Scott T: The Blog

Decisions (part 2)

Posted Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 7:17pm by Scott
Tagged: this-site
2 comments

After all the input in response to my last post (*cough*), I've gone for the slightly easier option of throwing the 5 most recent tweets over on the right column. Still to-do is adding a relative time-stamp similar to what Twitter shows (I have the absolute time stored in the database - just need to display it) and some minor graphical fiddling since it doesn't look "right". It's also on a 1-hour update schedule so as to not upset the delicate balance of cpu-load in a shared-hosting situation so updates to twitter (and this blog rss feed) will be delayed by up to an hour rather than being manually tripped. I also fiddled around with the column contents so all the links are now over on the left, and the lack of white space now makes the site feel "busy". *sigh*

Nothing quite like procrastination...


Decisions

Posted Sat, May 23, 2009 at 11:57pm by Scott
Tagged: spam, this-site
No comments - Add one!

I've recently picked myself up a Twitter account, and am currently investigating options to display it on this site somewhere. Current options are either to place it in a box on either left or right column, however I'm contemplating the option to inline with my blog stream as well. Any thoughts on this? Obviously the RSS feed will only show blog updates, however a separate feed with Twitter updates could be added later down the track.

On another note, I've noticed the spam count for comments has basically stopped for the last few months - the only thing I can remember changing was locking comments on one blog post, although these were re-enabled a month ago. Not that I'm complaining =P


Has it really been 2 months?

Posted Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 12:14pm by Scott
Tagged: spam, this-site
1 comments

It's hard to believe it's been nearly two months since the last post (you thought I'd forgotten about this place didn't you :P ). There have been a few small updates over the past few months which have been mostly backend related to make my job look after this site easier. Some are yet to be uploaded (such as a little bit of Ajax) while others have (such as the ability to manually close commenting on certain posts). Oddly enough, since blocking comments for one post which appeared to attract spam, no other spam has hit the site for close to a month. Not that I'm complaining at all.

I do plan to do several smaller posts over the next week or two which outline what's happened since my last proper post (see my December update) since I prefer smaller posts (both quicker to write and read) which are around the 2 paragraph mark. Not full-on blogging but not micro-blogging either :)

Do other people share the same views? Should I be writing long/detailed posts or are 2-paragraph updates fine?


Not Dead Yet

Posted Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 8:28pm by Scott
Tagged: this-site, uni
2 comments

It's been mentioned I need to update. So I am. Or at least plan to do some updates over the next few weeks. The main thing is that I haven't forgotten about my blog so no-one has to go to the trouble of deleting my feed just yet :p

The uni holidays started when I last posted and the following day I went to a LAN party at a friends place - by the time 6pm turned up there would have been 15 or so of us there. After a long night gaming and socialising, the Wednesday was spent mostly as recovery.

The following week, however, my work placement position commenced. As such, I haven't had much time to do a lot and that's not likely to change at any time soon with another 15 or so weeks left to go. I have been working on a few different projects during this limited time as well which I will also reveal when ready :)


Drastic Measures

Posted Fri, May 02, 2008 at 9:40am by Scott
Tagged: spam, this-site
2 comments

I must say Akismet rules, however I've been getting a little bit of blog spam recently (10 per day every few days - up to about 160 in total now and they seem to like 7th Guest). And I'm sick of clearing the queue. So it's time for me to take some action.

I don't feel the need just yet (or the inclination with uni and other more pressing matters) to implement any form of CAPTCHA (of any sort, be it math, image or "english" based) so I've now blocked ALL spam comments that Akismet picks up such that they get immediately binned. No moderation. No spam queues. Nothing. So if anyone trips the spam filter, you'll need to try again with a less "spammy" comment.

Hopefully it doesn't start trying to block all comments :p


Spam Count 
  • 1906 spam comments
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