Category: Uncategorized

Ahh! Spam, Your Killing Me!

digitaleagle Blogging, Uncategorized, Wordpress Leave a comment

After moving my blog, one of the problems is SPAM.  And, it seems like it is getting worse.  I get all kinds of spam comments, some advertising various things like iPhones and worse, but the most annoying are these unreadable ones.  These are like random letters or like someone just slid their hand across the keyboard.

Akismet

On WordPress.com, they offer Akismet as a spam filter.  It seemed to do a decent job, and now that I see what happens without it, I realize that I took it for granted.  What I didn’t realize was that it was a service.  The plugin came preinstalled on my new website, but to activate it, I had to sign up for an account on the Akismet site.

I have been reluctant to sign up because I am not sure that I want yet another service.  The cost would probably be minimal if not free, but my profits are minimal if not none.

GASP

A little search for an Akismet alternative turned up iBlogZone’s article about GASP.  GASP stands for Growmap Anti Spambot, and you can read more about it on the WordPress Plugin Site.

I like this option because it isn’t a service.  From what I can tell, it adds a few features to the form that will trick spambots.  First, it looks like it adds a checkbox via Javascript.  Because spambots don’t care about running Javascript, they will not be able to check the box and therefore not be able to comment.  Also, it adds a hidden field that a human would not be able to populate.  The spambot will not realize it is hidden, and that is a dead giveaway.

So, we’ll see how this option goes.

Solve Media

Another option that looked very interesting was Solve Media.  This idea is pretty cool.  They take a problem and end up making money off of it!

I read about it at iBlogZone’s article.  The idea is that you put a Captcha on your comment form.  In order to comment, you have to type the letters from the image, and they are designed so that a spambot could not decipher them.  The cool part about this implementation is that they incorporate an advertisement into it so that you earn money at the same time.

I think I am going to hold off on this option for now.  It is another service after all, and I don’t have enough legitimate comments at this point.

Fixing Issues with Android ADT Plugin

digitaleagle Eclipse, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I have been having trouble using my Android Development Tools ever since I upgraded my Eclipse.  Here is what I went through:

Some possibilities:

First, I tried to uninstall the plugin, and that was quite challenging.  I finally found this article that explains how to do it.

  • Go to the Help > About Eclipse dialog
  • Click the “Installation Details” button
  • Click on the plugin in the list on the first tab.  (You have to do each Android plugin individually)
  • Click the Uninstall button at the bottom of the screen
  • Click finish in the next dialog
  • Once uninstalled, I clicked “Not Now” to repeat the process without rebooting.  After uninstalling all the Android plugins, I clicked the “Restart Now” button.

Next, I opened the Error Log view with Window > Show View > Error Log.  I clicked on the Clear Log Viewer so that I could see only the new messages.  Then, I installed just the first Android plugin from the Update Site.

When the plugin install opened the restart dialog, I still didn’t see any messages in my Error Log view.  So, I just clicked “Restart Now”.  Even after the restart, I didn’t see any messages relating to the install.  Doesn’t make sense!

So, let’s try the permission thing.  I am copying the security over to make the eclipse directory accessible to everyone:

sudo chmod g=u -R /usr/lib/eclipse
sudo chmod o=u -R /usr/lib/eclipse

Note, I found the chmod command option to copy the permissions from a PDF that Google turned up.

After that, it worked!  So, I guess it really was a security issue.  I can see the DDMS option in the Preferences and the DDMS Perspective can be opened from the Window menu.

Setting up Google Custom Search

digitaleagle Blogging, Google Search, Uncategorized Leave a comment

The other day, I was trying to create a Custom Search for all of my blogs.  I had trouble getting it to work.  It wouldn’t save my URLs and therefore wouldn’t return any results.

I finally found a thread showing that you leave the protocol (http://) off when you enter the URLs.  So, my settings look like this:

URLs on Google Custom Search

One of the things that I don’t like about the search is that I don’t seem to have control over the ads on the page.  I don’t like the big section of ads before you see the search results.  That seems like it would be slightly annoying side for the users, but that’s just my thought.

Example Search Results Page from My Site

Still, it seems like it works well though.  All in all, I am happy with it so far.

Please comment any thoughts you have.

Resources

Tips for Moving a Blog

digitaleagle Blogging, Uncategorized Leave a comment

Through the past month or so, I have been working to move my blogs from WordPress.com’s free service to a Lunarpages website.  In doing that, I did a little search for tips on getting my readers and all to move over to the new one.  Here are some of the things that I found.

I found some helpful tips on this site:

MommaBlogga: Safely Move Your Blog (eMoms Group Research Project)

I really liked the “evaluate why you want to change” section.  I moved my blog because I don’t own and I can’t control my previous URL.

The other thing I learned was to use 301 redirects.  I see you can do that on WordPress.com, but it is considered an “upgrade”.  The instructions are here.  This blocking search engines idea might be a good option.

If you have any ideas, please comment below.

Fun Fact: When Will IE6 Be Gone?

digitaleagle Fun Fact, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I ran across this article on Engadget:

Microsoft kicks off effort to rid the world of Internet Explorer 6

I have a great suggestion — change their slogan from “Friends don’t let friends use Internet Explorer 6” to like my shirt: “Friends don’t let friends use Windows!”  That will get rid of IE6!  Just kidding…

In all seriousness, I can’t help but wonder if delivering the browser with the OS has caused most of this issue.  On top of that, new releases of Windows haven’t been as frequent as they could have been, and users didn’t have compelling reasons to upgrade.

Maybe one thing that might help is to finish the HTML 5 specification and give the users a compelling reason to upgrade their browser!

Linux Client for WordPress

digitaleagle Blogging, Uncategorized, Wordpress Leave a comment

Now that I have WordPress setup on a separate website, I am ready to attempt to use another program for writing the posts.  Here is my first attempt at finding such a program.

Options from Ubuntu Software Center:

In order to use these, I did have to go to the settings on my blogs and enable the XML-RPC feature.  In the admin tool, I went to Settings > Writing.  Under Remote Publishing, there is a setting for it.

Blog Entry Poster worked pretty easily once I got the RPC enabled.  Drivel was a little more difficult, but I found a post that helped.  I just had to use MoveableType.

I think I like QTM the best out of the three.  One feature I like is that it supports multiple accounts/blogs:

The accounts window in QTM

Another feature I like is that you can save/upload it as a draft.  So, what I will probably do is write and complete most of the post from QTM.  Then, I will go back and proof it online in WordPress.

QTM does seem to support adding images although, I don’t think I have tried it yet.  It doesn’t seem to support WYSIWYG editing though.  That isn’t that big of a deal for me with simple posts.  It does have a preview button.

Help! Maintenance Mode in WordPress

digitaleagle Blogging, How To, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized, Wordpress Leave a comment

I got a little scare last night when I was updating one of my plugins in WordPress.  I got a little click-happy, and I think I didn’t let the page finish loading when I told it to install the update.

Anyway, I went to the front page, and I got a message like this: “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.”  Thankfully, I found the solution here:

WordPress Forums: [resolved] Blog now stuck in maintenance mode

The solution is to delete a .maintenance file in the root directory of my WordPress installation.  I use nautilus for my FTP connection to the website.  Because the file begins with “.”, it is hidden by default.  You can hit Ctrl + H to show the hidden files, and then I could delete the file.

Fedora and Pixar

digitaleagle Fedora, Great Links, Interesting Articles, Uncategorized Leave a comment

While catching up on blogs, I noticed that Paul mentioned he saw Pixar was using Fedora with Toy Story. You can read is posts here and here.

I think it is cool to see Linux used in real world applications. Sometimes it seems like Linux just gets pushed off as a hobbyist tool. In the PeopleSoft world, Linux isn’t an option for the developer’s desktop. Here recently, I have been working with SQL Server installations on Windows servers even for the server side. I feel like a loner as a PeopleSoft developer who uses Linux.  But, Linux has been good to me, as I am sure it has been to Pixar.

On a side note, I went poking around the Internet to see if I could find any more information. I did see that Meta Headers seems to show that Pixar uses Fedora for their web server: “The Pixar.com Server powered by Apache 2.0.49 (Fedora) webserver.” Other than that, I didn’t see anything else related.

So, let me add my two cents to the blogosphere: Good Job Fedora.  Good Job Pixar.