An Aussie geek stuck in Texas

[tag]blogging[/tag]I’m not going to name names but one that comes to mind is one of the popular blogs on Wordpress.com at the moment, like really how do people get paid for this stuff? I swear if I sold my soul then I could probably make a fortune online but you know what just because you can doesn’t mean you should, professional blogging is going to be another bubble that is going to burst anytime now it just makes no sense.

Can anyone remember when “blogging” was just fingering the ID software guys’ plans when the likes of the original Quake were under development? Those were the days…

[tag]Astros[/tag]Oh poop!

There is a new Akismet plugin for Spam Karma 2 that is currently in beta that sounds like a great idea where SK2 is still used to determine if the comment is Ham or Spam but if it needs assistance instead of sending a comment to moderation it will then check with Akismet but even if it doesn’t it will submit the comment to Akismet as either Ham or Spam to help build the central database so classifciation at Akismet can be improved over time.

Sounds great, eh? But Matt’s comment on the Akismet plugin page states that it is no good to just send comment marked as Ham or Spam back to Akismet unless they had been previously classified incorrectly by Akismet itself so that means any classifications made locally by SK2 won’t be fed back to Akismet. It is almost like Akismet is setup to become the only spam detection service available and be exclusive to other systems like SK2 and well that just doesn’t sit well with me so I’ll just keep using SK2 on it’s own as it is yet to give me any problems.

[tag]Wordpress[/tag][tag]plugin[/tag]I finally worked out that LiveSearch was barfing when the search term was 3 characters or less (probably because of some MySQL error or timeout) so I modified the Javascript used to wait for 4 characters or more before firing off the search.

I still need to tweak the CSS to fit my theme but at least it isn’t throwing ugly PHP errors now and functionally works but the search algorithm is pretty weak:

where post_content LIKE '%$item%'"

Might have to do something about that…

EDIT: ARGH! It is still borked for certain terms like “girl”, WTF? I think it is something wonky with get_permalink, maybe the posts with girl in them have some weird characters in them or something.

EDIT2: Seems like there is a bug in template-functions-links.php on line 92:

$pagestruct = $wp_rewrite->get_page_permastruct();

Commenting that out seems to fix the problem but now to find out why *scratches head*

My whole world has just been turned upside down, I never thought it was possible for the Texans to win a single game this season but they have proven me wrong! Maybe the announcer at Minute Maid Park gave them the encouragement they needed when he mistakenly introduced the Astros as the Texans at the beginning of Game 4 (and probably contributed to the Astros losing as well…).

Well after the World Series incident in the bottom of the 14th in Game 3 where my s710a met the ground with a large amount of force I am in the market for a new mobile phone (that is cell phone to you Americans) and am thinking the upcoming Sony Ericsson W600 is going to be the one.

It is basically an upgraded s710a within their Walkman line of phones so suits me fairly well, plus it comes in Orange. Now I just have to wait for it to be released, anyone seen a release date anywhere?

If anyone is looking for a great brunch place in Houston then you can’t beat Baba Yega in the Montrose area unless you are one of those silly homophobics that is as Montrose is of course the main gay area in Houston. It is a $16.95 buffet with one of the biggest spreads of food I have ever seen for a buffet with an omelette and waffle bar as well, drinks are also reasonable with mimosas being something like $2.75 as opposed to the $7 or $9 you see in a lot of other places.

Get there early though as it gets crowded fast.

Akismet is a new online anti-spam service that has recently been launched by Matt (the main guy behind Wordpress) to prevent spam reaching your blog through comments and trackbacks. Basically what it does is send details of the comment/trackback including it’s content to the Akismet server(s) where it is analyzed and determined to be spam or not and then a flag is sent back to your blog accordingly.

What do I think of it? Well first a disclaimer, I haven’t tried nor am I likely to. A third party service that you depend upon for commenting to work in your blog? Uhm no thanks, what happens when it is down? I know they probably have all sorts of privacy rules but really it is hard not to think that they will eventually do something with your comments like inject contextual based advertising (again their policy may state they will never do that I just haven’t read it so it is a gut feel only). Plus it isn’t free for all bloggers and requires a Wordpress.com account to use although you don’t have to actively use your wordpress.com blog.

Spam Karma 2 has been doing a wonderful job so far for me, in an early version it had a couple of false negatives but since then it has caught all spam and let everything else through without any dramas so why do I need Akismet again?

[tag]intraweb[/tag][tag]HTML[/tag]I am really liking the new trend I am seeing with websites featuring larger fonts in HTML forms, it makes life so much easier as you don’t need to squint to see if you did a typo or not.

When will Garner and Hickey learn?

EDIT: I have nothing against Brad Lidge at all and don’t hold him responsible for any of the losses, playes have their ups and downs, it just happens Brad wasn’t doing so well in the post season but was still called upon by Hickey & Garner when they should have tried other alternatives. So Brad hats off to you buddy!