Spam Karma 2 rocks! Have I said that already? Well, not in so few words…
But I just noticed something. I wrote a post last night with multiple references to my own blog–in this case, I refered to two other posts. The first reference correctly generated a pingback, but the second reference doesn’t seem to have been handled. SK2 didn’t log it as spam or a valid comment, and there is no pingback comment in the second post that I linked to. I’m going to disable SK2 for a minute while I post this article, to see if both pingbacks are done correctly, then I’ll contact dr Dave and let him know what I’ve found.
When I originally set up my blog, I installed Farook’s WPBlacklist plugin to help combat blog spam. Then, a few days ago I installed Spam Karma 2 in order to take care of issues that were possibly being caused/exacerbated by WP-Gatekeeper. Today while perusing the management interface for SK2, I discovered that it handles blacklisting as well. I chose to let SK2 handle blacklisting and disabled WPBlacklist because:
I want to use SK2 as my primary spam filter, and
SK2 doesn’t require manual BL updating, as WPBlacklist does.
SK2 can even update the RBL when spammed.
This is turning out to be a pretty spiffy plugin! I get grim satisfaction from looking over the “recent spam harvest” and seeing the blocked attempts.
siriradha is sending a box of books to the Modoc Hall/Java City OBCZ. Thanks, siriradha! These are being sent fourth class (media mail) from Colorado on Wednesday, 2005-08-31, so they might show up almost any time in September. (Media mail is handled whenever the post office feels like getting around to it, seem like.) As soon as they arrive, they will be journaled on the OBCZ bookshelf.
It was too hot to cook again on Friday night, so we went looking for a good Chinese restaurant in our new neighborhood. I think we may have found it–Eastern Empire on Howe near Fair Oaks Blvd. My wife and I ate lunch there a few days ago, and we thought the kids would like the food. It turns out that we were correct.
The sweet & sour pork, foil-wrapped chicken and pork chow mein were all big hits with the kids. My older daughter also liked the chicken with garlic sauce. My wife and I liked the lemon grass beef, but it’s not as good as that available at BoBo’s.
I found The Green Mile on the bookshelf at work a few days ago, just finished reading it late last night. I’ve never considered myself a Stephan King fan before because I always perceived him as a horror writer, a genre which doesn’t interest me in the slightest. But after reading this book, I started thinking about some of his other stories that I’ve read–Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (from Different Seasons), The Running Man (under the Richard Bachman psuedonym), and The Shining. Of these, only ‘The Shining’ really has much of a “horror” feel to it. I think I may have to pay a little more attention to this author, even if he is extremely popular–I hate following a fad, but in this case there may be a reason (other than marketing) for his wild popularity.
I’ve seen the movies based on all these books, except for ‘The Green Mile’. I read ‘Shawshank Redemption’ and ‘Running Man’ after seeing the movies, and liked both the movies and the books. I saw ‘The Shining’ after reading it, and was disappointed with the movie. This is almost always the case with me, regardless of author–as long as I haven’t read the books upon which they’re based, the movies stand well on their own, while the books add depth to the story once I get to read them. Because of this, I probably won’t see the movie rendition of ‘Green Mile’.
I read a post today on Nicholas’ blog which indicated that he was having trouble commenting on my site. I’ve had other commenting problems (1, 2) in the past which have been traced to my spam-blocker, WP-Gatekeeper. I haven’t spent any effort on the current problem, I’m just assuming that gatekeeper is at fault, so I disabled this plugin and installed Spam Karma 2 since Nicholas seems to be getting good results with it. I’m not sure what Joseph is using nowadays, but gatekeeper may be doing the trick for him–I found out a few days ago that he hand-rolled his crisp minimalist theme, and perhaps gatekeeper plays well with such a setup.
I’ll run with Spam Karma 2 for a while and see how it goes. I hate to think that people might have tried to post comments here, failed, and given up on this blog. I really have no idea how many people read the crap I post, but I know there are at least a few people out there with too much time on their hands. 😉
When I published my review of “Free” by Mike Comfort, I sent him an email letting him know about it. Imagine my surprise when a published artist took the time to write back, almost immediately! I can certainly accept a very small delay in shipping the CD, especially considering such a personal response.
The best thing in the email was the news that Mike is planning to release a new CD next month. The release is scheduled for September 23, to coincide with a show at La Salles in Chico, Calif. There’s a bit of information on La Salles’ calendar app, but I can’t seem to link directly to the show, or even to September–you’ll have to browse the calendar, select “September” on the pull-down list, then click the show link for “Thirst” on September 23rd.
More good news is that Mike is working on getting his CD into stores. I’m happy to support an artist directly–the prices are cheaper because there aren’t any bloodsuckers middlepeople between me and the artist, (except the postal service), hence the artist gets more of the money. However, there are two major problems with direct sales:
The artist has to spend time doing non-artistic things like producing the CD’s and filling orders. All the time spent on this comes at the expense of the art.
Nobody can jet down to the record store and pick up the CD right now. For some people, this may be a deciding factor. Other people may not trust PayPal, or whatever online payment system is employed, and avoid ordering via the web.
I think having the CD in stores would help promote the artist. I won’t be happy with the increased price, but you can’t have it all.
I stopped by Viking Hobby today and got to chatting with Mark about the top-rated games on the ‘Geek. Until today, I only knew how to find the rank of a particular game, and there’s no Internet access in the store, so I told him that I would check out the ‘Geek after work and see if I could find such a list. It turned out to be pretty easy. To save other folks the trouble, I’ve included a link to the highest-rated games on BoardGameGeek. I’ve printed out the first page (the top 29 games) of this list, so that Mark and Jess can keep it at the store for reference.
A couple of weeks ago, I read about Mike Comfort’s CD, titled “Free”, and ordered it. I received the CD yesterday and have been listening to it ever since. I’m happy to support a local (Chico, Calif.) artist, especially since his music is good. I have some more links in my earlier post for things like sample tracks.
I’ve got the whole album on my iPod right now, but the tracks that will stay on it are:
The guitar work and lyrics on “Beautiful” remind me of Jim Croce. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not what I’m in the mood for right now.
“Hit the Floor” has a lot of energy, but it almost sounds like something I’d hear in the soundtrack of one of my teenage daughters’ movies. If I can get over that mental association, I think I’ll really like this track.
The final track, “Someday + Hidden Track”, is a bit weird–It seems to be two separate songs glommed together into a single track. The songs are pretty different, so I’m not sure why this was done. I really like the first half, while the second half is jarringly different, so I’ll see if I can split this into separate tracks in iTunes. If I can pull that off, then there’ll be one more track living on my iPod.
Out of 14 (or 15) songs on this album, I didn’t find any that I disliked–every track was worth listening to, and I found 1/3 of them worthy of living on my iPod. There aren’t many artists that have such a high percentage of “keepers”. You’ve done well, Mike!
Back in October of 2004, Alicebirdand I set up an OBCZ in the coffee shop on the ground floor of our building. Things were pretty hectic, and I somehow managed to forget the email address I had associated with the OBCZ’s bookshelf, which I was hoping to use to register books that were dropped off without BCID’s. Well, I finally managed to dig up the email address, which is effectively the “username” one needs to log in. (I did keep track of the password at least!) So this evening I updated the bookshelf profile with the street address, hours of operation and a map link of the location.
There were also three unregistered books on the shelf: Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, The Dead of Jericho, and The Green Mile. I registered all 3 of them to the OBCZ. I’ve been wanting to read The Green Mile for some time, so I figured it was a sign that it was sitting on the bookshelf–I took the book home, journaled it, and started reading!
nyisutter used to keep a list of crossing zones, but had trouble maintaining it. The torch has been passed to pachydomo. I contacted him with our OBCZ info and he added it to the California OBCZ finder page. I still need to do a little more work to get this crossing zone set up as well as I would like, but it’s a lot better than it was!
I use this platform to share things that are of interest to me or things I'll want to reference later. Occasionally other people like these posts, hence "Shared Interests".
What might you find here?
Problems I've solved (mostly computer- or network related).
