Looks like a lot of work has been done on the LJ-XP plugin for WordPress, so I figured I’d give it a shot again. If people on LiveJournal are wondering why I haven’t posted anything other than Twitter things in a long time, it’s partially because the crossposting plugin broke when I did a WordPress upgrade a while back, and I never bothered to do anything about it.
I decided to turn off comments on the LJ posts this time though, but you can log into my WordPress with OpenID, for which LiveJournal acts as a provider, so hopefully that will work out.
Website
lj-xp
Upgraded my WordPress installation to the new 2.7 version. So far the new admin interface seems much nicer than the last one, though I’m still a fan of the original. Other than that, nothing really seems all that different. I fully expect to continue doing patches every time I go to post anyway, but at least now I have a small shell script that takes care of that for me, including backing up the old WP and database.
Also trying out a new theme, called iNove, which so far I’m pretty happy with. The widget column is slightly wider than in the old theme, which lets me use a slightly fancier GamerTag, and it’s overall pretty plain and simple. I’ll keep it around for a bit and see how it goes.
I’m also trying out the Textile2 plugin for WordPress. I’ve used Textile in the past with MoveableType and other CMS software, and like the markup it uses. So if you notice any weird markup looking stuff, it’s because I’m getting used to it again and probably messed up the syntax.
Website
textile, themes, wordpress
Been making a few changes on the website. Did the upgrade to WordPress 2.5, which seems to be working fine, though I’m not a big fan of the new admin interface. I also finally fixed the CSS for the text boxes on the sidebar in this theme, so they have the proper background and bottom decoration.
Some of you may have noticed that I switched to the CLI theme for a bit. I liked it, but decided to go back to Connections Reloaded. One of these days I’ll get around to writing my own theme…
Also, I added an Amazon box to the sidebar, the top item is what Amazon thinks you want to buy based on your purchase history and the content of my site supposedly. The bottom item is a link to the Kindle e-reader. If you want to buy a Kindle, please use the link over there, they give associates a huge cut of the purchase price on those. 
Website
amazon, themes, wordpress
Finally bit the bullet and upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1. Unfortunately, this means the LiveJournal Crossposting plugin no longer functions. So, if you’re used to reading my posts via LJ, you’ll have to subscribe to the kyzokurss feed.
I’ve also decided to disable the reCaptcha plugin. I’m not sure it was actually stopping any comment spam, and it was probably just annoying the few people who do comment here.
Website
captcha, wordpress
Giving something new a try in the battle against blog spam; DNSBLs. It works for e-mail, so maybe it’ll work for the web too. I’ve rigged up Apache with mod_access_dnsbl to query Spamhaus’s XBL and SBL for each request and to reply with “not authorized” if the they’re listed in the DNSBL. I also rigged up my own local DNSBL zone so I can list the IPs of the spam that Akismet catches.
So, if you can’t read this, let me know.
Website
apache, dnsbl
Been making a few changes to my website over the past few days. Probably the most notable is the addition of the reCAPTCHA, a new CAPTCHA system that does useful work as a byproduct of fighting comment spam. The first link has a full description of the system, but basically it shows two distorted words, one is known to the computer, and one from a scanned text that the computer doesn’t know. When the human enters the known word correctly, it’s assumed they entered the unknown word correctly too, and one a number of humans agree on an unknown word, it’s considered to be identified.
The other change is a bit of reorganization of my domain. I’ve moved my weblog off over to weblog.2bithacker.net, and my gallery over to gallery.2bithacker.net. The old locations are setup to redirect to the new, so it’s probably not all that noticeable. I decided to go with this arrangement as I feel it gives a bit better separation and organization to things, and it was easier now that all my stuff is running in a jail on Hindenburg.
Website
captcha
Finally got around to making some updates to my website today. I had been putting off working on the rest of the templates for WordPress, and finally fixed a couple of them today. I still have the archive pages to update to match my style, but the individual post pages work right now (for example, this one.) I like how the WP template system works, it’s a lot easier to deal with than MovableType’s, and you can use pretty much any PHP you want.
Also did some poking around to find a power and data cable for my GPS and found this site. They make and sell an alternative to the overpriced cables from Garmin, including the eMax cable. I think I’ll buy one once I have the money to spare. I figure it’d pay for itself after it takes the place of a few packs of AA’s that I usually go through on roadtrips with my GPS. I’ve also been thinking of starting to use the GPS with work, marking points for each dealership. I figure I could eventually make a map with all our customers marked on it, which would help out any new drivers that come along. At least, I would find such a map helpful.
And all that GPS thinking got me thinking about the Mobile PC project again. There’s a lot of slick hardware out there for the project now, including a Mini-ITX enclosure specifically designed for car PC’s. And I got to chatting with about it, and we got to thinking that having the box be able to participate in a mesh network with other car PC’s in the area would be pretty useful. Something like MeshAP would do nicely, then you could do all sorts of fun stuff like VoIP communication between vehicles and shared music collections and vehicle tracking information. The VoIP stuff got me thinking that using Bluetooth headsets connected to the Car PC would be pretty cool.
I think it’s something I should definitely spend some time on, especially if I can ever get the equipment together to actually implement such a setup.
Anyway, I think that’s enough rambling for now. I think my WoW addiction is fading, and my brain is starting to grind on all these ideas again.
Projects, Website
car pc, gps, wordpress
