Category: Computer bits

Computer stuff

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spam spam spam spam

I’ve been getting a bunch of comment spam lately with .info URLs in them, so in an attempt to block them I added a pretty broad ranging MT Blacklist regexp to block anything that looks like a domain ending in .info. At least that’s what I think it looks like it’s supposed to do. The regex looks like:

^[a-zA-Z0-9]+([a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+)?\.(info|INFO)

If you get blocked trying to leave a legit comment, fire off an email to me and let me know. The regex will probably need a little tweaking.

BTW, for those of you that aren’t regex gurus, there’s this fantastic site, Regular Expression Library where you can search their library of user submitted regular expressions, and even test out your own. They also have a bunch of links to other regexp resources out there to use.

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Forms with PHP

Over at ONLamp.com there’s a very good article with a number of good tips for handling forms with PHP.

Tip 7 looks like a pretty good one which I think I’ll use when I start redesigning some of my web database projects. I’ll have to check out this HTML_Quickform thing too.

PHP Form Handling by David Sklar — If your PHP program is a dynamic web page (and it probably is) and your PHP program is dealing with user input (and it probably is), then you need to work with HTML forms. David Sklar, author of Learning PHP 5, offers tips for simplifying, securing, and organizing your form-handling PHP code.

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Google recruiting

I’ve really been getting a kick out of Google’s recent recruiting ads, such as their GLAT booklet and their big question billboards. The most recent ad is one that I saw in the latest issue of Physics Today.

It’s a big full page ad titled “How to Care for Your Big, Wonderful High-Performance Brain”. It looks like one of those full-page ads for weight loss or hair growing products, or maybe an old fashioned PSA ad, or even one of those big anatomical charts you might see in your doctor’s office but way more amusing.

There are sections titled “Big Brains Crave Algae and Acid”, “Lead is Big-Brain Kryptonite”, “Get Your Nap On” to name a few. I think they’re actually pretty clever and creative.

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Pardon my dust

I really need to get around to redoing my MT templates and style sheets to make them more MT3 compliant. I’ve been meaning to redo them for a while now, but it’s one of those things I never seem to be able to get around to doing. Time to get started on that task. So I expect for the next little while things will look different, some things will be broken and other things will just look wierd. Bits are going to be reorganized…that’s the plan anyway.

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I can watch CBC news online!

I don’t know why I didn’t look for this before, but discovering that CBC Edmonton and CBC have Canada Now and The National available as RealPlayer feeds has me just happy as a clam. I’m sure they’ve been around for a while now. I just never thought to look for them.

So now in the mornings, while I’m working away I can plug in the headphones, fire up the feeds and watch/listen away to the news going on back home. It’s definitely a very different perspective on the news than you get from the local news here, or even on CNN.

I love it 🙂