i summon one kim

Given that I’ve successfully avoided spam by using me at example dot com as an “obfuscation” method for email addresses, I’m not surprised by the findings that spammers are lazy. But it is still interesting to read about good proof through a real test, and I’d hazard a guess that using hex entities may be a longer-lasting method.

I’d consider replacing the JavaScript I currently use, if it weren’t for the fact that people already seem to be able to find my email address just fine. Actually, Phil’s article would seem to support the case that disabling JavaScript is rare. He only got a couple of actual messages to the non-JavaScript address. I guess that’s good news for me.

I just deployed DoFollow on a vanilla WordPress 1.5 installation, and found out that there was a bug in the nofollow tag removal logic used with an unpatched version of the code. If the timeout was set to zero for immediate tag removal, it wouldn’t work. I’ve fixed it, so you should all upgrade to DoFollow 1.2 now.

Another WordPress plugin: Finnish Quotes

The quote marks used in Finnish differ from those used in English. The reverse curly quotes are not used at the beginning of the quotation, instead the same quotation mark is used for both the beginning and the end. This plugin will insert an additional filter after all the default wptexturize() filters to replace the reverse curly quote marks with the forward one.

Download: finquote.php

After a dozen years of living in the United States, I can relate to a lot of what Therese Catanzariti writes in her column titled Communication – Finnish style, published on Crikey.

But many of her comments don’t apply just to Finns. From my experience of working in a subsidiary of a German bank, I tell you Germans are a lot like the Finns described in the column. It always drives me nuts when I get asked for the “actual status” of a project. (The reference to Amélie is just perfect!)

I also remember having a visiting professor from France at the University of Delaware. Everyone was complaining how difficult it was to understand her. I had noticed also, but had no trouble — I was using the literal translation approach mentioned in the column, automatically.

I’d warmly recommend a few years of living in a “foreign language” to everyone.

The WordPress download page has version 1.5 available! I’m up and running 1.5 as of a couple of minutes ago, although I’ve been running and tweaking the latest CVS code for the past couple of days anyway. Or I maybe I should say “untweaking,” as really I’ve been able to remove almost all of the local changes, and move many of the remaining ones to plugins.

Cool stuff, especially all the new goodies for plugins!

Due to the low volume of comments on my site, I didn’t think it is necessary to tag links in comments with the rel="nofollow" attribute. All the links in the handful of comments that exist are just fine. I created a plugin to disable such automatic tagging.

Download: dofollow.php

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WordPress implements a nice wide selection of hooks for plugins to modify the functionality of the software. I’ve used some of the most recent ones to override the time offset value with information derived from the operating system. The benefit is that WordPress can now automatically observe DST changes.

The result: timezone.php — download it now!

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