For the past week, it's probably appeared that I've neglected this poor little site. To the contrary: I had messed around a little too much with my .htaccess file and the result was, well, less than stellar.
site
No Access
It shouldn't be an excuse. After all, the post office overcomes greater difficulties. Still, no internet access yesterday meant no post then -- though I don't think this is cheating to back-date the explanation. Not cheating much...
Nose and Stone
"You really don't have to," says Kinga often enough when I trudge upstairs to keep my little posting streak going. I think I'm on month four of daily posts, and I really sometimes think it's not worth it. What's the point? But then I think, I can always cheat.
Enough!
I’ve been wrestling with WordPress, the software that runs this system, all evening, on and off. I’m sick of it, aren’t you?
Spike
At the beginning of last month, we had quite a spike in spam over three days.
Day 1: 1,037; day 2: 2,881; day 3: 581
Three day total:4,499.
Russian Spam
In our spam list was the following comment:
Ты как обычно радуешь Ð½Ð°Ñ Ñвоими лучшими фразами ÑпаÑибо, беру!
Given the source, it seems to be a spam. But “беру” also seems to be an off-kilter version of my name, so I struggled with it a while.
Then I called K over, and we puzzled together.
Our Russian is rudimentary at best, but we pieced together a bit. Apparently, the spammer/commenter wanted to say that “You so…” (Ты как) something or other about “enjoying” or “being happy” about one’s own фразами.  And it ends with the the first word most folks learn in Russian: “ÑпаÑибо.” “Thanks.”
Of course, these days, one doesn’t have to trouble oneself over an unknown tongue — there are plenty of translation sites out there. Google translates it, “You’re normally so happy about us with the best phrases thank you, take.” Little help there. Still, it sounds quite spamolicious.
In response, I say “ÑпаÑибо.” I think.
Update
Russian spam looks just like English spam: СпаÑибо автору блога за предоÑтавленную информацию. “Thanks to the blog author for the information provided.”
Critical Edition
I've decided to spin off the non-LMS content to a new site, "The Critical Edition." You can see new content through the RSS feed at right. Mostly, it's going to deal with religion, but I'll also include thoughts about politics from time to time. MTS will, in other words, become a strictly family blog.
My first long-term project will be blogging the Book of Mormon. I've never read it; I thought I would. I'm trying to read it objectively, but it's difficult...
Odd
A post and two comments have suddenly disappeared. How is that possible? The only thing I can think of is that there was some kind of issue at my web host and they had to reload from an earlier tape backup that was made before I wrote the post in question.
The fact that an old version of the post exists in draft form seems to support this notion.
Curious…
Worst is, it broke my posting streak. Well, I shan’t be defeated. I’m simply going to repost it and backdate it.
Still, it gives me yet another reason to switch hosts…
New Site
This site has been moved. If you’re just coming to “matchingtracksuits.com” you’ll have no problems.
RSS readers seem to be having a bit of a tough time coping, though.
New Look
I decided to clean up the nasty, table-based quicky template I'd done for the first version of MTS. The new look is not completely new -- same basic ideas -- and it's not quite finished, but...
I've also upgraded to Textpattern 4.0. So far so good. It seems to offer a bit more flexibility in how things are displayed (for example, comments) and it has a great auto thumbnail creation. In addition, you can provide files for visitors to download without having to fire up your favorite FTP program, and it counts the number of downloads. (I added a few of the Polish Christmas carols from last year to play around with -- i.e., format -- the feature.)
And you can now get it in Russian! Isn't that what you've always wanted?