Two Years Before the Blog - Comments/Pings Off

I started blogging about two years ago with this entry, which was typed during the initial WS-CAF face to face meeting. This might give you some idea of what attending these type of committee meetings is like. Everyone around the room with laptops out, surfing the Web, checking email, or sometimes even paying attention to the discussion at hand, especially when it turns to something of interest.

I brought my mother along on that trip, and we went from there to Dublin. She had a great time and has been asking me ever since when I'm going again. Unfortunately most of the time the trips are not conducive to taking someone along or spending time sightseeing. I wish they were. But the trouble with traveling a lot is that you want to spend some time at home, too, and sightseeing just exacerbates the problem.

Since Steve and I started, blogs have become nearly ubiquitous. It seems like everyone has one, or at least knows about them. And blog spam -- both comments and pings -- has become a major nusiance. Proving once again that there is no public activity on the Internet that someone won't try to take advantage of.

I spent more than an hour last Sunday cleaning up the stuff. We need to upgrade our installation of MovableType - the new version has much better spam control. I already have more than 3,500 URLs on my blacklist, and I'm sure many sites have multiples of that figure. It is just amazing. But of course it's so cheap to do that it must only take a handful of folks clicking on these URLs to porn sites or gambling or music or drugs or you name it...

In the meantime I've taken the simple fix - turning off all comments and pings. That is the big hammer fix, and an unfortunate one, since one of the reasons for blogging is the ability to engage in dialogue with others via trackback pings and comments.

Until then, if anyone wants to leave a comment, email me and I'll unblock them.

A sincere thanks to everyone who reads the blog, and who has commented or tracked back in the past, or who has let me know via email or in person that you have read something interesting. I will do my best to keep it up.