Author Archives

About Dougal Campbell

Dougal is a web developer, and a "Developer Emeritus" for the WordPress platform. When he's not coding PHP, Perl, CSS, JavaScript, or whatnot, he spends time with his wife, three children, a dog, and a cat in their Atlanta area home.

Some blog spam cases you might want to watch for

Oct272006

I like to think that I’ve got some pretty decent spam prevention measure in place on my server. My mail server uses RBL/DNSBL services and sets maximum limits for certain protocol violations. All my blogs use Akismet for comment spam detection. I’ve got a large number of entries in my comment moderation and blacklist lists. And I hook it all together into my SpamValve plugin, which automatically adds firewall rules to block repeat offenders. Still, … Continue reading →

Egads! It’s Purple!

Oct262006

Susan’s spookalicious Halloween theme A few months ago, I mentioned that my wife Susan had gotten her blog up, complete with a pink theme. She’s been pretty busy lately, what with taking care of our three kids, working part-time, and taking graduate classes (whew!). But she still managed to work on a Halloween version of her theme, which has been up for a short while now. So, until further notice, enjoy her new, spookalicious, purple … Continue reading →

Dilbert Creator Hacks His Own Brain

Oct252006

Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, has been suffering from an unusual condition for the last 18 months. It’s called Spasmodic Dysphonia, and essentially its a condition where your brain forgets how to talk. You may still be able to communicate by other means, singing, for example (because different portions of the brain are used to process singing than for normal speech). But for some individuals, normal everyday speech becomes limited, or impossible. … Continue reading →

Syndactyly (Webbed Toes/Fingers) Forums

Oct202006

A few years ago, I made a post that mentioned in passing that I have webbed toes. About a month later, my logs started showing up a fair number of referals from search engines from people looking for info about webbed toes. So I promised that I’d try to put up a picture. A couple of days later, I posted said picture. Since that time, those three posts have collected over 900 comments between them. … Continue reading →

WordPress 2.0.5 RC1

Oct172006

No official announcement yet, but WordPress 2.0.5 has just transitioned from Beta to Release Candidate status. Join the wp-testers mailing list for details on how to download nightly builds. This release is mostly minor bugfixes. You can view all the changes at the WordPress Trac site.

A Friendly Game of Hockey

Oct162006

This past Wednesday, I got to go see the Thrashers play the Bruins, courtesy of a visit from Geof Morris (thanks for the ticket, Geof!). Geof and I have known each other via the net for quite a while, and we have some friends in common from back when I used to live in Huntsville. But I’m pretty sure that this was the first time we had met in person. So, I finally got to … Continue reading →

Browsenberg Uncertainty Principle

Sep292006

Co-worker Stephen Touset has described what he calls the Browsenberg Uncertainty Principle: As one increases the layout precision of a section on a webpage, all other sections of the page have their layouts perturbed by a proportional amount. And its corollary: The more precisely one specifies positioning and layout for a page in one browser, the less accurately every other browser will render it. Make sure you follow the link and also read his example … Continue reading →

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Sep192006

Ahoy, me maties! It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day once again, and as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve spruced my site up for the occassion. Around my office, I’ve been hearing a lot of “yarrr!” and “avast!”, as many folks have been getting into the buccaneering mood. Or maybe it’s just because they’re grumpy — it’s hard to tell on some days. In any case, I hope you’re enjoying this fine holiday. And if you … Continue reading →

Drinking the Ubuntu Kool-Aid

Sep182006

For quite a while, I had considered nuking Windows from my laptop and starting fresh. A few weeks ago, I finally took the plunge. I started with a full backup (two, actually — a file-by-file backup, and a partition image). I toyed with the idea of dual-booting, but finally decided that I’d try to go completely non-Windows, and see how well I could get by. After hearing one of my co-workers rave about how impressed … Continue reading →

Piratify Your Blog!

Sep122006

There’s only one week left until Talk Like a Pirate Day! If you haven’t already downloaded my Text Filter Suite, which contains the awesome tfs-pirate filter, then you’d better hop to it! What’s that? You want to know what it does? It turns your blog into pirate-speak on Talk Like a Pirate Day! Well, it does some other stuff, too, but we’re mostly concerned with the piratey bits here. For example, if you typed this: … Continue reading →