This blog gets about 1 spam comment a second. Not bad for an obscure blog with, as I write this, only one post open for comments. Akismet, the spam plugin does a great job of keeping the spam out, although recently a few more spam posts have been sneaking through for moderation, perhaps two a… Continue reading WordPress spam, Akismet and Cookies for Comments
Category: Metal (Technical)
MySQL, MariaDB and relative asymptotics
In 2002 I wrote a book on MySQL. At the time, I was working crazy fulltime hours for IOL and I was exhausted by the end of the process. I’ve been approached quite a few times since to write an update, or to write other related books, but have never had the energy, time or… Continue reading MySQL, MariaDB and relative asymptotics
Speed Comparison of South African Media Websites
I’ve noticed that each time I’ve visited IOL recently my browser takes a noticeable performance knock. Trying to browse it by opening lots of tabs, as I do with most sites I visit, is out of the question, and it’s probably the worst-performing site I have visited recently. I decided to run speed tests of… Continue reading Speed Comparison of South African Media Websites
You like my blog?
With my regularly updated blog jam-packed full of brilliant content, naturally it receives more compliments than Lady Gaga’s Twitter account. Happy New Year by the way. And Christmas. One fan went a bit overboard, submitting what seems to be every one of the compliments spammers regularly use to deceiver bloggers. Here’s the heartfelt comment: Thanks… Continue reading You like my blog?
Lessons from a server upgrade
Recently, the server hosting the Ethical Co-op website died, and needed to be replaced. It launched in 2005, running on a standard LAMP system. Since it was written in the days of PHP4, and was working well, I’d never upgraded it to PHP5. Everything was running smoothly on PHP4, but this had reached end of… Continue reading Lessons from a server upgrade
SOPA and moving from GoDaddy
Late last year I moved most of my domains that I was hosting with GoDaddy to a new registrar, and the rest will follow closer to expiry. For those who don’t know, in October, Lamar Smith, a US congressman, introduced a bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The bill is a hideous monstrosity… Continue reading SOPA and moving from GoDaddy
Northern Sotho Wikipedia now an official project, Afrikaans reaches 20 000 articles
Northern Sotho now has it’s own Wikipedia, becoming the 10th official South African language to do so. The project has been sitting for many years in the Incubator, where projects that aren’t yet ready are hosted and developed. It was a bit of an anomaly, as even though it was more active than many other… Continue reading Northern Sotho Wikipedia now an official project, Afrikaans reaches 20 000 articles
Becoming a morning person, take 2
I may live at the southern tip of Africa, but I’ve been on Hawaii time for a long time. For years my circadian rhythms have seen me going to sleep in the very early hours of the morning and waking up similarly late. Two months ago I recorded it and the average time I went… Continue reading Becoming a morning person, take 2
Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu and Mint
I run Ubuntu 10.10 on my primary machine, a now-aged Lenovo Y510. I used to upgrade the minute I could get my hands on a newer release, but the novelty has worn off, and I can’t spare the time these days to get my system back to how it should be, customising and/or fixing things,… Continue reading Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu and Mint
Faster online video
I don’t watch too many online videos – mainly because I’m impatient, and watching videos is…. just… so… slow… It’s not (just) that I’m counting the seconds but also that I get bored listening to people speak slowly, especially when they’re belabouring the point. Text is far preferable as I can race through text very… Continue reading Faster online video