Not the most interesting topics of conversation I know, but up until yesterday I was getting literally hundreds of spam comments on my site every day. I have long been grappling with the problem and have tried various methods to filter them all out but for the most part a few always slip through the net. This was annoying me so much a couple of days ago I disabled commenting because it was just taking to much of my time to delete all the junk. I wanted a 100% perfect solution (not asking much I think!) which would eliminate the problem for good. After a quick search around I found such a plugin for WordPress called ‘Spam Stopgap Extreme‘. This clever little plugin uses some dark magic in the form of embedded random MD5 hashes to prevent spammers from automatically commenting. It’s a simple and elegant solution which has so far has worked flawlessly and made my inbox a lot lighter!
I received some pretty good xmas presents this year, the highlights being a watch from my parents and some assorted books & DVD’s. Amongst all this I especially liked a hefty sized book called ‘Japanese Graphics NOW!‘ which is packed with some of the coolest imagery you’re likely to find anywhere.
“Exploding with eye-popping originality and freshness, today’s best Japanese graphics have been gathered together to make this must-have guide to contemporary aesthetics in Japan.
If you like this sort of thing it’s definitely worth getting hold of a copy. You can take a look inside at some of the cool graphics here.
Speaking of graphics the ‘The Ultimate Matrix Collection‘ (Ten Disc DVD Set) is also a must-have for serious fans. I’m only about halfway through the 35 hours of special features and am loving every minute of it. Some might argue that seeing how a film is put together spoils the magic but personally I am fascinated to see how something of such epic scale is put together, especially from a technical viewpoint. I think my perfect job would be in visual effects but I have no idea how you would begin getting into such a position, from what I hear it isn’t easy.
Discovered a cool service today called Audioscrobbler courtesy of another tech-head which builds up a profile of your music listening habits automatically allowing you do some pretty nifty things. If you’re so inclined you can see what I’ve been listening to recently here. Not exactly Mozart I know!
As with many others, I have some Gmail invites to give away. If you want one drop me a line and it’s yours. First-come-first-served!
I think I’ll round things off today with another sunset photo I took last night out of my window. If you like it click on the text just below to see a larger version:
Sunset behind the rooftops
Hope everyone has a Happy New Year!
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