Archive for October, 2006
Happy Halloween!
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
Arthur’s Deep in the Heart of Texas, Jeremiah’s The Cry, Adrienne’s Clown
Trackbacks: The Real Blog Spam Problem
Monday, October 30th, 2006If your WordPress blog is inundated with spam, try disabling Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)
in Options > Discussion.
My blog delightfully ran spam-free for years. Then suddenly, a tidal wave of comment spam hit. I installed Spam Karma, which prevented 100% of the comment spam from appearing on my blog.
However, Spam Karma was a reactionary solution. The comment spam still infiltrated WordPress and my database before Spam Karma could analyze and discard. My blog began to use more CPU cycles and my WordPress database swelled.
To be more pro-active in my fight against comment spam, I added a challenge & response
text field to verify those commenting were real humans. Spam still got through, even though my hack seemingly worked.
I enabled Users must be registered and logged in to comment
in WordPress. I hate registering for sites myself and didn’t want to implement this burden on my visitors. Comments to my entries decreased sharply and Spam Karma kept processing hundreds of comment spams a day.
No one on the WordPress support forum could give an explanation. Finally, I found a suggestion that the spam might be TrackBacks instead of comments. I disabled TrackBacks, turned Spam Karma off, left user registration on, and I have not had a single spam since.
TrackBacks are disabled on my blog forever because they’re unjustified technology and poorly conceived (by the geniuses at Six Apart, no less). User registration for commenting will be turned off and I will re-implement my challenge and response hack soon.
Why I Vote
Sunday, October 29th, 2006America is at a crisis state. The experiment of democracy is failing. I’m not being an alarmist, but I am unfortunately reactionary.
President Bush signed in two disturbing laws this month. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 allows the Presidency to suspend habeas corpus. Habeas corpus is a court preceeding that determines the legitimacy of a prisoner’s custody. The concept is prevent meaningless imprisonment by an overreaching government. The concept was so important that it’s mentioned in the United States Constitution.
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
— Article One, section nine
While the bill targets illegal immigrants, it gives the Presidency the power to declare anyone, even American citizens, “enemy combatants”. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 has undone a Constitutional declaration and gives power to one person.
This should offend Americans and the rest of the world, since it allows violation of the Third Geneva Convention, an international agreement on the rules of humane treatment, under the guise of presidental “interpretation”.
Oh yeah… the bill also legalized torture tactics. America is better than this. Torture is not the high ground that we should be walking, especially when we are walking on other nations’ soil.
It Gets Worse
Why does America have two elected representational bodies? Answer: To represent the interests of all Americans that allow the government to exist and to prevent dictators / kings / tyrants.
The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 allows the Presidency to declare martial law (when the military temporarily replaces representational government) anytime, anywhere in the United States in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.
Our own military can now be used to control the people it was created to defend at the will of one person.
One person now defines what is an insurection, who is an enemy, and how all Americans are represented when those definitions are changed from their historical precedents.
Look What’s Going Down
I am having difficulty restraining my hypothetical thoughts. I didn’t want to share them because I want this entry to be informative and encourage people to get involved politically. At the same time, I feel a hypothetical scenario is relevant, even if it hurts my argument, because it’s entirely possible under these two laws.
Imagine if President Bush possessed the power to and declared martial law over the entire country on 9/11. Imagine if rescue services were suspended under a martial law curfew in order to keep the situation worse than it was in order to extend his moment of absolute control. Imagine if the would-be dissenting Congressmen were declared enemy combatants, jailed indefinitely, tortured, and then convicted in a private, military court.
Would you have wished you were more politically active now that you lacked control over your government and your life?
Link: Apple Takes Larger Bite of Campus Market
Friday, October 27th, 2006Harvard Crimson: Apple Takes Larger Bite of Campus Market And who was the Apple Campus Rep working at the Harvard Technology Products Center during that quarter? You’re reading his blog.
I’m going to BarCamp LA-2
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006I’m going to BarCamp LA-2. Are you? Edit: I’m going to Boston this weekend, but email me if you want a Wallop invite.
I had never heard of BarCamp until I read about it on Boing Boing this morning. BarCamp LA-1 seemed like a blast and the whole BarCamp concept is spiffy.
Wallop, the social network that is going to eat MySpace for lunch, recently invited me as a mod developer or modder
. Since you have to present something if you attend BarCamp, I’m probably going to pimp Wallop and present some of the mods that I have been developing.
Where are the High Def Commercials?
Friday, October 20th, 2006So I’m watching Jay Leno in high definition, as I do*, and I started observing which TV commercials were broadcast in standard definition during HD shows. Many TV stations are in a two-decade long transition to digital and high definition broadcasts, so they switch between standard definition, 720 and 1080 HD content constantly.
I understand the cost involved with HD production, but there is no excuse for anything with a broadcast budget to be shot and delivered in standard definition in 2006. If you’re going to spend millions of dollars airing your commercial, you can spend a smidgen more to have it produced in HD.
High definition commercials stand out during commercial breaks, especially ones with that trippy surround-sound-through-stereo audio effect. Political ads, local businesses, and infomercials expectedly are not in high definition, while companies I associate with the “cutting edge” air HD commerci…
I interrupt this blog entry because K Fed is totally bombing on Leno right now and it’s distracting. What was I saying? Right.
For example, Apple’s Get A Mac commercials are shown in high definition. You can even download them in HD from the Apple website.
Ironically, almost every movie trailer and car commercial is shown in standard definition on high definition channels. These are visually impressive ads and many are shot on film. These companies are pulling an Onan (all the motions without the delivery). What’s the deal?
* Arthur & I have an old (but awesome) HDTV and a digital TV tuner, so we don’t pay any monthly fees, but still get about 20 basic channels.
Link: Overhead Tiffany
Thursday, October 19th, 2006Overheard At College: Tiffany’s Debut
Link: Bravia Paint
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006Sony Bravia: Paint: Follow up to the amazing Balls.
Thanks Andrienne!
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
Probably the cutest photo of Arthur & I. ever.
Eligiendo: DEMOCRACIA Screening
Sunday, October 15th, 2006The first phase of Grey Matters Media‘s documentary following the Nicaraguan presidential election will be screened in Managua, Nicaragua this week.
I drove Arthur to LAX this morning. He’s meeting up with Jess (the editor), Ana (the associate producer), and, of course, his lovely mom and grandmother. However, this executive producer has to stay home and tend to his internship. If you can’t make it to Managua, be sure to check out the Grey Matters website for a webstream on Friday.
