Stuphi

Every year April 1st comes along. I take no notice and start reading Slashdot. Invariably I read a number of posts without even raising an eyebrow. I will even click on a few links to read the attached articles. Eventually the penny drops that what I am reading is a little too unusual, and then I realize that it is a hoax.

At this point I then have to go back and re-read all the posts so that I can check that they are all hoaxes. I have to do this to make sure that I don’t quote the story thinking that there was some truth in it. I was almost caught out this year by the Gmail Paper story. I only read the slashdot summary, and believed it. Although I did think, I bet it will only be available in the states.

Once I realized the date, I went back and read the actual story.

I like this type of humor.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

Comment spam is a pain. When I first set up this blogg, I was really excited to see that I was getting some comments. Then I realised that it was all spam. Grrr!

There appears a number of methods of combating this. A captcha seems to be a fairly successful method, but does make creating a comment a bit harder, even if by not much. Another option is to add some java script that is not likely to be interpreted by the bots used by the spammers. This does mean that anybody adding a comment needs to use a java script enabled browser, but the user does not have to do anything more.

The solution that I have opted for is the latter. I will leave it to run for a little while, and see how it goes. Now all I need to do is add some content to this blogg that encourages people to actually submit a comment. Maybe I should just mention the Debian Mozilla debacle

While chatting to my brother, I decided to have a google for my screen name, stuphi. Google’s very helpfull spell check gave me this very helpfull sugestion:-

This is a test post only. I wonder what it will look like when I eventually add this to my blog.

I can’t play the guitar, but I am impressed by people who can. Recently I was made aware of some videos on Google that I thought were quite cool. The first one is not technically a guitar, but the idea is the same.

The second video is a classical piece played very well by some kid in his bedroom. This has lead me to wonder how many people may find their fame by appearing in a home movie on the Internet.

Having installed Ubuntu on my desktop machine, I decided that it should go on my Laptop as well. The installation of Debian unstable was still working fine, but a change can be good for even it it is only for changes sake. The main reason for trying this is to enjoy the slightly higher polished finish that Ubuntu seems to have. Also, my wife uses Linux on the laptop, and she does get annoyed when things brake.

I am hoping that with Ubuntu, I can resist changing things too much, and then just suffer a bump with each new Ubuntu release.

Having now done a second Ubuntu install with this latest release, I have to say that it really is slick. Having the live install makes it simple to check partitions etc before starting. The end result is a very usable system.

I probably should have used an already existing Blog system that includes a comment facility. However, I decided to roll my own, with inferior features, lax security, poor scaleability etc. All I need to do now is to write something that is worth someone making a comment about