Tech News and Rambling from a Surly Little Bastard…
Welp, USC lost to Missouri 38 to 31 in the last 5 minutes of the Independence Bowl, but by that point I was so far gone that I barely remember the final Miz touchdown…
Not to mention by that point I was getting cheered on for taking shots and talking to the insanely hot waitress I went to school with oh so many years ago…
We’ll see if I remember either in the morning…
I just read a comment that totally cracked me up for its randomness, yet truth:
Alas, I am on LInux, and am stuck with using bloglines in
There was a major flaw in the Akismet+ 2.x series that prevented SPAM comments from being successfully marked as legitimate (HAM). For some reason, I never seem to be able to properly type the empty() function (it always comes out “emtpy”). In any case, this is now fixed in version 2.4.
Also in the new version is some more code cleanup by branching out retention into its own function. The akismet_get_retention() function now checks the database for a retention setting and checks to make sure it’s valid, or uses the default. This just saves a good bit of repeated code in several other functions that utilize retention.
The best part of 2.4 (aside from the plugin actually working, of course) is the new updates-checking feature I added. If you switch it on in the Akismet Configuration panel, the plugin will automatically check for new versions of itself by hitting my server every 9 or so admin page loads.
If a new version is detected, a red error message will be displayed in the footer of the admin page you’re on letting you know. I may play with the positioning of this, as well as the invalid API key message over the next few versions, and adjust the timing, but this should be a nice feature.
I also plan on adding the ability to automatically update the existing plugin (assuming the directory is writeable by your web server) when a new version is detected. We’ll see how that goes.
The only other change in the 2.4 release was made to the “Activity Box” in your WordPress Dashboard. In addition to the amount of SPAM that has been blocked, it will now show you the amount of spam waiting in the queue and your retention setting. Unfortunately, the API hook needed for this action is only available in WordPress 2.0, so you won’t see anything if you’re still using version 1.5.
As of this release, I’ve also decided that this project has moved beyond the “oh, let’s make a minor change and see if this works” stage. I’ve now officially moved it to the Incoherent Code project, where you can now find the download on the Akismet+ page. More information is forthcoming, but check there from now on for the latest news. I will of course continue to post here whenever I release a new version, just because it’s a noteworthy use of my time.
Best of luck with the plugin, and let me know if you have any problems with this release!
Welp, I got it Tuesday night, which was an adventure in and of itself:
I left work about 4:30 to be home when the UPS guy came, since he usually shows up between 5 and 6. About 5:45, I had pretty much given up on him showing up, and checked the UPS tracking number once more.
Akk, it’s got an “Exception”! The details spit out some random gibberish about not having the correct Company or Customer Name on file…
So at this point, I’m wondering “Why did it take them 12 hours on the truck before they realized this? What does the driver of the truck know that the people scanning it onto the truck at the sorting depot didn’t?” So I call UPS and talk to one of their ever useless customer service reps, who basically told me there’s nothing they could do until it showed back up at the sorting facility and got scanned back in, so I should call back about 10:00.
Now, excuse me for continuing to wonder why in the hell their system can wirelessly update to let me know over the internet that there’s a problem, but the customer service rep who is in one of their corporate offices can’t tell me what exactly was wrong or provide any way of fixing the error until the package is scanned back into the system?
In any case, all ranting aside, I got my original question answered at about 6:45 - when the UPS driver showed up.
Apparently, the package had been shipped to the wrong address, but had my name on it. So he got over to the incorrect address and the people there were obviously not me. After scanning in the error, he looked at the name on the package and realized he knew where I lived - which is really just a sad statement about the amount of online shopping I do - and made a special trip back to deliver it before heading back to the sorting facility.
At this point, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re wondering “What the hell was so important?”. Well, it was my “little” Christmas present to myself:
Anybody got it yet?
I’d show you the whole thing, but the digital camera I was using wouldn’t auto-focus correctly… I guess the convenience of instant photos is a give and take.
I’ve already got everything loaded up, now it’s time to enjoy this puppy and settle in so I can track down some software (more coming on this in another post).
So if you’ll excuse me… I’ve got some Mac’in to do…
Hint Hint, Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge
Tom Simpson sent me an early Christmas present that I’ve really appreciated: an invite to the Wink beta program.
I wanted to give it a week for some actual testing before I wrote any kind of review, so here goes:
Thus far, Wink looks like it has a lot of potential. Not only can I “bookmark” links and tag them, a lot like del.icio.us, but at the same time I’m helping to contribute to the community-accessible search engine that is more relevent to what people like me are looking for.
I have seen a few random errors, mainly involving retrieving items based upon my tags, but they’ve all been fixed within a few short moments. (One was a PHP error about a function which did not exist. No doubt I simply caught them during an update.)
Unfortunately, one major problem I have with the service is their “Recently Discovered” list. In the list you can click an item to mark it as a “favorite” (ie: tag and bookmark). It throws a small Ajax popup that asks you to tag the item, then reloads the page as the item is added to your personal page. Unfortunately, during the tagging and reload process, many new “Recently Discovered” items can be added to this list, pushing the point you’d read to far down, even onto seperate pages.
Often times, even if not tagging anything, by the time you click over to view page 2 of the list, page 1 will have been replaced with new content, leaving you where you started: the same content that was on your page 1 is now page 2.
There’s also presently no way to filter what is displayed in this list. There have been times when I’ve seen 2 full pages of Chinese / Japanese / etc. characters which mean nothing to me. Coming up with some method for only displaying “English” results would be greatly appreciated.
Another request: Sort the “Recently Discovered” list by tags, since everything is added with some default tags as it’s pulled from various sources around the web.
Some more eventual additions that would be nice perks to increase useablility: a Firefox extension that pulls your Wink items into a tagged bookmarks list for easy access. An auto-tagging option would also be greatly appreciated, since a lot of things I’m tagging feature key tag words in their titles.
Other than that, I think Wink is off to a great start. I’ve used it for several tech-related searches (a plugin for Wordpress, a program for OS X, a GPO hack for Active Directory, etc.), and the accuracy has been astounding. I think it’s definitely in the running to replace Google for some of my typical tech-related searches.