Image via CrunchBase
I’d been meaning to post something about SOPA, but Christmas got in the way.
I finally got round to posting on it last night: Blacknight Does Not Support SOPA
Very clever series of interactive Youtube videos with singing Christmas hedgehogs
Image via CrunchBase
Enjoy!
Firefox is a wonderful piece of software, but sometimes it has issues.. Trying to debug the problem can be made a lot easier if you start the browser in “safe mode” ie. with addons and plugins disabled
On OSX you can do this by holding down the “option” key when starting Firefox (it’s the key with “alt” on the top)
Image via Wikipedia
US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Last week I was in Washington DC for a few days on a short break. I spent quite a bit of my time trekking around the various museums that the city has to offer.
The one museum, however, that really “left a mark” was the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In common with a lot of the museums in DC, the Holocaust Memorial Museum is free to visit, though unlike other museums it definitely costs emotionally.
The building is a short walk from the main National Mall, which is dominated by the various parts of the Smithsonian.
On entering the building and passing through security you are ushered into a lift up to the 4th floor where the tour begins. It’s entirely self-guided and, unlike some other museums, the layout is very easy to follow. Before entering the lift you are encouraged to pick up an ID card of a Holocaust victim. The idea being that you can trace your victim’s fate – some lived, while others died.
The tour follows the rise of fascism and Hitler, through the war, the final solution and the ultimate liberation of the concentration camps by the Allies in 1945. Along the way there are some fascinating and disturbing segways into Jewish communities in Europe and how the Holocaust wiped a lot of them out. But the museum does not focus solely on the Jews, but also gives plenty of coverage to the fate of other groups that Hitler deemed unworthy to be members of the “master race”, such as gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally ill.
It’s hard to find words to describe the experience of visiting the museum. By the time you finish the tour of the permanent exhibit you will probably be mentally and emotionally drained. The museum exhibits speak for themselves.
If you are in DC then I’d highly recommend a visit, though be warned it is a gruelling experience.
The .xxx domain went live yesterday afternoon, so we’ve been having a bit of fun coming up with imagery to promote it.
This one might not make a lot of sense to non-Irish people, but it’s influenced by a popular postcard that used to be on sale back in the 1980s:
And this one is my personal favourite:
There’s a whole load more over here.
And if you want to get a .xxx domain you’ll need to go here
Image by Patrick Nouhailler via Flickr
I’m currently reading the Steve Jobs biography. I wanted the “dead tree” version, so I had to wait for it to arrive, so I’m probably a bit behind compared to other people.
I don’t remember the launch of the Macintosh, but I do remember the Apple stand at an exhibition in Cork around the same time. I have vague recollections of a video they were playing about IBM vs Apple, so it must have been roughly around the same period, though I could be completely wrong!
The imagery in the Ridley Scott directed advert from 1984 is very strong, though any version of the video I’ve found is pretty grainy.
Here it is:
Image via Wikipedia
Pretty much any site that has “user generated content” will be abused by spammers.
It’s an unfortunate fact of life.
in many respects it’s like a war. The software vendors tweak and improve their software to stop spammers, but the spammers find new ways of getting around them.
Vbulletin has several options in a base install that can help, but unfortunately they’re not going to be able to stop the more persistent spammers, which means you probably need to supplement your arsenal with some extra tools or plugins.
On your own install I’d strongly recommend that you force users to validate their email address before being able to post and turn on all the other validation checks that come with the software ie. reCaptcha
Here’s a few that I’ve been using across the various Vbulletin installs I run:
BlockScript
Blockscript comes in two versions. With the free version you can block based on the user’s IP address and country. So, for example, if you don’t want anyone from India posting on your site you can simply blacklist the entire country. With the paid version you get a lot of other options that can help block against dodgy proxies and whole lot more.
The commercial license is well worth the investment if my logs are anything to go by. The developers are also very responsive if you submit feature requests, which is helpful.
Vbulletin.org Plugins
If you want to do something slightly different (or radically different) then chances are you’re not the only person who has had that idea. (Sorry – you’re probably not that original 
)
The number of plugins on the Vbulletin.org site is impressive with a lot of them being maintained to professional standards. In terms of fighting spam here’s a couple that I’ve found helpful:
One Touch Ban & Cleanup – The “delete as spam” option in Vbulletin is useful, but if you’re doing a cleanup operation you can easily find its limitations. This plugin will completely nuke a user and all traces of them quickly and easily. You can either ban them and delete everything or even delete them entirely. Handy when the Vbulletin tools have a post limit of 50!
Multiple Account Detection & Prevention – Blocks spammers from registering multiple accounts based on their IP and cookies. Very useful. Note: although the plugin is for 3.8.* it also appears to work fine on any of my 4.* installs.
vBStopForumSpam – allows you to check your user registrations against a shared database – think of it as the forum equivalent of a DNS blacklist. You can check both IP addresses and usernames. Be careful with the username check, as it can throw false positives. Also if the database site goes offline nobody will be able to register on your forum.
If anyone knows of any other plugins for dealing with spammers that target Vbulletin installs please do share!
From the “weird and disturbing” category comes today’s “gem”.
At the moment if you type the following query into Google you will get some rather “interesting” results:
what defines an english person
And here’s a screenshot of the results (click to enlarge):
NB: I didn’t manipulate this. Found via James
There’s been quite a lot of talk in recent weeks about how the Euro might collapse and whether or not Ireland would be better outside the Euro, back with its own currency or maybe even using Sterling.
One of the things I miss about not having our own currency is the design of the notes and coins. Ireland’s Euro coins aren’t exactly distinctive, unlike a lot of the other countries who were able to maintain a very strong identity.. all we got was a harp!
So this “punt nua” idea is almost appealing, though I’m not sure I’d want to see Bertie Ahern that often:
Bertie Ahern punt nua
More on the story here
© 2012 Michele Neylon :: Pensieri. All Rights Reserved.
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