I have been running this blog on Wordpress for about 6 months now. For the first 3 months, there was no spam at all. The next 3 months I got some, but not a big deal. Over the past few weeks, comment spam has gotten completely out of control. I delete all of it, so (as far as I can tell) it does no good to the spammer. But even so, I am/was getting over 100 spams a day, everyday.
As of 01/10/07, I have implemented Akismet. I am cautiously optimistic this is going to solve the problem.
I woke up this morning (Thursday 12/21/06) to a radio news report with a clip from the Broncos coach – Mike Shanahan. His comments had been recorded yesterday in midst of a major blizzard. He said the team had its normal practice yesterday. They were in “the bubble”, an indoor facility. Shanahan said he expected every player to show up on time for the practice today. He said (to his players), if you need to leave 2 hours early, then that’s what you do.
After my morning cup of coffee, I decided to look around and maybe start to shovel some of the snow. We had about 2 feet of snow, with drifts of 4 feet. Instead of trying to shovel, I got my camera and took a few pictures. Click on the small image to see an enlargement. If you look closely, you can see the antenna from Kimberly’s car.
All the schools are closed and nearly all businesses are closed – including the malls and retail stores. I’m not sure about the grocery stores, but my guess is they are open. The airport is closed. There was no mail yesterday and likely none today. All major highways are closed to the north, south and east. You can try to go west (into the mountains) but chains are required.
Right now (Thursday 12/21/06 10am) it is still snowing, but not very hard and the wind is mostly calm. My plan is to wait at least a day before I do any shoveling. With luck, this will all melt overnight. Maybe not.
Click for more photos – Garage 01, Garage 02, Sidewalk 01, Sidewalk 02.
Fun with vocabulary.
This is truly amazing. This is (more or less) the first time I ever used digg. OK – I admit I’ve been out of the loop. Word of the day is mung. I came across this word at the very end of a very long and very well written rant.
It’s designed to all fit together. Not just munged after-the-fact to go together OK, but designed from the ground up to be a single coherent system. And when something doesn’t fit, it’s a bug to be fixed, not just “part of the game”.
From dictionary.com mung = an acronym / mash until no good.
Don’t you just love it? But it gets better. In researching the definition of mung, I learned about Finagle’s law, the folk version of Murphy’s Law – which (of course) I already knew. But it gets even better.
Some technical and scientific cultures (e.g., paleontologists) know it under the name `Sod’s Law’; this usage may be more common in Great Britain.
Summary:Â Murphy’s law / folk version = Finagle’s law which is known by British paleontologists as Sod’s law.
I learn something new everyday.
A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE (“EINE Is Not Emacs“) and ZWEI (“ZWEI Was EINE Initially”).
which leads to backronym = backward acronym – did you know – Discovering backronyms is a common form of wordplay among hackers?
tags
mung recursive+acronym Finagle Sod’s+law backronym backward+acronym
technorati ping / blog phil.rice / mung / recursive+acronym / Finagle / Sod’s+law / backronym / backward+acronym /
Light Bulb Joke
Click if size matters.
Q – How many HUD weenies does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A – Can I borrow your shoe lace?
humor joke light+bulb shoe+lace
technorati ping / blog phil.rice / Real Estate Yard Signs / humor / joke / light+bulb / shoe+lace /
Fun with vocabulary – The words fusty, mephitic tang – actual unsolicited use. Quote from The New Bedouins: This Is Over The Top
street people, with the usual fusty, mephitic tang in the air around them.
fusty defined: / dictionary.com – having a stale smell; moldy; musty: fusty rooms that were in need of a good airing.
mephitic defined: / dictionary.com – offensive to the smell
tang defined: / dictionary.com – a pungent or distinctive odor
Stowe Boyd is my hero. Having said that – I am critical of this sentence because:
Fusty means stinky. Mephitic means stinky. Tang means the stink. It’s like new innovation. It’s redundant.
Having said that – I enjoy being exposed to new words. I have never in my life ever heard anyone utter the words fusty or mephitic. I have heard the word tang – and not just the orange drink of the astronauts.
fusty mephitic tang stowe+boyd phil+rice lingo vocabulary cliche edge
technorati ping / blog phil.rice / Real Estate Yard Signs / fusty / mephitic / tang / stowe+boyd / Phil Rice / lingo / vocabulary / cliche edge /
Fun with vocabulary – The word inured – actual unsolicited use. Quote from The New Bedouins: This Is Over The Top
With the number of laptops per capita at coffeshops going up, we have all become a bit inured to the office-like feel of the corner expresso bar.
inured defined: source / via Google / dictionary.com
made tough by habitual exposure; “hardened fishermen”; “a peasant, dark, lean-faced, wind-inured”- Robert Lynd; “our successors…may be graver, more inured and equable men”- V.S.Pritchett
Stowe Boyd is my hero. Having said that – I am critical of this sentence because:
“we have all” – is nearly always bad form. The cliche is the word “obviously”. If this is your point of view – then fine – just say so. But don’t speak for rest of the world, and above all, don’t speak for me. As a matter of fact – I have not become inured to the feel of anything at the corner expresso bar. What if my expresso bar is in the middle of the block (not on the corner)? Then what? There are people out there who read blogs but make coffee in a low tech flat bed drip coffee machine and drink it at home. Then what? We enjoy reading about the scene at the expresso bar – but “we have all” does not hold water.
tags
inured stowe+boyd phil+rice lingo vocabulary cliche edge
technorati ping / blog phil.rice / Real Estate Yard Signs / inured / stowe+boyd / Phil Rice / lingo / vocabulary / cliche edge /
Lingo of the A-List Blog
Lingo defined: Similar to jargon. A vocabulary used by a particular group. (source)
Fledge defined: to become well enough covered with feathers to be able to fly. Generally used to describe the process of young birds leaving the nest for their first flights. (source). This raises the question – is the edge fledged? And if so, to what extent? Is it full fledged, or partially fledged? To the best of my knowledge, the word fledge is not used on any A-List blog.
tags
lingo jargon scoble phil+rice philip+g+rice pirillo a-list froth edge edgy bubble un 2.0 foobar unfuck fledge mashup
technorati ping / blog phil.rice / Real Estate Yard Signs / lingo / jargon / scoble / Phil Rice / Philip G Rice / pirillo / a-list / froth / edge / edgy / bubble / un / 2.0 / foobar / unfuck / fledge /
How do I know it’s phish? (see below)
Screenshot:
How do I know it’s phish? Because I don’t have a paypal account.
Text:
Due to upcoming year 2006, and recent changes in PayPal’s Service Agreement you need to submit additional details on your PayPal account. Starting from 2006 all PayPal accounts will come with complete detailed information! Identity protection matters. And PayPal works day and night to help keep your identity safe.
According the new changes in Service Agreement any unverified account will be deleted from the system in 72 hours after receiving this letter.
Research – report phish / phish wiki with PayPal example
Tags
phish paypaltechnorati ping / blog phil.rice / Real Estate Yard Signs / fraud / phish / paypal /
An interesting article by Tim O’Keefe about blog and it’s place in marketing – in particular real estate marketing.
My thoughts -
he says blog is being done by: geeks and kids. I agree with the comment about geeks – most of blogging is done by geeks, about geek stuff, read by geeks.
Kids — in my experience, kids are into facebook and myspace. I don’t know much about these 2 mega popular things, but in my limited understanding, they are not a blog.
Another area up and coming area is politics. I am not politically active – but daily kos has demonstrated a great deal of potential to activate and organize a grass roots effort. Let’s see how much influence the blog has on the selection of the next president of the United States.
I recently read up on tags at technorati, and (you many have noticed) implemented tags for my posts and web pages. After reading the instructions, I looked at a Chris Pirillo blog item to see what I could learn about how “the experts” tag. Chris has a few tag links at the bottom of every post. So I clicked on the tag link, and it connected me to tag jag. I read the instructions – the service is called gada.be
It’s an interesting concept. During my testing – the service was down. As I check it now – it’s up and running. I notice that Chris now has a post bemoaning the abundance (overuse?) of social bookmark buttons. Oh well – the story of my life – about the time I get up to speed on what the heck it means – everyone else does too – and its un-cool.
My overall comment on gada.be / tag jag = when it works it has potential to be a great service. I don’t have the patience to use something that may or may not work. Maybe over time I will get more comfortable with the process.
