Geeky Notes
I am so, so tired now. Yours truly had been spending the past four hours re-coding this site, making a transition from HTML Transitional 4.01 to XHTML Transitional 1.0. However, note that I didn’t say the entire site, as there are still errors in a couple of pages. I wouldn’t mind correcting them, but it is already 4:00a.m. in the morning and I really need a rest.
It was a frustrating four hours, I must add, because most of the pages were extremely difficult to convert. But I managed to do it at the end. Yay.
Everything else would be worked on later in the day once I get sufficient rest. Hopefully this site would be error-free by the time this day is over.
Pointless, short entry. I know. I have loads to write but I really need to sleep. I can already feel my eyes closing even as I am typing this.
At last, I have finally managed to upgrade to Wordpress 1.5 Strayhorn successfully. It didn’t take me that long, and everything went rather smoothly. Quite pleased with the updated Weblog script, although I wouldn’t really use much of the features. I downloaded it mostly for the security and bug fixes.
I do have some trouble with plugins, though, because most of them that were compatible with 1.2.2 are no longer compatible with the new 1.5 version. So now I am hunting high and low for new plugins.
On a slightly different note, there have been rumours that the A’Level results would be early next month, around 4-9th March. That is only in three weeks time. Thus, I am starting to get the pre-results release jitters. The anticipation is building up and I would definitely be a nervous wreck on the actual results day. Please please please let me do well.
The number of questions asked by my relatives regarding what I wish to study in the future has been rising. For some reason, everyone is assuming that I would be able to get to a university. Hello? The results aren’t out yet! Well, I lack self-confidence, which is true to a very large extent, but still, one shouldn’t set their expectations too high.
“The higher you clinb, the harder you fall.”
Still, I would rather answer that question so as to satisfy everyone’s curiousity. I am aiming to enter the Psychology course at the National University of Singapore as my first choice. The second choice is Digital Media Design at Nanyang Technological University. Well, I am mostly aspiring to enter a local university because I feel I am not really suited to be studying overseas since I am someone who gets homesick easily.
Ahh… Psychology. The career which pokes into the human psyche. Hopefully it would help me to understand people better.
I was doing a study on IP addresses for the past hour or so, which is rather crucial considering that one particular anti-spam plugin I had installed on this webjournal two weeks ago had been going awry. For the past week, some visitors have found their comments either not getting through, or moderated as spam despite their comments being completely clean.
Hence, I have been collecting samples of IP addresses and comparing them against certain online blocklists. This site has proved itself useful as I was doing my ’study’ and I was able to pinpoint which visitors are facing the ‘comment tagged as spam’ error. You can use that site to get your IPs checked out as well. At the moment, I have eight anti-spam plugins installed, and I zoomed in on the Wordpress SpamAssassin plugin which was causing the abovementioned problems. The rest are working perfectly fine.
WP SpamAssassin makes use of four real-time blacklists (Online sources containing listings of IP addresses known to be either an open-proxy server, or well-known for sending out spam.) and it so happens that the IPs of some completely innocent people are also listed there.
At the moment, I am doing a ‘case study’ on this plugin by computing the percentage of false positives (comments tagged as ’spam’ when they are not supposed to.) and to determine whether it is worth it to continue using this plugin.
Here is where I need your help. I am appealing to all visitors to leave a comment to this entry and simply typing whatever that comes to your mind, regardless of whether it is related to this entry. Of course, try to avoid using spam words as far as possible. If the comment gets through, you and I can heave a sigh of relief. Should your message be tagged as spam, please contact me immediately.
For another case, you may not get an error message at all, and would be redirected back to the weblog without your comment showing up. This is the case where a comment is being placed in the moderation queue. Such cases would still be considered as a successful comment entry.
I would gather the overall figure of the number of comments collected, and the number of legitimate comments tagged as spam. I would deactivate the WP SpamAssassin plugin should the false positives rate be more than 8%.
Thank you for your help in advance. :)
Current Results of Study (Plugin under testing: WP SpamAssassin)
Total number of comments collected: 25
Total number of comments that got through: 23
Total number of legitimate comments blocked by another plugin: 1
Total number of legitimate comments blocked by WP SpamAssassin: 1
Current percentage of false positives due to WP SpamAssassin: 4.00%