Your Schwartz is as big as mine!

Well, bigger actually. I looked, for the first time in a while, at the relative size of my MuNu blogroll and the one contained on this site. Why am I missing so much, and is there an update I can grab?

Closing Comments

Someone probably already told everyone about this, but meh, here it is again anyway.

I know there was an earlier post about closing old threads because of spam, and since I often get hammered by spam I was all for it but didn't know how. So I did some searching and found that it can be done either with little plugins/program thingies, or with a (blessidly) simple code.

By using the appropriate code you can control when the comments will close automatically:

Close comments for posts more than 21 days old.
MTCloseComments old="21"

Close comments for posts that are too old to appear on the main index.

MTCloseComments

Close comments for posts that are not on the front page and have been inactive for at least three days.

MTCloseComments inactive="3"

Close comments for posts at least 7 days old and inactive for three or more days.

MTCloseComments old="7" inactive="3"/center>

(Remember to ad the <'s and >'s to the tags)

I will admit that it has its drawbacks because I know I still have a few threads that get googled sometimes and people leave comments, but I'd personally rather loose the comments then deal with the spam. I'd call it a fair trade.

I found it here.

Show/Hide Comments Help

I've been trying to figure out how to show/hide comments on the main page and I'm trying to follow the Thingys & Doodads - III instructions but they are confusing me a bit. It says to copy and paste a bit chunk of code "between the tags in every page that you want to utilize the script" and my main question is 'What tags?'. Also, and I guess this one is directed towards Madfish because my sidebars are in different sub-templates, do I have to do something special in this case?

Either way, can someone help me figure this out, because I can't, and I'd like to get the roll down thing working (because lets face it, everything beyond my main template is a nightmare on my site, and I have no earthly idea how to fix it... and my motto is "if you can't fix it, hide it from prying eyes!").

Unveiling The Age Of Reason

Thanks to Pixy, I am now getting up and running at my new URL.

I did another redesign. What do you all think?

Take a look

Al-Munuvia?

I read this weekend in the NY Times that Qatar may put up for sale its wholly owned television news network, Al-Jazeera. For sale. The whole network which is internationally known for anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism.

Who's up for pitching in with me, forming an investment syndicate, and buying the whole thing? Can't you just see it: Al-Munuvia. Forget Google news, we'd be our own news channel. I bet we could get some kind of government loan, too.

How cool would that be? Who's in?

Email notifications

I'm not getting any email notifications of new comments. I had this problem once before, and Pixy fixed it.

How can I put latest comments on my blog? That would work for me too.

Referral Spam

Charles at LGF has found a source of the referral spam crapping up our awstats. Hopefully this information will facilitate the blocking of such hereinafter.

Blacklist Fun

Okey-doke. Can't make a comment on my own site. I've removed the following words:

Wellbutrin
Ritalin
pharmacist
amphetamines
birth-control pills
sedated

And I'm apparently still engaging in "questionable content." Anyone have any idea what my bad word is? Check it out:

The problem is, I'm not sure the drugs in question would go with my sleep disorder: Like the Ramones, I need to be you-know-what.

I've also considered hormones. Or getting a job.

Seriously, I'll check on that. Thanks.

So does anyone over than the overworked stud/god Pixy have any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong? I'll venture into the blacklist if I must, but I've heard too many horror stories of people getting lost in there, so I thought I'd post here first.

Any chance someone was overzealous with the blacklist?

I'm only posting here so I can be entry #1000

So does this happen to anybody else : something reminds you of a memory, and then you realize the memory is of a dream you had, not an actual experience?

Age of Reason?

I was considering making my blog more focused in it's approach, and I started so by featuring my buddy Ben in the header.

Would it be possible Pixy to rename my blog and move all content to a new url such as ageofreason.mu.nu with an automatic redirect from naproom.mu.nu to the new URL?

I was just thinking about it. I think the Age of Reason might be a cool blog name.

Tom

Trackback Spam

MT Hacks has a plug-in for disguising trackback URLs from spambots. Pixy, would this be worthwhile to try out as a group? Most of my spam is from trackbacks these days, and unless I'm wrong, I cannot get Conversation Killer to close all my older trackbacks.

Help get the Mu-nus back on Google News

Here is an opportunity to up the hits for us all. As some of you know, my site is listed as a source for Google News (ok, stop snickering....)

The catch is that Google News crawler-bot seems to think my site includes ALL mu.nu extensions. I know all of you would hate the traffic....

The crawler-bot is having a problem, though, with the MT format. I thought I fixed the problem by making each of the post headlines a hyperlink to the post archive page. It seems that they need the main page headline to be a link to the post archive, but the archive page post headline must not be a link. Here's part of the e-mail from Google News:

we found the reason why our system may not crawl some your articles because your articles' headlines are still active links on the article page. If it is feasible, we recommend making the article headline inactive on the article page but not on the hubpage.

Little help, please.

Question about XP SP2 and wireless

I have a question for the more geek inclined among us.

I'm running a D-Link wireless network at home (802.11g cards and and 802.11b WAP), and XP (both Pro and Home) on three different CPU's. When I installed SP2 on my machine last year, the wireless connection went south. The only fixes I could come up with were to either disable WEP or uninstall SP2.

Bye-bye SP2! WEP isn't the greatest, but all I have to do is make my network less vulnerable than the one my neighbor is running with no encryption. Heh.

Anyhoo...

The gf just bought a new CPU and it's sweet (I'll be blogging about it later on, but for those who can't wait: BTX), and it came with XP Home w/ SP2 pre-installed. Guess what? All we can connect to is the no-encryption neighbor's connection!

Has anyone run across a fix for this apparent SP2/WEP incompatability?

BTW: The first person who tells me to get a fucking Mac will be visited late at night by my rats.

UPDATE: Thank you to those who responded! It seems we have a fix. I contacted the card/router manufacturer (D-Link) and spoke with a tech who was better than most of those I have to deal with (and as Mr. Computer Guy at work, I have to deal with a lot). The fix was to not let Windows configure my wireless network, and to let the D-Link configuration tool do that for me. One minor glitch is it won't connect on power on; the gf has to go into the utility and rescan for all of the available wireless networks, then select ours. After that, it seems to be fine and she can live with that. BTW, we're both running Zone Alarm (I've got the Pro version, she has the freeware version) as well as the hardware firewall on the router.

Next step is to install SP2 on my machine sometime this weekend.

Whose Munuversary Is It?

It's mine! Yay! Thanky to everyone in Munuviana, you're awesome! You've all been so nice to me in the past year, and it's been a delight to be on the same blogroll with you!

Un-ban a Word, Please

I don't want "sociali*t" banned. I seriously don't. I live in a sociali*t country and often use the word. (I would write the word, but it's already been banned, and I hate the MT banning so much I don't go near the thing).

I don't want to think that any kind of political slant in any direction is harboring what words can or cannot be used in the comments. I don't want anyone else's politics deciding what can and cannot be posted in my comments, regardless of whether or not I agree with them. Seriously, it really pisses me off. Can it be unbanned for Mu.nu please?

Memories...

I've ordered another gig of memory for the Munuserver, which should make it happier. (And a happy Munuserver means a happy Pixy. Or a less unhappy Pixy, anyway.)

There'll be a 15-minute or so outage when this happens; I don't have an exact time yet.

Update: Well, you can stop waiting for the outage, kids, 'cause that was it. Now tell me that things are much faster. :)

Sir Pixy, do you need a hand?

The line is getting long at Ellis Island. Though I am not the wizard you are I can follow a sheet of instructions with 78% accuracy. If you'd like, I'd be happy to take over the upsetting setting up of new blogs.

Need a hand?

Vote for Munuvians!

In our quest for world domination, there is a new poll involving several Munuvians.

It's vote for your favorite Israeli/Jewish bloggers. Here's the Munuvians up for it and where to vote for them:

DFMoore : Best Politics, Current Affairs, and Academia Blog (Group B)
Willow Tree : Best Personal Blog (Group B)
Rishon Rishon : Best Jewish Culture Blog (Group A)
Rishon Rishon : Best New Blog (Group B)
Rishon Rishon : Best Overall Blog (Group B)

This is a multi-stage award thing and this is the first round. so vote now and vote later. With our numbers we should be able to make sure that all of our brethren make it at least to the next round!

(p.s. I know that Jen nominated me, so thanks! Also, if I accidentally missed anybody, please let me know!)

For those geeks among us

Okie dokie --- here is the deal. I cannot access hotmail or gmail via the web. All I ever get are 404 pages. I have effectively set it up so I can check the hotmail account(s) in outlook express. I attempted to set gmail up to check through outlook express as well, but it continually was asking me if my name and password were correct and never, ever connected. Moona, seeking to assist, installed the gmail autochecker, which does check for new email from time to time, but always returns with "cannot log into mailbox - unknown trust provider." This is not a new situation with my DSL connection, as the hotmail problem was occurring when I was still using the cable connection prior to the office move. After I got my gmail account, I discovered the same problem existed. At that time, I just waited until I got home to check it. As I discussed on my site today, however, I am unable to check anything via dialup without tying up my business line.

I thought it might be a firewall problem, and disengaged firewall protection. I was still unable to successfully connect with gmail.

Anyone have any other thoughts? It sure would be nice to be able to connect with gmail via the web.

Trackback Spam

Here's something new that I just received:

A new TrackBack ping has been sent to your weblog, on the entry 39746 (Ah, My High School Memories...).

IP Address: 67.43.14.2
URL: http://www.couture-handbags.com/
Title: Coach Handbags
Weblog: Prada Handbags

Excerpt:
I blog too and it's like really difficult when people aren't serious. So, i've spent more time promoting our prada handbags and designer handbag site. Coach Handbags. Check it if you want if not, i'll see ...

Removed in Blacklist and got this:

Entry rebuild: FAILED - Writing to '/home/pixymisa/www/old/Archives/blog/this_is_my_blog.i.new' failed: Opening local file '/home/pixymisa/www/old/Archives/blog/this_is_my_blog.i.new' failed: Permission denied

Those Annoying Little Outages

THE PROBLEM

I expect most of you have noticed by now that lately the server has been experiencing brief outages a couple of times a day, for two or three minutes each time.

What's happening is this:

We get a burst of spam (evil spam!) hitting twenty to fifty blogs all at the same time.

The server fires up the necessary twenty-to-fifty CGI sessions to handle the spam.

These make twenty-to-fifty connections to the database.

The server runs out of memory, and starts "swapping". That is, it pushes some of the programs out to disk instead of trying to hold them all in memory. Unfortunately, disks are hundreds of times slower than memory, so this makes the machine grind to a halt.

There's an automatic monitoring process that checks every five minutes to see if the web server is working, and if it doesn't get a response, it restarts it. This also kills all the CGI programs trying to process the spam.

Suddenly everything is working again, although sometimes if the spam flood is particularly bad it will go through another cycle of this.

THE SOLUTION

There a couple of things that can be done to fix this.

1. Buy more memory. If the spam gets bad enough, we will still run out of memory, but it should improve things.
2. Move to MT3, which is more efficient in discarding spam and getting out of the way. We want to move to MT3 for many reasons, so I'll be setting everyone up with an MT3 login and blog so we can start the mass migration.
3. Use something like mod_perl. I haven't tried this, and I'll need to do some reading first, but this should speed things up and reduce the memory requirements for this sort of thing. A PHP application would offer the same benefit; I just need to find one that doesn't suck.
4. Close comments. Closing your old comments should help by preventing a lot of spam in the first place.
5. Hunt the bastards down and strangle them with their own network cables. Check with the police in your area first, as they may prefer to do this themselves.

There's inconvenient and then there's inconvenient

I really don't care if you will no longer be able to "socialist" in the comments, we've got to blacklist "cialis". This has gone beyond annoying.

Help!

Trying to go into Fantistico and got this message:

PHP script /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/x/fantastico/includes/enc_restrictions.inc.php is protected by SourceGuardian and requires file ixed.lin.4.3.10.pxp. Please read SourceGuardian protected scripts manual.

Anyone else?

Screw the spammers

Google has launched an anti-spammer initiative with the "nofollow" anchor tag reference. MT details here. Can we implement this wonderful little doohicky here in Munuviana?

Blogroll Question

I have noticed some differences in blogrolls throughout mu.nu, for example my url is CombatArms.mu.nu but my site name is SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse. On the majority of Mu.Nu blogrolls I appear as combat arms, but on some I appear as SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse. I have also noticed some others that appear the same way Delftsman/Emigre With a Digital Clue Bat etc.

Is this something that the individual bloggers are doing or is there some way to standardize it?

SlagleRock Out!

On tags

Now that Technorati is making use of tags, you may want to use them on each post. I have them used on my posts by using the categories - here's the code you need to add

<a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/<$MTEntryCategory$>" rel="<$MTEntryCategory$>">Related Links</a>

Hitmaps

Have you seen this? I think they're really cool. If you could get a free license, would you consider getting one for Munuviana?

Newbie Question

I've noticed that all the MuNu blogs (in the interest of personal style of course) display the blogroll differently. I just switched to a pull-down munu to make the sidebar a bit more minimalistic;-)

I'm not familiar with all the blogs...and don't know how many I'm missing to update the list in the "Thingies Pull-Down Menu" entry. Does anyone have a current script for the pull-down menu that I can paste into my blogroll? Once I get current, then I will update manually of course.

technical question

I'm testing a new PDA blogging tool that's compatible with Movable Type and during the setup it's asking for the "CGI-BIN Path" among other things. The FAQ is quite helpful, but directs me to the admin pages of MT, which I don't have access to. So some questions, maybe y'all can help or offer ideas.

1. Our web server would be "blog.mu.nu", correct?

2. Does each blog have it's own CGI-BIN Path, or do we all share one?

3. Either way, what's it called?

Thanks,
Ted (aka Rocket Jones).

New Spam Tactic Warning

I just got an interesting piece of comment spam. I believe it is designed as a fishing expedition. Once you respond they know that their garbage is getting through. The text of the comment reads

Hi, it's really good weblog, where do You get blogengine?

Overzealous MT

Ummm, what's up with MT Blacklist not allowing trackbacks (on occasion)?

Gravatar

So, this whole Gravatar thing really looks cool, but ummm, me getting the info pasted into my blog properly? Start laughing.

Help anyone?

Gravatar MT Info

Not Directly Related To Spam

I've updated the firewall on the Munuserver.

It should be allowing all the usual stuff to get through, but if anything has suddenly stopped working, let me know.

Fighting spam

The Six Apart team put together a guide to fighting comment spam; Joe at Winds of Change has even more ideas on the topic. Personally the shutting old comments after 30 days approach has worked wonders, but at a cost of missing legitimate comments. Joe has the ultimate solution:

Personally, I'm surprised all that in-your-face porn, drugs, etc. hasn't yet been declared "un-Islamic" and a fatwa issued for the deaths of those involved. It would be the best publicity Osama et. al. could ever hope for, and a problem caused by a small circle of bad actors would be very susceptible to this solution.

Whoops!

Sorry about the comments, folks. Bad case of brain-fade on my part. I need a holiday. :(

Multiple Author Weblogs Question

I'm trying to figure out how to script a way to have different avatars or little pictures show up on the main page of my blog. Example:

If I post Milo is next to my name.

If someone else posts maybe Opus would appear. Right now I have straight HTML on my end notes.

The script would select based on the author name of the poster. Anyone familiar with a plugin or coding that would do this?

New Weblog

How do I set up a new weblog? For a variety of reasons, I plan to take down my old one and I'd like to start something new. The login page says I can create one there, but I didn't see how.

Dave

Network Manglage

Okay, we were suffering some serious packet loss there for an hour or so. Just as a change from the incessant spam, crap floods, and hacking attempts.

Bah.

New Spam IP

BTW, I don't know if this helps, but the IP of my latest mega-spammer is:

69.50.175.146

If we can ban that, it would help enormously. (He/she uses lots of different actual addresses and names.)

I'm also more than willing to upgrade to the new MT to slow these sons of bitches down, for what that's worth.