Category: Just Saying …

I create a lot of web sites, many for my own amusement, but sometimes the form spammers find the contact form or comment form and start emailing their spam. Now I have a solution to stopping form spam in it’s tracks.

The details are over on my new FormSpammerTrap web site. That’s where the automated form spammers end up when they try to spam my contact forms. The concept is quite easy to implement, and even works on WordPress sites without needing another plugin.

I also put the details about stopping form spam on my SecurityDawg web site. (That is another example of a web site that amuses me. I liked the domain name.)

If you have problems with form or comment spam, check out the FormSpammerTrap site.  The process works quite well. If one of my sites starts getting form spam, it will stop as soon as I implement my process.  And the whole process is absolutely free, open source.

It just works. And I am quite proud of myself for figuring it out. (I am, apparently, also easily impressed.)

Since the last post, there have been more changes, including changes to the change. The Net Change is that we decided not to move, for several reasons.

Housing in CA is expensive, and with potential limits on income, there might have been difficulties in house affordability. Pam also decided that she didn’t want to be that far away from the kids and grandkids, and that she would deal with the 24/7 supplemental oxygen and stay here. And although I have good employable skills, being older would effectively limit my employment prospects. Even though age discrimination is not allowed, it is there in practice. So the move to CA was cancelled.

We did decide that we would take one-month trips to CA to give Pam a break with things. My employers are willing to let me telecommute from there (apparently, my claim about good employable skills are valid) during the trip. I will use up some vacation and comp time. But my job functions just require electronic access to the various systems I maintain; physical access is not required. My supervisor is supportive of this decision, as are his bosses.

So, next week off to Oceanside for a month. The alarm system in the house is working well, we’ve got some responsible neighborhood teenage boys to mow the lawn (if it doesn’t start snowing here) and watch out for errant newspapers and door flyers.

We’ll take a few days to visit Disneyland (we’ve invited our youngest daughter and her little family to be with us there), and probably a few other touristy attractions in between work. Pam is bringing some of her scrapbook stuff. Should be a good trip, and the break from 24/7 oxygen for Pam will be helpful to her health.

Major changes in store around here. Pam has developed pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure in the lung to heart blood vessels) which requires her to be on oxygen full time, and results in decreased energy and stamina.

We took a trip to California a few weeks ago, and due to the low altitude, she was able to be completely off of oxygen, and had her normal energy and stamina. So, although it is difficult to leave the kids and grandchildren, we have to move.

So, the house is up for sale, and we will be moving when that happens. Our plan is to go back to the Rocklin, CA area, since we came from that area. I will have to quit the job, and then decide whether to keep working or collect Social Security early (I turn 62 in November). If the house sells fast, we’ll move into an extended stay hotel in SLC (cheaper than renting) until we move in the late fall.

Changes are afoot.

New post on my Security Dawg web site about protecting web sites with a file hashing program I wrote.

Did a front brake rotor job on my car on Saturday.  Didn’t notice any leftover parts when I was done. The first test drive was OK, but heard some unusual noises from the front right this morning as I was leaving for work.

So I went back home, planning on changing my clothes to take it apart again. But Pam let me take her new ride instead. I’ll work on my car tonight; sounds like a bolt needs to be tightened. The lug nuts were tight, so perhaps one of the four brake pad mounting bolts is not tight enough.

Pam’s new ride is a 2008 Toyota Highlander Limited Edition. We’ve been looking for a replacement for her 1998 Camry, due to the need for extra cargo space and a trailer hitch for a trailer for the powered wheelchair that appears to be in her future. Went to the Hertz used car sale, and found this one at a good price (under blue book) with all the options we needed. It has just about every option you could get other than the back seat video display. Only 75K miles on it, and well-maintained.

We’ve had good luck with the Toyotas we have bought from Hertz before. No mechanical problems, no maintenance (other than the usual tires and oil changes and a battery or two). Two of the Camry’s have over 200K miles, and mine has 120K, and all are still running well. So we are pleased with the new Highlhander. It drives well, and according to the on-screen display gets about 25MPG combined city/highway. Comfortable ride and handling. We’ll be taking it on a weekend trip to California in a couple of weeks.

And Happy Birthday to my oldest daughter Christine!

This one is quick and to the point.

Time to disable Java in your browser. Switch to Firefox if you can. Check out these articles: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/01/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-java-exploit/ . also, see what I wrote and was published on Jerry Pournelle’s blog : http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=11417 .

Do it now.

In my never-ending quest to write silly web sites, I just finished another one.

This one will help you survive the coming Zombie Apocalypse with the rules that are needed to survive.

The site is www.RulesForZombies.com . You can enter new rules, vote on existing ones, subscribe to the Twitter feed, and generally waste some time.

Now that that site is done, it’s on to the next. I am looking into the best way to make a WordPress site ‘responsive’, so that it looks good on any size screens. There are many WordPress themes that have that capability, but many don’t allow for customization of the ‘look and feel’ of the site. I need to add widgets in various places, and even sub-widgets (for lack of a better term), plus change just about any component of the page with CSS style changes.

There are a few possibilities. What I would really like is a ‘drag-and-drop’ theme designer. I’ve been playing with one called “ThemeFrame” (from the folks at www.bytesforall.com who make the Atahualpa theme I have used for the last couple of years), but not sure if it will do fully responsive themes. And although it has been in beta for over a year (and I paid for the ‘early release’ because it showed promise’), I am not sure that it has all of the capabilities I need. Plus it has some rough spots that require some manual CSS tweaks.

The next project will be a highly customized WP theme, with ‘responsive’ capabilities. I’ve started the basic design, but it’s not quite there yet. Needs more work to make sure that I can get all of the elements in the theme that I need.

So there is that to keep me busy, plus the usual weekend projects: lawn, patio cleaning, and the various “honey-do” items.

Back again…

New things around here. We changed from CenturyLink/Qwest (CLQ) to Comcast for Internet and TV. Last week, CLQ had some equipment problems, resulting in web pages loading very slowly (if at all). Since both Pam and I use the Interwebs a lot (in the evenings, we site side-by-side in our respective recliners, each with our own laptop, as we both surf the web and watch TV). Pam does a lot of scrapbook (and other) shopping on the Webs, and I do my web site programming and maintenance. So a disruption in the Interwebs is not appreciated around here.

I did the support call to CLQ, after doing all of the usual things to ensure it wasn’t my home network. I told the support person all of the things I did, but (as usual), they have a script they must go through, and they don’t know how to deviate from it. After at least 30 minutes, they said that there must be a problem in their servers (!?) that would get fixed in a few days.

The next day, the Interwebs are still slow. And we both are not happy campers. The next day, no change. We were able to grab onto the neighbors’ wireless (with their permission  — they were rewarded with giant chocolate chip cookies), but by Saturday (3 days later), still no improvement.

It was then that we decided that CLQ has failed, so we started the process to change over to Comcast. That got done today (one week after ordering), with the Comcast guy taking about 90 minutes to set up everything – cable from the street (right now on top of the grass, the cable-burying team is coming next weekend), the full HD channel package, three cable boxes, HD-DVR (watchable from any room). Although we’ve been DirecTV customers for years, there are some advantages to Comcast. We’re getting more channels, and saving about $40/month.

So, today was the cable installation day, and the cable guy got everything working quickly. Then some rearrangement of the wireless routers (and the wireless repeaters) got our internal network going. There are some new channel numbers to get used to, and setting up the collections of programs to record, but it’s mostly been just fine. TV looks great, and Internet speed (according to the tests at www.dslreports.com ) are much faster, even on my laptop.

I do need to get some network wiring finished off so that not all of the systems around here are on wireless. The house has CAT5 wiring on all of the phone wiring, so that’s good – no digging into walls. But that can wait a bit.

In the meantime, I am keeping busy in the evenings with the new web sites I am working on. There are three of them (at the moment), with one in very final testing, the second in ‘almost-final’ testing, and the third in the design phase. Nothing ready to announce yet, but the work does keep me entertained.

So, that’s the way it is. For now.