Noise Between Stations

Technology

  • Spam Proofing

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    1 min read

    Dan Benjamin’s Win the SPAM Arms Race offers a clever way to create a clickable mailto: link on your web pages while greatly reducing the ability of spam harvesters to find it. Some people are so nice. I’m combining that with some email filters, started with Heather’s list plus a few additions that are working…

  • Best Spam Subject Line So Far

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    1 min read

    ‘I never said I want to be alone‘, on spam selling a stock. I still don’t understand why they think we’ll be in a buying mood after they trick us into looking at their unsolicited marketing message.

  • Looking for an IMAP Account

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    2 min read

    So I’m planning on moving away from Yahoo mail. It’s been wonderful to go many years without having to change my personal email address, but: the reliability has been spotty lately they started charging, which is fair, but it makes me wonder what other services are out there the email hack, ugh it’s time to…

  • Validation, The Movie

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    2 min read

    I’m gradually going around my site, cleaning each room, applying a template here, fixing a link there. In the process I’m finally getting around to reading Owen’s Validation, a persuasive argument for proper code, which could have been subtitled ‘Markup for the Long Now‘… My view is validation is very important, and not because I’m…

  • Blood Book

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    1 min read

    Mark Bernstein has an interesting review of Rebecca Blood’s The Weblog Handbook. For Blood, as for many diarists, the exercise of writing is its own reward. “If you allow yourself to begin posting entries based on what you think someone else wants you to write,” she warns, “you are missing the point of having a…

  • BlogSpam

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    1 min read

    Spotted! Well, not exactly the BlogSpam I referred to. But crazy random posts on the topic of air-conditioning and mold appeared on Molly’s blog here and here. Is it someone’s idea of a joke? Do you wish you thought of it first?

  • Spam-Proof?

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    1 min read

    We have email spam and IM spam. Today I received a spam text message on my mobile phone (either Sprint sold my number or the spammers haven’t even bothered to harvest numbers, simply sending them out in numerical order because it’s so inexpensive). Oh joy. Next I predict – and I probably shouldn’t say this…

  • Comment Engines

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    1 min read

    Just an implementation note…I recently spent several hours researching and trying out comment engines. The various hosted systems like YACCS can be quite nice, but when their servers slow down it slowed my site down. There are some nice PHP systems, but that was a learning curve I wanted to avoid. I ended using SnorComments2,…

  • 1fps

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    1 min read

    Adrian Miles’ first axiom of network video: legibility is more important than the representation of movement. Which means that over the web when we have to decrease the size and resolution of video we should also lower the frame rate instead of trying to jam 24fps down the wire. How low can the frame rate…

  • .htaccess – it slices, it dices

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    1 min read

    This .htaccess tutorial reveals that this one little file is more than you ever imagined! Password-protect files, redirect files or whole directories, specify error pages, prevent directory listings and hotlinking to images, and more! Apache web server not included.

  • Tinderbox Service

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    1 min read

    Last night, modifying this here blog, I shot Mark Bernstein an email after having tried about ten variations of Tinderbox syntax that I thought should work (I was mistakenly making an assumption instead of paying attention to the docs, prolly some decade old Pascal knowledge rearing its ugly head). This morning in my Inbox was…

  • Philip Greenspun’s Future

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    1 min read

    Philip Greenspun’s Research page reveals several interesting ideas. He’s known for explaining how to build robust database-backed websites when most people were still hand coding everything. That was a process of making everything modular and separated from the presentation, and in many ways the next generation of the web is a continuation of that. He…

  • Comment Survey

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    2 min read

    Because the Noisy One values your opinion he asks, should Noise Between Stations offer you, my dear visitor, the ability to add comments to each post? Your answer here. (Survey closed.) Update: The survey revealed 75% in favor. Comments included: …you might find them annoying after awhile, and after awhile you might find that you…

  • Instantaneous Posting

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    1 min read

    There’s a sidebar on your blog and it too is a blog. But it’s simply a list of links. And the list is powered by your visitors. They stop by and, like a coin in the metal box at the cathedral, leave you a link. The metal box in this case is a text box…

  • Ward on IAWiki

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    1 min read

    Wow, Ward Cunningham stopped by the IAWiki. That’s like Warren Buffett stopping by your local investment group to see what’s up.