Mikey has his own cartoon!

Chris Muir Rocks!

Hop over to Day By Day or Mikey's place to see Chris's contribution to Mikey's recovery.

Drop a few coins in Mikey's paypal while you're at it.

More on Blacklists

1) So, when MT offers that "quick de-spam using blacklist" option, should I decline, or should I just be looking at the window it produces, to make sure there aren't any common words and phrases in it?

2) Someone has blacklisted the phrase "beaut," which makes it difficult for Jeff of Beautiful Atrocities to comment on my blog. Can someone help?

What's Wrong with Benefits?

Apparently, the string "benef" is bad in comments.

Sorry if this isn't the right place to bring these things up. It's hard to talk economics or pet food when you can't use the string "benef."

Does someone have the magic to fix this?

There goes the neighborhood

Lord Pixy, Fellow MuNuvians and MuNuvian sympathizers, we may now begin the next step in implementing the MuNuvian World Order.

Step 3.14159265 of the MuNuvian World Order is now complete, Conferate Yankee has successfully infiltrated the Main Stream Media, his interview can be seen here.

You can stop by and congratulate him here.

changing link colors within blockquotes

Hi all,

Thanks to those who assisted me with creating a different format for my blog blockquotes. One problem still persists (just one!): How can I change the links (standard, active, etc.) colors within my blockquotes? I ask b/c the background color I've chosen for my blockquotes now makes it difficult to see any links within them. I tried copying the link codes from the beginning of the stylesheet template, posting it within the blockquote code, and merely changing the color parameters. No dice.

Thanks in advance! :)

DNS Problems Weirding Me Out

Since I updated the DNS a couple of days ago, there have been a number of people who haven't been able to reach munu, or some sites on munu, or who have had intermittent access.

As far as I can tell, though, everything is set up correctly.

For example:

# dig blog.mu.nu

; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> blog.mu.nu
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 29759
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;blog.mu.nu. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
blog.mu.nu. 14400 IN A 69.72.215.227

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
blog.mu.nu. 86400 IN NS kei.mu.nu.
blog.mu.nu. 86400 IN NS yuri.mu.nu.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
kei.mu.nu. 14400 IN A 69.72.215.218
yuri.mu.nu. 14400 IN A 69.72.215.226

;; Query time: 845 msec
;; SERVER: 10.1.1.15#53(10.1.1.15)
;; WHEN: Fri Feb 24 14:08:05 2006
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 113

The DNS checker at squish.net (a wonderful tool), returns:

Results

50.0% of queries will be returned by 69.72.215.218 (ns1.mu.nu)

blog.mu.nu. 14400 IN A 69.72.215.227

50.0% of queries will be returned by 69.72.215.226 (ns2.mu.nu)

blog.mu.nu. 14400 IN A 69.72.215.227

Anyone out there who is DNS savvy, could you take a quick look at what you are seeing from your point of view and leave a comment. I think that the problem is due to flaky DNS caching servers being run by various ISPs, but I'd like to be sure.

Update: I thought I'd managed to duplicate the problem on my wireless internet, but before I could do any real diagnosis it started working again. Damn.

Sorry About The Fruitcakes

If you are getting a "fruitcake error" when trying to log in to Movable Type, or when adding a post or a comment or something, it's a problem relating to MySQL, and I'm working on it.

Update: It may be to do with the current spam-storm. It's all getting zapped, but that seems to be generating errors on MySQL, because Fluffy keeps killing the comment script while it is querying the database.

I've put something in place to prevent this from causing problems while I do a bit more digging.

Update: Found it. It was indeed the spam-storm. Over 100,000 spams in the past couple of hours, and no sign of letting up. Bleh.

All under control now.

Update: Currently clocking between 600 and 1000 spams per minute. All being rejected.

Update: Confirmed. Spammer smacked, errors stopped. Yay. Bed time.

Blockquote styles

Hey all....

I checked all the help topics at right, but I didn't see anything related to adding a bit of pizzazz to blockquotes. Like, for instance, changing the background color of a blockquote, the font, etc.

Any hints?

Trouble Accessing Site

All day today I have had difficulty signing on to Movable Type and even viewing MuNu sites (mine and others). I was able to sign on this morning, but for most of the day was unable to. Just got on now after trying time and time again. Any ideas why this happened and will it happen again? I didn't go to work today, so I don't know if it's just an issue with my home setup. Thanks!

Unusual Spam?

I've received five comments, all on old posts, this morning from someone/thing calling itself "Shari Smith," leaving "http://www.google.com" as a site name, and stuff like this in the actual comment body:

9ffd3bce74633d1b6f269fd6d32b79d6

I love the look of hexadecimal in the morning! No, seriously: What is this and how do I get rid of it, save by manual deletion? I obviously can't blacklist by site name, email addy, or comment text . . . or can I?

Anyone else have something like this occur?

Multiple authors

Pixy and/or others who know the answer:

I'm thinkin bout adding some contributors to my blog. If I just add an author or two with permission to post to my blog, that's cool, right? That won't affect anything else happening in Munuviana, I don't think.

Let me know if there is a special procedure for this.

Thanks =)

C-Panel? What is C-Panel?

Ooookay.

Some two and a half years ago Pixy telled me how to upload mp3s. I remember about the FTP an' all, but I have no idea where to send it. Those emails are lo-o-o-o-ng gone.

Back in September I tried to get info on where to send an mp3 of a nifty New Orleans-y ditty that I wanted to play on my website, but, for some reason, never got a response. Now that Mardi Gras is underway, I would like to have this music uploaded. I emailed Stephen Macklin (since he's posted a few podcasts) to ask him where to send the mp3.

He told to go to C-panel, type in my user name and password and go from there. I went to the URL he sent me and typed in my usual .mu.nu user name and password but couldn't get in. I then clicked on the "forgot your password?" button and was told that a new password would be emailed to me. Nope. No email has come.

Soooooooo, what is this "C-panel" thingie of which y'all speak and how do I get there? I see nothing in the sidebar about it. Thanks!

Blacklist Meltdown.

It would seem that someone has blacklisted the entire English language AGAIN. It would seem they have taken the extra precautionary step of blacklisting the entire alphabet as well since a test comment of just the letter "u" was blocked.

I don't think I have ever actually blacklisted anything precisely to prevent causing something like this. Does everyone understand that the blacklist is universal to all of Munuviana and not specific to their individual blogs? If you screw up, you screw us all.

Please use the blacklist with care and caution.

Stress Free Blogging

If you have a Troll That Will Not Die, do what I did.

Go all Malkin on them and just shut off your comments.

And then, and this is the best part, check your sitemeter or whatever and laugh your ass off as they hit every post trying to find a way to comment.

You'll really laugh hardest when you realize they don't see your email address in the sidebar.

Oh, and I found a handy little tool in Cpanel, which I'm sure you all know about, that actually blocks people from viewing your site. It won't help with shifting-IP trolls, but it will help with treacherous family members.

:)

Panties Destroyed, Part 2

Hey all,

Have been corresponding with the designer of my site, and she suggested that I ask if if when munu upgraded the PHP if they shut off global variables for php. I don't know what this means, but could somebody let me know?

I am still unable to get my site skins to work.

Or get any comments.

Ever so grateful.

Shameless Offer to Help MuNuers Increase Ego

A few of you may not know The Jawa's little super-sekret: any mu.nu post that I link will automatically be added to the Google News feed.

For instance, you write a post called Al Gore Wear's G-Strings. I link your post. Some one searches Google News wanting to know the latest about the inventor of the internet's panties. Voila, you've hooked a new reader.

It won't generate tons of traffic, but you might be able to piss some one off. And isn't that what blogging is really all about? The hate.

RSS Feed

Can anyone tell me where would I find my RSS Feed? Is it listed somewhere in the MT editing menu? Or is this something so simple I should already know this?

Mailman Weirdness

Hey Pixy,

ever since we moved to the new servers, Mailman has been behaving a bit oddly. I get notifications that there are posts I need to moderate, but when I go to the listserv, there's no message there. I get a reminder about 9 emails I need to moderate every day, but no messages. No archives to be found where I expect to find them. And so on.

Should I delete the list and recreate it, perhaps?

Blacklisting English

Something has gone awry with the blacklist. I seems somebody black-lilsted English. The entire language.

Objection!

I was alerted by a commenter that when she tried to post "How Funny!" to one of my entries, she was told this was objectionable content! She tried to say "Too Funny!" and that was objectionable! I went in and tried to say the same thing for a comment and got the same message.

This is new to me. Any ideas??

Trackbacks, yeah!

Hey Pix,

I don't know if someone's been working on the blacklist or what, but my blog is apparently, finally accepting trackbacks from BlahgSplat. So, thanks to who ever's been working on it (if someone indeed has been) =)

The Troll That Would Not Die

I have a troll that will not go away.

He's using proxies so he can't be banned.

I've set my close comments code to 1 day, and I just delete the ones he makes on the few open posts.

He thinks he's funny, making fun of my mother who has Alzheimer's Disease, with comments like this:

LOL the midnight foray with *my* gym teacher went real well, except eric's mom was there and we think she bumped her head too hard against the locker as Coach fucked her, cuz she can't remember it too well

It doesn't bother me that he's making fun of my mother, he's not saying anything that I haven't heard before in "Yo Mama" jokes.

But he is irritating.

So is there some other way to get rid of this turd that I don't know about?

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

Hey Pixy, I managed to exceed my bandwidth limit! I'll shut off the offending file, but can you fix the bandwidth issue?

Bloody Technorati

I gather from reading prior posts that perhaps Technorati's not favored around here, but I'm hoping for some advice.

In short, the stupid database thinks I haven't updated my mu.nu site in 86 days. That's obviously not true, and I can't seem to get the blasted thing to recognize that I have. I've got the auto ping configured properly according to their instructions (http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping) and I've got the blog claimed at their site perfectly.

The only thing that I can think of is that they're not happy with me listing the URL as 'countrypundit.mu.nu', because I've seen it on other links as 'www.countrypundit.mu.nu'. Can anyone help me with this? I bet it's simple and being overlooked by me.

Hey Pixy, Help...

Hey Pixy,

Any update on the trickle post?

Thanks!

Hey Pixy,

I need some help:

Can I get you to turn on the "Trickle Post" for my blog? From this Post.

Also, can you take a look at this post on EllisIsland?

Thanks much!

SR

RSS feeds in blogs? Howdidodee?

I'm not exactly down with this "RSS" contraption you darn kids are using these days.

::shakes finger::

I want to add a "newsfeed" that is auto-updated on both my MuNu blog and my Blogger blog.

I kinda like this one: http://www.humantraffickingsearch.net/

I tried to view their source code and just paste what they had but I guess it's not that easy.

Any idears?

Destroyed Panties

Hey, y'all.
I don't know what has happened to my blog.
My comments have trickled down to...none. I have made sure that my preferences are checked so that it should send comments to my inbox.
Also, none of my skins work anymore. We switched over, I think, and now they are NIL.
Can someone point me in the right direction?
Thanks.
My panties will be grateful.

Duh

I just figured out that if you upload a graphic that has an apostrophe in the file name, it will get uploaded but it won't show you the html for the result.

Don't know if this is common knowledge or not. Hopefully this little advice will serve as a warning.

MT Blacklist

Blacklist is becoming too restrictive again...

Terms not allowed include shut, BBC, CNN among others.

Commenters are not allowed to post links to web sites relevant to the discussion.

My question is how to access the blacklist to correct this... maybe a MT Blacklist for Dummies post?

Thanks in advance!

Comment Question

I just got an email from someone who wants to comment on an old blog post. It's not spam -- just a popular search topic (Joel Osteen and Larry King), but the post is from last June.

For some reason, it says that comments are not allowed on that post. I haven't disabled comments for any posts, and you can still comment on other posts on the blog. Is it just because the post is old? Is there a way I can let people keep commenting?

Thanks

Warren
View From the Pew

Nonprofit Ecommerce Bleg

I'm on the board of a non-profit corporation that runs our neighborhood swimming pool (which is, incidentally, shaped like the state of Texas). I'm designing the website, which I'm perfectly capable of doing, thanks to a couple years of blogging and tinkering around on the 'net.

However, I'm looking for some informed advice on the best way to implement an online commerce interface. Essentially, we would like to register members online, letting them use their credit card to pay the fee, and being able to track and pull reports on their registration information.

I've looked at active.com and www.paymentonline.com, and think something like that might work. However, if any of you wonderful MuNuvians have some experience or advice in this area, I would much appreciate a comment or email.

Thanks!