Category Archives: Administrative

Kitchening

Probably little to no posts this weekend. A guy is coming in tomorrow to do the drywall, and we’re frantically trying to finish up the electrical and plumbing so that the ceiling is ready to be buttoned up and closed.

New Regex Question

OK, I’m still getting these weird blog spams, like this:

A new comment has been posted on your blog Transterrestrial Musings, on
entry #4886 (Lousy Salesmen).
http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/004886.html

IP Address: 61.102.44.56
Name: Kimberly
Email Address: naomi@pochta.net

Comments:

Great work!
[url=http://aouyktgf.com/nntn/hzmj.html]My homepage[/url] | [url=http://wtjpdovz.com/iure/alke.html]Cool site[/url]

They tend to come in pairs, with the same nonsense URLs, but different email addresses and IP addresses.

I’ve been just deleting them without adding to the blacklist, because I don’t want to clog up my blacklist with these nonsense strings that seem to be one (or two) shot deals.

But how about refining previous attempts at a pattern match? Instead of just looking for a string of consonants, how about a string of five consonants containing at least one of the letters “z,” “x,” or “q”? That would seem pretty safe to me, from a false positive standpoint, and would catch most of them. If so, what would that regex look like?

And I’d like to know what the point is, other than annoyance. Any theories (other than perhaps incompetence on the part of the spammer)?

More Kitchen Remodeling Issues

I’m still bogged down in kitchen destruction/reconstruction. I’m installing recessed lights from Halo, and when I open the box to find the electrical connection I find they’re connected to connectors that I find a mystery. The wire to the socket is already installed in them, as is the ground (two stranded wires, one to the socket and one to the housing).

Am I supposed to use these to connect the incoming power (and perhaps outgoing, to the next light in the series, as well)? If so, how does it work? It’s just a little plastic thingie, with multiple holes to stick wire into, but no obvious places to poke to release pressure on the conducting clamp that holds the wire in place.

Or does it just grab the wire, and it’s a one-way deal?

I can’t figure it out from any on-line search. My options are to just hook it up and hope it works, or cut the existing wires and wire nut them together (which was what I’d figured I’d be doing, but if this dealie works, I’m happy to use it–I just want to know how it works).

OK, What Now?

As I noted on the post update, I thought that I’d come up with a clever way to eliminate a lot of these nonsense-domain spams, by blocking the letter “q” followed by anything other than a “u,” “a,” or a period, comma or space (so we could still write “Iraq”). Here’s now I implemented it: q[ua\ \.\,]

Unfortunately, in testing it, I get a large number of false positives (about 25%) When I see the comments flagged by the new filter, I don’t even see a “q” in the comment. What’s the problem?

Regex Bleg

Can someone give me a regular expression for my blacklist that would disallow any four-consonant (lower case) string? I’ve been getting a lot of spam lately like this one:

Name: Ryan
Email Address: ron@fromru.com

Comments:

Well done!
[url=http://cowbtclt.com/gcqj/uqml.html]My homepage[/url] | [url=http://vprqmclp.com/rsyx/vvwl.html]Cool site[/url]

None of these seem to be real domains, so I don’t know what the point is, but they all seem to have at least four consonants in a row. I figure that there are few real words like this, at least in English, so it would keep out the riff raff without impeding genuine commenters.

[Update on Friday night]

OK, as a commenter has pointed out, this would preclude some actual English word (like “strength”). So let’s go for five consonants. My goal is to err on the side of letting good posts through.

[Update on Saturday night]

It doesn’t catch them all, but I did come up with a good trap for them: q[^ua\ \.\,]

Anything with a “q” in it followed by anything other than a “u” or “a” (or a space, period or comma, so we can write “Iraq”) is blocked. A lot of these things have “q”s inserted in them.

[Another update, a few minutes later, after testing]

I’m getting a lot of false positives.

Rewiring

When we removed the soffits in the kitchen, there were a lot of wires in it that had to be rerouted above the joists so we could put in the drywall to the higher ceiling. You can’t just cut and resplice wires–you have to put them inside junction boxes. There were other complications as well.

That’s the story of my weekend. Taking pictures, but probably not posting them until later.

Is It Just Me?

Or is Technorati continually overloaded, and if so, why?

Wheneve I try to get more than a couple pages deep in seeing who’s linking to my site (yes, yes, I admit it–I’m an egomaniac), I get the following message:

Sorry, we couldn’t complete your search because we’re experiencing a high volume of requests right now. Please try again in a minute or add this search to your watchlist to track conversation.

This isn’t an occasional thing. This is every time I try to get more than a couple pages worth of recent links.

Is anyone else experiencing the same problem?

Weird Comment Spam

I’ve been getting several comments on ancient posts for the last few days along these lines:

Ive pretty much been doing nothing to speak of. My lifes been bland these days. I havent been up to much. I feel like a void.

They’re all variations on the same theme, and they’re spam in the sense that they have nothing to do with the post subject, but they don’t have a URL they’re advertising, so I can’t blacklist them. Each one has a different IP address. All I can do is delete them individually, and shrug. If I got flooded with them, it would be a royal PITA to deal with. Does anyone have any theories as to the purpose of these? Are they just testing to see how spammable I am before actually hitting me with a payload?

[Update late Monday morning]

Maybe it was test runs. I just got this one, with a blacklistable URL this time:

I haven\’t gotten anything done for a while, but whatever. I can\’t be bothered with anything , but what can I say? Maybe tomorrow. More or less nothing seems worth doing. Thanks for shared info!

The only thing is that this time it was a ping, rather than a comment.