Category: Technology

Even though it was enabled for less than a day…

 

WP-Blackcheck did an excellent job of eliminating the trackback/pingback spam I receive, don’t you think? It blocked 2,309 trackback spam comments. As you can see, seven spam comments actually made it into my spam folder. However that spam was manually entered by a person. Anti-spam plugins won’t stop a real person from leaving a spammy comment. However since a persons first comments are always moderated on this site, they won’t ever make an appearance on Celebrate Life.

 

If I want to check out the Blocked comments this is what I see.

I most likely will test out a few other Plugins that do a similar job and keep the one that I like the most. I could always disable trackbacks completely, but presently I’m unsure if that’s what I want to do.

 

For non-trackback spam, I could use Captcha to catch the autospammers… but I think Captcha is annoying! Don’t get me started on the illegible Captcha codes! I really dislike seeing it on sites that I follow! So why in the world would I add it to mine? Nope, not happening. Leaving a comment on a Captcha site, means one more thing I have to fill out just to comment on a persons site! Why oh why do some people want others to jump through extra hoops just to comment? Oh my goodness, don’t they know how annoying that can be?

I must say it’s a huge relief not seeing a whole bunch of spam waiting for me when I log into the admin panel.

Updating my theme

I use paid themes for my business sites, but haven’t gotten around to making the switch with this site, but that’s about to change. I’m really impressed with the FlexSqueeze theme. Sire has mentioned it a lot on his blog and I’ve decided to purchase it at the end of this month which will be about the time that I’ll be setting up a small site for my daughter so she can have a place to show her stop motion videos.

Since Sire has done a great job of promoting FlexSqueeze and he actually uses the product, I’ll purchase it through his affiliate link.

 

 

When I started (actively) blogging in late 2003 (or was that early 2004?) I didn’t have too much issue with spam, however as my sites became older and gained traffic I also experienced an increase in spam.

Fast forward to the present and the amount of spam I get is ridiculous. Easily over 800+ spammers daily! I’ve written about my dislike of spam before.

Even though the spam rarely makes it’s way on my site, I still find it annoying to see it in my admin panel!

There are many tools available to combat spam and over the years, I’ve tried many.

Earlier today, I did some behind the scenes maintenance to help me combat spam. I renamed my comments.php file and included a few additional rules in my .htaccess file.

Since trackback and pingbacks are the #1 way I receive spam comments, I also installed the  WordPress plugin WP-BlackCheck.  Even though it’s only been a few hours, I’ve noticed a decrease in the amount of spam I see in my admin panel. The developer is Stargazer, check them out at their site. I’ll keep an eye on the Plugin, but thus far I’m thrilled to see hardly spam in my comments queue.

Are you having issues with my plugins? I’ve logged out and sent some test comments and everything appears to be working properly. But if you run into any issues, send me a note and let me know if you’re experiencing any problems.

I’ve been dreaming about the iPad since E-readers came on the scene. In fact, I blogged about them at a few technology sites where I wrote, and I along with other Mac fans speculated on when they’d finally appear.

Naturally when they were released I was thrilled! But I didn’t instantly log onto the Apple store and purchase one (Even though I had the funds to do so)… I waited. I originally wrote about purchasing an iPad  in 2010! Obviously money doesn’t burn a hole in my pocket, and it’s obvious I can sit on my wants for a loooooooooooooooong time. I’m zen-like with my patience. But now it’s time to think about purchasing an iPad and while I could purchase it now, I’ll hold off a few months longer. I’m starting to set aside money for this purchase and within a few months I’ll have one for myself.

I’m an avid book reader, but I’m running out of shelf space. I do know that one way I could reduce the amount of books I have is to simply transition to digital format for future books. Admittedly I’ve been fighting this, because I do love holding an actual book… but over the past few months I’ve been slowly getting accustomed to digital format by reading books on my desktop, laptop, and occasionally viewing things on the iPod that I purchased for my daughter at Christmas.

I’m still undecided as to which iPad I want, there’s a few generations available. I do know I want the maximum storage, and if it’s available I’ll definitely snap up a refurbished iPad to drop the price a bit. What I’ve always loved about Apple products is that you can get the same awesome warranty (Apple Care) on their refurbished products. I’m definitely not new to Apple products, I’ve been impressed with them since I purchased my MacBook Pro in 2006, since that time I’ve added other Apple products to our household. Apple makes great quality products and their warranty is awesome.

Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer, restart the installation.

This is definitely not a message you want to receive when you’re doing a new install…

But it’s what I encountered a few days ago when I chose to reinstall Windows 7 64 without losing my data.

What worked was shutting down the computer, and holding down Alt and F10 as soon as the computers power was back… I kept holding it down those keys until It brought me back to the reinstall menu. Depending on your computer you might have to use a different F key… but it’s worth a shot if it fixes the problem.

Ultimately I had to wipe out all the data since attempting to save the data brought the same error message again. I wasn’t too worried. I always back up my important files to another source (a external hard drive, and something else in my case) and so should you — if you aren’t already.

Photo Source: Orlando Sentinel

It would appear that our household is on a roll with the technology glitches. Not only am I having issues with Windows 7 64 bit OS, but I’m having Direct TV issues also.

A few days ago, the flatscreen television in our family room, I’m not sure how big it is, I know it’s over 60″,brought up this lovely error message,

Weak or no signal

My first reaction was it has to be the HD Direct TV box. However, being the dutiful customer that I am, I called Direct TV and told them about the problem. Naturally they ran me throug list of tests of things that I’d already done (thanks to my online search). When those didn’t work, hey also suggested a new HDMI cable. While they would have supplied me one for free, I decided to stop by the store (after dropping off my daughter at school this morning) and purchase an additional cable. I connected it, and really wasn’t surprised that our Direct TV is still not working. I’m telling you, it’s the HD Direct TV box!

The customer service rep was polite, and now I’ll have a technician will be visiting our household next Friday to fix this issue. I’m not upset that I’m without Direct TV, I can go days, weeks, and in some cases months without watching television… and if I really feel the urge to watch something (I’m sure I won’t) there’s always the television in the basement. I take that back, last week my daughter and I did watch some nature shows. Those were quite fascinating. But as for regular shows, I rarely watch them. I find most of thee shows I’ve seen aren’t good, and in some cases a bit trashy. Which makes me wonder… when did I turn into my mom! 😉

Things are starting to slow down, so perhaps I’ll have a chance to post some crafts; crochet, knit, paper, etc, that my daughter and I’ve made over the past week.