Doing some further testing on the new CMS. There should be a “MORE” link below if you’re viewing this from the front page. If you click on it, you’ll get the extended body text and as a treat I’ll throw in some of the things I’m doing behind the scenes. (more…)
Blog
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Spam Pounder
So the spam problem finally got to be a little overwhelming on our BendCable email account, and we opted in to use BendCable’s anti-spam software/service, Spam Pounder. But here’s the catch: you don’t actually get this anti-spam service on your regular bendcable.com email, no—instead they change your email to a bendbroadband.com address because that’s where they have the actual anti-spam software running. (In order to preserve your bendcable.com address—which you may have had for years, as we have, and don’t want it gone—they set up a forward that shunts everything from your bendcable.com address to the bendbroadband.com one.)
I mean, what the hell is that? Sure changing your email address is a solution for spam, but that’s not the point. I don’t have a lot of confidence in an ISP that can’t even set up spam filtering software on their main mail server, fer chrissakes.
And what the hell is with that name (“Spam Pounder”) and logo?? The images I’m associating with it are not good ones…
Now, having said all that, I will concede that so far it’s doing the job: almost all of the spam is now being caught, I’d give it a 98-99% effectiveness rating so far. The technology seems to work.
But why can’t BendCable integrate this into their main email server like everyone else?
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Flipping Switches
I’m flipping switches on my blog tonight, and going live with my new CMS I’m working on. Hopefully, all will work as planned; consider this entry a test message.
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Back with links
Okay, yes, so I didn’t write anything here last night, the first time since the beginning of the year that I missed a night. I actually felt a little guilty about that. Keeps me honest, I guess. Anyway, I’m back tonight with some links.
The first is Topix.net, courtesy of ongoing. On the front page, Topix appears to be a news site that aggregates the news from umpteen online sources. Ho-hum, Google News anyone? But the cool thing happens when you give it your zipcode to get local news; BAM! suddenly you get a page devoted to your city/region, and I have to say, the Bend, Oregon News page is one of the best local news pages I’ve seen online. Not just news, either; local weather, sports, resources, even Amazon bestsellers for Bend. Color me impressed.
And call me crazy, but I’d swear Topix was developed in PHP.
The next link is to BlogBinders, courtesy of Adam Curry. It’s a site/service that will turn your blog into a bound book. Interesting. I remember quite a while ago reading an article on blogging where this idea was suggested, and I thought it was eye-opening. I wonder, though, that a lot of blog entries revolve around linking to other sites—I can’t imagine this translates well to a book. Nor would I really want to read all my blog entries in book format—some are simply throw-away.
Third link is to A Californian’s Conception of the Continental United States, courtesy of Utterly Boring. I just thought this was funny.
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CMS Ranting
Gadgetopia has a good rant on content management that I’m just getting around to posting about. (CMS’s Should Manage Content, Not Display It)
My solution was to write a function library to make raw database calls to get everything out in a nice, big, nested PHP array. I essentially built an API for the CMS to make pulling content easy, but I do all the HTML processing in PHP, abandoning completely the display side of this CMS. I still use it for administration, workflow, etc. (which it excels at), but when PHP is such a fantastic, mature language, why reinvent the wheel?
I really don’t have anything to add to this, other than that this is largely why I favor developing my own PHP software rather than using pre-built systems—I have absolute control over the way the software works and I don’t have to rely on clunky, awkward front-end architecture and programming that I disagree with. Give me the data, and let me decide what to do with it.
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Cheese
I was looking at a cookbook over at my parents’ house this evening and came across a general primer on making cheese. I was under the impression that making cheese was a rather complicated procedure, but it turns out it’s not, really; only time-consuming.
Basically you separate milk into whey and curds, and then drain and age the curds until they become cheese. Well, okay, it’s slightly more complicated than that, but still.
While making cheese at home may seem like some to be some kind of insane throwback rustic hobby, it appeals to me in the same way that brewing beer or making wine does—it’s a way to recapture some of the old skills that seem to get lost sometimes in our mass-production-consumerism society. And, it’s reflective on the way I was raised; growing up in rural Central Oregon, I’m just more used to the idea of growing and raising your own food. Move along now.
Anyway, here’s a link to a Google search for “how to make cheese”.
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Writing tips
Here’s a good link for anyone who’s trying to be a writer: Learn Writing with Uncle Jim. It’s a series of posts on a message board on the topic of writing commercial novels, from a professional writer. It’s also an insane 27 pages long, with 21 (is that right? I counted twice…) posts per page. It’s good stuff, what I’ve read so far.
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Casting Call
From katu.com, Big-time movie director holding open casting call in Portland: Gus Van Sant is looking for people for his next movie:
…show up on Sunday, Feb. 29, for an open casting call for Portland writer-director Gus Van Sant’s latest movie, a story about rock ‘n’ roll in the Northwest grunge heyday.
The casting call will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. February 29 at the Child Services Center of the Portland Public Schools located at 531 S.E. 14th Avenue at Stark.
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Is Google Broken?
Elsewhere on this site I’ve stated that I love Google. That still mostly holds true, but there’s been some things about Google lately that are making me pause a bit.
The first concerns Google’s apparent abandonment of RSS for (exclusively) the still-incubating Atom syndication format/API. I won’t bother rehashing the situation here; if you want more details, check out this wonderfully recursive-ironic Google search for “google atom” to get all the gory details. To me this seems like a highly questionable/irresponsible move for Google to make, frankly rather surprising. Hopefully they’ll come to their senses over there.
The other thing deals with their AdWords program. I think it’s broken. Here’s the deal: We’ve been toying with AdWords to run ads on a new project we’re working on, to see how the system worked and if it would be worth it to ramp it up. (Side note: very cool. You can get a nice in-depth look at Google’s internal keyword rankings without ever putting any money down.) Well, it worked for a while, we were very impressed, but then suddenly, over the weekend sometime (I think), it stopped working.
Completely. Our ad never shows up on the exact same searches that it was previously showing up under before. In fact—and here’s the biggest clue that something is seriously broken—as you page through the results, the exact same ads that appeared on the first page of results appears on every subsequent page of results.
WTF?
This did not happen before and should not be happening now. Something is broken. Period. For at least a week. Could it have something to do with Google doubling their index to over 6 billion items (4 billion web pages)? Maybe.
Ideas?
