… we were still catching our breath after the trip to South-East Asia. Today, we haven’t been travelling for a while and thus I have time to add minor improvements to Nomadig.com.
I’ve added a new plug-in that provides links to articles written one year ago. The links can be found at the sidebar in the journal section, between the calendar and the search form. If there is nothing, then chances are that I haven’t written anything last year on the very same day.
Lately I’ve received a fair amount of comment spam in the blog. Fortunately, most of it is wiped away by Spaminator and none has passed through WordPress’ moderation queue for a really long time (knocking wood).
The most recent change in the spam comments is that there is no body, except two quotation marks (”"). Spaminator does not care about these, and they end to the moderation. I clean the queue twice a week or so, usually when writing new articles. So there are not a pain, but still somewhat annoying.
I checked Wordpress.org and found no mention of this issue except one entry in the forum. Maybe I should dive into the code and get this fixed — but on the other hand, I haven’t yet upgraded to WP 2.0. Spaminator could also tackle them with small modifications. Time will tell whether I get heated up with them and actually do something for it.
Wayne’s Coffee is a Swedish originated coffeeshop chain that has been steadily opening new cafés in Finland. Helsinki center hosts seven, most in malls or department stores. One of the biggest is located in Kaisaniemi, a couple of blocks to east from the central railway station.
The café has the normal variety of sweet and salty pastries, and all special coffees are available, too. The muffins set Wayne’s really apart from the rest of the cafés, as they are big, fresh and delicious.
There is also an Internet stand and a wireless network available in the café, but it is not free.
www.waynescoffee.fi, Kaisaniemenkatu 3, Helsinki, Finland, +358 40 413 9401
Year 2005 was an eventful year in my life and in Nomadig.com. The following events mostly dictated the year (in no particular order):
Aapo. Our first child was born on April and life has never been the same. During the first eight months, he has been a constant source of joy and a great stress relief.
Travelling. I got to travel a lot due to my job during 2005. I visited United States four times, spent almost a month there; three times in France, and several times in Oulu. This will change as I’ll move forward on my career and join a new company next Wednesday. There will be some travelling, but to different destinations. Time will tell.
Web 2.0. The new emerging methodologies and ways of implementing web based software has been intriguing me a lot lately. I’ve been experimenting with some bits and pieces, but nothing major yet. Currently, the old styled systems sell all too well to get them revamped with AJAX and other recent gimmicks. You know, costs and benefits.
Moving to “countryside”. We moved to Ymmersta on late October and have never looked back. This place is so much better to raise children than Lauttasaari. To add a twist to the situation, my new job is located in Lauttasaari.
Company car. These things are a blessing for a person that would just like to get from point A to point B without thinking anything else but just the driving.
I was happy for two days with my ShortStat patch that I wrote on Friday. Then the spammers changed the tactics (or I just got hit with new spammers using an alternative method), and inserted the spam words in the path of the URL.
My domain checking code was useless against these, as the domain names were generic, such as aaaaa.com. Fortunately, the same idea could be applied to the path as well.
I inserted yet another test to the same loop that checked for the domain names, and lo — the spammers were gone from the listings.
I’ve currently wondering whether this was a coincidence or are spammers reading my blog? In the latter case I could feel flattered…
For some odd reason, I get a lot of referer spamming to one of my articles, aptly named New kind of referer spam?.
The frequency of visiting does not bother me, as I still have enough bandwidth available for each month. My only issue was with ShortStat, as the referer spammers polluted my recent referers display. Instead of seeing where people really came from, I saw a lot of domain names related to certain medicines and so forth.
After looking at the issue for a few weeks, I decided to something about it. The easiest solution was to add a filter to the display, and simply not show referers that match the filter.
I took the following steps to weed the list:
Now, the list is clean once again. I inserted just four names in the configuration and that took care of everything. Hopefully there won’t be more.
The patch is a bit complex and as I’ve heavily tweaked ShortStat, it might not be applicable to a standard ShortStat distribution. Thus, there is no file to be downloaded — but I can provide the stuff for you, if you are interested.
As a sidenote, I’ve been pondering on moving on from ShortStat, as it seems that I’m the only guy developing anything with it anymore… Any suggestions besides Mint?
The cold weather has finally find its way to Finland, and the Sunday morning was already biting cold. The ground on the park nearby our new flat was all frosty, and it was impossible to resist its calling.
I spent half an hour with Sanna and Aapo on the cliffs, I photographing the details on the ground and in trees, and Sanna carrying Aapo in a chestbag.
We all had really good time, and now I’ve handpicked the best shots to a new gallery, aptly titled Crispy Finnish autumn pictures. Hopefully you enjoy viewing the images as much as I enjoyed making them.
Yesterday was the official day for opening the Christmas season in several shopping malls and other public market areas in Helsinki. The snow has not yet fallen, but the weather is already crisp — today it was -7C in the morning — so the settings start to be ready for the Christmas time.
I spent yesterday in Helsinki center with Aapo and Sanna to find gifts for my parents and relatives. They, the parents and my little sister, are coming to visit us next week, and we’ve planned to exchange the presents then. Fortunately, I have got some hunch on what to buy for whom.
Apart from buying the presents, Helsinki is a really nice city to wait for the festivities. There are no flamboyant Christmas markets as in German and Austrian cities, but still the darkness combined with a commonsensical amount of lights creates a magical atmosphere. If you have some extra time and money, come to visit Helsinki now!