Comment Moderation Is In

Moderation of comments is now enabled on every blog on this server!
When someone posts a comment, you’ll receive the usual email with the comment, but at the end of the email will be a link to the Comment Moderation page for your blog.
From this page you can list:

  1. All comments posted in the past month.
  2. All Comments.
  3. New Comments.
  4. Deleted Comments.
  5. OK Comments.

Comments aren’t really deleted, just not displayed. I may add an option to “really delete” a comment eventually.
I’ve updated the comments on every blog here to “OK” status. This means all current comments will be displayed. You can change that status as you like from the backend.
Please leave a comment here, or mail me if you notice any bugs (There’s bound to be!), or have any feature requests.

Comment spam on blogs.linux.ie

Well done spammers, you finally discovered this site! I received 3 comment spams last night and others have been hit too. It was inevitable I suppose but now it’s time to take care of the problem.
There are so many methods of stopping this abuse of the site and they’ve been endlessly discussed in the blog world. I tried to pipe 2 of the spams to spamassassin but it doesn’t work too well unfortunately. Chances are, it won’t work when run as “nobody” either.
I’m opting for the method that keeps the CLUG and Webdev mailing lists free of spam: moderation. When someone posts a comment to your blog you will receive an email as normal with that comment, but it will also include a moderation link to validate or delete the spam. By default moderation will be turned on.
The next step would be a “registered user” mode so that regular visitors can register (with email validation) and post comments by-passing the moderation system.

This evening on the river…

I went into town this evening to take some photos.


I noticed this boat a few days ago when I parked my car down the road.


As I was taking the previous shot several fire engines and an ambulance raced up the quays towards Patricks St. they stopped on Patrick’s Bridget so I went to investigate.


Two firemen searched the river with a high-power lamp. It could have been a false alarm as they didn’t find anything or anyone.


Lots of people gathered to watch.


When they didn’t find anything at Patricks Street, they searched near the bus station. Again, without finding anything. I hope I don’t hear bad news tomorrow morning.


There’s a fire engine on the bridge and ambulance on the quay above.

It’s strange. When you have a camera and a tripod, people think you know what’s going on! At least half a dozen people asked me what happened, but I didn’t know any more than anyone else!

Here’s a tip when taking photos at night in a lit area: If you want to set the exposure for more than a second, then set the EV compensation down as low as possible. You’ll be able to capture the motion in the picture, and it’ll also reduce the glare off street lights or other light sources. The same effect can be achieved with a dark filter of course!

Close

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