|Absolute Value|

Two pictures of my new toys. My Fender Rumble 15 and the beautiful starburst Squier Precision.

Blog spam is a problem that no blogging software seems to have solved. Comment spam is filling up the comment space in posts and prevents readers from seeing real comments.

Until now the spam has been simple comments being left for a post promoting online poker games, viagra and a multitude of other products. But today I was on the receiving end of a new type of spam: Trackbacks! A spammer has found a way to script the trackback submission procedure for Wordpress. This is very disturbing news. Now instead of having one area of weakness in comments, we have two. I have submitted a bug report to the wordpress team which is visible here.

Comments anyone

UPDATE
After submitting the bug, I got feedback on the bug saying that in version 1.5, trackbacks that have not already been approved are held for moderation. Problem Solved!

At 10:39am on the 6th of February 2004 I made my first tentative effort at a blog post. Starting on MovableType on my PC in South Africa, I typed the first words that started this all off. Grant gave me some server space and allowed my thoughts to progress over the web.

Now one year on, my posts are (hopefully) are a little better written, have less ranting and are of a better quality. Thank you to everyone who read my posts and much hatred to the poker loving spammers.

So as you can see this post was posted on the 6th of February 2005 at 10:39 which is the exact same time that my first post came live. Thanks for reading and keep visiting.

(There better be some comments here soon!)

This will probably only make sense if you live in the UK.

Bring forth the The Golden Chavalier!

A Geek Dinner? What a brilliant idea! Thanks must go out to Lee Wilkins for organizing last nights dinner at One Aldwych last night. Brilliant food and even better company.

We started off slowly as people started arriving, having a few drinks and generally getting to know everyone around. Frank Shaw was our guest and pretty much blew me away with his Tablet PC.

Once everyone had arrived (+/- 10) we started ordering our food and got down to serious Geek Talk. Julian from IT Dudes enthralled us with his fascination with “flat foods”. Needless to say his food for the evening was not flat.

After food, some more drinks and some coffee, I bid everyone farewell (this was the second lunch/dinner of the day and was feeling the effects :P) and made my way home. Thank you again to Lee for organizing and Frank for attending. Your company was well appreciated.

Following on from my post about Ubuntu Linux and their offer for free CDs, I have received my second batch of CDs. I have quite a few x86 CDs and some PowerPC CDs as well.

If anyone is interested in picking up a CD, you are more than welcome. I work in the West Kensington area in London. If you live or work nearby, let me know and we can get together for a CD!

From the Ubuntu Linux Website:

Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support.

The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.

These freedoms make Ubuntu fundamentally different from traditional proprietary software: not only are the tools you need available free of charge, you have the right to modify your software until it works the way you want it to.