Fighting Comment Spam

The good news: according to MT-Blacklist, it's refused to post 371 spammy comments in the last three days. No fuss, no muss, they just don't ever show up on this blog. Yay!

The bad news: I don't want MT-Blacklist to even have to bother with these bozos. What I want to do is rename the comments module, and there's plenty of documentation (here and here, for instance) on exactly how to do that. The problem is that they all start by saying to look for the CommentScript option in your mt.cfg file—unfortunately, our mt.cfg file doesn't have one.

No problem, thinks I, it's probably just because we started with an ancient version of MT and it never got created somewhere along the line. So, I add that option to the mt.cfg file and rebuilt the blog, but no joy. No matter what I call the new comments module, or where I put the option in mt.cfg, it always looks for the default name.

I've successfully proven to my satisfaction (by changing the value of other options) that our installation of MT is actually reading and using the mt.cfg file; it's just not looking at that option.

So, we're back using the default comments module name, and letting MT-Blacklist do the work. Anyone have any idea why this approach isn't working for us?

101 Apple problems

Matt Haughey pointed to this blog piece, I got 101 problems but Apple ain't one.

Me? I got 101 problems, and Apple is all of them.

Browser survey

An article at eWeek says: Another Survey Says Mozilla Up, IE Down. My prediction: they ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until all the geeks go home for Thanksgiving and install Firefox on their parent's PCs.

I'm betting that there will be a measureable drop in IE/Win use between this week and next week.

QuirksMode Bug Reports

This is very useful: QuirksMode Bug Reports, "entirely dedicated to finding, mending, and publishing CSS and JavaScript browser bugs." You can search by browser or by keyword, or just go to that page to see the last seven reported bugs.

College Gender Gap

When the LA Times headline says A Growing Gender Gap Tests College Admissions, you naturally assume that they're talking about a shortage of girls. You'd be wrong.

According to the article, more girls have A averages in high school, and they take more academic courses. End result: there's more females than males enrolled in colleges, with 57% of college degrees going to women each year.

Researchers are divided about the causes and extent of the college gender gap.

Huh? Have they paid any attention to high schools lately? The cause, folks, is that high schools these days make it harder for boys (particularly white and asian boys) to graduate on a college-prep path. End result, from the article: Pepperdine: 59% female. NYU: 60%. UCLA: 56%. Berkeley: 54%. Overall national college enrollment: 56% female.

When you explicitly favor one group over another, including support services, clubs that are only open to that group, and easier graduation requirements (all of which is the case at our son's school), you shouldn't be surprised when you end up with this kind of imbalance. The good news: some schools (particularly liberal arts colleges) are giving boys the benefit of the doubt when it comes to admissions in the name of being diverse. Sadly, though, that's not the case at any of the schools that Sean's likely to want to go to.

Waiting for Widgets

Over at the Macworld Editor's Notes blog, Phil Michaels wrote a piece called Waiting for Widgets. He's got a few ideas about Dashboard Widgets he'd like to see. Keep those ideas coming!

Secret Santa 2004

Yes, it's late November again, so it's once again time for Secret Santa.

I have habitually been the person in the gift exchange whose name never got put into the hat, or the person who drew my name didn't bother to buy me a gift, or the person did get me a gift, but it was a white elephant piece o' crap that they'd gotten from someone else where it was clear that no thought about my likes/dislikes had gone into the gift decision.

And then, there's the annual Secret Santa exchange from these folks. This will be my fourth year as a participant, and so far, it's always worked out simply and easily (which is why I keep participating). You should go sign up too, and maybe I'll draw your name!

FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 adapter

Another thing that came up at the Apple Store yesterday was whether or not Dori wanted to buy a FireWire hub. She's got one more FireWire device than she has ports. As it happens, here in the office, so do I. But both our machines also have FireWire 800 ports that we're not using. A hub costs around $50, and gives us 4 to 6 more ports, way more than we need. But the Sonnet 9-pin male (FW800) to 6-pin female (FW400) connector adapter does the trick, and it's under $10. I think we'll buy two.

Return of Brush with Geeky Greatness

Well, it's been the year for us to meet geeky television personalities. A while back, we posted about meeting Alton Brown, of Food Network's Good Eats. Yesterday, Dori and I did the radio gig she posted about below, and as we were driving back home, we decided to stop at the Corte Madera mall to do a bit of shopping.

We were in the Apple Store, and I was looking through the iPod accessories (I bought a Sendstation PocketDock, which is a cool little adapter that allows any dock-based iPod to use a standard FireWire cable, rather than the special Apple dock cable), when I noticed a familiar face checking out the iPod cases next to me.

"Excuse me," I said, "But are you Adam from Mythbusters?" He turned, smiled, and said, "Yes, I am." Now, if you're not familiar with Mythbusters, it's a terrific, fun series on the Discovery Channel. The idea is that you have two guys (in real life, they're special effects experts for film and TV) who use science and experiments to try to prove or disprove all kinds of urban legends. Can chatting on a cell phone while pumping gas cause the pump to blow up? Can a penny dropped from a skyscraper really kill a pedestrian on the sidewalk below? Can you really murder someone by dropping an electrical appliance into a bathtub? It's fun, informative, and they get to blow stuff up a lot. What could be better?

We chatted for a while with Adam Savage and his lovely wife Julia. He was really a nice guy, and shared some fun facts about the show. They're shooting the current Season 2 for the next several months, and those episodes will be airing throughout next year. It looks like Season 3 will be a go. The show is done by an Australian production company, which sells the show internationally. The shows aired on Discovery in the US are 4 minutes shorter (to fit in more commercials, I suspect) than the same episodes in foreign markets and on the show DVDs.