The Progressive Blog Alliance HQ

All right. Sorry for taking this long. My job is really giving me a stressful time right now, so I can dedicate less time than I would like to this site.

Now, there are several problems:

• Spam comments were submitted like no tomorrow.
• Worse, spam nodes were being submitted like no tomorrow.
• People are still not on the blogroll.
• The captcha apparently doesn't work, in that it doesn't keep spam out but has been known to keep out legitimate users.
• The site allows unfiltered HTML posts, which is practically an invitation to hackers.

I have been approaching all of these issues in turn...

• Drupal was updated to the current 5.x branch
• I re-installed the private messages module and tested it. We can now send PMs again.
• The error log table was corrupted; now that it's repaired, you won't be pelted with "watchdog.MYI can't be opened" errors whenever you post or log in.
• The captcha module has been updated and re-enabled. I hope it now works - I'll test it.
• The userpoints module has been reinstalled and points have been retroactively applied. If you wondered about the constant "Point total is now 10" messages on posting a new node, you'll soon notice that your points will actually increase now.

I'm in the process of updating the blog roll.

It's come to my attention that the Match Captcha is behaving oddly and preventing people from signing up or requesting new passwords. Many apologies for letting this remain unfixed so long.

I haven't had time to put this issue up at Drupal.org yet, but in the meantime I have disabled the module. Our first priority must be to be open for new members. Keeping out spambots is important in the long run, but until the module functions properly, I think we can cope.

Again, sorry for the inconvenience.

The last month was pretty stressful, but the projects I was busy with are finished, and even though there's a lot more that will keep me busy this year, I have a bit of spare time.

I've so far kept away from the blogroll mainly because Nick's advice (more or less verbatim, "don't list sites on it because it will FUCK UP their ranking on search engines FOREVER") has scared me off. And I still hesitate to update it, even for people who explicitly want to be listed.

So I'm starting with the easy part: Tonight, I will go through the blogroll and remove dead sites that either no longer exist or haven't been posted to in more than 3 months.

My work is still looming, but I have a few minutes to look around and see a few things that could be improved. For once, the primary links at the top could use a cleaning - two "help" items, they point to "?q=" even though we have clean URLs otherwise, and maybe "help" could have its own URL alias (/help).

Stuff like that.

The Drupal software was updated to version 5.x just now. I'd been putting this off for a while. Partly because I was scared I might royally muck it up (but I was careful with backups), and partly because we have dozens of modules installed that need to be updated separately, and some of them won't have 5.x-compatible versions.

But the update went fine, and I now have the dubious pleasure of installing the modules, one by one, to restore all the functionality of the site.

And a few new ones, too. BBCode, for example, which will hopefully put a stop to the constant site-breaking from unclosed tags.

Regarding blogroll:

Yes, I know you've waited for this for nearly half a year. I'm sorry. I'm working on it. Please be patient for a few more days. Also, some input would be appreciated (read more below)

Hello. Nick's given my administrative access to this site since he does not have the time to maintain it for the moment.

The Blog Roll is currently in a sorry state, not having been updated for what is likely over a year now.

However, Nick has advised me that Blog Rolls may harm the search engine rankings of its members, as the search engine interpret the network as a link farm.

I am currently looking at ways to avoid this - such as adding "rel=nofollow" attributes to the links to make the search engines ignore them - or alternative ways to centralize our blogs without blogrolls - such as a central aggregator that collects all our RSS feeds.

For now, the blog roll is defunct until further notice. Note that even if it does eventually get reinstituted, it will probably not be hosted on blogrolling.com anymore.

kristendom is repeatedly peppering his or her posts with unrelated images and various spam links that are obviously advertisements ("Get your website flooded with visitors and readers for FREE!"). This is confusing, because the posts are sometimes on-topic. But then, I've seen spambots that manage to post "related" content based on some kind of context search.

If you read this, kristen, could you confirm that you are not a spambot please? Answering this question should be sufficient, we don't need Turing tests here. And if you aren't, then why the heck are you posting these spam links? It's definitely not appreciated. (And by "appreciated", I mean "If you persist, you will be banned. Fast.")

In the past few weeks, I've repeatedly seen comments by people asking to be included on the blogroll.

Now, the problem with this is that the blogroll can only be administered by a single person. That person is Nick Lewis, and Nick Lewis has a lot to do. Blogrolls for small communities can be managed in spare time. But when it grows as big as this one has, it becomes a bit time-consuming.

The obvious solution is to put the Blogroll not into the hands of one admin, but into the hands of each user - let all of them add their own site to a profile and update it when needed.

Besides, given how extensible the Drupal engine is, it might not be the worst idea to integrate the PBA Blogroll into this site, the PBA HQ, which is after all powered by Drupal.

The following is the result of half a day's messing around with the Drupal API. It's my first attempt, so don't expect to see anything worthwhile - but I've tested what little there is, and it works. A user can register an account, set the URL and site name in their profile, check a box to have it listed in the Blogroll, and the list will update.

What's this I hear about Tom DeLay being arrested and stepping down? I haven't had time to keep track with the news lately, but with that and Rove and Lewis Libby - is the Bush administration somehow falling apart?

It is a relief to see that the law does apply to Republican politicians on occasion. But it's much like the disengagement in Gaza: One gets so accustomed to reading bad news that anything remotely positive immediately sounds fishy. Why is DeLay being effectively removed from the political stage? Is this actually a victory, or is there a bigger purpose behind it? I get paranoid when I'm tired.

via the Right Left Story, I just read the following news from Political Switchboard: Cindy Sheehan's mother, who suffered a stroke on Thursday, is "improving rapidly", according to doctors quoted by Cindy, and she "should recover". This means that Cindy Sheehan will rejoin the protest at Camp Casey on Wednesday or earlier. (Tagged: Cindy Sheehan, Sheehan, Crawford,

At the community page of Crawford Peace House, they write that they need Satellite Internet due to the huge demand both from Press and volunteers. With a better internet connection at Crawford, the news we will receive will be more frequent and more up to date, and awareness of the situation at Camp Casey will hopefully increase as more information gets in and out. So it's a worthwhile cause.

The Peace House can be contacted for information at crawfordpeacehouse (at) yahoo.com, or at 254-486-0099.

This post is tagged: Cindy Sheehan, Pr

According to Drudge Report, Cindy Sheehan has left (or is leaving) Camp Casey today to visit her 74-year-old mother in a Los Angeles hospital, who has just had a stroke.

(via Breitbart, from Associated Press)

Cindy has assured she would be back "as soon as possible", and hopes to return in 24-48 hours. She does not yet know serious her mother's condition is.

There is always hope...

A little over ten minutes ago, the parliament in Iraq adjourned after voting to extend the deadline for a constitution another 7 days, until August 22. The original deadline was right now (as I'm typing), at midnight local time in Baghdad.

[crossposted at The Unpatriot]

Yesterday, I was stunned to receive a new email message alerting me someone had commented on my other blog. (This isn't because I usually go uncommented, but because most people use the Haloscan box rather than Blogger's own feature.) More surprising was the fact that it was on an older entry that had almost dropped off the page.

I read the comment, and saw it was commenting on a post outlining corrupt recruitment practices in the US (such as psychological pressure, deception, bribery and tips on cheating drug tests), as well as mentioning stop loss in passing. Now, the comment (by someone I'd never seen on my blog before) detailed certain reassuring information about stop-loss, saying it is not a backdoor draft in any way. First I thought to myself... "okay, here's someone who knows his facts and has some time to dish them out when he finds an inaccurate post". Good so far.

A U2 spy-plane has crashed in an unspecified location in "Southwest Asia", which is also colloquially known as the "Middle East".

Have you heard the one where a man walks into a restaurant and asks for "a Vienneve Veal Fillet pleafe"? The waiter asks: "What? You mean a Wiener Schnitzel?" The man replies: "Yup, but I can't fay that with my falfe teeth". It appears that, likewise, "Middle East" is currently a term to be avoided, of course partly due to "sensitivities in the host nation". Which that host nation was, they don't want to specify, but the silence speaks volumes.

It was returning from a mission related to "Operation Enduring Freedom" in Afghanistan, and its wing was based near Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (via TimesUnion and Bloomberg). Which, through broad conjecture, could give it an interesting route indeed, as you can see in this Map of Southwest Asia:

Rachel Corrie March 16th, 2003, 14:45-15:20 GMT.

We must take care not to forget those brave souls that will die for a dream, to stop an atrocity that never concerned them. There are not many, and if we continue to kill them, soon there may be none left at all...

Rest in Peace.

(Category: Politics, Peace, Palestine, Israel, Rachel Corrie)

(Crossp

U.S. Forces Wound Freed Italian Hostage in Iraq

So it appears that she got lucky with getting out of captivity alive, but was then shot at in another one of those "Paranoia"-induced friendly fire assaults. Actually, she got lucky again: She only received a wound in the shoulder, while the Italian secret service agent accompanying her was killed.

I can see the diplomats wringing their hands to explain this. And explain this they shall have to:

"Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he had immediately summoned the U.S. ambassador, declaring someone had to take responsibility for American soldiers opening fire."

For anti-spamming purposes, I propose that - if that is possible - a filter be configured to kill any comment whose subjects contains "poker" or "texas hold em". It'll take care of 99% of the crap.

The way this place is being swamped now is a disgrace. If I were more vengeful, I'd suggest we do something to take these idiots out of business, but that'd be a waste of time.

Source: New Legislation Would Ban Urban Legends, by Brian Briggs (BBspot)

(via Science and Politics)

A bipartisan group of representatives has proposed a bill that, if passed, would fine senders or forwarders of email spreading an urban legend for 500$, and sentence originators thereof to up to ninety days in jail.

Urban legends, occasionally also referred to as "spoofs", is a far more general term than people think. Into this category, depending on how one stretches the definition, would not only fall crap stories of aliens and paranormal sightings, but also such jokes like 'Bush Arrested in Ottawa, charged with War Crimes, or Notice of Revocation of Independence. Even in the case of stories originating outside the US, anyone within the US who posts them to their website or forwards an email to their friends would be subject to this law.