More Spam Issues
February 12, 2007
Spam continues to be a problem here at Mr Papa’s World. I recently wrote about some of the tools I use here.
In the last week or so, I have run into some serious trouble with the Bad Behavior plugin blocking good folks like me! Prior to about a week ago, it was stopping a lot of spammers from even reaching my site. This had the side benefit of saving me some bandwidth too. Then all of a sudden, it stopped being nearly as effective.
Akismet is the other piece of software I use to defeat spam. While Bad Behavior was functioning, Akismet had to do very little to stop spam since it never reached Akismet. Prior to Bad Behavior, Akismet was stopping several hundred spams a day.
Well, with Bad Behavior going on the fritz about a week ago, Akismet slowly started ramping up spam stops again. When Bad Behavior started blocking readers and then me, I finally threw in the towel and uninstalled Bad Behavior today. The Akismet spam blocks are already rising steadily throughout the day.
I guess it really doesnt matter how the spam is stopped as long as it is stopped. By getting to Akismet, it uses up a bit more bandwidth, but I seem to have plenty of that. I dont know how many “good” readers Bad Behavior stopped, but at least with Akismet, I can peruse the blocks before the stuff is removed. I didnt have that option with Bad Behavior. Of course, not sure I want to review several hundred or more spam logs a day to find a few bad blocks, but I will do it for a while to see make sure Akismet is not blocking real comments.
Bad Behavior is supposed to be releasing a new major revision to the plugin soon, so I may yet try it again.
Websites and Computers
February 10, 2007
Today was an interesting day. Most of it was spent in front of a computer, but the vast majority was not having fun. We have always had some issues on our home LAN with our computers being able to see each other. They were all running the same firewall software with the same settings but not everyone could see the other ones.
When I got my new computer, I decided to research firewall software and go a different route. Today, was spent changing out the firewall software and upgrading my PC management tools on all five of our machines. Since I have had outstanding luck with AVG anti-virus software, I ended up selecting their firewall/spy-ware and malware solution in addition to their anti-virus.
Well, after changing out software and upgrading the backup solution, registry cleaning and other assorted management tools, I discovered a series of viruses and trojans on Suzanne’s computer. She has the uncanny knack of taking the firewall down on her computer so she can get to the other ones when she needs too. Unfortunately, she rarely remembers to put the firewall back up. At some point towards the end of last week, it appears she also took the anti-virus software down such that is wasn’t protecting and scanning. The actual cleansing of the machine was pretty easy and straightforward and there doesn’t appear to be any permanent damage.
I also stumbled on the JV16 Power Tools. This is a set of tools that claim to improve the performance of your PC but fixing deep hidden issues. After running a few simple and mostly non-scientific benchmark tests on my old machine and Suzanne’s machine, I turned the software suite loose.  They have a 30 day trial version. Now, it might just be me, but both machines exhibited noticeable improvements in response times for typical activities (opening and closing apps for instance). On my machine, America’s Army opened much better and even had a 20% increase in frame rate. It’s hard to believe but the tools may actually have done some good. On Suzanne’s machine, they found 1100 issues in the registry – even after other registry cleaning tools had been run. I may just have to invest in some licenses of that tool when the 30 days is up.
I did find some time today to begin work on a couple of new sites. As mentioned prior, myself and a couple of buddies are going to launch a new, yet undefined site. I have been creating a new theme for the site and work is progressing nicely. I would roughly guess we are a month or so from launching. I am excited about the prospect of something fresh and new.
I also began work today on a complete redesign of my America’s Army gaming clan’s website. The existing design on that site has been in place for almost 2 years now. It’s time for something new. I also want to get that site away from php-nuke. I am probably going to redo the site in WordPress with some bbpress forums. I am hoping to enlist some graphics help from clan members as Mr Papa doesn’t do graphics well.
After all that, the family found time tonight to enjoy a movie. We watched The Island. It’s a strange concept but has some fast moving action and maintained everyones interest. It won’t win any Oscars, but it was enjoyable. Sean really like it but claimed the plot was a bit thin. He is keen on action movies.
Suzanne and the kids musical show at the Tucson VA Hospital today went well. They had about 40 folks in attendance and put on a show of singing and dancing. I understand it was good prep for next weekends Showstoppers Dance competition in Phoenix.
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