The newest version of WordPress is out, Version 1.5. They seem to have improved the commenting and moderation system, so I'm tempted to upgrade, because despite implementing my own captcha, I got bombed without about 30 spam comments last night. Thank god for "Mass Edit" mode...

I might try playing around with my captcha a little more, but I'm having a hard time believing someone actually figured out a way around my little captcha just to post comment spam on my little blog with an audience of about 2. Thus, I think they're exploiting a vulnerability within WordPress there and I may investigate that a little.

What bottom-feeders...:(

§48 · February 21, 2005 · Software, Technology · Comments Off on Pressing Words ·


Let's say you're cheap or you can't afford a fixed IP address and let's say you also want to be able to access your Linux box from the internet but you don't want to have to constantly know the IP address of that box.

Well, if you have your own website (that supports PHP scripting), you can still get around this. Check out this article that I just wrote on how to work around this using some PHP, some Apache mod-rewrite and a simple cronjob.

§45 · February 16, 2005 · PHP, Software, Technology, Tips, Web · 1 comment ·


A friend of mine once showed me this popular article in which the author recommends putting "your life" into version control. Read the rest of this entry ...

§42 · February 14, 2005 · Software, Technology · Comments Off on Subverting Your Life ·


An update on my Subversion installation: I woke in the morning to find that most of the Subversion tests had failed during the "make check". I looked at the log file and it seems that all the tests that had anything to do with the repository failed (checkout, commit, etc).

First, a little history: Subversion 1.0 had a backend based on a Berkeley DB, while Subversion 1.1 introduced a backend based on the filesystem itself (not dependent upon the Berkeley DB). After weighing the repository pros and cons I decided on the new FSFS filesystem for my Subversion 1.1 installation.

Thus, I had a doubt: Could the make file only be supporting checks for the Berkeley DB filesystem? A google for it turned up this nugget which shows that a special argument is required during "make check" if you're using the new FSFS filesystem. Grrrreat....

§41 · February 11, 2005 · Software, Technology · Comments Off on A Patchy Update ·


So last week I got my Linux server up and running 24x7 on my LAN. I've got it grabbing daily snapshots of my website databases. It's running Apache 2.0, SSH, FTP and Samba successfully. From my main Windows PC, my home directory on the Linux box is my H: drive. So far very cool, and not that difficult for someone who doesn't regularly use Linux.

My next step was to install some Version Control software because I wanted to use this Linux server as a repository for all my documents, source code, databases, etc. I decided on Subversion since I had never used CVS and apparently Subversion is meant to fix some annoyances in CVS...I read through the first couple chapters in the free O'Reilly Subversion book and most of the Administration chapter...OK, another something I can put on my resume, I guess - let's do it. Read the rest of this entry ...

§37 · February 11, 2005 · Software, Technology · 4 comments ·