Random burblings since 1999
So it seems that Blogger have a solution for their recently introduced layout problems.
This will stop Blogger adding those nasty <div clear:both> tags. Everything is explained in this post although I think they might have been better advised broadcasting it a bit further.
That other site I run has just hit a landmark, 300 members. Wow. It’s been a fun couple of years and I’m hoping the next couple will be even better (irons in fire, etc etc).
Now, I have to admit I feel slightly guilty* when I go on holiday as I would hate to deprive my dear reader of my nonsense carefully considered posts, so I’ve scheduled a few posts to be published whilst I’m away.
(Awww c’mon, you didn’t think I’d give you the post titles, did ya?)
Not got time to fix the miniblog (after Blogger started adding in extra code without being asked!) so Keep an eye on my del.icio.us account for the meantime. anyway…
And yes, the HaloScan is playing silly buggers, hassles installing a new database server I believe. Sorry.
Thankfully this is not an area I’ve had much experience in, so I’ve done a little Googling and come up with some interesting ideas and ways to handle referrer spam.
Firstly it helps to know if you are being hit hard by it, and for that you’ll need access to server logs or a basic statistics package for your website. If you start seeing odd names in your referrer logs and your bandwidth usage starts to skyrocket then read on.
Rather than waffle on at length I’ll quickly point you to a couple of articles, one short one “why are they doing it and what should we do about them?” and a more indepth article that also includes some proposals for handling referrer spam.
There is one simple way to handle referrer spam, that’s to block access to your site for the domain name that is being used. A lot of referrer spam will use sub-domains so blocking the top-level domain name handles all the sub-domains as well. For example:
If you are receiving refferer spam from naughty.example.com, bad.example.com, spammers.example.com and so on, then blocking “example.com” from accessing your site should block those other referrers.
Obviously the people behind referrer spam are aware of this and so use .com, .us, .tv and anything else they can get their hands on. For this reason, manually adding and blocking referrer spam sites is laborious, time-consuming and ultimately a losing battle.
However if, like me, you are only experiencing a small amount of referrer spam then here’s an article that explains how to create an “.htaccess” file to block referrer spam (scroll down to the “How to do this” section).
WordPress users try Referrer Karma (now running on this site), or bad behavior, and then anyone can use WannaBrowser to test if they are working.
So, hopefully I’ll be referrer spam free(ish) from here on out, ohh and if anyone gets a message along the lines of “Please click on the following link if you are not redirected automatically (sorry for the inconvenience)” then let me know.
I recently signed up for Odeo, the podcast service, and during the signup process I was greeted with the following message:
Having your subscriptions auto-magically downloaded to your computer is a big part of what Odeo is all about. For that to happen you need to have a copy of the Odeo Syncr. It’s only 6.5MB, and now is a good time to get it…
How times have changed.
“It’s only 6.5MB” it says and I found myself agreeing. Long gone are the days of waiting 20 minutes to download a 6.5MB file, more and more I find myself using web based services, Flickr, del.icio.us, blogrolling, Bloglines, Backpack, Ta-Da, audioscrobbler and so on.
Of them all I think blogrolling is still the one I use the most (several times a day as I use it on my own personal “start page”), which one do you use the most?
Almost 66 million people have downloaded the Firefox browser, and whilst I’m sure those stats can be manipulated (lies, damned lies…) it’s still an impressive number, and it’s one that keeps on rising.
I know I’ve been banging on about it for ages now, but evidence that it is being taken seriously can be gathered from the fact that there is a link to a story about it on the front page of the BBC News website, which follows on from articles in most of the American mainstream media.
The story states that 1 in 10 UK websites fail to work properly in Firefox, listing some examples:
I’m sure we could add many more to that list.
However there is one thing I’d just like to throw into this discussion, namely web standards. At present Firefox has the most compliant rendering engine of all the browsers (sharing that claim with Opera I believe) and THAT’S what can make a difference. If sites are designed to be compliant with the W3 specifications then they stand a much better chance of functioning properly across all browsers.
I wonder if the success of Firefox is just the long tail of the WaSP campaign?
Having recorded the TV Series of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy recently, and burned it onto DVD, I’d now like to make a copy of that DVD to give to a friend.
How do I do this easily? DVD Shrink?