I have to admit, it has to be the most creative campaign in a long time: the Lycos Europe 'Make Love, Not Spam' screensaver. The idea of a distributed DOS attack client to bring spammers on their knees is something I actually discussed with a friend a couple of days ago. What a nice idea, if it weren't for the disadvantages attached to it, such as going to jail and further clogging up the internet with useless traffic...

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I set up a separate site for Pivot-Blacklist. I'll still post here when there's something really important to say but for updates you can from now on visit this new site. A minor update is out which brings us to version 0.2.5. Get it at:


The Pivot-Blacklist website

I'm proud to present the release of Pivot-Blacklist version 0.2. This release features a fully web-based administration interface which you can use with your existing Pivot admin account. Features:

• Manage your personal blacklist
• Update the MT-Blacklist by the click of a button
• Set the URL to redirect spammers to in order to piss them off
• Expressions for the personal blacklist are checked against the existing list to prevent duplicates
• New regexps are validated before adding them

I will set up a page about Pivot-Blacklist later. If you'd like to show the world you're using it you can use the button below:





If you have any problems with it feel free to send me an email. Click the link below to go to Pivot-Blacklist's own page and download the latest release!


Pivot-Blacklist homepage

UUD, or Useless Utility Development. I just love it. Just before going to bed I found a site I just had to post something about: Toogle. This perfect Google clone searches for images. Hoewever it displays them as nice colored ASCII art. A really fun site and, a quite remarkable technical accomplishment. Check it out, cool stuff ahead!


Search on Toogle!

Having been annoyed to death by comment-spamming on my other (MT-based) blog kontverhaal.com I was already fearing the worst for this site for the future since Pivot doesn't have any protection against comment spammers. And so Pivot-Blacklist was born...

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The Nokia 3310 mobile phone has turned out to be a wholly remarkable model. My girlfriend has washed it at 60 degrees celsius for 1.5 hours, tumble-dried it and it came out nice, clean and with a lovely smell. And what's more important: it's still working fine like nothing ever happened. Therefore my personal durability award for this month goes to Nokia. A truly remarkable phone!

First they took usenet... then they took your inbox and now they're taking your weblog. Spammers are everywhere, in even the tiniest corners of the internet we are confronted with the same stuff over and over again. Viagra, Phentermine, Penis enlargement creams, diet pills and all other imagineable stuff you really DON'T need and definitely not on your precious little blog...

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It seems I have quite some places to go left...



create your own visited countries map

I seem to be an HP/UX person. I've never used it but hey...
Which OS are you?



Which OS are You?

A definitely interesting way to find out whether your site looks the way you want in Safari or versions of Internet Explorer are two sites I discovered recently. For Internet Explorer you could of course install multiple versions but quite often a quick look is all you need. For Safari you'd have to buy a Mac first. While I highly recommend everybody to switch from Windows to Macintosh this idea might be a bit beyond some peoples budgets. A well known site to check your site in a plethora of browsers is Browsercam but the internet wouldn't be the internet if there wouldn't be some fine people offering the same thing for free! So go check your website in:

• various MSIE versions, Firefox and Opera
• Safari

PS: Apparently my site sucks on older MSIE versions.... *growl* work to do..

Yesterday evening when surfing around the net a bit I found something that made me smile and realize there's still hope in the proportion of people that actually thinks before they vote.
I stumbled upon the website www.sorryeverybody.com where an enormous amount of American people that really tried to get rid of George W. Bush apologize for what happened.
I'd say apologies accepted, as a lot of other people around the world said too on another website named www.apologiesaccepted.com. Of course I'll post my entry there as well. I'll make a new posting about it once I've done so.

I couldn't help but think about how I'd love to get out of here lately. A Douglas Adams passage comes to mind:

• Phone NASA. Their phone number is (713) 483-3111. Explain that it is very important that you get away as soon as possible.
• If they do not cooperate, phone any friend you may have in the White House - (202) 456-1414 - to have a word on your behalf with the guys at NASA.
• If you don't have any friends in the White House, phone the Kremlin (ask the overseas operator for 0107-095-295-9051). They don't have any friends there either (at least, none to speak of), but they do seem to have a little influence, so you may as well try.
• If that fails, phone the Pope for guidance. His telephone number is 011-39-6-6982, and I gather his switchboard is infallible.
• If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing flying saucer and explain that it's vitally important you get away before your phone bill arrives.

- Douglas Adams

The news is getting better and better (insert cynic look). Last night alone we've had one islamic school burned down and a fire in a church. Finally the cream on the pie is the fact that at this time of writing the government sent in the marines in the Hague to capture several possible terrorist suspects. It's gonna be a hot winter, or at least so it seems...

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Today is a rather glorious day for the open source world because we're celebrating the release of Firefox version 1.0. I am using this browser for months already and I think nothing beats Firefox, not on a PC nor on my mac. Congratulations to the Firefox team! If you're still using Microsoft Internet Explorer please do yourself a favor and try it out...


Get Firefox!

So here I am again doing some writing on the train. It's a beautiful morning! That is, as long as you look at it from behind a double-glazed window. It seems winter is kicking in here in the Netherlands. Cold... very cold. But when I read the news it seems it could actually get very hot soon. I didn't get any mail yet from anyone offering me a job in New Zealand. Hope time isn't just yet running out on me here.

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Someone on the WSG mailinglist dropped a little message telling the rest of the list about something he called the coolest developer tool since the FireFox Web Developer toolbar. I must admit I agree! If you're a webdeveloper you just have to check out the Slayeroffice Favelet Suite. The suite features several really cool browser tools. I especially like the Mouseover DOM inspector. Check it out!

The Dutch government has, just like president Bush years ago, declared 'war on terrorism' in our little country. It seems the atmosphere has permanently changed since the brutal murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. It seems from now on things can only get worse. Anyone from Australia or New Zealand reading this? If so send me an email if you have job vacancies in the field of web development or chemical research!

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Recently I have delivered a presentation for Eduvision at the PHP mini-seminar they held about a month ago. While I'm definitely not the first who writes something about the great new assets in PHP5 I still think it's worthwhile to translate it into English and publish it here on my site. I hope you will find this brief introduction to PHP5 useful.

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Well congratulations to the USA... you've voted. Congratulations for choosing for four more years of:

• ignoring global pollution
• corporate lobbyists being the real rulers of the USA
• wondering why everybody 'hates' you
• dirty wars (who's next? Iran? Korea?)
• increasing poverty inside your own country
• gay discrimination
• feeding hate and fear among your people
• and the list goes on and on and on..

I hope you Americans (and the rest of the world) aren't going to be sorry for this.
I already am...

So here I am again on the train towards work. Yesterday has been a day from hell. Let's hope today will bring better things and good news...


It's funny how Dutch people can always completely forget any form of reason and react like stone age people when something bad happens. Like I wrote before, yesterday morning the Dutch cineast Theo van Gogh wad brutally murdered by someone who's now known as some muslim extremist. While this is an utterly sad thing there's something else that makes me even more sad. It's the reactions by the people.

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This must be the most screwed up day of the year and I don't like it! Right now I'm on the train to go and see my girlfriend and I wish I weren't. This may sound strange but you'll know what I'm talking about soon enough. This whole day just seems plain 'wrong'. Like the U2 song says I would like to close my eyes and make it go away.....

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The fine folks from the Pivot team have just released a new beta 3 version of Pivot 1.20. It needed some tinkering because of some small code bugs but it features some nice enhancements compared to the old version. I'm running my own fixed version right now and everything seems fine so far. Cheers to the Pivot team!

Since I'm all in love with the new PHP5 engine with a well thought out OO model the Zend coding contest caught my interest quite a while ago already. If I wouldn't have been so terribly busy during the contest period I would probably have entered the contest myself. Nevertheless the contest is still interesting enough because the prize winners were recently announced. If you want to see what PHP5 can do for you you should definitely check out the code written by the lucky winners!


Go check out the winners!

IMPORTANT

Pivot Blacklist is DEAD. Long live Pivot Blacklist!

All important features of Pivot Blacklist have been included in Pivot itself since version 1.3RC2. If you're still running a version even older than 1.3 your site is vulnerable to all sorts of security holes and you're missing out on many excellent new features of Pivot. Therefore:

UPGRADE! There's really no excuse.

Also, now that you're here anyway: Welcome to my weblog! You might find quite a lot of other interesting things here. I hope you'll enjoy yourself!