General

Comments are off for a while

I’m in the process of moving the blog from one host to another and until I get all of the perl configuration working so that the various comment spam protection methods are working properly I’m turning off comments. Email me if you have a comment to add.

Spam problems

This morning a spammer somewhere seems to have used my main email address as the return address on a whole bunch of random spam that has been sent out from all over the place. As such I have around 3000 undeliverable mail responses flowing into my in box. No doubt this will now have knock on effects with ISPs who use DNSLB type systems as my domain is being used by spammers again.

Comments, captcha and blacklist...

I’ve turned the blacklist back on. I turned it off yesterday and have had a couple of spam comments get through. The blacklist itself doesn’t always catch the spam comments but it does give me a one click method of removing them. With it turned off I lose the easy removal. If your comment is refused you should get a message telling you why; the reason is logged, but, unfortunately the full comment txt isn’t.

Where did August and September go?

What with holidays and having my head down doing x64 and CLR hosting stuff for a client it seems that the last month and a half has rushed by… The good news is that the x64 port is slowly slipping out to clients; the bulk of the work has been done for ages but I’m using this release to bring all of my example servers in line with best practices for using The Server Framework.

Back in the UK

Normal service is about to resume… I arrived back in the UK yesterday evening after lots of good skiing in France and Switzerland. Conditions in France could have been better (it’s still best to hire skis or use your rock skis - in Avoriaz at least!) but that only served to make us realise how good the conditions had been in Switzerland. I now have a couple of weeks to get some work done and let my legs rest before 3 weeks in Jackson Hole…

Something that has helped

It’s been a difficult few months for me recently. One of the things that has helped a lot was something that, thankfully, I discovered relatively quickly and have since refined somewhat. The refined version sounds very simple; “appreciate every moment” but it actually takes some practice to get into the habit. Once you do get into the habit you will find that it leads to a positive feedback loop of happy thoughts; which often leave you with a smile on your face which seems to encourage more happiness around you…

What this blog is ACTUALLY about

Given all the publicity that this blog has received recently over my relationship break-up I thought it might be a good idea to give any new visitors a jumping off point into some of the more popular technical pieces. Believe it or not, this blog isn’t all about network snooping and infidelity. More often than not it’s about C++ on Windows, Test Driven Development and my opinions and whinges about software development issues.