix, but I eventually caved in and used it because the blog spam was getting exponentially worse. When I figure out a better solution I’ll do it.
You also might have noticed I upgraded the site in a few ways. I added a way to go through archives at the top there. I didn’t realize before there was no way to go back in my blog, so I got a blosxom extension for archiving that is extremely simple. It’s fairly obvious. Also, I moved the RSS link to the top from the bottom where it previously resided. With Firefox 1 RSS is become more popular, so I figure I should put it in a more prominent spot. I also added the appropriate tag in the header of my pages so the RSS feed will appear in the bottom right of firefox and other things that pay attention to that will see it.
Lastly I upgraded the creative commons license to version 2.0 instead of 1.0. I also corrected a few issues to make sure I still validate at XHTML1.0 Strict and the CSS still validates also. Oh yeah, reading my blog in Internet Explorer, which is perfectly standard XHTML and CSS, is worse than ever. Get Firefox, what is wrong with you?! Lastly, I’m considering adding a new rectangle thingy at the bottom to proclaim the blog is powered by Blosxom. In fact, I’m doing that this second, so anyone reading this will probably see it.
That should take care of the web design tasks of this blog for quite awhile. I have a predicament though, that in just a little over 10 weeks I graduate college. After that I’m on co-op. And unless I find a co-op in the Rochester area, I’m blowing this popsicle stand for good. That means the server isn’t going to stay in the apartment much longer. So I have to find hosting or get a new place with a domain and a net connection. Hopefully I’ll be paid enough money and I can co-locate the server cheaply. Maybe I’ll get www.apreche.net or www.gourmetgeek.com or something. Yeah… Anyway, watch out for that in the future. I still don’t know what I’ll do about my e-mail address.
