I’ve gained first small victory in fighting comment spam. A few days ago I installed Kitten’s Spaminator and after that it has swallowed every comment spam message. Way to go!

My only concern is that it may delete some normal comment as spam and I wouldn’t know anything about it. The Spaminator sends email for every deleted spam, but currently I have to read the message to see the title and the sender of the message. This is cumbersome, especially is some jackass sends a spam for every article that I have…

Maybe I have to fix this someday, if the number of emails grows.

Sala Thai is a cheapish Thai restaurant on Connecticut Avenue. The restaurant is hidden in the basement and thus it is easily missed from the street. It is located in a microcluster of restaurants, so there are plenty of other places to choose from in the neighbourhood.

The food is average, not bad but not good either. The staff is not extremely attentive, we had some troubles to get attention from the waitress.

Sala Thai, 3507 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington D.C., USA, +1 202 237 2777

Penang is a nice looking restaurant in the sort-of restaurant district in Washington D.C. downtown. The place is well designed and has somewhat modern feel.

The service is fast, but unfortunately the food is not that good. It’s an achievement to spoil Far-East food as everything in Thailand or Vietnam seems to taste good. Seemingly you can succeed in failure, too.

Penang, 1837 M Street, NW, Washington D.C., USA, +1 202 822 8773

After fighting too long with Windows XP, I decided to move along and buy a Mac.

I completed the order a couple of days ago and soon I’ll be a happy owner of 12″ PowerBook. The next mission is to buy more memory to it, as they are shipped with ridiculously small memory and Apple memory costs fortunes.

Maranello is an excellent place to find stylish clothes for white collar workforce. The shop stocks clothes from Barcelona and Scandinavia for both men and women.

The shop isn’t that huge, but the selection is good and the staff is very attentive. You can find also jeans and other non-formal wear here, too.

Maranello, www.kampgalleria.fi, Pohjoisesplanadi, Helsinki, +358 9 6221062

G.W. Sundman is one of the best restaurants in Helsinki, located next to the old market square. The restaurant has been carefully renovated in an old bourgeous home built by captain Gustaf Wilhelm Sundman – hence the name.

The atmosphere is very charming, the tables are distributed to several rooms, and the silverware creates feeling of being at the 19th century. The food is modern and excellent. Consider something Finnish, such as arctic charr, Finnish whitefish, pike, deer and ceps. The place has also a winecellar worth mentioning. If you are unsure, ask always attentive waiter to help with wine selection.

The restaurant is owned by Royal Ravintolat, a collection of quality restaurants in Helsinki.

G.W. Sundmans, www.royalravintolat.com, Eteläranta 16, Helsinki, +358 9 622 6410

I got attacked by comment spammers during my long weekend in northern Finland. They seem to operate mostly on Saturday and Sunday (seemingly a favourite). I found out that I had issues when I was reading my email with my phone and there were 91 new messages in my Nomadig.com account. Unfortunately all of them were related to comment spam, and none of these spam messages were caught by WordPress spam tools.

As a sidenote, I must say that it was quite nomadic experience to clean up my blog while travelling in a long-haul bus from Taivalkoski to Oulu. I successfully used my phone to log in to the WordPress management pages and cleaned up all spam comments.

I also added a few spam words to the filter. This was a mistake. WordPress didn’t understand the newlines send by the phone and all words were separated with ‘?’. This, of course, opened the doors for spam. Luckily enough, I found this out during middle of another wave of spam and fixed the situation immediately. The flow stopped and I now have to clean up a couple dozen moderated comments.

I have to shift gears in the fight. I’ll use the following countermeasures:

1. Install Stop Comments plug-in from Laughing Lizard to allow me travel without caring comment spamming for a while. Unfortunately this restricts also all valid comments for the period of my trip.
2. Use Stop Open Proxy Commenting from John to stop comments from HTTP proxies that are known to send spam email.
3. Consider using Spam Karma from Dr. Dave to stop spam comments getting into the blog.
4. Study more alternatives at WordPress Combat Comment Spam site.

[Update Dec 8th]
I just installed comments off and ip blocklist plug-ins. If you cannot comment, please provide error report by email.

Any other suggestions?

Kämp Galleria is the most exclusive mall in Helsinki. The mall is located next to the only five star hotel in Helsinki, so you can rest your sore feets in their bar.

There are several Finnish design shops, such as Marimekko flagship store, Tarsala Creations shoe store and Moomin store. There is a jewellery store Paananen, Zio boutique for Spanish quality shoes, Red Skins leather shop, Diesel and other brand stores.

Kämp Galleria hosts also Sony Center and B&O store in the basement. On the second floor, you can find more clothing shops and a kids store stocking Burberry and other quality brands.

There are two restaurants, Zen Sushi, and Strindberg that has also one of the best cafés in Helsinki.

www.kampgalleria.fi, Pohjois-Esplanadi, Helsinki