I’ve been informed that my host server will be relocated later tonight. So if you find that you can’t access the site for a while, that’s probably why. This will not be a migration to new hardware as mentioned previously, just a physical move of the existing hardware to a new location.
Update: It looks like the move didn’t happen last night after all. So just be warned that the site could go down at some unknown time.
I’m sure some of you have noticed that I’m experiencing occassional server problems. The host I’m on has been overtaxed, mostly due to spammer activity (both web and email varieties). There are times when the server load spikes up into the 20s, which is ridiculously high. To combat the problem, I set up a cron job which monitors the load level, and restarts apache and mysql when it goes above a certain threshold. However, for some reason, the mysql database server sometimes fails to restart properly. I’ve just added another monitor program which should fix that, so the database should never stay down for more than a couple of minutes. [...]
February 1, 2005 – 9:57 pm
Earlier today, I upgraded the webserver on this box to the latest versions of Apache, PHP, mod_ssl, and a few other things. I still need to go back and do some tweaking, since the a lot of configuration file paths were different from my previous compiles. Currently, I’ve got a hodgepodge of symbolic links and config file hacks acting as a bandaid. If you notice anything misbehaving, please let me know.
January 6, 2005 – 9:49 pm
I’ve seen several people recently who have noticed changes in their Google PageRank. I’ve just now noticed that I seem to be one of them. I used to be at PR6, but now I’m at PR7. What does this mean in the grand scheme of things? Not much. Probably just that I’ll be targetted by even more comment spammers. But hey, PR7. Cool 
January 5, 2005 – 2:58 pm
Yesterday, while doing some experiments in WordPress, I apparently borked the rewrite rules for this site in a fashion that broke permalinks. It’s fixed now. Sorry for the inconvenience, please resume your usual surfing.
September 20, 2004 – 8:59 am
Talk Like a Pirate Weekend was fun, but now it’s time to get back to normal again. Mostly.
Saturday, I was updating my test copy of WordPress from CVS, when I accidentally ran the update command from the wrong directory. I ran it from the top level of this web site. Suddenly, I realized that I had broken everything. I had two options: I could restore things back to WP 1.2, or I could just go ahead and upgrade to the current alpha code. I went with the latter choice.
Since I’m now running experimental code, some things could be broken. If you spot anything, let me know. [...]
September 17, 2004 – 3:26 pm
For the past three hours, a spammer has been attacking this site, attempting to post comment spam. Of course, none of the over 600 attempted comment spams have ever shown up. The attacks have come from a variety of different IP numbers (at least 8 different ones at a quick glance), so it appears that the perpetrator is using remotely controlled “zombie” machines.
The comments have been a breeze to delete from my system (just search on a common keyword, go to “mass edit mode”, check all, and delete!). Since I use Kitten’s Spam Words plugin, the spams contribute more fodder against future spams. [...]
Early this morning, a spammer flooded this site with around 20+ comment spams. Thanks to MooKitty’s Spam Words Plugin, I was able to delete them all quickly, and ensure that the spammer will not be able to attempt spamming me again with any of the porn links he used in this morning’s attack.
The spammer’s attack was interesting. There were two separate batches, but obviously the same person, because they all came from the same IP number (217.110.169.122, ad96ea97a.dsl.de.colt.net) within the space of just a few minutes.
The first batch of comments all had an author URI that pointed to a particular (obviously porn) site, and the comment bodies each contained just a link to a different (for each comment, and again obviously porn) site.
In the second batch, the author URI was again the same for every comment, but to a different site than the first batch, and with a domain name that doesn’t appear porn-related. [...]
Testing a new spam blocker
I’ve been trying to snatch a few minutes here and there to work on the automated spam blocking system that I proposed last week. Earlier today, I finished up one of the components, and I’m currently testing it. It seems to be performing as designed, so far.
There are three pieces to the system, currently:
ipupdate: A perl script which accepts an IP number as an argument. When run, it checks whether the IP already exists in its configured database table. If not, it adds it. [...]