Monthly Archive for June, 2008

[solved] Stop WordPress Spam Registrations

I’ll bet all of you out there have dealt with your fair share of spam. Everyone gets it, in their email, blog posts and lately even WordPress registrations! I have a tool for handling spam comments on my blog, but what do I do when I get 10’s to 100’s of spam user registrations on my blog with names and emails like BuyCheapMeds and FreeSoftwareDVDs@some-russian-website.ru?

Well, thank goodness the WordPress Extend site has so much to offer! After asking in the WordPress forums how to completely disable new user registrations…and getting little response…I decided that I would have to edit some of the WordPress files to ignore new user registrations in a fashion to fit my needs. I wanted to keep them open from the admin panel so I myself can add new users, but block outsiders from registering so I could control the spam registrations.

To my surprise I got a response in the forum thread that I started with an example plugin that could be used. I looked into the example plugin, but I found myself confused at the description and uncertain of how the plugin actually worked. Who wants to install something on their site when they have no clue how it works!

I dug a bit deeper and searched this time for only 5-10 minutes and came across two plugins that were capable of handling my needs and one that was just plain cool.

To control your spam registrations I would suggest the following three plugins which are ordered according to the order that I would choose them.

  1. Register Plus
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/register-plus/
  2. Sabre
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sabre/
  3. Referrer Bouncer
    http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/word-press-1-5-plugin-referer-bouncer/

If you’re wondering why I sorted them this way then I’ll try to explain quickly.

Referrer Bouncer was the one that was suggested to me in the forum thread, but I found that it was a bit more involved than the others and it required the user to create a file called “referer.txt” and add domains that should be blocked (at least I think it was for blocked domains…not a clear description or how to :( ) and it just made more sense to go with a different plugin rather than tracking down all of the referring sites that I needed to block.

Sabre does exactly what I wanted to do. It was like it knew what I wanted before I asked, haha, but I decided to go with Register Plus in the end because it allows me to create invitation codes so that I can easily leave the registration open to the public, but they will need to contact me and request an invitation.

Why did I chose this method? I figured that most people would prefer not to register in the first place. Nothing at kyleabaker.com is restricted to the general public that is open to the registered users…it’s all the same. So if you wanted to post then you can freely post comments here. The invitations are for friends and people that I know so they can register if they wish and I know they won’t be spamming me. :) Except maybe Dan…he’s done it before. :P

The third plugin that I found (the Referrer Bouncer was found by someone else and posted in the WordPress forums for me) was one that allows users to login via OpenID! This is really cool because it doesn’t require a user to actually register at your site and waste space! They can register at any website that offers OpenID such as Yahoo, WordPress, Flickr (also Yahoo) and many more!

I didn’t go with WP-OpenID because spammers can still register via OpenID and login on your site. They wouldn’t be spamming the registrations, that’s one plus side, but they are still encouraged to test out my comment filtering system..and they always jump at chances to piss people off like that. :P

So I suggest you look into my “research” if you’re having similar trouble! Enjoy!

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Opera Mobile 9.5 beta coming July 15… err 17

From the Opera Mobile blog:

A release testing phase is underway now and the target date for the first beta is July 15th. You will be able to download it from opera.com just like you would any other versions of Opera.

Some versions of Opera Mobile 9.5 are already shipping on great phones like the HTC Touch Diamond, and some of you have asked why we wouldn’t be able to release it publically yet. As you probably know, releasing a version that works on a large variety of phones is more complex than making it work on one specific phone. You should also expect a few differences between the versions that are pre-installed on phones and the public version of Opera Mobile 9.5.

Stay tuned to Opera Watch and the official Opera Mobile blog for further information and details!

Edit (7 July): This just in from the Opera Mobile devs:

After we announced last week that the first beta was expected on July 15th, many of you asked if we would offer a Symbian version. We will offer a Symbian version of Opera Mobile, but you will have to wait a while. We do not yet know when the Symbian version will be ready because development and quality assurance on mobile devices is time consuming.

Edit (15 July): Beta release is now pushed back to July 17

Auto-hide toolbars in Opera

You can auto-hide any toolbar in Opera after enabling it via keyboard shortcut or mouse gesture or button.

Keyboard shortcut / Mouse gesture

Create new keyboard shortcuts or mouse gestures in Application section with following action codes.

Toolbar Action code for keyboard shortcut or mouse gesture
Menu bar Enable menu bar & Delay, 12000 & Disable menu bar
Main bar View main bar, 6 & Delay, 10000 & View main bar, 0
Personal bar View personal bar, 6 & Delay, 12000 & View personal bar, 0
Tab bar View page bar, 6 & Delay, 10000 & View page bar, 0
Address bar View address bar, 6 & Delay, 10000 & View address bar, 0
Navigation bar View navigation bar, 6 & Delay, 10000 & View navigation bar, 0
View bar Set alignment, “Document view toolbar”, 6 & Delay, 8000 & Set alignment, “Document view toolbar”, 0
Status bar View status bar, 6 & Delay, 12000 & View status bar, 0

To modify auto-hide time, change Delay, X value (time in milliseconds) in above code.

To hide/show a toolbar without auto-hide use the following.

Toolbar Action code for keyboard shortcut or mouse gesture
Menu bar Enable menu bar | Disable menu bar
Main bar View main bar, 6 | View main bar, 0
Personal bar View personal bar, 6 | View personal bar, 0
Tab bar View page bar, 6 | View page bar, 0
Address bar View address bar, 6 | View address bar, 0
Navigation bar View navigation bar, 6 | View navigation bar, 0
View bar Set alignment, “Document view toolbar”, 6 | Set alignment, “Document view toolbar”, 0
Status bar View status bar, 6 | View status bar, 0

Button

You can add buttons to any toolbar (main bar, tab bar, address bar, navigation bar, view bar, status bar, start bar or panels) except menu bar & personal bar simply by dragging button links to required place. Clicking on the button links without dragging will add the buttons to Tools → Appearance → Buttons → My Buttons for later use.

When you try to add a button, a dialog box with following message will popup. Press OK to add button.

Adding new button with action

[Action]

Do you want to proceed?

To remove a button, right-click on it and select Remove From Toolbar.

Get buttons for above from here as Opera button links won’t work in Opera Watch (WordPress). :(

Bill Gates’ Last Day With Microsoft

As many of you may already know, today is the last day that Bill Gates will be working with Microsoft. He will be stepping down from his position with Microsoft and is currently the third-richest man in the world!

Microsoft will undoubtedly continue to prosper without Gates of course, but what he did to build and develop the company will be unmatched for the the rest of it’s existence. Although I’ve long since switched to open source platforms such as Ubuntu linux, I must respect the work and effort that he has put into building the corporate Microsoft that we know today.

While catching up in the news over the past few days, I came across a hilarious video featuring Bill Gates and several celebrities in a short skit. You should check it out!

Bill Gates will now be spending his time and work to contribute to charities. What a noble thing to do! I mean with his wealth and status he could do anything, but he chose a very respectable way to spend his retired time.

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Opera 9.51 RC 2


More fixes in the pipeline for 9.51! As always, we appreciate constructive feedback. Main focus was on stability and the installer - some issues that users have encountered when upgrading from 9.27 should now be finally solved.

Changelog:
  • Security status should be now always correctly set when navigating from HTTP to HTTPS.
  • Fixed an issue related to OCSP and CRLs that would lower security level - Yngve has a detailed article. You'll have to manually check for updates to activate this fix.
  • Fixed an issue in the content blocker that might cause no page to be loaded anymore. :doh:
  • Fixed a crash on Yahoo! Mail (now really!).
  • Fixed a crash with userjs.
  • Fixed a crash related to Dragonfly.
  • Fixed a crash on Print Preview.
  • Fixed an issue that caused unwanted line breaks in rich text editors.
  • Fixed loading of stylesheets when navigating in history.


UNIX specific:
  • Fixed an issue that would prevent pages from closing on Qt4 builds.
  • Fixed saving of changes to plugin configuration.


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Opera Dragonfly alpha 2 RC

Opera has just released the Release Candidate for Opera Dragonfly alpha 2. New features added since the initial alpha include auto-complete for the Command Line (including object inspection), docked window mode, CSS editing including auto-complete, and a downloadable debug menu. There has also been many bug fixes and stability improvements.

Support for editing and a single window mode have been two of the three most requested features for Opera Dragonfly. The third was HTTP inspection, but this requires Core support to expose the required information through Scope, and will require the next version of our Core rendering engine. Alpha 2 will debut experimental support for the first two features.

Currently only CSS editing is supported, but much of the code can be reused for DOM editing for alpha 3. CSS can currently be edited by clicking on a property or value in the styles sidebar. User defined values are editable, but not the browser default values. Pressing tab will move to the next token (and shift-tab for the previous token). Pressing the up or down arrows on the keyboard activates auto-complete, that will cycle through the valid values. Typing co then the down arrow when a property is highlighted will suggest color for example. Pressing the up or down arrow on a value will increase or decrease the value. All changes are live and instant, so it is incredibly useful for testing tweaks and colour or size changes. I find it very useful when using HSL colour values for example, to get the exact shade I want to use. When at the end of a line or when the value is highlighted, pressing return will create a new property.

The docked window mode is now default, but can be changed to a separate window by pressing the icon next to the close button in the top right corner of the Opera Dragonfly UI. The UI for the docked mode is still very experimental as the support came at the end of the Opera 9.5 development phase. The UI will be improved to make it less confusing in alpha 3.

Command Line auto-complete has also been added. This can be activated by pressing the tab key. If an object is returned it is highlighted and can be clicked on. Doing this will allow the object to be inspected in the Inspection sidebar. A debug menu has also been released to complement Opera Dragonfly, which currently packages existing Opera features that are useful to developers, along with links to reference materials and validators. This will be improved upon in the future to add new functionality. It can be downloaded on the Opera Dragonfly web site.

Once alpha 2 is released there will be a break while the lead developer takes a much deserved holiday, then work will resume on Opera Dragonfly alpha 3. This should include more bug fixes, DOM editing, support for localisation, UI work and more.

You can test out the release candidate of alpha 2 by entering https://dragonfly.opera.com/app/weekly into the Developer Tools URL field, which can be found by going to opera:config#DeveloperTools in Opera, and pressing the save button. Please give us feedback in the usual places.

Opera 9.51 RC 1


Hey
We have fixed the worst issues after 9.50 and are preparing for a 9.51 update.
Please look out for regressions :-)

Changelog
  • Added option to toggle mouse flips, and decoupled them from the mouse gesture setting again
  • Fixed drag/drop of tabs - always drop the address
  • Fixed menus on deviantart.com
  • Fixed TinyMCE 2.1.x editor
  • Feeds now show the first time you subscribe
  • Fixed crash when printing chat
  • 64-bit linux is back



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11 Orgoo Invites left if anyone wants one!

I’ve still got 11 invites left for the new email service called Orgoo that integrates all of your favorite instant messaging services into the same window!

It’s a very cool new email service mainly aimed towards the younger generation, but everyone would love the integrated instant message features that Orgoo offers. It’s currently invite only, but I have 11 left to give out! If you’re interested in trying Orgoo and want an invite then all you need to do is email me with an invite request.

You can find my contact information on the About page (link located at the top). Please make sure that the subject contains [Orgoo Invite], otherwise it will most likely go straight to spam. ;)

Make sure that you mention in the comments that you sent a request as well and I’ll make sure to check my mail and send you an invite immediately. Check it out while the invites last! Else you’ll most likely be waiting for a while. If you request an invite from the main page then chances are it will take you a while to receive it, so you should take advantage of my offering. ;)

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“Sliders” - Watched and Reviewed

“Sliders” was a Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) TV series that aired from 1995-2000. It’s one of those “oldie, but goodie[s]” if you know what I mean.

The tag line sums it up very nicely.

Four people just found a gateway to another dimension, but they forgot one problem… how to get back!

I’m personally not a fan of The X-Files or anything like that, but I really did enjoy watching this show. I just finished watching the entire show, seasons 1-5, on Netflix with Watch Instantly! Well, almost entirely, there were about 8 episodes that Netflix did not have available to Watch Instantly (it’s like a little scam that Netflix tries to pull thinking we’ll never realize that they would rather slow our watching with rentals). :P

The show was at times very interesting and at other just plain old interesting. I did, however, notice a number of flaws in the story line and other facts that were distributed randomly. I didn’t let any of those get in the way of an honest rating for this show, because I enjoy watching these older shows and movies usually more than brand new shows. :)

If you haven’t seen the show and are planning to watch it or catch-up on some episodes then you may not want to read the details below (possible spoilers)!

One big annoyance that I had with the sitecom as a whole is that the worlds that the original four always slide into are the same as their original with different twists, such as communism and lack of technology. What’s funny is that their duplicates are always there as well and one of them usually holds a pretty powerful position in the alternate world…so the double takes advantage of that situation to make sure they slide to their next world safely.

Another funny thing is that in alternate worlds your double may or may not exist. They would, however, never play with these cases in the stories that were released. When a character died on the show, they would never be seen again. Now that doesn’t make those worlds very alternate does it?

Also, they stress time and time again that the slider device does not allow them to move forward in time or backward in time. They always end up in the same year and same hour and same minute…only a different world. They tend to mess this up two or three times in one of the seasons and say that they are in the pas. Then a new sliders asks in one episode if they slide to the past on another world and they aren’t sure…of course not! The prof. and Quinn already decided that they were not affecting time travel…so where is the confusion? Only in the writers minds. :P

I’ll have to say, the two worst actors on there are Rembrandt ‘Crying Man’ Brown (Cleavant Derricks) and Colin Mallory (Charlie O’Connell). At times they can be decent, but I get sick of Rembrandt Brown always having the role where they land in a world where things aren’t perfect and always asks questions like: “I have one question. How can you people blah blah blah..on this world?” like it’s any of his business and his duty to make everything perfect.

He has to be one of the most annoying ones on the show. And then in the fifth season he begins to run the opening lines on the show…just pathetically read if you ask me. :P

Colin Mallory, Quinn’s older brother, plays a very poor role of being behind times (technologically) and he has a terrible accent. Blah.

Also, it seems that the focus of the show shifts three or four times off course from the original focus in the show. The start sliding just to be the first in the world to see what happens, but then they immediately run into the problem of not being able to return home. The show follows this and runs with it for a couple seasons, but you can tell that the writers are drying up and running out of ideas. Shows start going from minor twists to enormous twists. Not that dinosaurs couldn’t rule the earth in an alternate universe, but the lack of anything that different and then all of a sudden everything is that different is just a little confusing and crappy.

Then, after the crazy worlds with primitive people and animals…we got the whole Kromagg (or however it’s spelled) thing. The Kromaggs were on basically every alternate world that they slid into after they saw them the first time. Kind of stupid how they tried to save every world from the Kromaggs. Honestly, if you’re just sliding so you can get back to your own world wouldn’t you just lay back and enough each world or hunker down in the war zone worlds? I wouldn’t be wasting the time trying to save each alternate world, because they are alternate for a reason. You can’t make them all the same as your own and who says your own is better anyways? Just not very well thought out if you ask me.

I would be sitting out on the beaches and hitting up the popular tourist sites and snapping pictures! Not risking my life to save a world and each time narrowly escaping into the vortex and into another world, only making it by a minute or less at times.

Over all, it’s a good show from start to finish. Worth watching if you can find the time. Just don’t keep notes every time you see something that doesn’t add up or contradicts what has been previously outlined. The best thing to do is just sit back and enjoy the show! If you want to see some comments on the show by other fans who loved the show, but found that it was ruined or flawed in some way then check out this group f comments on Sliders from TV.com.

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Towards 9.51


It's time for maintenance - we have been fixing several of the most reported issues in 9.50 - including a rather nasty crash on Yahoo Mail. Have fun testing - and as always, we'd appreciate feedback.

WARNING: These are development snapshots: they contain the latest changes, but they also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, they may not work at all.

Changelog:
  • Fixed crash on Yahoo! Mail.
  • Fixed a crash when clicking the feeds button.
  • Fixed a crash when installing Shockwave Player 11.
  • Fixed some issues with the search engines when upgrading from 9.2x: it is now possible again to edit the Google search.
  • Fixed a leak when printing or in print preview.
  • Fixed a GDI handle leak in the transfers window on Windows.
  • Fixed thread expanding in Mail when receiving new messages
  • Fixed some issues with subscription to IMAP folders.
  • Fixed a too zealous reconnection of the IRC client.
  • Fixed "reuse current tab" feature in speed dial on Mac.
  • Finetuned some issues in the new skin.


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