Overflow

I have added a new room to my online digs — an Overflow wiki. I’m not sure exactly how I will use this, but I figure I need a better hub for my online world than Yahoo mail. I envision a guest room/lounge/studio/workroom/junk closet type thing.

Drop on by if you wish. There’s nothing much there except for my collection of poems which I have finally gotten in one place.

Yes it’s a new, less cluttered look. I went to one of the Wordpress generic templates. Lost the verbage on the left. lost the ill-maintained lists. Lost the picture of me attempting to devour raising and kissing a baby petunia. Added a little color. I like the font better.

I love Wordpress. Change the look of your blog with a button.

This is your same blog. Same management.

I’m back in the Swing. Family is back from vacation. Kids are back to school. I’m back at work.

Maybe I’ll post more regularly now. I’m going through one of those periods where I don’t see how my blog fits into the rest of my life and so I am feeling no impetus to update as frequently. Maybe I’ll hit my stride as life returns to something of a regular rhythm.

I have hit that period in my blogging life where i don’t really care how many people read me. I haven’t looked at my stats in months but I’m sure they’re way down from what they used to be. Whatever.

But I really appreciate the connections maintained with those of you who do read me. You are my reason for keeping it up. My living counterexamples to the idea that peaks occasionally in my mind that blogging is rather a waste of time. Thanks for sticking by me as I figure out how to weave Overflow back into the rhythm of my life.

If you came by in the last few days and this site wasn’t here, I apologize. I forgot to pay my crossimpact bill. Apparently I didn’t check the automatic renew option like I thought I did. But we’re back now.

Matt has generously spent the time to update me to the latest version 1.5.1 of WordPress. This should take care of my comment spam problem in a more permanent manner. So not only do I get the relief I need but I get a bundle of other snazzy features and fixes to boot. Granted, most of the snazzy features are like pearls before swine to an old school circa 2oth century blogger like myself. It’s great to know I’m on the cutting edge of blogging software regardless of how dull I may be as a blogger.

Thanks Matt!

I had to hack my version of Wordpress to do it, but I think I finally got rid of the comment spam. I made a two line modification which has reduced my comment spam from thousands of messages a day, requiring twenty minutes of clicking to delete, to just 33 messages over two days. How I am still getting comments when I’ve forcibly disabled the comment form is a subject of mild interest, but not interesting enough for me to spend more time figuring it out. I have just enough time lately for the crude two line hack, but not enough to fix the root cause. Such is the life.

So, no comments for a while. One day I will update myself to the latest version of Wordpress which I understand has all this mess fixed, and then comments will return. But until then, maybe I can direct the twenty minutes a day I spend on comment spam deletion into writing actual blog entries. Hope springs eternal.

When I need a good source of empty flattery, I just read some of my comment spam before I delete it. Obviously the source of most of this spam

1) has never read one word on my site
2) lacks complete mastery of the english language and its idioms

Which makes it kind of amusing to read. I guess the rationale for flattery spam, as I’ve come to call it, is that I will be so blinded by my ego that I will cherish each compliment, leaving the comment on my site therefiore boosting the Google rank of some nefarious ninny.

But it’s kind of funny to read for a few seconds before I delete it:

great site great site great site BRAVO!

Aw, shucks. Go on.

I love everything about this site!!

Especially the open comments, I bet.

nice site keep it on ;)

Okay, I’ll never take it off…

I just wanted to say WOW! your site is really good and i’m proud to be one of your surfers

You gotta have some low self esteem to be proud of such a thing. But hey, glad I could help.

I have admire your unselfishness in taking the time to make this web site.

Right up there with Mother Theresa. That’s me.

I really like the layout and colors that you chose for this website! It certainly is incredible! :)

So you like black and white with a little picture that looks like a man eating a baby?

Thank you for opening a wonderfully new sight..I wish you the best of luck with your new venture.

I’ve recently sprouted a third eye on my forehead, trying it out. Thanks for the encouragement.

I recommend this site for great pleasure.

Excuse me, but which entry of mine did you read?

Oh my god you kept me entertained.

Someday I’d like to be that easily amused. Will come in handy if I ever sustain a brain injury.

Super site darlings. Thanks awfully

You’re welcome. Quite. Cheerio.

YOU HAVE GOT SOME KIND OF CLASS IN THIS SITE. Good to see you up and around!

What, have I been sick?

Your site is also very interesting, very calming effect just reading it. Will spend more time with certain areas.

Yes, reading my writing is very, um, calming. Don’t read it while operating heavy machinery.

Logging into this website should be a requirement for anyone knowledgeable on earth these days…

Finally. Someone who’s actually read my site!

Wordpress is not letting me close off comments for some reason. I set the option, but the comment form is still active. That gives me hope that there’s a bug fix out there somewhere I can patch. I was despairing yesterday that the spammers had found a way around my defenses. Instead, my defenses needed fixing. That I can handle.

So I decided to turn and fight. the spammers have motivated me to do what I haven’t done in many months – wade through source code. I have a crude hack to Wordpress that will let me delete the spam 100 messages at a time instead of 20 at a time, which makes the problem more manageable. That will tide me over until I can figure out an even better hack. Or maybe I’ll just live with my ability to delete at the same order of magnitude as the incoming spam rate.

So, I’m not going away. Feel free to post comments. But forgive me if your comment gets caught in the comment spam tide.

Oh. Aha. I discovered one thing I didn’t turn off – trackback. Maybe the buggers are getting in via trackback.

So I turned off trackback and comments. If that works, maybe the reports of my self-inflicted demise are greatly exaggerated. We’ll see.

That’s it. I give up. I deleted comment spam until my wrist hurt and there was no end in sight. I can’t take it. Apparently the porn spammers have found me, so now in addition to repeated offers for free online poker and prescription painklillers, I have to wade through thousands of offers to glimpse the most vile and soul-draining stuff imaginable.

So, I’m done. Turning commenting off did not work. Apparently they’ve found a way to post comments regardless. The only way I can think to lose them is to kill my site.

So I won’t be posting here anymore. This site will be taken down as soon as I can find a way to save what I’ve written.

Maybe I’ll start another one someday.

I had to disable commenting, as deleting comment spam has grown to take up most of my blog time. Hundreds of comment spams per day. Today I had to delete over a thousand spam comments, twenty at a time. If you have posted a comment in recent weeks and you don’t see it here, it probably got cut out along with one of my mass comment spam purges. I am sorry.

Of course I always welcome email.

I wonder how long I have to lay low before the comment spammers delete me from their rolls?

My readers took a vote. (Well, the two that are still left that is.) They want me to start posting again, “and not so much of that existential stuff.” They want the kid news, the funny stories, mindless trivia, daily effluvia.

I’ve not been much into blogging lately. I’ll try to do better, promise. Is anyone still out there? I remember back when I used to monitor my hit count daily. Ah, those were the days.

Did I mention how thankful I am for being off of Blogger now? And how grateful I am to Matthew Mullenweg for his hosting and brand spankin new blogging tool?

If you want a clean, fast, feature-filled blogging tool, WordPress has been great for me so far. Check it out

So I’m here in my new place. Thanks Matt!

Looks a lot like the old place, I know. I’m not one for snazzy design. What’s changed is mostly the WordPress under the hood. My load times will not be at the mercy of Blogger and my separate comment hosting service anymore. There are a lot of features around here that I don’t yet know how to exploit like RSS and trackback and pingback and just about anything other than simple typing and posting. I feel like I moved into a big house in a nice neighborhood and I don’t have any furniture except for a matress and some folding chairs. Heck, I haven’t even seen all the rooms yet.

And my hosting setup (Thanks again Matt!) is pretty cool. Instead of a simple guestbook, I’ll have a forum. And once I figure out what to do with that, it’ll be loads of fun.

I’ve lost all previous comments, but hey, maybe you’ll help me get a whole bunch of new ones.

There’s still a lot to do around here. Forgive the mess. Come back often.