Problems with Akismet

Posted by Tom on April 16, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized.

Akismet is a very good tool for blocking comment spam on WordPress blogs. It has blocked more than 550 spam comments on my blog alone. Unfortunately it recently decided my URL was a spam site and started blocking my comments on other peoples blogs (notably those of Leo and Alice .) It even blocks my comments here if I include my URL! I’ve tried contacting Akismet and tried marking my comments as “not spam” but so far nothing has helped.

If you have a WordPress blog that I often comment on, please check to see if any of my posts have been blocked by Akismet and mark them “not spam.”

You can do this by going to the WordPress Dashboard (by clicking Site Admin) then under the Spam heading click the link on the number of comments blocked. If any of my comments are trapped, please check Not Span and then click the box that unblocks the checked items. This should, supposedly, train Akismet so that it stops blocking my posts. Posts marked spam are only kept for 15 days so you probably need to do this every couple weeks to make sure there aren’t other false positives.

Thanks in advance.

Match It For Pratchett

Posted by Tom on March 17, 2008
Posted in: Science Fiction.

One of my favorite authors is the UK’s Terry Pratchett, know for his wonderfully odd and entertaining Disk World novels. A short while ago he was diagnosed with at rare form of Alzheimer’s and recently he and his wife have donated £500,000 (~$1,000,000) to support research into the disease. A numbeave now started Match It For Pratchet to raise matching funds from all those who love his work.

As far as I know, contributions are not tax deductible in the US but that really does not matter. You can also buy T-Shirts from Poosk.com and all the profits will go towards the fund. That’s what I will be doing. I hope some or all who visit here will contribute too.

Match It For Pratchett

What Day Is It?

Posted by Tom on March 14, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized.

Pi Day

Yes everyone, it’s 3/14. This is the day when we celebrate everyone’s favorite irrational number. (Yes, I know there are a lot of √2 fans also, but there isn’t any 41st of January!).

Did you all get your Pi Day cards in the mail at 1:59:27 this morning? I have to admit, I missed the deadline. Maybe next year.

Here’s a link where you can learn all about Pi Day.

Fun With Ray Tracing

Posted by Tom on February 14, 2008
Posted in: Around the House, Technology.

A few weeks ago one of the podcasts I subscribe to (FLOSS Weekly) had a episode about a ray tracing program called POV-Ray. The people being interviewed in that podcast were so enthusiastic about their software that I decided to give it a try.

It’s a free, open source product and I found it has good documentation too. Anyway, I’ve been playing with it for a while, mostly going through the tutorial and doing the examples. Finally I decided to try something original and here is the result.

Rocket

This is a very simple image though I hope to embellish it as I learn more about the program and how to use it.

The great thing about POV-Ray (at least to me) is that it is all done with software and written in a “scene description language.” It’s very much like programming in any other language except that the output is rendered into an image. I’ve tried creating images from scratch using Photoshop or other image editors but I never could get the hang of that. With this I can work in a way I am familiar with.

All the images created are 3-dimensional and it’s easy to change the viewpoint and lighting to get the best looking results. Also there are many pre-defined elements such as the background stars and the planet’s sky in my little example.

Anyway, if any of you are interested, you can download the program for most OS’s (Windows, Mac, Linux and others) and just play around with it. It comes with a lot of pre-coded examples that you can have fun with. If you want to listen to the podcast that got me hooked you can download it here. It is an MP3 about 32MB in size.

Super Advertising

Posted by Tom on February 4, 2008
Posted in: Curent Events.

This summary is for the first half of the game only, I presume that the second half was similar. I don’t know, I didn’t watch. I saw a football game once.

(The following list came from Jan )

● 5:15 (CST), New England came out of the tunnel – 5 commercials followed
● Star Spangled Banner sung – 7 commercials followed
● Coin toss – 2 commercials followed
● Teams come onto the field; no action – 1 commercial
● Kick off; with 14:55 left first qtr. – 1 commercial
● Player down with 10:47 left first qtr. – 3 commercials
● Field goal with 6:12 left first qtr. – 4 commercials
● Kick off; New York to New England – 3 commercials
● End of first quarter – 5 commercials
● NE touchdown with 14:57 left 2nd qtr. – 4 commercials
● Kick off to NY – 4 commercials
● Interception with 11:53 left 2nd qtr. – 5 commercials
● Giants stop NE with 10:00 left – 5 commercials
● With 8:36 left 2nd qtr. – 3 commercials
● With 6:59 left 2nd qtr. – 3 commercials
● With 5:00 left 2nd qtr. – 1 commercial
● With 2:30 left 2nd qtr. – 5 commercials
● Giants punt to NE with 1:50 left – 3 commercials
● Time out Giants with 1:35 left – 2 commercials
● Time out NE with 0:59 left – 1 commercial
● HALF TIME

They said there were 64 commercials in all; each must have played at least once during the first half with some playing twice. Of course, I did not keep track until the teams started out of the tunnel… can you imagine how many played before that in the pre-game show???

If you want to see all the commercials, you can go here.

Thanks Jan

So, what is claimed to be the biggest sports broadcast of the the year consists of more commercials than game time. This does not compute!

Changes

Posted by Tom on January 30, 2008
Posted in: Around the House.

This has been a day for changes here. First, after dithering for a while, I finally had our DSL service upgraded. I was an early adopter of DSL from our local phone company and have been running that 384Kb SDSL connection ever since. Recently the ISP made 1.5Mb ADSL service available though initially they would not allow upgrades.  Now they have opened that up and I called today to make the change. It took only 5 hours from phone call to working upgrade. I love our local phone cooperative!

The second change is an experiment with not requiring registration for comments. I’ll still moderate the first comment and do other anti-spam things. If the blog gets too much spam then I’ll go back to requiring registration. I hope this will encourage some friends and family ,who haven’t done so previously, to post comments.

How Cold Was It?

Posted by Tom on January 24, 2008
Posted in: Around the House.

ColdIt is cold (again) here in Iowa. Minus 16°F this morning with wind chill of -30°F. Can you say Brrrrr? I bet you can.

There was an item on the local TV last night that said of 108 school districts reporting to the Dept of Education this week, none have had one full week of classes in nearly 2.5 months without an early dismissal, late start or days missed.

This is turning into one of the worst winters for cabin fever in my memory. Not only is it cold but we still have ice left from a storm in early December. Forecast is for more snow tomorrow and freezing rain Sunday night.

Believe me, when warm weather finally gets here I’ll be dancing naked in the back yard.

Fascinating!

Posted by Tom on January 20, 2008
Posted in: Astronomy, Radio.

Early this morning (01/20/08) I took part in a fascinating radio test, the HAARP – LWA Moon Bounce Experiment It was an attempt to detect high frequency (~7MHz) radio waves reflected from the Moon using regular amateur radio receivers and antennas.

I was quite skeptical of the possibility but still got myself out of bed at 0630z (0030 am CST) to see for myself. The experiment was to last for two hours, one hour on 6.7925MHz and the next hour on 7.4075MHz. Fellow hams will notice that these frequencies are just below and above the 40 meter amateur band, an extremely low frequency for Moon bounce.

The tests consisted of 2 seconds of transmission followed by 3 seconds of silence with this pattern repeated for one hour on each frequency. Since the round-trip travel time for the signal to reach the Moon and return is about 2-1/2 seconds, the echo should occur in the silent period. You can read the other details of the experiment at the link above.

The bottom line: Even with my modest antenna (a multi-band vertical) I was able to hear the signal returning. Not strong, but easily audible. I was really surprised when I first heard the echoes. Even with the transmitter putting out 3.6 megawatts of RF power, I felt it was an amazing feat.

I’ve submitted my report to the people at HAARP and I’m pleased to have made even a tiny contribution to the experiment.

WordPress Update

Posted by Tom on January 15, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized.

I’ve just had this blog updated to the latest version of WordPress. I think I have all of the customizations back in place. If anyone notices anything that doesn’t match the pre-01/15/08 version, please post a comment here with info about it. Be sure to refresh your cache (CTRL-F5) to see the current state.

Cruise Photos

Posted by Tom on December 19, 2007
Posted in: Travel.

I just put photos from our cruise up on my static web site. There are seven pages with 5 pictures each plus descriptions. Comments are welcome here.

Wind StarThis is a picture that my good friend Mike Apsey captured from the web-cam at the Panama Canal Miraflores locks while the Wind Star was passing through.

Thanks Mike!