Archive for December, 2004
Interview time
This came from a friend of mine:
1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You’ll update your web log with my five questions and your five answers.
4. You’ll include this explanation.
5. You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
(3 - 5 are, of course, optional)
Here are Joyce’s questions for me and my answers:
1. If you could learn any one skill instantly (like Neo in the Matrix), what would
it be?
Great question (and a tough one to answer). Most of the potential answers coming to mind are more like personality traits or habits than skills. Wait…got it. The skill I’d like to instantly learn more than any other is how to play piano. I learned to play the trumpet growing up, but I’ve always wished I could play something that would allow me to create both melody and harmony myself…preferably with the ability to sing at the same time. There are other choices that fill that bill, but I don’t know of any that have the piano’s ability to “fit” into so many different styles of music. No other instrument has the same ability to compel me to sing along.
2. What’s your favorite color?
It really depends on a lot of things (mood being not the least of them), but probably most often either deep red or dark green. However, that brings up a funny story from college. Picture this shy, southern, painfully conservative geek kid who manages to end up with a thoroughly-feminist teacher from (I think) New York for second semester Freshman comp. The first day of class, she asked us to fill out cards with information about ourselves. One of the questions was: “If you could paint Denny Chimes any color you wanted, what color would it be, and why?” (Go look at the picture.) I knew I was in for a ride when she answered for herself: “I’d paint it magenta, because then maybe everyone would see it for the phallic symbol it is.”
3. What’s your earliest memory?
It’s hard to separate my own memories from the stories I’ve learned about myself over the years. Pictures that I know are in a picture book back at my parents’ house keep coming to mind. About the earliest one I can claim for certain as my own has to do with what eventually became known as my “red mountains”. We built a new house when I was something like 3 years old. It’s what’s known as a “basement house”, which meant that a lot of good old northwest Alabama red clay had to be dug up to build it. That dirt ended up in two big mounds in the yard, and they became favorite play spots for me. I remember being really upset when the machines came to move the dirt away.
4. What crazy thing would you love to do, but just don’t dare?
Audition to become a professional studio backup singer.
4a. (added later) Why don’t you dare?
A combination of suspecting that I don’t have the pipes for it and that I wouldn’t be able to make a living at it.
5. What would you do if you won the lottery?
Well, I’d take Amy on her dream vacation (I’ve heard several ideas…don’t know which is her favorite…it probably involves Europe, as in all of it). I’d build the perfect house (which would probably have quite a bit in common with the Dilbert Ultimate House…it’s not as silly as it looks). Definitely hire someone else to do the lawn work permanently. Then, I think for the rest, I’d just try to work out whatever investments were necessary so I could forget about working if I didn’t enjoy it.
Battling comment spam
UPDATE:
I’m leaving this post in place for historical purposes, but quite a while ago I dropped AuthImage in favor of Spam Karma, which seems to do an excellent job of blocking pretty much all my comment spam.
—————-
I’ll be honest: comment spam really hasn’t been THAT big of a problem here on slidingconstant.net. So far, I’ve been able to filter almost all of it into my moderation queue just by adding some stuff to my blocked words list.
However, I just really hate the idea that some automated bot can so easily create more work for me to do (namely, reviewing my moderation queue). The last straw, so to speak, was when other friends of mine had to shut down commenting on their site because of massive moderation queues. So, I decided today to follow up on something that I had thought about before (and that another friend Rick confirmed was possible in WordPress).
Enter the AuthImage plugin. This little gadget uses a type of visual “puzzle” called a captcha, which requires the commenter to enter the letters he/she sees in an image in order to post the comment.
Unfortunately, this method excludes potential commenters who are unable to view the image (images disabled, text browser, blind user, etc.). However, since my commenters are a pretty small group anyway, I’ve decided that I’m willing to trade the likely zero drop in legitimate comments for not having to deal with comment spam.
Tenet misquoted?
I followed a link today from Slashdot to an article from the Washington Times about George Tenet speaking at an “information-technology security conference” in Washinton.
Most of it sounds like boilerplate vague “we need to make the Internet more secure” talk, but this line was interesting:
Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously, he said.
Note that it wasn’t a direct quote. I wonder if this was a case of the reporter misunderstanding something and screwing it up, or if this really was said (in which case it’s pretty clear that Tenet has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about).
The Slashdotters, of course, went nuts. *shrug* Me, I mostly ignore ideas like this that are so obviously impractical to implement. I’m just curious whether Tenet really believes it.
Power ballad timeline
Don’t ask how I found this, because I don’t remember. I lost concentration with all the laughing.