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.

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 Here’s a tutorial explaining how to write a Script-fu plugin for Gimp 1.1.24, so it may be a little out of date.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!

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:

2004 US Presidential Elections
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!