The Mother of All Spamkillers

Cringely lays out another plan for stopping spam. He wants people to verify they’re legitimate by replying to a confirmation email the first time they email a new person. Sorry Bob, but it’s been done already, take a look at TMDA – Tagged Message Delivery Agent.
Personally I rely on Spam Assassin, and despite difficulties in the last few days, it keeps my inbox 99% spam free!

Nokia 7650 w/ video recorder

Peter has the scoop on this little Nokia video recorder app for the 7650. It’ll record up to 10 seconds of video! I haven’t installed it yet but it looks like I’ll have to sacrifice some Gameboy stuff. Oh well, I already have a decent Tetris clone!
Update! Woo! A 10 second video only occupies 94KB, and yes, it records sound too! Unfortunately it records in some proprietary format you need to download a player for so it may not work in Linux.

SpamAssassin 2.51

Note to self, install this at work on Monday: SpamAssassin 2.51 (via Dangerous Meta)
Over the last few days a lot more spam has got through to my inbox, and it seems to be after I installed version 2.50 of SA. This could be because I was still training the Bayesian filters. I also blacklisted *@artist-server.com as they were very persistent in spamming me. That helped, and putting the threshold down to 4.5 caught 2-3 spams. Today was better. Perhaps the Bayesian filters are working now!
On another related matter, I configured Goldmine to filter out spam, but it’s unusable. Goldmine has to create a new identity for each new email address so it’s easier to delete the email “online” before it’s downloaded. (If you knew Goldmine you’d know what I mean, it sucks!)

Template Editor Updated

The template editor has been updated! Here’s a list of changes:

  1. Everytime you edit any template file a backup is made before the file is changed. Up to 5 backups can be made and these are put into a FIFO queue.
  2. The display of “editable files” has changed. A list of backups now follows each file. If a backup exists you can click on the number to edit it. If you save the backup again it will overwrite the template, thus restoring the backup.
  3. If no changes are made to a file then it won’t be saved when you try to save it.

Be aware that these single file backups are alse backed up when you backup the whole template via the “Template Changer” page. When you restore a template backup from that page those backups will also be restored.

GoBoy – games, downloading and installing!

One of the comments on my GoBoy post of March 15th asks how to copy games over on to your Nokia 7650. The GoBoy homepage explains how using bluetooth or IR, but if that doesn’t work just mail the game to your phone! I recommend using Zipman though, each game is usually at least 1MB in size, but compress to less than 350KB.
Open your inbox then, select the game, and zipman will launch if it’s zipped, or GoBoy will (presumably) launch if it’s uncompressed.

Template Editor Updates Soon

The next version of b2template.php will be a major upgrade!
It’ll keep seperate backups of each file edited. It will also allow you to edit and restore old backups. Currently I’m thinking of having up to 5 backups for each file, with a FIFO queue to handle them. (brought me back to my demo days figuring out the for loop -> it’s the same technique as a scrolly-message!)
Watch this space!

Reporters blog the war in Iraq

This log of BBC reporter’s activities in Iraq is fascinating and frightening. (via Scripting News)

There can be few things as sickening as being woken from sleep by the banshee wail of a siren threatening an incoming missile. The air raid warnings which come long after dark, seem all the more menacing. The all clear comes only after anxious minutes of imagined explosions.

Salam’s ok and blogging today.