» Fringe Blog – Writing on Film, Culture, and Things on the Fringe

Comment Issues

jelewis8 — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:54:33 +0000

If you have tried to leave a comment on Fringe and been redirected to a “Your comment is being moderated” paged, then that means this blog is LYING to you. It is in fact being shuttled to some nether region where bad computer code and dictators roast in a boiling mixture of turpentine, lemon juice, and their own liquefied feces.
I’m trying to track down the precise mechanism causing this nefarious scheme, but until I do, consider commenting to be a huge waste of time. I apologize for this inconvenience, and I don’t mean to silence you. I’ll inform you once the error has been corrected.
Until then, think about which Presidential candidate you’d dunk at a state fair, if you were given the chance. This has nothing to do with politics, by the way–it’s just who you think would be more amusing immersed in dirty fair water.

Massive Fringe Redesign

jelewis8 — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:40:15 +0000

Fringe is and has been undergoing a massive redesign over the last month. The purpose for this change is to focus on a complete branding and marketing of the Fringe name as more than a blog, but as a destination site that features all manner of content. The blog is now merely one aspect of the site.
As time has passed, I have had to rethink a lot of the models of organization for the site, as well as imagine Fringe as a larger entity capable of offering many things to many people. To date, Fringe has been just a voice piece for my musings and occasional rants. Now, Fringe has become Fringe Design, and now caters to anyone wishing to utilize my services as a web design/marketer/brander.
It may seem I am biting off more than I can chew. This remains to be seen. But I trust you will see where things go, and you just might be surprised. I think I certainly will be.
In the meantime, please excuse the mess. I hope progress will be swift.

Site Wonkiness

jelewis8 — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:03:57 +0000

Sorry for the wackiness with the blog. I'm trying to determine why CSS can be so wonderful one minute and so mysterious another, and then evil even later. It's a case of floats, I am sure, but until I can determine the exact issue, please excuse the mess.

Update: Fixed the problem, which was an errant div enclosure. Thanks for your patience.

Link Blog Active

jelewis8 — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 11:03:56 +0000

As you can see, I’ve added a Link Blog to the side. This is something I’ve been wanting to add to Fringe for a while, but just never got around to it. Now if I’m feeling lazy and don’t want to post a longer article, I can still find a couple of cool links for you to peruse. These will be updated fairly often, so check back often for linky goodness.
I’m not keeping archives of these links (well, technically I am, but I’m not making them accessible), so once the links leave the page, they’re gone forever, baby. Just one more reason to get ‘em while they’re hot.
Please let me know if you have trouble viewing the site now. It shouldn’t have changed fundamentally too much, so you shouldn’t see any errors or weird layout problems, but I have been known to make mistakes. From time to time. Oh dear, oh dear.

Bloglet Subscription Fixed

jelewis8 — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:01:35 +0000

I just realized that Bloglet Subscription service wasn’t sending out notices of updates to Fringe, leaving all five of my subscribers wondering if I was still alive. I have fixed the error, and it will hopefully begin sending out missives once again.
Feel free to subscribe – it’s a convenient way of getting your Fringe fix on a daily basis, without having to keep checking the site to see if I’ve updated or not (my schedule doesn’t necessarily prevent regular posting times, but I like to keep it dynamic).
Sorry for the problems.

Posting Issues

jelewis8 — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 17:48:57 +0000

My account got suspended again for “high-load use” of the servers. My site doesn’t come close to batting a hit count big enough to cause this, which means that something or someone has been using my site as their own personal online punching bag. Result, server loads go up, my site gets suspended, and I spend a day and a half working with my host’s tech support to convince them I’ve done all I can do to lock my site down.
I’ve considered moving, though that wouldn’t really help things. Whoever or whatever is responsible would eventually catch up with Fringe. What’s a fella to do?
So, sorry for the lack of posts. I will make it up to you tonight, when I’ll be liveblogging the Oscars. Speaking of which, in case you missed them the first time I posted, here are my Oscar picks for 2004.
Hopefully I can resolve this issue with my hosting company, but should the situation exacerbate things, I may have to grab my bindle and can o’ beans and head on down the tracks until I can find a new host. We’ll see. Thanks fer understandin’.

Out Flooded

jelewis8 — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 18:53:07 +0000

I had another bout with comment spam flooding which shut my account down for about 8 hours last night. In the continuing fight to keep spam flooding under control, I’ve instituted a 10 comment per hour limit, and 100 per day limit. I doubt either will be reached by normal standards, and it will hopefully prevent the constant hammering my host has apparently been getting through my site. If a thread does happen to open up, I can adjust those settings accordingly.
Sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m doing everything I can to keep comments running. I’ll take them down as a last resort, but I’d feel like that was giving in, and I don’t want to let them see me cry…just kidding.
Anyway, hope this new policy works.

Spam Fighting Nobody

jelewis8 — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:06:27 +0000

By no means am I a comment spam fighting superhero, nor even the poor detective who knows someone is putting down all these organized criminal enterprises with stunning and stealthy alacrity, though it’s not one of his guys, that’s for sure. Hell, I’m barely the man on the street with the mortgage and two kids and a wife who doesn’t seem to see you when you walk through the door every evening, even though your welding job is paying for her salon appointments and her tupperware parties. No, I’m hardly a speck in the unknown city of this spread of larger-than-life figures, average do-gooders, and citizens, though I am trying really really hard to be that bus driver you see in one panel on page 12, the guy who asks the superhero-in-disguise if he needs some help stepping off that third step (poor guy, wonder how long he’s been blind?).
In other words, I’ve gone and mucked the whole point up, and that’s the truth.
What I really want to alert you to is the recent development by Movable Type to further reduce the power of comment spam. Whilst not a prevention mechanism per se, it is a method by which the whole point of comment spamming becomes null and void. And as best I can figure it, no lawyers are involved at the blog level.
Essentially, MT has gained the broad support of Google, MSN, Yahoo, and hopefully more in the near future, to ignore links with a special, new tag developed as a automated plugin.
Thus defeating the whole point of spamming blog comment sections in order to gain a higher placement in a search engine query result.
As I’ve become the victim of a spam DOS attack, I’m quite serious about fighting it whenever and however I can. If you’re in the same boat, highly consider installing this new plugin.

Back On the Air

jelewis8 — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 05:40:32 +0000

Fringe is back on the air after being spammed out of service. Given that spammers target older comments by a ratio of 8 to 1, the consequence is that I am now in the process of retiring all comments older than 30 days. I’d like to keep those threads open, but I’d rather have my site remain on the up and up.
Thanks goes to Greg Piper who graciously put the word out about my site’s temporary demise.
UPDATE: I have installed a hash system process on the comments. Basically, the site forces you to preview your comment before submitting. When you do so, an approval hash is generated, thereby allowing your comment to “go through”. It’ll still be moderated by me, at least until Six Apart puts out a new release of MovableType, which should hopefully fix the bug that allows spammers to use the site’s commenting system to, in effect, shut down a shared hosting environment (such as what Fringe is on).
This should prevent auto-spamming, though only time will tell. Initial reports for this system are positive, though it wasn’t the comments themselves that was the problem, but the DOS-like attempts to post spam comments. Even though none of them went through, the attack was enough to cause my host to suspend my site. That’s so not cool.
Did I mention I hate spammers? But moreso, I think I hate the people who make spamming possible–the idiots who’ll click on every phentermine, viagra, cialis, porn, or consolidated loan link they see if they think they can get something for nothing. Rubes and putzes, all of them!

Another Nice Mess

jelewis8 — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 09:42:55 +0000

Basically, my host screwed me over by being totally non-responsive to support calls, and with the dirth of problems I experienced over the course of about nine months with them, I decided to seek a host that would be a better fit. Thus, I have been off the air for the last two days. My sincerest apologies.
I should start up regular posting again now that I’m with a new host and things seem to be operating at semi-normal levels. Sorry for the inconvenience.
And the reason this is a throw-away post is that it’s 2:45 in the AM and I still have work to do.
Happy Friday.
UPDATE: 4:10am – All the archives should now be up and running beautifully. I have also styled the comments and trackbacks pages, with some decent form customization that wouldn’t have been possible without some good info from Tweezer’s Edge. Awesome possum.
You know the drill. Spot anything unusual or not working, give me a holler.