It appears that the DNS fix is broken. I can no longer see the site, even with the Google public DNS.

What I did:

I have XP so I right clicked My Network Places and clicked properties.

I then right clicked my Local Area Connection and clicked properties.

I then clicked Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and then clicked properties.

I clicked the radio button to use the following DNS server address.

I typed in 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and clicked OK.

To refresh it I went back and right clicked my Local Area Connection and did a repair.

Worked like a charm.

I got a spike last night from people hitting this site. I was getting a huge amount of traffic from Google because a site name Cuevana started showing 403 errors. For some reason I came up on the searches. I even got questions as to how to bring Cuevana back.

Well, Cuevana is a pirate site for Videos from Argentina. It is like Hulu.com, except in Spanish and, as I understand it, it does not pay for the content it streams.

I don’t understand why Google listed me in Cuevana searches. I have discussed 403 errors, but I had never heard of Cuevana before.

I am wondering if Cuevana is hosted on 1and1.com and their 403 errors were related to mine.

I thought it was me, but when I came in this morning, all my sites on 1and1.com were timing out. Now they are back, with that quickness which means that the server might have been rebooted, or even swapped out with the next generation.

Anyway, we’re back.

I made a change to the htaccess file last night to block 30 or so bad IP addresses and I thought that I had blocked myself. Since it was just this site that was down last night, that was probably not the case. It might have been a bad nightly load that “healed”. I don’t even know if this is possible.

Inspecting the log, I have noticed that my “blogthis” script is generating 403 errors from various sites. Well, there is no warranty, expressed or implied in the script. I should make it available for download so that the technically challenged can install it on their own sites. I don’t need the traffic that the script generates.

This site started getting 403 forbidden messages for no good reason. I am not sure what is going on.

I am using the bleeding edge nightlies beta versions of  WordPress here, so I think they broke something last night at wordpress.org.

I wrote a short article on using the iPad as a writing tool on the cheap. I have since bought a compact keyboard for less than $10 for this and I have made a velcro strap to attach the iPad to the back of the seat in front of me so I can work. It is very nice when I feel like taking notes on the bus.

iPad for (cheap) Authors

I’ve decided that that no theme is better than a dark hard to read theme.

You are looking at a simple fluid design without any typography.

I am keeping the side bar, but the header is just the name of the blog.

I find referer spam annoying. Referer spam is spam that appears in my log as bogus http_referer entries – referer is misspelled for historic reasons. I also think that spammers who drop by also leave their dirt behind in the logs. By blocking certain strings in the referrer string, I think I can stop a few spammers also.

I’ve been testing the following referer string block. I have no idea if it is working, yet. I am going to set a bogus page with one of the strings in it to test it out.

Make a backup copy of your .htaccess file and then copy this stuff into the top of the file.

Test it. I got 500 errors when I made a mistake, so be sure you have a backup copy that works in order to restore the file if it breaks your site.

Make sure you leave the wordpress stuff and anything else needed to run your site after this code.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# referrer spam
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} poker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} viagra [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} casino [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} sex [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} qzone [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} jokes [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} calories [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} alliatemarketing [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} mafia [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} erotic [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:VIA} ^.+pinappleproxy [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} nestseekers [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} porn [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} advair [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} allegra [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ambien [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} amoxicillin [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} baccarat [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} blackjack [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} cash [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} casino [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} celeb [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} cheap [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} cialis [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} craps [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} credit [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} deal [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} debt [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} drug [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} effexor [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} equity [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} faxo [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} finance [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} gambling [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} hold-em [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} holdem [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} iconsurf [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} insurance [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} interest [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} internetsupervision [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} keno [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} levitra [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} lipitor [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} loan [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} meds [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} money [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} mortgage [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} omaha [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} paxil [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} pharmacy [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} pharmacies [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} phentermine [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} pheromone [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} pills [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} poker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} refinance [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} roulette [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} seventwentyfour [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} slot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} syntryx [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} texas [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} tournament [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} tramadol [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} tramidol [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} valtrex [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} viagra [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} vicodin [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} xanax [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} zanax [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} zoloft [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]
</IfModule>

As near as I can figure it, someone downloaded one of my plugins this week making my total downloads from the WordPress.org Repository numbering over 100,000.

This makes me about 285th most popular WordPress author. I have no idea how many authors there are, but I would guess more 10,000.

I would have to become a lot more popular to make it to the top 100 authors, though. The hundredth person on the list is at 280,000 downloads and counting. I am gaining about 5 positions a month, but this decreases as the competition gets harder.

100,000 is pretty damn good, though.

I have received more downloads in the last 24 hours of any plugin that I’ve ever released. This is due to the fact that 3.2.1 release of WP was released at the same time as I released my code. Everyone is upgrading WP and then going back and upgrading their plugins.

The main change to the Spammer code is for users behind a firewall. I made the changes but don’t have any way of checking them. I run a version of the code here at work for a routine that logs IP address of incoming hits. It works here behind a firewall, but I don’t know if the version I incorporated into Spammers is working.

I fixed a bunch of little bugs and added some things to the MU panels. I changed the way MU works again.

I added a “Really Really Clean strings” function to sanitize the incoming data. I have not had a crash on any of my installations since I added it. So I hope that it works.

This site, which doesn’t get much traffic, gets about 200 spam hits a day. I get a 40  or so legit hits. Let’s face in, there is not much here to attract surfers. Most legit hits come from WordPress.

I am testing sending spammers a 404 error on rejection. I figure that the engines must record the 404 errors and remove the site from the list when they find it (or don’t as it turns out). This might “teach” spammers to stop sending spam.

A frequent commenter here, Ovidiu, was just reject by spamhaus.org as being a spammer. The ip address that he used was listed in the spamhaus black list.

It turns out that he is in an ip range that denies direct email. I am going to change it so that it only checks for known spammers and just spammers.

I have a mysterious situation where the cache is not sorting correctly. I moved the point where I do the cache sort  way down to just before I save it. I hope this helps. Wouldn’t you know that I haven’t received any spam since I made the changes. I hope that the sort order fixes itself.

I added DNSBL support. Right now it is turned on all the time and I always check the IP at several popular email spam black hole checkers. I am not sure how well this works with comment spam. After all email spam is different than comment spam. I should catch a few this way as comment spammers are probably related to email spammers.

I reject disposable email addresses from a list of disposable emails I compiled by searching forums. The list is probably older and I would like to find a reliable public list that I could use to update things from time to time. Right now this is just a test. I expect some user to claim that I am rejecting legitimate users by rejecting disposable emails.