Defiantone.com

Due to my ever present boredom and need to share anything I find interesting to anyone who will listen I added my Google Reader RSS feed to my page. Check it out on the bottom right - you’ll find a listing of the latest and greatest stories that I felt were worth sharing but didn’t feel were worth blogging about. I have no idea why someone would come to me for information but if you’re here you might as well see what I’ve found interesting the past day or two.

One little plug-in was all that it took - one plug-in to rule them all, one plug-in to find them, one plug-in to bring them all and in the darkness bind them!

YAWASP, a plug-in for fully hosted versions of Wordpress like mine has effectively stopped the torrents of comment spam that I was receiving daily. Now, instead of removing 50-100 bogus comments a day I find myself removing as little as one bogus comment a week. If you have your own blog I STRONGLY recommend you grab this little beast. Its going to save you tons of time.

We all fight spam in one form or another be it snail mail, email, or comment spam. I’ve done a fairly good job at blocking out the email spam but and I can readily ignore the snail mail by throwing it in the trash. I haven’t had good luck blocking out the comment spam.

Spammers will leave me random comments full of links to websites full of porn and prescription medication advertisements in an effort to increase their Google page rank. The spam filter catches 99% of them and leaves them for me to moderate. I have to dig through the comments in hope that there is something that isn’t spam - there seldom is.

I noticed a new plug-in for my blog YAWASP (Yet Another WordPress Anti Spam Plug-in) that alters the comment field so that bots cannot easily access it and leave comments. Hopefully it works - only time will tell. It should be absolutely invisible to you but its going to help me out immensely. I’ll be able to see that I have no new comments from one day to the next. Oh well

XKCD started as random scribbles by the author that were scanned and saved for posterity. Somebody found them and they became a phenom. This comic, in particular, should serve as a guide on how to comment on the schlock that you will find posted on this website. Click the image for a link to the site and hours worth of comedy. Enjoy!

BlueCoat, the web filter ran by the USAF, has caused me much aggravation since my arrival at Balad. I am not the only one that is feeling pain - everyone else is affected by this poorly written web filter. Recently, I discovered a way to circumvent the filter - RSS feeds. Techically, I’m accessing the site information without breaking the terms of service because I am not accessing the site or any restricted content - including all images hosted on that server that could potentially corrupt me (I think the only reason the filter exists is to 1. save bandwidth, 2. block porn, 3. prevent idiots from downloading viruses). RSS stands for really simple syndication - really, I’m not kidding at all. Its the summarized content of a website that is delivered without all of the extra advertising, images, and themes of the full website. You get the good part of the website without all of the crap that slows down your browsing experience. RSS feeds are read and displayed by readers that can be web or desktop based.

Google - the company that does almost everything - well, they haven’t figured out how to build an electric car that runs for a 1000 miles on a single charge… yet - has a free reader that is quite simple to use. Simply register, subscribe to the websites of your choosing, and read away. The reader allows you to view all feeds or just those that have been recently updated. I’ve added a RSS link that you can see to your right - right below the Askimet spam count. Click on the link and you can easily add my feed to the reader of your choice. You’ll never miss another gripping update - ever - you can rest easily now.

So - Screw you BlueCoat - I’m going to get my news one way or another.