all things me

After complaining about not updating my other sites, I finally found something new to add to TGWLSK: 3 new books I bought today; Green Mile, IT, and Firestarter. I’m going back tomorrow with a list of books I have, because I don’t have Desperation yet, for instance, and I saw it there (I’m desperate to get it, har har).

It was quite a lucky find today because Firestarter is a paiiin to find in the libraries (read: it doesn’t exist) and IT’s been quite difficult too. Now I have them! And I only have to wrap them in book plastic and finish the Cook I’m reading and I get to read them too!

I also placed an order on the Bachman Books.

I don’t use the JavaScript version of Alex King’s Since Last Visit hack/plugin because I don’t like to depend on JS. And I didn’t even get it working back when I tried it out

After keeping the comment referred to in my previous post I noticed that the targetted post was showing new comments. So, I added a requirement to the database query in function ak_new_comments: and comment_approved not like 'spam' making it say

if (isset($ak_last_visit)) {
 $last_visit = date(“Y-m-d H:i:s”, $ak_last_visit);
 $comment_date = $wpdb->get_var(“SELECT MAX(comment_date)”
 .”FROM $tablecomments ”
 .”WHERE comment_post_ID = ‘$post_id’ and comment_approved not like ‘spam’”
 );
 if ($comment_date > $last_visit) {
  echo $html;
 }
}

around line 178. No more ghost comments.

(Database studies came in handy, yet again.)

I got a genuine looking comment to my post on games suggesting a game site. It wasn’t exactly relevant but close enough. I checked the commenter’s referrer and even though it wasn’t from one of those disgusting gambling/medicine/loan sites it was a weird looking Google search. The spammer had searched for fitting keywords (puzzle and games) AND the string “leave a comment” which rang my alarm bells. I checked a few of the first links and found a similar comment (under a more suspicious name) on another site. You ain’t getting through here, buddy.

Shame on you!

Isn’t this nice. Spammers are visiting my site and leaving very kind comments.

Yeah, right.

It’s a great website of yours. I surfed by and found it very informative. Bookmarked and check you back in a while

Please don’t.

Best content I ever seen. Huge amounts of live feeds, high payouts. Realy cool.

Yup, exactly. Aren’t my live feeds and payouts really smashing?

Great site guys, please let me know if you are interested in exchanging links with us.

I’m a girl. Singular.

One of the email names is ‘otard’ — ‘retard’ more like it.

Oh, good laughs. Or not. I won’t even start on the grammar of these things!

[edit: Apr 4] I was baffled as to why I was getting comments every 10 seconds or so. Then I realized I had updated my WP files last night because I thought there was an error (which in fact was caused by a plugin) and had forgotten to do my thang (yes, thang) to the trackback file. Now, I did it. [/edit]

I’m a little tight on the money so unfortunately I won’t be able to keep this domain any longer….

It’s really sad, because I love web design and blogging, and I don’t know what else I can do online — or offline, to be honest! Maybe I’ll get one of those free accounts, like Blogger or whatever there are. I don’t even know!
Oh well, this is it. The domain won’t close right away though, but around April 15th. I’ll have to enjoy it to the fullest till then. Bah, at least I won’t have to delete those bloody spam comments anymore!

April fools!!

Why can’t the spammers even write correctly!?! I’m invited to check out some very “interesdting” stuff.

None of the spam gets through, so there’s really no point, now is there? What annoys me the most is that the comment IDs get so big! Last legitimate comment was number 2888 — now the number is definitely over 2900 — when in fact there are only 80 comments (wow, eighty) showing on the posts! Do the math.

I miss captcha soooo much. People, not Tom, did you have trouble having to write that short code before posting? Would you mind if I brought it back? I’m honestly ripping my hair here… Even that blacklisting thing won’t delete the posts anymore! They’re stored…! I don’t want them cluttering up my database because Spam Karma can already handle them without any need to compare to past comments. Sheesh.

I hate this essay!

Tom commented that he doesn’t like captcha images. Well, neither do I, but I hate spam more. Encouraged by the small amounts of spam going to Hades, I decided to remove the plugin. For the time being. Also, with the help of Paged Comment Editing and a little spam leftovers hack, spam management is much easier.

I tested out the Image Headlines plugin but it created such insane amounts of png files that I returned back to the trusty old TitleImages². It may not have the ability to wrap too long lines (and I shouldn’t even write that long titles), but it’s simple and effective.

(Oh yes, the title is a reference to the oldie and goodie Take That song Everything Changes. I’m a fan forever, and not afraid to tell.)

I love helping at the WP Forums, but replies like this make the smile stay on my face a while longer: It’s so quiet at work. Everyone’s probably having a vacation and I’m here sitting, venturing into the world of telecommunication cables…

It’s amazing how some people don’t seem to read what’s been written before they reply to a thread. Just check out this thread at the WP Forums, and see how this Deborah is trying to help… Also, Lorelle was being very helpful, too (she does reply to a lot of threads so I’m sure that was a temporary lapse).

Now my upgrade to WP1.5 “Strayhorn” is pretty much complete. Everything looks more or less the same, right? It was quite an ordeal, but not because of WP. The server decided to start acting up right when I was going to upgrade the database (corruption hazard, I’d guess) and then I had to go to the sauna and then watch 24. But, after wondering why my menu’s links aren’t clickable (an extra closing div), why the cool comment thing I did wouldn’t show up (there was a is_single inside the comment call function), checking that the site really works well table-less (I’m so proud of myself!), and activating Spam Karma and trackback moderating, I can try to relax for the night.

There are still things to do: I had “home-made” static pages which I have to change to pages and some plugins to activate. I also have to dig into the world of page templates and make the most of it because now my code is full of <?php if (is_whatever()) { ?> statements — very messy.
Of course I have to update Ami’s page, but it’s an earlier version of 1.5 so there’s not much to do.

It’s going to take some time to learn where everything is. Write and Manage are different things and I have to remember to modify the right file because of the theme system (great feature). I am going to hack that Dashboard away because it takes quite a while to load all the stuff it loads (feeds from several dev sites, I assume, plus the dev blog at WP home)

I love the is_ functions that are now properly a feature.

I gotta get to bed now.

[edit: 16th, 2005] I had to edit the login page because the font in the fields was GIGANTIC. Geez. I ain’t blind. [/edit]