On a lighter note, Apple is threatening it’s iPod owning users over a bit of software that lets you download your music off your iPod. They really didn’t have a choice, it was the big bad music corporations guiding their hand! Still, I love the simple work-around 🙂
Holding Your Breath?
Who else stayed up late watching the US election commentary and watched the non news unravel?
As time passes it looks more likely that Bush will win again and that has serious implications for the left, or perhaps for American society as a whole. Who likes Kerry anyway?
At least we can probably look forward to seeing ol’ Bill in the Whitehouse again. Cigar wielding interms beware.
What if Bush Wins?
On another matter, no doubt, the plight of Margaret Hassan has been largely forgotten now as well. I heard her sister speak and plead with her kidnappers, and it’s heart wrenching.
Later Kerry concedes defeat (5 minutes ago!). Well George, you’ve got a tough job ahead of you – a huge defecit, looming recession, and war in Iraq. Good Luck.
Kerry ended his quest, concluding one of the most expensive and bitterly contested races on record, with a call to the president shortly after 11 a.m. EST, according to two officials familiar with the conversation.
New for GIMP 2.2
Carol Spears looks at what’s new in GIMP 2.2! Lots of screenshots and a section dedicated to the GIMP Animation Plugin.
Gimp Script Writing, Script-fu and Python
Although you can write plugins for the GIMP in several languages, the most commonly used one is Scrript-fu. Here’s a tutorial explaining how to write a Script-fu plugin for Gimp 1.1.24, so it may be a little out of date. TBH, Script-fu scares me.. too many lists and lisp orientated! *shudder*
Another more palitable method would be using Gimp-Python to write plugins. I’ve been looking for an excuse to learn Python for ages now so this may be my entry into that world! I could certainly speed up my workflow with some automation!
Kitten's Spaminator
I’ve just installed Kitten’s Spaminator on this site. Go into your Plugins page and activate
it there.
Kitten’s plugin “combines the best of Tar Pit & Three Strikes” as she says on her blog. It’s a great idea, scoring comments based on spam words and links. Unfortunately there’s a bug in the plugin running on her site so I can’t comment on her blog. Kitten – please change $this->strike_cnt = 10; to $this->strike_cnt = 0;
All comments get trapped otherwise!
I’m playing around with the rules, I added a check on the URL, the plugin goes through all the rules regardless of wether referer and link count checks return true or not. It’s fairly benign unless you actively teach WordPress about your comment spam. Next time you get spam copy the URL, first 3 number from the IP, and email into your spam words textarea in Options->discussion. This post will probably be updated throughout the day.
13:50 – if no email entered then automatically notch up one strike.
As this post will appear there, I won’t make a big deal of it, but WordPress development can be followed at WordPress Planet, an aggregator collecting posts from here and other WP developer’s sites!
IR In the Park
Inspired by the psuedo-IR tutorials I linked to yesterday I walked down by the Regional Park and took the following shots. Lots of post-processing in the GIMP, and none were handled the same. It’s amazing what can be squeezed out of night-shot mode of a Sony digital camera!
Paddy Power: Odds on the Election!
As of a few moments ago, these are the prices on both candidates in the US election from Paddypower.com:
| Selection | Prices |
|---|---|
| George W. Bush (Rep) | 4 – 7 |
| John Kerry (Dem) | 5 – 4 |
And, as we approach the election hour, here’s Bush showing his true colours, giving Just a one-fingered victory salute to you and the world!
Sunday Times Online.. reading tonight
I bought the paper yesterday but it’ll probably be easier for me to browse it online anyway. I find myself skimming articles and on paper that’s hard to do.
I blame the web. First we grew accustomed to banner ads and flashing gizmos flying out of our browsers, then to suck down all the content blogging creates every day we learnt to quickly scan titles, then along came css so we don’t have to even visit websites any more! Now I can quickly scan the Sunday Times, and I’m waiting for the RSS feeds.
And, pron, Jeremy Clarkson’s article on security at Westminister was great!
The BBC, for instance, is supremely well guarded. The security personnel are programmed to allow nobody in, at all, ever. And if you do make it to the electric revolving doors they will respond only if presented with a computerised photo ID.
To get round all this I simply enter the building every day through the post room.
WPMU Update – Paging Categories Works!
Yay! I finally got around to fixing it! I noticed a while back that paging of categories didn’t work, but then got swept off by some other problem before I could fix it. Anyway, it’s a simple fix to your wp-inst/.htaccess file. Open that file up in your favourite editor, and add the following after the first line:
RewriteRule ^category/(.*)/page/(.*)/ BASE/wp-inst/index.php?category_name=$1&paged=$2 [QSA]
Change “BASE” to wherever your installation lives, ie. http://domain/wpmu/ will have a BASE of “/wpmu”.
WordPress Discussion Options – limiting spam annoyances and problems
WordPress 1.3 has much better anti-spam features than previous releases. It’s still relatively simple however but despite the existence of third-party hacks and plugins to catch spam here’s how I configured my site:
- Disable email notifaction when comments are held for moderation
- Before a comment appears, the comment author must have a previously approved comment
- Hold comments if they have more than 1 link
- Fill the spam words textarea with words, urls, emails, IP address, etc that you want blocked.
You’ll catch just about all the spam that gets posted to your blog this way!
Later… Feck ya spammer! None of yer crap got through! 🙂