Schinckel.net

I just came across the webcomic xkcd, and laughed all of the way back to the start of the series. This one in particular is fantastic. But I actually think he’s pretty talented, too, as an artist:

Yet another eBay phishing site. This time located at (line broken deliberately): http://hyper6.amuser-net.ne.jp/~sphzion/dzb/random_msg/ws/ signin.ebay/eBayISAPI.dll/SignIn&pUserId;/index.html Again, looks very convincing. However, the start of the URL is always a dead giveaway. The interesting thing about this scam is that when you try to login, it fails (naturally, as the site doesn’t know your real password), but then passes you through to the real site, so that if you try again, you’ll succeed. Naturally, I entered a few fake details in, just to let him know he’s been caught. What this loser doesn’t realise is that he’s hosted this on his homepage. http://hyper6.amuser-net.ne.jp/~sphzion/dzb/index2.htm Which also has a couple of email addresses:

• sph@x.age.ne.jp
• ohkawa@mb.gallery.ne.jp

Make no mistake. This guy is a scammer! As per usual, this is being forwarded to spoof@ebay.com as we speak.

I’m trying to get Search terms from within the Blog’s search engine to be highlighted. I’ve got the following code:

    {if $smarty.request.s == ""}
        {$content}
    {else}
        {assign var=hilite value="<span class='hilite'>"|cat:$smarty.request.s|cat:"</span>"}
        {$content|replace:$smarty.request.s:$hilite}
    {/if}

This works fine, as long as the search term isn’t in a URL, or something like that. In that case, it breaks the URL. To get around this, I need to only replace if it’s not inside an HTML tag. regex_replace to the rescue. This took me about 30 minutes to eventually figure out, a tipoff to wfinn at yakasha dot net, and the comment he made on the PHP documentation pages:

    {if $smarty.request.s == ""}
        {$content}
    {else}
        {assign var=hilite value="<span class='hilite'>"|cat:$smarty.request.s|cat:"</span>"}
        {assign var=regex value="/(?![^< ]*?>)"|cat:$smarty.request.s|cat:"/"}
        {$content|regex_replace:$regex:$hilite}
    {/if}

Obviously, you’ll need to have some sort of CSS styling for the search term.

    .hilite {color:red; border:1px dashed; padding:0 3px; 0 3px;}

This is actually a bug I’ve come across in other contexts, but the tag {wp_title} has a bit of a bug. When a category is selected, it returns a reasonable value (the title of the category). Ditto for an individual post. However, with a date archive, the value is not as expected. A daily archive is fine, although I don’t like the format: Captain Obvious » 2005 » October » 16.10.05 It doesn’t seem to be possible to alter this, other than the separator: {wp_title sep="•"} But it gets worse. If a monthly or yearly archive is chosen, the date of the last post to be displayed will also be presented: Captain Obvious » 2005 » 13.08.05 Note that this is the last post on the page, not the first post. IIRC, normal Wordpress would be the other way around. Instead, what I use is:

    <title>
        {bloginfo show="name"}
        {single_post_title prefix=" &raquo; "}
        {single_cat_title prefix=" &raquo; Category: "}
        {if $smarty.request.name == ""}
            {single_month_title prefix=" &raquo; "}
        {/if}
        {if $smarty.request.s != ""}
             &raquo; Search: {$smarty.request.s}
        {/if}
    </title>

This has the bonus of also noting when it’s a Search.

It’s possible to create a private post within Blogsome, but not a whole private blog. However, if you turn off allowing registration, you can make your blog private. In your Main Page template, find the line that has {$content} on it. Just before the line, insert the following lines: {capture name=loginout}{wp_loginout}{/capture} {if $smarty.capture.loginout|strip_tags:'0' == "Logout"} And then, after it, insert the following lines: {else}     <p>This Blog is Private. Please {wp_loginout} before continuing</p> {/if} This will then prevent non logged-in users from viewing your posts.

There are still a couple of issues with the XMLRPC interface.

• ecto seems to work nearly fine. It publishes posts without escaping, and allows for the setting of categories. This is with MetaWeblog API as the account type.
• Performancing publishes wrong unless using MetaWeblog API, but even when doing this, categories are not set.
• Flock appears to be the same as Performancing, when set to Wordpress, or MetaWeblog API.
• Qumana is the same - it autodetects it’s a Wordpress blog.
• MarsEdit - works, but presents an error message.

Thanks to kreaper, who’s been a big help in the testing. Anyone with any other results can leave a comment.

This is a test post using Performancing for Firefox editor.

This is a single quote ‘
This is a double quote “

I’m having a bad evening. I’ve been trying to print several pages of an Excel document to a PDF file, so I can send it off. What it’s doing, however, is not printing them to one PDF, but seperate files. Now, that’s not too bad, but each file has the same name, so only the most recent one is actually being left on the disk. What I’ve had to do is print each one seperately, and combine them in Adobe Acrobat. What would have happened if I didn’t have Acrobat? Fuck Microsoft.

ABC Shop - Boyer Lectures 2005

Please note these downloads are compatible with most MP3 players and encoded with Windows Media software for PCs running Windows 98 or later. Please see website for full terms and conditions.

Okay, so they are compatible with most MP3 players, yet they are not MP3 files. Oh, and might I add they are not compatible with iPods, the most common MP3 player… It gets better: ABC Digital Music Service - abcshop.com.au Downloads - Powered by DestraMusic.com V3.0

Internet Explorer V6+ is required to purchase, download and aquire licenses. Unfortunately, this service does not support Macintosh systems.

Or Linux, or other OS, or anything relatively old. Nice one ABC. This site gets even worse. They claim to support “most MP3 players,” yet in actual fact only support WMA players, a subset of personal music players. I suspect this is verging on false advertising.

I often spend a heap of time tweaking stuff on my blog, and these show up as hits in the Referrers list, as well as on Performancing Metrics, a system of tracking readership. Now, it’s rather simple to stop your visits counting towards your stats. First, visit your site, and ensure you are logged in. In your address bar at the top of your browser, type in javascript:document.cookie, and press return. Find the cookie entry that starts with wordpressuser_, and copy the garbage-looking string after it - this is the md5 hash of your server name - to the clipboard. Find the location of your stat-gathering code. Before it starts, enter: {if $smarty.cookie.wordpressuser_md5string != "username"} and after it ends, enter: {/if} Make sure to replace md5string with your md5 hash! • This could also be used to have any text show/not show when you visit your own blog. Like Google AdSense ads, for instance.