Recently in blogging Category
so I think I got comments working here... so if you're reading this, please post a comment to test it out! (it'll make me feel important)
the system will make you log in, but it turns out you can use this thing called "OpenID", and if you use AIM (among other things), you already have one. In the AIM case, it's just openid.aol.com/screenname.
the idea of a single username everywhere you go on the net is interesting, and might be especially good for things like random blogs (like mine) where you don't want to make an account, but the maintainer of the blog (like me) would be annoyed at removing comment spam otherwise. let's see if it takes off...
I spent today converting my old blogs to this nifty new system. The main advantage over blogger is that you can have yearly archives, instead of monthly.
I haven’t been posting much at all this year, due to the stress of taking my MA oral exam (I passed!), commuting to Stanford for the LSA Institute over the summer (it was interesting, but for some reason not as fun as Santa Barbara—perhaps it was the expensive on-campus housing, or the shorter length), and finally this semester GSI-ing 130 (historical linguistics) and taking field methods and trying to work on QP’s all at once, which David M. said was “near suicidal”. Next semester I’ll be GSR-ing for STEDT, which should be more amenable to my work habits.
Let’s see, what else is good about this new system… I think you can put in comments, and there’s also an RSS feed too, I think…
the stupid guestbook has been more trouble than it's worth. first it kept getting spammed, so i had to fix that. now someone's taken advantage of a security hole that allows admin access to everyone and effed up the page. i'm lucky they didn't delete all the guestbook entries. but now i've fixed that, too. though i must say, it was rather clever...
basically, anyone can hack in to version 2.2 of the guestbook by leaving the username blank and typing this line as the password:
') OR ('a' = 'a
it's called an SQL injection exploit. and then whoever did it edited the latest guestbook post by inserting the following HTML (offending text has been censored):
<div id="post" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 1024; height: 2000; z-index: 1; overflow: auto"> <table border="0" width="100%" bgcolor="#000000" height="100%" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="5" valign="top"><tr><td width="100%" valign="top">
blah blah blah blah blah blah</font></td></tr></table></div>
dammit, people are posting guestbook spam in my guestbook. they post throwaway messages like, "nice site, good work!" and then a URL that they want you to click. augh. i have smote them with fiery anger.
I've moved my blog to my new domain, blyt.net. My friend Adrian is generously giving me some of his server space to host my web presence, and... well, this is huge! Now I've got more database and blogging and content management capabilities than I can shake a stick at!
So here's the plug: if you need a place for your web site, go to http://www.icestorm.com for all your web hosting needs. Reliable hosting, great prices, and friendly support. And you can't beat the 30-day money-back guarantee.
So, why blyt, you ask? Well, if you look up 筆 'pen' in ancient Chinese texts, you'll find the phrase 不律為筆. Roughly translated, it says "No rules is pen." This makes no sense unless you read it not for meaning, but for pronunciation: "The character 筆 is pronounced like 不 + 律", which linguists nowadays guess might have sounded like b-liwət. Of course, that's rather inconvenient for a domain name, and naturally blit.net was taken, so here we are. Welcome to blyt.net, where I shall put digital pen to digital paper.
