Every few days some online p*ker bots post a sp*m ad for themselves as a c*mment on my bl*g.
I use some free blog ware based on PHP, whatever that is.
Rooting around in the blogware, I find a file called comments.php with this function, written in, I guess, javascript (script type=”text/javascript”):
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Question Anyone know how to edit this so as to reject any theform.blog_text.value or theform.comment_name.value that includes the string “p*ker”? (I don't want to use the actual word here as I don't want to provoke the bots, watchful as mind parasites.)
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Ever since Big Sur, I've been playing with this idea that just as it is, our world IS perfect. That's my new slogan, it could be the conclusion of the novel. They start in another Earth and go throgh a series of them and they meet God, who happens to be a giant jellyfish, and they end in God's profoundly considered and much pondered best of all possible worlds, and they in fact end up here. Where we live.
This is a picture I'm trying to paint of myself among the Micronesian jellyfish. (It's not done.) And here's another movie of me looking at stream eddies in Big Sur, it's an unconscionable 33 Meg. Click here to view movie. As before, the sound is a bit blown out, and you have to let it run jerkily once and only then can you click and play it at normal speed. Yes, I'm a geek, but I'm a happy one.
Sur obviously being the spot where I got the notion of our world being perfect. You or I are little universally computing eddies in the flow of it all.
Synchronistically, I found a passage in Borges to the same effect the day I got home. Here's a picture that Pearce took of me in a tree at Sur.
“We are not in paradise,” the young man stubbornly replied. “Here, in the sublunary world, all things are mortal.”
Paracelsus had risen to his feet.
“Where are we, then, if not in paradise?” he asked. “Do you believe that the deity is able to create a place that is not paradise? Do you believe that the Fall is something other than not realizing that we are in paradise?”
— from Jorge-Luis Borges, “The Rose of Paracelsus,” in Collected Fictions, Viking Penguin 1998, pp. 505-506.
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Yes, you may say, but if this world is perfect, what about spammers? What about Iraq? What about the Chimp?
These things are unavoidable information-theoretic occurances. Turbulence of a certain type that has to occur. Any river has ripples in it.
Easy to say, of course, living in peace, I admit, and perhaps borderline fatuous. But how much does the daily news matter, really, compared to reality's rich computation? What if you just decide to think that everything is perfect, at least for a day? And if it works, try it for the next day too.
May 26th, 2005 at 3:34 pm
After a bit of pootling about in php, the file you want to modify is comment_add_cgi.php, which actually commits comments to disk for posterity. If it’s being posted by a malicious bot, I wouldn’t expect them to honour a mild javascript repremand. I’ve cludged together a quick fix here:
http://www.unsidhe.co.uk/comment_add_cgi.php.zip
This uses the “comment on nonexistant blog entry” behaviour to make a comment posting fail if the main text of the comment contains “poker” (case insensitive) — It may be obvious from this I spend more time with genes than doing web development. This is just a simple regular expression and will clobber innocent comments like this, so it will require a little tuning to your spam. Hope this is of some assistance!
May 29th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
“I’ve been playing with this idea that just as it is, our world IS perfect. That’s my new slogan, it could be the conclusion of the novel. They start in another Earth and go throgh a series of them and they meet God, who happens to be a giant jellyfish, and they end in God’s profoundly considered and much pondered best of all possible worlds, and they in fact end up here. Where we live.”
Our world is perfectly what it is, isn’t it? If it isn’t “objectively” perfect, maybe we’re just seeing it from a less than appropriate perspective
June 1st, 2005 at 6:53 am
The best of all possible worlds is perfect? I see Candide seated in half lotus at the feet of Ramakrishna chanting “All is One Algorithm”.
Ok, I get the idea, it’s actually a functionally useful congnitive tool. Be At Peace. Does the news matter? Well, yes, if you’re the maker of the story or the object of the story makers.
But if not, there’s always your mother’s old chant: “Mind your own business”, or keep in mind the necessity of tending your own garden.
Oh and BTW, does anyone know if you can play a decent algorithm on a synth drum? :0
haha ~~ mouse
June 10th, 2005 at 6:03 am
“What if you just decide to think that everything is perfect, at least for a day? And if it works, try it for the next day too.”
I like that. I like that a lot. I’ll let you know how it goes…