Like most bloggers, I regularly receive comment spam on my blog posts. However, while I can just about tolerate spam on an occasional basis, I have started to receive literally hundreds of spam comments every day - and I am utterly fed up of it. So I had a look round for spam prevention methods and, as expected, there are loads. I probably should have looked for one in the first place and I’m sure most of you reading this already use one. However, for those of you who don’t, this is the one I chose to use:

SI CAPTCHA

It’s pretty straight-forward to install and it works a treat. Just go to the Plugins section of WordPress, select ‘Add New’ then search for ‘captcha’. There’s plenty of options but SI CAPTCHA seems to have the best rating and I’ve found it works perfectly. Hopefully I’ve seen the last of the recent surge in comment spam on my blog!

It’s that time again - rant o’clock. This one is a two-pronged rant. Firstly, Firefox seems to have upgraded itself the last 2-3 times I started up my PC. This in itself is an annoyance, but I can just about tolerate the frequency (and inconvenience) of Firefox upgrades. What prompted me to write this post is the statement on the Mozilla web page with which I was greeted when I started Firefox. The statement seems to be their main reasoning for upgrading Firefox and it is:

“For security reasons, we recommend downloading the latest and greatest version.”

For security reasons? That’s the bit that got my attention. They use this statement every time there is a Firefox upgrade available. Forgive me if I’m reading it wrong, but this statement says to me that the current version of Firefox is not secure. Given how frequently Firefox upgrades become available, does this statement from Mozilla not suggest that every version of Firefox becomes insecure soon after its release? In which case, are they not suggesting that you should use a different browser altogether, for security reasons?

For the second part of my rant, I would like to ask you a question. Just what on earth is the background image all about on the aforementioned Mozilla web page?! The part of the image to which I am specifically referring is below:

From where I’m sitting, it seems to be a group of translucent birds flying out of a pipe. Anyone got any ideas what it means? My guess would be that the pipe is a metaphor for Internet Explorer and the birds are a metaphor for Firefox users, flying free from Internet Explorer as they download the latest version of Firefox. But do those translucent birds realise how insecure the world outside that pipe is?!

Another random post. This one’s about Spotify, the latest music website/program/thingy that everyone’s talking about. Let me just start by clarifying that I love Spotify - it’s a great idea and I’m a big fan. But the reason I’m writing this post is because I just had to have a good old rant. Not about Spotify itself, nor the fact that you have to put up with ads if you choose the free option, but about the ads themselves.

I don’t know how much money Spotify are making but it seems to be taking off somewhat, judging by how much I keep hearing about it all over the place. So I’m going to assume that they’re doing ok for cash. In which case, could they not afford to have their own ads done a bit more professionally? I find the ones that start with “Hi, I’m Joe Bloggs from Spotify, we hope you love Spotify as much as we do”, and finish with “everyone loves music”, pretty annoying and borderline patronising. But I can just about tolerate these. It’s the latest batch that have irked me.

First off we have Dave Berry - or at least it sounds like Dave Berry. He’s a pretty successful radio DJ from XFM in London. He’s done loads of voiceovers - I hear him on adverts all the time. And, as I mentioned above, I’m assuming Spotify are doing alright for cash. So why are both Dave Berry’s Spotify ads so unbelievably rubbish? They’re poorly scripted, poorly voiced and the audio quality is AWFUL. Seriously, they must have got the microphone in a Christmas cracker and then said “just make something up for 30 seconds Dave, anything will do”.

And secondly, the voicemail adverts. Ah yes, phone Spotify’s voicemail and leave a message - tell them what you think of Spotify. That’s all fine, the idea itself is not overly offensive. But what occured to me when hearing one of these ads just now was that each advert is the same duration - around 30 seconds. The Spotify bit (the guy saying “leave us a voicemail on 0207…” etc) is the same duration every time - it’s the same recording. And the adverts are always the same duration. So the first half of the advert - the voicemail left by a Spotify user - has a set duration. My question is, does everyone who calls their voicemail just happen, by coinsidence, to speak for exactly the same duration of time? And, by another freak coinsidence, is this duration of time the exact same duration of time that the voicemails in their adverts must last for? The cynic in me suggests that this is more than a coinsidence and that the ‘voicemails’ they have put in their adverts are faked.

Like I said, I’m all in favour of Spotify - it’s brilliant. I just find Spotify’s own adverts to be pretty irritating in various ways - I just wanted to have a quick rant about it.

Ah, now I feel better

Time for a random post. I’m hoping this will prove useful to some people as I couldn’t find anything on Google for the life of me when I tried to figure out the answer to the problem.

I purchased a Blackberry Bold a few months back and have been experiencing a problem with the screen going blank at random. From time to time, it just seems to go into standby randomly and the only way I could get the screen to come back on was to shake it. I searched the web like crazy and found nothing - and pretty much everyone I know who has a Blackberry (either Blackberry Bold or Blackberry Storm) has been experiencing the same problem. However, I have finally figured it out.

When you put your Blackberry into its case, there is a magnet inside the case that the Blackberry detects. It then automatically goes into standby in order to prevent any buttons being inadvertently pressed if you lean on it while it’s in your pocket.

What I found was that the screen was going blank when I was holding the Blackberry against the case - so it was obviously detecting the magnet and thinking that it was inside the case, hence going into standby. It wasn’t the shaking that got the screen to come back on - it was simply pulling the Blackberry away from the case!

So that’s it. I hope there’s some people out there who read this post and find that it solves the problem for them - I know how infuriating it is! Thankfully I never got round to sending my Blackberry back to Vodafone to get it repaired - I may have looked a bit silly…

Welcome to my blog. Having been a webaholic for over ten years and spent most of those years designing websites, I figured it was about time I started a web design blog. I’ll be posting about various things related to web design - recommending websites that I find useful, documenting various problems that I encounter, sharing useful tips, etc etc. I hope you enjoy your stay!

Adam