Geek stuff

I'm a geek, I admit. I'm a board game geek and a computer geek, to some extent. This category is a place for all sorts of geeky stuff I've found worth noting. Some of it is interesting software I've found, some of it is science stuff, some of it is something else. Back to the front page.

MT4 and preview problems

I had this problem with Movable Type 4 and an older blog created on MT3. It wouldn't allow entry previews, but gave an error about missing context handlers for entry_based archives. It bothered me a long time, but yesterday I decided to fix it and fortunately I was able to find the solution at the Movable Type support forums.

I'm posting it here now to make it easier to find in case someone else is having the same problem, as it's really quite simple fix. The problem is caused by MTArchive tags: your entry-based archive template shouldn't have any. Most likely culprit is MTArchiveTitle - just replace that by MTEntryTitle and everything works. Watch out - the bad tag may be hiding in a Header module.

14.11.2007 klo 08:27 | TrackBack (0)

BookMooch recommendations

I've been happily mooching books lately. BookMooch has actually beaten both Bloglines and BoardGameGeek in my browser: if I type 'b' in the URL bar, Firefox suggests BookMooch.

It's been fun, and quite useful too: I've mooched over 70 books with a very reasonable cost, just about three euros per book. While three euros is more than enough for some of them (old, worn paperbacks), I've also received brand new trade paperbacks and hardcovers in pristine condition, books I couldn't get in library and I'd have to pay at least 15 euros or so to buy.

In an effort to give something back to the community (and to get something for myself), I created BookMooch Recommendations. It's a simple recommendations engine: type in your BookMooch id to get some recommendations based on your mooching history. It was a fun project, and depending on your history, it can produce pretty good results, too.

If you're a BookMooch user, try it out. If you're not - well, if you like cheap books, you probably should be!

9.04.2007 klo 14:38 | Comments 2 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

SpamLookup keyword blacklist

Comment spam is a constant nuisance to every blog owner. Movable Type is an excellent tool for having a blog, but it's also very popular - which makes it a prime target for spammers. Fortunately the newer versions have SpamLookup, a good tool to fight spam.

I haven't seen many comment spam blacklists around, so I thought I'd publish mine. My keyword list has a bunch of regular expressions that block lots of spam. Not everything, definitely, but most of the common stuff: porn, debt consolidation, pharmacy and so on. This is for SpamLookup, but works with any keyword filter that understands regular expressions.

Installing the list is simple: just copy-paste it to the SpamLookup keyword filter. These are pretty safe for junking comments, but if your blog discusses finance, pharmacy or sex, you'll need to remove some stuff, otherwise conversation will be severely stiffled. Non-English blogs have it easier here.

These are all regular expressions, as this gives so much more power to the keywords. For example, /free(\s*|-)porn/i is much better than free porn, as it will catch several forms more: freeporn, free-porn and free porn.

Any good suggestions? It's best to send those by email to msaari@iki.fi, because SpamLookup might just want to eat them... I'll try and update the list every now and then as spam trends shift.

11.03.2007 klo 15:18 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (1)

TagSupplementals

If you're running Movable Type 3.31 with the new tag functionality, getting TagSupplementals should be pretty high on your list. The plugin adds several very useful tags; the MTRelatedEntries tag which displays related entries based on similar tags is particularly nice.

24.08.2006 klo 08:25

Lingerie flood

You go to bed in good faith. Oh, sure, there was a spam comment on your blog, but hey, you can deal with it later. Wake up next morning and what do you see: over 300 bloody spam comments advertising lingerie...

Fortunately Movable Type had the good sense to moderate all those, so removing them took just minutes, not hours...

24.08.2006 klo 07:15 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Math trades

Math trades are a fairly popular thing on BoardGameGeek, where people keep trading games using them. The idea is simple: instead of traditional one-on-one trades where two people exchange games, people list what they have for trade, then form want lists of the stuff other people have listed and then computer takes the lists and checks who gets what. The goal is to maximize the trades so that as many items trade as possible.

TradeGenie is the de facto standard for running the math trades. However, while the program is fast and works well, it's not ideal. The biggest problem for me is the fact it only runs on Windows. I need something that runs on Mac as well. TradeGenie has some other limiting factors as well.

Since I enjoy programming, the obvious solution is to create my own software to calculate the trades. I was curious: am I able to do this? It turned out to be fairly easy. Currently my program, TradeResolver, written in Java for platform independence, can actually beat TradeGenie on some lists, finding more results faster. Of course, if faced head-to-head, competing for speed, TradeResolver loses hands down. That doesn't really matter, because even TradeGenie is too slow to completely go through bigger lists.

You can find TradeResolver at SourceForge. It's open source, so the source code is included in the release package (found on the SourceForge download page).

17.06.2006 klo 07:31 | TrackBack (0)

Blog renovations

I finally got around revamping the categories here a bit. Now most of the miscellanous stuff is somewhere else - I hate when a misc category gets too large. It should for the few entries, which don't fit elsewhere. I also lost the fairly inactive library category. Few minor changes on the look of the blog wraps up the renovations. Now let's just hope I get more energy to write about stuff here, right?

23.04.2006 klo 09:23 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

SimpleComments users note!

SimpleComments is a useful Movable Type plugin that prints out comments and TrackBacks in one list. However, it has a problem with Movable Type 3.2 and junk TrackBacks - it will show junked TrackBacks! That's bad.

However, there's a fix. Go see SimpleComments on Movable Type 3.2 and download a patched version and hey, the junk goes away. Highly recommended.

11.11.2005 klo 09:56

Clutter and CoverBuddy

I've discovered two nice utilities to enhance one's music experience.

Clutter by Sprote Research is a small OS X application that shows the album cover of the currently playing track. While iTunes does that too, sure, but with Clutter, you can drag'n'drop the cover on your desktop. That way you can emulate piles of cds cluttering your real desktop.

I'm not sure if that's of real use, but something else in Clutter is: there's also a browser mode, where you can browse your album collection. If a cover is missing from the music file, Clutter will find it from Amazon. Then you can just press shift-command-K to attach the cover to the music file so you see it in iTunes, as well. That's pretty useful.

CoverBuddy is more interesting way to utilize covers. It shows your music collection as albums with their cover art, so you can browse through them like they were real cds. That's pretty neat.

However, CoverBuddy is shareware and makes it annoyingly obvious if you haven't registered it, covering every cover with an ugly "please register" message. I'm not sure if I wish to pay that, so probably I'll end up tossing CoverBuddy away. Clutter, however, is free.

23.06.2005 klo 08:32 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Remote power

It's fun to notice I can still get quite excited by small things. One of them is Salling Clicker, a tool for Mac. Our PowerBook has Bluetooth capabilities, as does my mobile phone. Salling Clicker connects the two and allows me to control the Mac with the phone.

This can be used for presentations, reading e-mail, running AppleScripts doing whatever or simply as a remote control for iTunes! For example, I'm now listening to music and rating the songs as I hear them. Instead of bringing up the iTunes and interrupting my work (ahem) flow, I'll just reach for my mobile phone and adjust the rating. I can switch songs, adjust the volume and if somebody calls me, iTunes goes on pause automatically.

It's just fun. It's pretty useless, though at times I might want to control the music from the sofa, for example, but it's fun. It's just amazing, the way it works. I'm still a bit of a child at heart, I suppose.

Now I'm left wondering if this is something I'd like to pay $20 for... The unregistered edition is limited to 30 clicks on each connection, which is annoying. This just might be cool enough to buy, when I have more money.

2.06.2005 klo 09:42 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Tip for Mac Firefox users

I've found Firefox's behaviour on Mac very annoying: by default, pressing tab jumps only between text fields. It doesn't move the focus to links or what's worse, dropdown menus or checkboxes. That's rather annoying, when you're trying to fill a form.

It seems it's not a bug, but intended Mac behaviour. It's bloody annoying, nevertheless, but fortunately there's a solution. Right now the Mozilla folks are debating whether to add this as something users can change themselves (I vote YES YES YES), meanwhile there's a cryptic solution.

Go to Firefox config by typing "about:config" on the address bar. Find "accessibility.tabfocus" (should be near the top). It's value should be 1. Change that to 3, and the tab key starts to work the way you expect.

It still won't move the focus to links (which is fine with me); if you want that enabled, setting the value to 5 causes tab to move to text fields and links and setting it to 7 causes it to move to everything.

See Bugzilla for more details.

25.05.2005 klo 09:26 | Comments 2 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is an amazing framework for developing web apps. I don't know what it can do, but I know making a todo list app with it was mind-bogglingly simple.

While I like doing web apps, I absolutely hate doing the routine chores that are involved each and every time: handling forms, doing the very basic MySQL operations... It's always the same, and it was interesting on the first time. Ruby on Rails makes all that deceptively simple.

Unfortunately my great idea to start learning Ruby on Rails will probably die a sad death, since my ISP doesn't support even Ruby. Too bad. I can't install it myself (it's all fine until the dreaded "make install" step, which I can't perform) and I'm fairly sure they won't install it, either; of course it never hurts to ask, but they've been somewhat disinterested in installing new modules or anything.

That's sad, but perhaps I'll keep on practising on our PowerBook. I have MySQL, Ruby has a webserver (and if I want more, OS X comes with Apache), so I can do whatever I want. Perhaps I can't do anything public, but at least I can practise Ruby, as it seems to be quite an interesting language.

20.05.2005 klo 09:10 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Neat software: Instiki

In an attempt to keep notes and organise stuff, I installed a Wiki on our laptop. I bumped into Instiki (Monday's Download of the Day at Lifehacker), which is a very neat Wiki server.

It's a very tight package, containing a web server and thus it's very easy to install. On OS X, all you need to do is download the disk image and that's it, you've got a Wiki running. On other systems it's pretty much as easy, but you probably need to get Ruby. Still, installing it should be a breeze.

So, if you're looking for a Wiki system for personal use, Instiki is the best thing I've seen so far.

What comes to Ruby, if I feel like I need to learn a new programming language, it seems to be a good choice. It's either Ruby or Python. But not now, some other day... And I know I need some good task to do, to get me working with the language. Fortunately programming languages are easier to learn than real-world languages, at least to me (I've so much wanted to learn German, but that just didn't work out and I know I'll regret that in October, when I'm going to Essen and it would be really cool to be able to understand German).

19.05.2005 klo 14:32 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

PowerBook experiences

We've been using our PowerBook for about two weeks now and it's been very nice. A computer kind of thought to be the secondary computer has made our desktop computer almost obsolete. It's just so much more fun to use!

Mac OS X is great. The user interface is quite intuitive and easy to use, we both like it immensely. There are great ideas like the Exposé - move the mouse pointer to one of the corners of the screen to see every open program at the same time so you can choose which one you'd like to see. That's very useful and natural feature, which I'm already missing in Windows.

I've also already learned to push the apple key, so when using the other computer, I keep using alt (which is where the apple key is on Mac keyboard) instead of control.

One Mac thing we didn't accept: the one-button mouse. Instead we got a Logitech MX510 with eight buttons (we have MX500 for the other computer). It's simply the best mouse I've ever used, either version. The red MX510 looks nice.

OS X isn't perfect: programs crash (especially Camino), but generally the system hasn't minded. Once Finder crashed (or didn't start properly) and we had to close the computer to get it working; at the same time (and much less use) Windows has had several fits, presenting us with the Blue Screen immediately after the Windows started.

One thing I'd recommend to anyone using a Mac is QuickSilver, which makes starting programs and accessing files very easy. It's a must for people who like using keyboard a lot, as it can eliminate lots of mouse pointing. Also some people have complained about Dock, saying it has usability problems; I wouldn't know about that, as QuickSilver has made Dock almost completely unnecessary.

We've also enjoyed the iTunes Music Store. It could have a better selection, but despite that, we've made some purchases already. It's just too easy... The AAC files can't be listened with our MP3 players, which dampened our spirits earlier, but then I figured out we can burn our purchases on cd's and then rip the cd's to get proper MP3's of them, so no problems there.

Listening to music is quite handy with Airport Express, so we can hear the music from decent speakers without having to worry about wires.

If we had the money, we would probably buy a 20-inch iMac right away and toss away the Windows machines completely.

16.05.2005 klo 14:12 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

A new computer

Today I'll march in and place an order for our new computer; with good luck, I'll get it today, but I'm trying to constrain my expectations. This time it'll be slightly different, as I'm going to get my first Apple computer.

Back in the days of DOS and older versions of Windows, things were tolerable. My biggest grief with DOS was the imbecile 640 kilobyte memory. I mean, if I have a computer with whopping eight megabytes of memory, why I must struggle with the 640 kB limitation? That was way stupid.

Windows's 95 and 98 have been a bigger struggle. Well, not struggle, but a constant source of annoyance. Computer that goes down when you're not actually doing anything is just too unstable. These days Johanna mostly laughs at the computer when Opera crashes after she has closed it.

I've tried Linux and found the base solid, but the user interface lacking. Xwindows might be great, but it's not for me. Too patchy, there's too much trouble just to get it work the right way. I've long felt drawn towards Mac OS X, with it's solid Unix base and well-designed GUI.

Our new computer will be a PowerBook. It's a secondary computer, in a way, and thus needs to be small when it's not in use. We don't expect to carry it around much, but just like small things in our small apartment. If it turns out well, I'm quite sure our desktop computer will be one day replaced by an iMac.

I'm trying my best not to became a raving Apple cultist. I don't like that. All the iPod hype, for example, when iPod clearly isn't the only or necessarily even the best MP3 player in the world. I know I'm not switching from my Pontis player.

Anyway, Mac OS people: hit me with the software I must have. As we are library types, Delicious Library is a must, but what else? I know I'll be needing an editor with syntax highlighting for Java (and perl and PHP).

3.05.2005 klo 08:52 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

URL ABCs

These are my URL ABCs:

28.04.2005 klo 08:18 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

OpenOffice file format

I thought I'd take a look in my OpenOffice files, having heard that the programs use a XML format for the files. I was met with binary rubbish, but I quickly noticed a familiar beginning: this is a Zip file.

Try unzipping an OpenOffice file and you'll find not just one but actually several XML files. For example, a chapter of my master's thesis includes five XML files: there's content, style, meta, settings and a manifest. Meta, for example, contains Dublin Core metadata and statistics like page, paragraph, word and character counts - useful, perhaps? Content has the contents of the file, neatly placed in >p< tags.

The same format is used for presentations and spreadsheets, even for vector art! Everything is described in detail: which element goes where. If you embed something in your document, there's a new object in the file with the same XML files for it. How clever!

There's a project dedicated to the OpenOffice file format. If you're interested, see OpenOffice.org XML File Format. It's certainly a very elegant and a modern approach to creating a file format.

21.04.2005 klo 16:16 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Content management

I find it hard to believe that I haven't written on this topic before, but if I haven't, it's about time. I'm gone completely mad on content management systems. I just love Movable Type - starting my first blog was a huge impact on my web site and all of my web site creation, really.

In November last year or so I started a project I had thought about a lot. My game site would get a content management system. It's just too weary to write HTML pages with an editor, FTP them to the server and so on. Making changes to the layout of the pages requires changing every page, one at the time... That's something I just don't find that interesting. It also binds me to one computer, if I want to change my pages I must be on my computer where I store them.

That's all different now. Instead of my computer, the articles I've written (game reviews and other related stuff) are now stored in a MySQL database. Instead of serving the pages dynamically from the database, which is the standard option, I adopted the mechanism used by Movable Type. After I've finished editing a page, I build it from the database. Building creates a HTML file that can be accessed as usual.

This approach has certain advantages. Rebuilding is a pain, kind of, but I can control when the changes I make appear on the public site. If a database is down for some reason, the pages are still accessible. Also, as the contents of the pages change quite rarely, building the pages saves time - serving static HTML pages is faster than building the same pages on the fly every time. I'm not sure if processor time is really an issue, but neither is disk space.

Updating the pages is a breeze, now. Writing new reviews is more fun, as I just fill a template and I don't have to worry about doing the HTML stuff, I can focus on the content. Playing with new layouts is also more fun, as I can apply the changes to all hundred or so reviews I have at the same time.

Because I'm using completely custom-built software, I can do whatever I want. If I need new functionality, I'll just whip it up. Adding something is often done in no time, as writing stuff in PHP is fairly straightforward - I've had lots of practise.

Most of the additions work towards more automation. Recently I, for example, reduced the amount of HTML coding I need to do by adding easier wiki-like codes for creating headlines in the reviews. I'll probably remove most need for HTML code eventually. I also made the automatical creation of indexes possible, so I don't have to maintain them by hand.

I just love my new system. Actually, I love it so much that my once-so-important music review site is slowly dying - it's been a year from last update. Well, there are other reasons, but lack of content management system is one of them. Why I haven't done such a system is another thing - there can be seen my lack of motivation to do anything with that site. I did add an ad banner on the site, though... Anything to make my creative work create money.

30.03.2005 klo 15:13 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Blog spam control

My anti-spam combat system has two new weapons. I read Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse (New anti-spam plugins) and found two new plugins for Movable Type.

First one is Chad Everett's MT-Moderate, which adds TrackBack moderation to Movable Type. That's neat. Perhaps that will block the TrackBacks that go through MT-Blacklist from showing up, as they are an embarrassment for me - most of them are nasty porn, which I don't want in my blog.

Second simple and useful tool is MT-Ban-Numeric-Entities, which blocks all comments with characters replaced with HTML entities. Blocking is the way to go, as that's almost 100% certain sign of spam.

21.03.2005 klo 16:45 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

IR humour

What's the favourite movie of someone doing information retrieval? Total Recall

(And here's the explanation for this lovely joke invented by my also very lovely wife: the effectivity of information retrieval is measured by two things, precision and recall. Precision is the amount of relevant documents in the found documents and recall is the amount of relevant documents found vs the amount of relevan documents in the database.)

27.01.2005 klo 08:16 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

On games and PHP objects

I've been reading Jonathan Schaeffer's book on his Checkers computer Chinook and it inspired me to do some game programming. The book (One Jump Ahead : Challenging Human Supremacy in Checkers, Springer Verlag, ISBN 0-387-94930-5) is excellent, by the way, and I will cover it later in better detail (probably in Gameblog) after I finish it.

Anyway, I wanted to do some game AI programming. To do a game AI, I need a game for the AI to play. As it goes these days, it means a web implementation of a game or another. I chose Geschenkt - it's hardly a challenge AI-wise, but I wanted to do something simple anyway. Besides, I'd like a web version of Geschenkt.

I've always thought that object-oriented programming would be a good basis for a game program. After all, games consist of different objects that interact with each other. I've toyed with the idea before, but now I actually started writing code. My game consists of two classes of objects: there's Game that contains information about the game state and Players, who do what the Game says. Game asks the players for move, telling the current situation of the game as parameters. Players use that information, formulate a move and return that to the Game.

Simple, and it actually works pretty well. It has other benefits, too. Saving the game state couldn't be easier. Instead of a complicated SQL table, my game state table has exactly two columns: id and data, which holds serialized game objects. That's it.

However, it also has problems. I've done something with objects in PHP before, but most of my object-oriented experience comes from Java, where objects are both natural and mandatory. Handling objects is more complicated in PHP and I really had to struggle with references to get everything work well. The problems were of annoying nature: I'd set a value to an object attribute somewhere, but it wouldn't carry on so I could use it elsewhere. I got it all sorted out in the end, however.

While the object-based structure was even elegant, it didn't work too well with the fact that the application would be run over web. The result is the single most bizarre piece of web code I've written. There's the main script, which initiates the games and passes variables, but most of the action happens in a class method, somewhere in include files. That's not good and kind of undermines my object method, but I can understand it and it works. That's enough.

I got the game running pretty smoothly now. What needs to be done is loads of interface work, boring basic website tasks like user management and finally, the main reason for this project, AI coding! Then I'll have a nice web version of Geschenkt I can show to other people. Temptation to keep it mine alone is strong, because that would mean I could forget nice user interfaces and user management.

In the end I will have a object structure I can probably alter to create other similar games. That should be fairly easy (but in reality it won't be, of course).

10.01.2005 klo 10:12 | Comments 2 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Asteroid near miss

NASA's Near Earth Object Current Impact Risks page says the MN4 asteroid has a probability of 3.8e-05 % or 1 in 26,000 to actually hit the Earth. It's Torino Impact Hazard Scale level is one, A routine discovery in which a pass near the Earth is predicted that poses no unusual level of danger. December 24th CNN (Scientists study orbit of newly found asteroid) said the asteroid had a 1 in 300 probability of hitting us and a Torino rating of 2. At it's peak MN4 had an impact probability of 1 in 37 and Torino rating of 4.

Here's a timetable of impact probabilities for interested parties:

2004-12-24: 1 in 300
2004-12-24: 1 in 62
2004-12-25: 1 in 42
2004-12-25: 1 in 45
2004-12-27: 1 in 37
2004-12-27: 1 in 26,000

(source: 2004 MN4 at Wikipedia)

Asteroid 2004 MN4 reduced to Torino zero, says UK NEO Information Centre. So I guess now it's time to breathe a breath of relief. We're safe again.

This all has been quite interesting, hunting for information. After all, MN4 was first asteroid to have a Torino rating over one. In the end it was the first asteroid to drop from Torino four to Torino zero, too, but that's just good. It's a good question whether or not such warnings should be announced at all - why publish the scary news of (almost) certain death in 20-30 years time when the probability of such news being cancelled next week is much higher than the probability of the impact?

Anyway, MN4 is still predicted to pass within the Moon's orbit in 2029 and is still a minor risk when it returns in 2053. However, the current highest risk is once more 2004 VD17, which has an 1 in 17,000 probability of hitting us within the next 100 years or so (highest probability being in 2091).

28.12.2004 klo 14:00 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Spam keywords

I checked the list of best keywords in my MT-Blacklist. Those have been most succesful in blocking spam comments and if they are not on your blacklist, they probably should be. The hits have been collected, by the way, over a period of month so as you can see, I get lots of comment spam in my blogs. Here goes:

top@tredgf.com (1269 hits)
phentermine (1094)
tramadol (1017)
meridia (909)
adipex (898)
xenical (888)
ionamin (888)
tenuate (886)
buy online -regex (512)
-hold-em (505)
<h1> (501)

That's the top 10, all over 500 hits. top@tredgf.com is the worst source of comment spam, assuming it's one source. Block it right away and you'll save yourself lots of trouble. Others on the list are pretty obvious: most comment spam sells drugs. Viagra is, by they way, way down the list. It's just not that popular anymore. Levitra is more popular. The most popular pills are all weight loss, except Tramadol which is a pain killer. Ritalin is also fairly popular. "-hold-em" refers to Texas Hold'Em, which is a very popular Poker game. It's also very popular in comment spam. I think most of the garbage landing on Gameblog is related to Poker. <h1> was means to block a surge of comment spam which didn't advertise anything.

Edit: Comments are closed; funny enough, this entry was a real spam magnet.

17.12.2004 klo 08:48 | Comments 2 comment(s)

N-gram string matching

As my game review collection has grown quite large (92 reviews now), I thought a search for game titles would a nice addition to the different means I have for visitors to find the reviews they want. As I'm a student of information studies, which includes a healthy dose of computer information retrieval, I knew I would be able to tackle the task.

I didn't want to do full-text indexing of the reviews, but make the game titles searchable. Most searches of this kind use simple keyword searching with truncation. That kind of search produces a list of titles which have the keyword in them and nothing else. The list can't be ordered by hit quality and even a slightest mistake makes the search fail. That, I believe, is not satisfactory. A course I took in cross-language information retrieval had equipped me with just the tools I needed to create a better system.

Cross-language information retrieval uses so called N-grams. N can be whatever, but digrams and trigrams are most used. For example, digrams of word "foobar" are *f, fo, oo, ob, ba, ar, r* where * denotes a padding space. Both the indexed words and the search key are broken into N-grams and then compared using a simple formula of intersection of N-grams in the phrases divided by sum of unique N-grams in the phrases. Let's have an example.

How well does foobar match with fubar? Digrams of the words are *f, fo, oo, ob, ba, ar, r* and *f, fu, ub, ba, ar, r*. The union (sum) of unique digrams in both phrases is *f, fo, oo, ob, fu, ub, ba, ar, r*. The intersection of the phrases' digrams is *f, ba, ar, r*. There are thus four digrams that appear in both phrases and nine different digrams that appear in at least one the phrases.

A simple division gives a score of 4/9 or 0.444... for the match between the phrases. That's pretty good, but still far from complete match score of 1.

With this method, it's easy to compare the search key to different indexed keys and find out which are the closest ones. It allows for small mistakes and variations in spelling (which is one reason why it's used in CLIR: N-gram matching can overcome different spellings of the same words in different languages). It also eliminates one problem with straight pattern matching: small keys are easy to search. Try searching BoardGameGeek for Go or Ra and you'll know what I mean. In this system, there's no problem.

Of course, working with the N-grams takes more computing power, which can be a problem. Also, two words can have the same N-grams but in completely different order. Still, I think N-gram matching is a good tool for simple title or name searches such as the one I'm doing.

I'm sharing the PHP code that does the tricks of forming the N-grams and comparing two sets of N-grams. The compare function is very elegant, thanks to good tools already implemented in PHP. You can find it here: ngram.php. If you're planning to do something with it, I'd appreciate if you'd drop me a note.

In addition to that, I have indexing code that goes through all the files in the directory that has the reviews, searching for HTML meta field that contains the title of the game - or titles, as each game can have several titles in different languages. File names, game titles and the N-grams are then stored in a MySQL database to be accessed by the search script.

Creating the search engine was very straighforward. I was surprised how quickly I got it all together. Having thought a lot about N-grams before helped a bit, obviously.

27.11.2004 klo 12:30 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Spam filtering survey

John Graham-Cunning, the mastermind behind POPFile (my favourite anti-spam tool) is doing a Spam Filtering Survey. If you have some spare time (John says about 20 minutes, but it didn't take me that long), go and do the survey.

The survey is a bit untypical. It has four pages of questions on spam filtering software and e-mail use and then 16 pages of e-mail to classify. Spam or ham? That takes a while and can be a bit boring, but advancement of spam filtering software is a cause noble enough to see the effort.

24.11.2004 klo 12:56 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Changes under the hood

*Hop*. There we go. I made a move from Nucleus to Movable Type. Despite the new, nice version of Nucleus, Movable Type is simply superior blog platform. Especially as I bought the new 3.121 version, which is just smooth.

There are some technical issues which are a bit unfinished, but most of this blog should work. Syndicated readers should note that while the old RSS url of http://www.melankolia.net/xml-rss2en.php is supported for legacy reasons, I recommend moving to one of the new urls (index.xml, index.rdf or atom.xml).

The old blog will remain, also for legacy reasons. Old links should stay alive, kind of. If you have linked to http://www.melankolia.net/index.en.php, please update your links. Linking to http://www.melankolia.net/ is a better idea anyway.

17.11.2004 klo 12:00 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

What to do to virus e-mail

I've been in the receiving end of rather heavy loads of virus e-mails. I've received dozens of messages each day from two or three senders. It's a huge annoyance, but fortunately something that can be dealt with. Here's how:


Check the full headers of the virus e-mail. Look for the Received:-lines. Follow the chain and find where the message came from. Here's an example:

Received: from mail.melankolia.net ([XX.XX.XXX.XXX]) by shadow.nebula.fi (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id i74Ba7D28962 for <tefomed@melankolia.net>; Wed, 4 Aug 2004 14:36:07 +0300

This was the only one in the message, so the message came straight from the virus-infested computer to me. shadow.nebula.fi is my Internet home. mail.melankolia.net is also my address, but that's fake. The correct source is the IP (which I've replaced with X's to protect the innocent). Feed the IP to RIPE Whois Database to get a domain name.

Then just send a copy of a virus mail (without any attachments, but with full headers) to abuse at whatever the domain is. That should do the trick, in most cases.


Here's another example:

Received: from mail.melankolia.net (dsl-olugw3p44.dial.XXXX.fi [XX.XXX.XXX.XX]) by shadow.nebula.fi (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id i744mCD24543

for <weni@melankolia.net>; Wed, 4 Aug 2004 07:48:13 +0300

This time the plain-text part tells us all we need to know. It's a dsl line for XXXX ISP. RIPE would confirm. Ripe will also tell that correct abuse e-mail is abuse@XXXX.fi.

These two were the worst offenders - I would get something like 40-50 emails a day from both on most days. I complained about both and that's it, no more virus mail anymore.

6.08.2004 klo 13:12 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Gmail

Thanks to a barefooted guy, I now have a Gmail account. I'm hoping to keep it free from spam to have an usable webmail in case I'm away from home. My regular mail gets unbelievably clogged in just few days as I'm getting few hundred messages - most of them spam - every day. If I don't download my mail for three days, the situation is horrible.

I'm not sure if I'll have much use for the account otherwise, but at least it's pretty cool. This - I fear - reveals my utter geekdom, but hey, at least I didn't have to name my firstborn child (or secondborn, for that matter) after some stranger to get one. Come on, people, it's only a webmail account...


It's amazing what lengths people are going to get an account, just because Google is cool and Gmail is invite-only. If something is not given to everyone, everyone will want it, it seems...

22.06.2004 klo 11:16 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Linux project fails

Back in January, I considered my Linux box useful. Well, it isn't now. Since we switched displays (to be able to play Syberia, but that's a longish story), I haven't used the Linux box at all. I managed to screw it up when I tried to change the display adapter and I'm not sure if it starts up anymore.

What I'm going to do now is to boot up the computer somehow and get the necessary stuff out of there by FTP and then format the Linux hard disk. I've been using the computer a lot for Windows use and that's the way I'm going to keep it. Sorry, but Windows is just so much more usable than Linux. I hate having to compile software to use it! I want easy-to-install binaries! I don't want to solve mystical compiler error messages when I just want to install some software!

What I'd really love would be a system with a nice easy-to-use graphical user interface (Windows is ok, Linux just doesn't cut it), stability (this is where Windows fails and Linux shines) and decent command line interface with powerful utility software like Perl (this is certainly Linux territory). Even though Linux seems to win the comparison 2-1, it's the first part that really counts in the every-day use. I just don't like system administration - I want a computer I can use, not a computer to meddle with.


The question remains - would a Mac be what I'm looking for?

30.05.2004 klo 15:44 | Comments 3 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Stopping Bandwith Theft

I've been a victim of theft. These thiefs haven't stolen anything material from me, but bandwidth. These sad creeps link images from other people's servers.

Before I studied my site logs, you see. A Deadjournal user had linked to my site and I went to see what it was about. It wasn't a link at all - she had stolen a picture from my website to use as her background image. That kind of theft can't be tolerated. If only she had even copied the picture on her web sites, but no. Well, if she wants to store her background image on my server, she must allow me to change it whenever I want... The pictures tell the story of before and after. She should be lucky I didn't use hard core porn... After

The problem is wider, however. My album cover pictures are used widely. They aren't my property as such and I don't mind someone copying them (that's what I did to get them, after all), but I don't like when people use my bandwidth to decorate their web sites.

Fortunately, there's a solution. Preventing Image Bandwith Theft With .htaccess describes how to stop the thiefs. Now you can't see the pictures, unless your referrer information tells you're coming from Melankolia.net. This will hurt some legitimate users, but not many. It's a nice solution to an annoying problem.

12.04.2004 klo 15:22 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Permalinks and lake Bodom

I moved the permalinks to title so that the title of the entry is the link text. That's good thing, usability-wise, I think. Link text should tell something about the target of the link, not about the function, I suppose. I think that's fairly elegant solution, which I've seen used elsewhere.

Biggest and most interesting news in Finland right now is the Lake Bodom murder case. Three young campers were brutally killed at the Lake Bodom in Espoo 44 years ago. The murder has remained a mystery until now. Police has arrested the person they think probably did it. What's surprising is that the person arrested is the fourth camper, who survived the attack. Now DNA evidence points to his direction.

If it really is him, I'd say that's pretty amazing. Of course it's a good thing such a classic murder mystery is solved and murder is found. But imagine how the murderer must have felt! For 44 years he has been able to hide the fact that he brutally stabbed three of his friends to death. What that must've done to his psyche! This, of course, assuming he really did it.

Police has been quite quiet about it this far, but at least I'm rather curious to hear more details about the case.

4.04.2004 klo 16:42 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Blog software comparison

I was asked about which one is better, Nucleus or Movable Type. I thought I'd share my answer with you all:

It depends. If you want several blogs on your system, Movable Type is better choice. You really can't have multiple blogs with their own authors in Nucleus, because to edit the skins and templates you need system administrator rights.

If you want to have just one blog, both are fine. Movable Type has perhaps a bit better user interface, while Nucleus has some other advantages. If you want to do your plugins, Nucleus uses PHP and MT Perl, that might make a difference.

You get wider support with Movable Type, but because it's more popular, people know it's weaknesses and exploit them. I haven't received comment spam on my Nucleus blog.


I think I prefer Movable Type slightly. I prefer the concept of building static pages from data stored in the database. Since the pages don't change that often, it saves you database traffic. Of course, if you want to do something dynamic, Nucleus makes it easier.

13.02.2004 klo 07:19 | Comments 2 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

National computer security day

Today is the national computer security day in Finland. I didn't know about it until I found a small leaflet hidden between my morning newspaper. The leaflet teaches the very basics of computer security: firewalls, viruses, spam, updating Windows and so on. It's very short and quite shallow, but it covers the most important parts and looks friendly. It's accompanied by a web site, which gives more detail.

I think this was a very good idea. The project has wide support, from government offices to businesses. Of course it's good advertising for F-Secure and other companies behind all this (well - Microsoft is involved and the material certainly underlines the need to update their buggy software), but I'm not complaining. As broadband Internet connections are becoming more common and used by non-geeks who might not understand the need for adequate protection, campaigns like this are increasingly necessary.

11.02.2004 klo 16:14 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Interesting and useful

I've found few rather interesting web resources recently.

Let's start with del.icio.us, which is a social bookmarks system. Users can use it to store their bookmarks. Bookmarks are public and the front page is a never-stopping stream of interesting links, which you can easily grab on your own lists as well. You can categorise the lists with a simple tag system. All the bookmarks are available in RSS format (see the sidebar for my latest delicious links, for example). You can also subscribe to someone else's bookmarks within the system. It's pre-pre-alpha, but already really interesting.


I like! is another interesting bookmark-related system. It's idea is simple: when you hit an interesting page while surfing, you hit a I like! button in your browser (implemented as a bookmarklet). From your selections, the system builds a profile and recommends some links to you. At the moment the recommendations aren't too cool, but I expect the system to improve when it's databases grow. It's interesting, but still beta. It's slowish and doesn't really shine yet, but I'm curious.

Finally we come to Bloglines, which is a highly useful RSS feed reader. It's web-based, so you can check your feeds everywhere without installing any software. It's the best thing since rss2email, which still rules the field in my opinion. Bloglines has lots of interesting features, including the possibility to export a blogroll. You can see that in action on Gameblog, where the blogroll is taken from Bloglines. Check it out and subscribe me (I've included a handy subscription link button).


I notice the English side of this blog is highly geeky.

30.01.2004 klo 13:12 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Quality Link Building

A fellow called Raul just sent me a cross-linking proposal:

"I am contacting you about cross linking. I am interested in melankolia.net because it looks like it's relevant to a site for which I am seeking links. The site is about pet odor control and removal products."

His signature says he's from Link Builder, who are "Experts in Quality Link Building". Yeah, right.

16.01.2004 klo 15:23 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Linux box

When I told you about my Linux box, I said I was wondering if I had any use for the machine. Well, it turned out surprisingly useful. I've been using a lot, mostly for everyday stuff like web surfing, reading my e-mails and writing. Johanna has been able to use our main computer for her web surfing more while I haven't been shut from computer while she surfs. Everyone's happy.

I've been very satisfied with Linux, especially since I switched from KDE to WindowMaker. My only problem is with Galeon, which is slow to draw stuff on screen. But I think it's unfair to compare it to Firebird running on my other computer (433 MHz Celeron vs AMD Barton 3000+). However, I have to check if some other browsers are any faster. Reading my e-mails with pine is always a delight, even though I do miss my spam filter...

10.01.2004 klo 12:45 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Lovely software

For some reason I find MiniMP3 to be a very charming piece of software. It's an invisible MP3 player. It resides in the system tray, that's all user interface it has. It can load and save playlist and play MP3 files. It doesn't even show you the title of the current track! What beautiful minimalism! The program is just a single exe file, only 45 kilobytes.

1.01.2004 klo 17:44 | Comments 3 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Mobile madness

There's one TV phenomena you can't and shouldn't miss in Finland: mobile chats. Nearly all TV channels have them. The concept is simple: viewers can send SMS messages which are then displayed on TV. Each messages costs from 80 cents to one euro. There's usually a host who's either (usually) a pretty young lady (who might have some popular guests) or faceless commentor whose only presence is in the form of text messages. There are also moderators, who check each incoming message for swearing, phone numbers, racist messages or other nasty stuff - of course, you'll have to pay even if your message isn't shown.

This goes on during the nights and as you can guess, it's a good way to make money. On the bigger channels the chats are so popular there can easily be a lag of over 30 minutes. After all, there's a limit for the speed of the displayed messages.

What about the content, then? Well, most of it is looking for company. "17yo stud looking for willing women in Helsinki". Or "Bob rules, John is an idiot". Or "How much is the lag?". If there's a pretty young female host, "host show your tits" is a classic. Sometimes on the smaller and more quiet chats there's been actual conversation. Lag of 30 minutes kills all conversation, that's for sure.

Anyway, there's a new development. The chats have changed slowly all the time, with new, small inventions coming up. One great idea was special VIP messages, which cost more but skip the lag. Latest invention is the use of computer speech software to read the messages. People want the hosts to read their messages aloud - well, the computer does exactly that. First time I saw it, there was an animation of Santa Claus who read the messages people sent. Then I saw it in the night chat: there was the typical host and she was accompanied with an animated computer head. There's another number where you can send SMS messages to be read by the head. Their price is double the normal price, 1,6 euros.

Now that's hilarious. There's a silly animated head with it's broken Finnish computer voice and a host, talking over each other. Then there are dozens of people complaining: "get rid of the head!". Which is of course all good and well from the point of view of the people who collect the money: the money's the same whether people are writing their typical silly messages or complaining about the head. Now I'm just waiting for the moment they get rid of the human hosts. After all, computer does the job for free!


Well, the human hosts do generate lots of "show your tits" messages, so I suppose they do earn their salaries. Also, I don't think they are paid too well. Their base salary must be pretty low - of course it's really higher because they get night and weekend bonuses. Still, it's probably not the best paid job ever.

The computer speech can be funny when it's put to say something hilarious, at least my sense of humour is low enough to enjoy that. Now I'm just anxious to see what they invent next to spice up the good old SMS chatting!

30.12.2003 klo 19:29 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Linux

I installed Mandrake Linux on my second computer yesterday. I expected the installation to take a while, but no: it took me only about 45 minutes, 30 minutes of which was spent copying files. It was easier than installing Win98! The results were just great: a working operating system, with several different graphical user interfaces and loads of useful software.

It's still a bit of a mystery how much use I will find for the second computer, because the Linux machine is not networked yet. It also takes a very long time to start up. But if we ever need to use two computers at the same time (say, we both need to do some writing or something like that), I'll have a working computer there ready to be used.

17.12.2003 klo 10:06 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Corporate Foundations Lottery

They replied to me with a winnings claiming form (which was hideous and had a typo in the corporate name, which was written in huge letters on top of it). They didn't want to steal my ID (sorry, Jooseppi's ID), they wanted money. Just few hundred dollars in advance, then they would send me my money. Yeah right.

4.11.2003 klo 08:27 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Here we go again!

I got another winning notice from an international lottery corporation ("Corporate Foundations Lottery International"), claiming I've won million dollars. The lottery was allegedly promoted and sponsored by Bill Gates.

This time I'm supposed to contact "fiducial agent" Mr. Bright Martins. My friend Jooseppi did so, immediately. This time without any ticket numbers or anything - let's see if they care. I doubt they do.


I haven't heard anything from Dr. Richmond Berkly, by the way. Perhaps his feelings were hurt by the nasty pictures I sent to him.

29.10.2003 klo 11:53 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Lottery fraud, part II

Well, of course Dr. Richmond didn't mind when someone else wanted to claim my lottery prize. That's pretty obvious. He replied pretty fast. That's what he wanted:

"I write to notify you that you are one of our lucky winners in our fortune lottery programs,the name attach to your email address was selected through computer ballot system,kindly scan or write your identifcation like working I.D student I.D,drivers licence or international passport through my email for more verifications,and also to avoid double claims of funds,delays,and complications in our program."


Too bad my friend Jooseppi (born yesterday) has no ID whatsoever. That didn't stop me from sending Dr. Richmond Jooseppi's pass port scan and driver's license scan.

15.10.2003 klo 17:30 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Lottery fraud

I have won 415,810 euros in a lottery. Which is quite neat, because I don't even remember participating in one. But oops - according to the e-mail I got, I'm not supposed to tell anyone. I'll have to contact Dr. Richmond Berkly (he's a doctor, so it must be really important) to get the money.

Let's see. Company that handles millions of euros doesn't have proper e-mail addresses - all free mail addresses from who knows where. Google search on the company name brings up list of Nigerian scam companies. Hmm-hmm... this one's tricky.

Well, let's see what they say when an imaginary lottery winner replies to them!

14.10.2003 klo 17:56 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Choosing Linux distribution

I'm probably installing Linux on my old computer at some point. I'm now pondering about selecting the distribution to use. Red Hat or Debian or something completely different? Opinions are welcome, as are pointers to interesting and useful articles about the issue.


Red Hat feels like a safer selection, with more support and easier use. In the other hand, Debian has some attracting points (mostly philosophical) too.

14.10.2003 klo 11:44 | Comments 4 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Bizarre spam

(See the same in Finnish)

I got this surreal spam message:

of the older child, how all the life and cares of the mother To that I owed my stalking by the Leopard-man, on the night of my arrival.

There was a HTML part, which probably had something less absurd, but this part was all I saw with my pine. The first line is from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and the second line is from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells.

Talk about bizarre!

10.10.2003 klo 17:00 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Actually, more computer trouble

Sure, I got my computer back. However, it didn't work. They claim it worked all right when they tested it, but I don't care. It doesn't work when I try to use it, that's just about all I care. Well, I returned the computer and hopefully they'll fix it properly this time.

I still have a pretty good opinion of Triosoft, but that's going to change if they can't fix the computer they sold me.

24.09.2003 klo 12:36 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

No more computer trouble?

Last Tuesday I took my new computer for repair - Win98 simply stopped working. Continuous fatal exceptions, problems starting up and shutting down, that kind of mysterious action. Installing Win98 again didn't do any good, so I decided to take the computer to the shop where I bought it.


Today I got a call from them - the computer is fixed and ready for pickup. Apparently the problem was overheating of the processor, caused by too inefficient cooling fan. The AMD Barton 3000+ needs lots of cooling, it seems. Now it should work, I sure hope it does... Computer trouble is very, very annoying. Fortunately I had a back-up computer.

18.09.2003 klo 16:29 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Morbid dieting

Considering the buzz around the Atkins diet lately, I found this dieting spam I received rather morbid. The subject is pretty tame: "Lose Weight While You Sleep. Here Is How!". It's the sender: "Final Diet".


Indeed there's little need for dieting after a thoroughly executed Atkins diet...

23.08.2003 klo 11:25 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

New display

I went and bought a Hyundai ImageQuest L17T 17" TFT display. It's beautiful! Full 17" of display space (my 17" CRT display had less than 16" of actual display), less than 2" thick, weights less than five kilos. In addition of crisp, non-flicking display it features a TV adapter so I can use it to watch TV too. There's simply no turning back - how can I use a CRT display after this beauty?

One funny thing: turned out the monitor is actually too light. Johanna's old computer table has three legs, two in front and one in back. Earlier the weight of the monitor was enough to keep the table somewhat stable, but now even a slight leaning on the front of the table caused the table to tilt. I solved the problem by placing some heavy-weight computer books behind the monitor in the back corner of the table. Now it's stable as ever and I can also reach my Programming Perl easier!

8.08.2003 klo 09:53 | Comments 4 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

New Google operator

Google has a new operator: ~. Add ~ directly in front of a word to search for the word and it's synonyms. For example searching for "~help" finds words like "manual", "guide", "tips" and so on. Sounds like a neat thing.

(From Google Weblog)

5.08.2003 klo 08:16 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Creative e-mail use

I've set up a e-mail to blog interface using PostMan plugin. It wasn't completely simple - the script has bugs, I had trouble getting cron do what I want, things like that, but now the system works and I'll just have to fix one bug to make it work even better.


Is it of any real use, is another thing. I think situations where I have SSH connection but no web connection are rare, but in the other hand, writing with Mozilla Mail is more comfortable than writing with Mozilla browser...

24.07.2003 klo 20:05 | Comments 3 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

A very good RSS reader

I like the RSS technology, but I haven't been satisfied with various RSS feed readers I've tried (those include AmphetaDesk, NewsMonster, Syndirella and nntp//rss). Somehow each has been too complicated in every-day use and I've quickly stopped using them.

Thanks to a RSS discussion on the Spielfrieks list, I've found something better: rss2email by Aaron Schwarz. I've set it up to check my feeds three times every day - if it finds anything new, it e-mails it to me. I don't need to use any external software to read the feeds. When I'm on my computer, I've got mail reader open 90% of the time. I don't need to remember to start any other programs (as with nntp//rss, which also shows the feeds in my mail/news reader).


Simply put, the solution is perfect for me. It took some installation effort, especially as I had to hunt down and install a newer version of python (which was surprisingly easy, even though I had to compile it from the sources).

Of course, I wouldn't be the geek I am, if I didn't already have plans to improve the system. I'm thinking about web interface... Then I could offer the system as a service for other people, as well. I'll keep on thinking about that... Meanwhile I enjoy reading my RSS feeds with Mozilla Mail!

24.07.2003 klo 13:39 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Finnish coffee mania

Finland is the world leader in coffee consumption. It's something like an average of nine cups per day per person. Which is a lot, considering that many people don't drink coffee at all. Finland must be full of caffeine addicts.

This mania of coffee drinking can be seen in various places. Today, I went shopping for groceries. Coffee was on sale - half a kilo packet of quality coffee was only 1,69 euros. Because of this amazingly cheap price (perhaps 50 cents less than usually), there was a sign that said "Only for households. No more than 10 packets/household."

And I was thinking about buying 11 packets! Darn. Then I just went on with my shopping, buying exactly one packet of different kind of coffee which cost me exactly two euros.

14.07.2003 klo 13:14 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Another PayPal fraud

Once again I'm targeted by a PayPal fraud. This time they asked me to verify my e-mail address. The URL revealed it, though... They tried to use the old trick of using the right address as a username for a fraud site, so the URL looked like this:


https://www.paypal.com:[long string of mixed characters]@some.fraudsite.com

Nice try, but I didn't fall for it. Instead I forwarded both of the messages (which made it more obvious they were fakes, why would PayPal send me two similar requests...) to PayPal spoof checkers.

13.07.2003 klo 10:16 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

Pirate keyboard

Defective Yeti offers us a view to the world of computer pirates.

9.07.2003 klo 08:03 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

New plugin

I needed to display the category description from the templates (because category description allows characters that the category title doesn't), but there was no template variable to do it. Therefore I needed to create my own... The result, CatDesc, can be found on my Nucleus plugins page.

2.07.2003 klo 12:54 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Plugin

I've created my first plugin for Nucleus. I wanted a list of articles with most karma and wasn't satisfied with the existing plugin. I modified it a lot and there's my first plugin: MostKarma. More information can be found at my Nucleus plugin page.

1.07.2003 klo 11:05 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Beta testing browsers

I keep on beta-testing browsers: I just installed the latest Mozilla (1.4 release candidate 3). This far I've used six different versions of Mozilla (1.2.1, 1.3, 1.3.1, 1.4rc1, 1.4rc2 and 1.4rc3)... 1.4 versions have been the best, I think. Or at least I've had the least problems with them. Hopefully this latest version doesn't spoil their good reputation.

1.07.2003 klo 10:08 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

PayPal fraud

I've now received several rather nasty PayPal fraud attempts in my inbox. I got a very authentic-looking e-mail saying that to prevent fraud(!), I should log in to the PayPal web site and verify some information about me. I believed it enough that I went to see the web site. It looked exactly like a regular PayPal login, but with one huge exception: the address in the location bar of my browser wasn't PayPal's. Oops.


Fortunately I didn't enter my user name and password, but I'm afraid many people have. I reported the fraud to PayPal, hopefully they will do something. If an experienced e-mail user like me can be fooled, then what about somehow who isn't critical enough?

26.06.2003 klo 08:49 | Comments 1 comment(s) | TrackBack (0)

New look

Hi!

This is the new Melankolia.net front page. It features a list of contents, which you can see on the right. On the left, here, what you are reading, is a blog. Sort of. It's about what's new in Melankolia.net. In lesser amounts, it's about my life. I will probably keep you posted on major events in my life, but don't expect any dirty details.

12.06.2003 klo 10:24 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)