Category Archives: Discourse.net

For various reasons it doesn't seem worth updating to the new versions of MT that have been released recently. The stuff I've read suggests that the changes are either unnecessary for folks like me who have installed agressive (very agressive) comment spam filtering, or downright trouble. So I think I'll wait for version 3.0 before doing anything major like that.

So, instead, I've been toying around with some of the templates for the blog. I added a link to the RSS 2.0 feed and some new silly statistics. I did some cleaning up here and there. Soon I'll maybe change the way that links are displayed, perhaps highlight the background when moused over.

It would be good programming practice to have a test blog somewhere to do all this to rather than doing the experimenting on a live site. I do know that. But I'm ignoring it. So if anything seems weird in the next day or so, give it five minutes and see if it goes away. If it doesn't, please drop me a note. And, of course, if you have suggestions for the blog—layout, content, whatever, feel free to comment on this entry, or write me privately.

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If there should happen to be a reader out there with a great comprehension of CSS, I wonder if I could please beg some advice. I’ve been told that the blue banner at the top of this page does not show up on Mac OX X.3, using the Safari Browser. As a result the white letters at the top are as good as invisible. It works fine in Mozilla and Explorer as far as I can tell. I don’t have a Mac to play with, and I don’t see why it should come out differently…or what I can do about it…

It’s called by a div id=”banner” code.
My correspondent suggested changing “id” to “class”, but that messed up the look in the browsers it’s currently working in.

RTFM, and what do you find? MTBlacklist Updater 1.0 and MT-Blacklist Updater, both add-ins to an add-in! The Internet is wonderful. The first one looks like a moderately complex install; the second sounds easier. (Although there's a security issue noted, unless you either put it above the webroot or create a dummy user with no privileges; I'll but it up out of reach, thank you..)

As the blog gets more popular (yay!) I'm getting increasing amounts of comment spam (boo!). I installed the Mt-blacklist plugin, but I don't update the list religiously and as far as I can tell it doesn't update itself. And the things that got through today (e.g. http://www.drugsexperts.com/ and http://hair-loss.hair-loss-cure.net/) were not on my five-day-old list. Is there some way — even a chron job? — to pull down a master list somewhere Out There and automagically merge it with my existing one?

I've banned IP address 62.213.67.122 from posting to discourse.net after deleting a handful of Dadaist-seeming comments (e.g. “'Of course' is the cyanide of the mind”) none of which were objectionable in themselves, but all of which linked the plausible author names to sex sites. If this banning action causes any legit users pain, I hope they send me email so I can reconsider. I don't think the ban applies to email, just posting.

Arrived safely, slept little. Not to complain or anything, but the hotel they booked me into has the most infuriating sort of internet connection in this lobby. First, it's web-only so I can't telnet to my email. Second it's got some sort of brain-dead filter on it, so that I cannot hit my news aggregator, which is web-based, because one of the blog or newspaper articles in the last week uses a naughty word (which is also a term of endearment for a cat, as in here p——y, here p——-y). And I can't read the recent comments on this blog, because the gentle readers have used ungentle language. Arrg.

Ok. Off to find some place that serves very very large quantities of coffee. Meanwhile get thee hence to Talking points memo which is full of important and highly disturbing news about Iraq. The only angle I can think of that's missing is that James Baker has been in bed with the Saudis for a long time, and to the extent part of the task is to get them to write off the $50billion (if memory serves) in debt Iraq owes them, or kick in new cash, he's the man for the job. But even so, from what one reads Iraq is not just a disaster, a quagmire, a total planning failure (worse than a mistake, a blunder), but now the administration is deep into CoverUp mode — neutering the inspector general, instructing the Iraqis not to count civilian deaths, employing Israelis to train what sound too close to Death Squads for my delicate tastes. Double double plus ungood.