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May 30, 2005
Another comment spam attack today.
There hasn't been one for a while now, but today there's been over 50 spam comments... and they're still trickling in. IP addresses are all different so no easy way to use MT Blacklist. As moderation is set for the comments then at least they're caught before reaching the main site.
Still its another annoyance....
Posted by weaver at 10:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 23, 2005
Trackbacks
Another spam attack, this time using trackbacks. 230 of the bloody things. All deleted now.
Trackbacks are a useful blog tool to find out who else is linking to articles in your blog. I've discovered they're also a way into your site for spammers. As a result, I'm even less convinced that Movable Type and this blog have a future together.
Time to be looking for a more secure alternative.
Posted by weaver at 07:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 17, 2005
'Broadsword calling Danny Boy'
I missed it the other night but Channel 4 ran a Top 100 war films of all times, as voted for by you.
I was surprised to note that I had seen (and could remember) about 75 of them, an unhealthily large number. Although no list is ever perfect (Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence and 12 O'clock High are missing) I think the poll got it just about right especially with the top 15, although The Great Escape ranks as my personal number 1.
Posted by weaver at 10:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 16, 2005
Internet Explorer 7 & Tabs
IE 7 is to have tabs. The Microsoft blog entry doesn't mention Firefox but the runaway success of Firefox must have something to do with Microsoft's decision.
Can only be good for the user.
Posted by weaver at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 15, 2005
The Shadow of the Wind
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafon. Ostensibly about the coming of age of Daniel, our young protagonist, this is a riveting story set in Barcelona during the dark days of Franco's rule in Spain. Its full of well drawn and colourful characters who really bring the book to life.
The initial thread, a father taking his son to the Cemetery of Lost Books for the boy to choose a book to keep alive for a generation, is a fascinating hook. Zafon weaves a mesmerising tale, full of intrigue and action.
Its the best fiction book I've read in the past couple of years. My one tiny criticism is that, during translation, some modern idioms have crept in that detract ever so slightly from the flow of the story.
This is a Richard & Judy Recommended book and rightly so. 5/5
Posted by weaver at 09:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Amelie
Amelie. Watched this one on DVD this weekend. Its a beautiful, poetic French language movie about a timid young woman, wonderfully played by Audrey Tatou. She tries to improve the lives of the people around her and in doing so finds meaning in her own life.
Full of quirky humour, its an enchanting film with a timeless quality, that draws you in and keeps you spellbound until the end. 9/10
Posted by weaver at 09:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Web developer extension
Out of the box, Firefox comes with a small footprint. Most of the bells and whistles you'd never use are not included, unlike IE. A whole industry has grown up producing 'extensions' for Firefox, giving you the option to add the bells and whistles you want.
One of my favourite extension is the web developer toolbar. For examining how web pages are constructed to debugging errors on my own, its invaluable. if you want to know more about web sites, then I recommended this Firefox extension.
Posted by weaver at 06:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 09, 2005
Clusty
Search engines claim to return many hits for each search term. Hands up if you've ever gone past the 1st page of results looking for the one you want. This is one of the weaknesses of search engines.
One approach to help target results at users is to use a technique called clustering. What this does is to group similar results in order to make the results more manageable. A fine example of this in action can be found at Clusty which works on the Google search returns.
In a sidebar on the left of the results if will offer some on-the-fly clustering results. Try it and see. I think it adds a useful new dimension to Google.
Posted by weaver at 11:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 08, 2005
Gallery Woes Resolved
Well, mainly resolved. The main problem was the table in the centre content div. It rendered fine in Firefox but due to some quirk/bug/feature of IE it spilled over into the right hand div and so pushed itself below both the left and right div.
Reducing the table size to 80% brought it back in line for 1024x768 browsers but not for 800x600 browsers. according to the web stats between 20-25% of visitors still use the lower resolution. Rather than hack them off, I further reduced the table size to 60% and it popped into place on the lower resolution as well.
I may revisit the gallery once the rest of the new style site is up and running to tidy up the comments bits, but for now, I'm just relieved that the gallery is functioning properly.
Posted by weaver at 09:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 04, 2005
Woes - A solution?
Could this IE bug be the cause of all my problems and could the ingenious solution offered here help me resolve the issue.
I'll have to wait until the weekend to try it out, but I'm starting to feel a bit more positive.
Posted by weaver at 10:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lincolnshire maps
Here's a page of links leading to old maps of Lincolnshire. Its fascinating to see how the area has developed over the past 300-350 years.
Posted by weaver at 10:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 02, 2005
Woe Woe and Thrice Woe
Grrhh..... One of the most frustrating days since I started maintaining this web. If you're the one who has followed this blog so far, you'll know I've spent the past few months trying to bring the site up to date using web standards. At the same time , I've been learning a new skillset that may prove useful in the future.
Well starting yesterday, the wheels started to come off. There are several features of the site that are dynamic; guestbook, forum, gallery and the diary to name a few. Out of 500 static pages, I've dealt with about 100, successfully converting them to the new style. At some stage I had to tackle the dynamic stuff. A bank holiday weekend seemed as good as any. Sum progress this weekend - nil.
Last night I tackled the gallery scripts and made some progress but it didn't render properly in IE. Most of today has been spent on the Guestbook. Again, I managed to get it to render correctly in Firefox but IE would just not play ball. I really hate CSS browser quirks. in addition, hacking or mangling someone else's scripts is no fun at the best of times but trying to understand how they intended their scripts to render cross browser is excruciating.
So, I've given up on the dynamic stuff for a bit and will go back to restyling the static pages, meanwhile doing a bit more research on browser quirks. Some days I should just stay in bed.
Posted by weaver at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 01, 2005
Dynamic Gallery Woes
After a peaceful day walking in the Peak District, I came back refreshed and determined to have a go at adapting one of the dynamic parts of the site, the photo gallery, to the new style. its something I've been meaning to do for a while but keep putting off because of it's relative complexity.
It should have been relatively easy. Add the new CSS and amend the gallery templates to take the new includes. Nothing ever works the way you want it to.Placing the includes files in the main body was a doddle as was adding the new CSS file. Amending the old css file was slightly more difficult because of the common elements, but was finally achieved.
Unfortunately the end result was unusable. the solution was 95% perfect but somewhere there is a misplaced div tag that's springing the gallery content out of its container and wreaking havoc with the sidebars. Examining the css printouts and the php for the main gallery page fails to show any obvious discrepancy. Aaarghhh.
Put everything back the way it was and have a few glasses of red and sleep on it. I'm sure it really simply and I'll find the elusive error tomorrow.
Posted by weaver at 11:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack