Monthly Archives: September 2005

[Reminder] New MacManX.com Blog URL

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Dear friends, eleven days ago, I surprised all of you by abruptly changing my blog’s directory from /wordpress/ to /. Hopefully, with this generic / directory, I’ll never have to do that again. If you have not had a chance to change your subscriptions to http://macmanx.com/feed/ and links to http://macmanx.com/, please do so at your earliest possible convenience, and please let me know if you encounter any errors. Thanks!

P.S. Thank you very much for taking time out of your day to read MacManX.com.

Pingback Problems with Bad Behavior v1.2.2

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A new feature in Bad Behavior v1.2.2 blocks all requests that carry a blank user-agent string. This is actually a good thing, because blank user-agents appear to have become a popular technique among spammers to avoid basic user-agent blocks. Generally, if you found a legitimate request to have been blocked by the new blank user-agent filtering, you would add the IP of that request to your whitelist in order to allow it to pass by Bad Behavior next time. Unfortunately, this feature also cripples WordPress’ ability to send pingbacks.

WordPress seems to confirm its received pingbacks using a blank user-agent, and any attempt to send a pingback while using Bad Behavior v1.2.2 will fail, because the confirmation request from the pinged blog will be blocked by Bad Behavior for having a blank user-agent. There are currently two ways to prevent this. You could add the IPs for every WordPress blog that you know to your whitelist, or you could disable the blank user-agent block by removing lines 49-52 of bad-behavior-user-agent.php, as detailed in Changeset #3535. Since Michael and I believe that this is actually a WordPress problem, I have submitted Bug #1713, which requests that future versions of WordPress identify themselves with a simple “WordPress” user-agent, rather than a blank user-agent.

Update: Michael has added a patch to Bug #1713. This patch is for both WordPress v1.5.2 and v1.6 (alpha, aka “do not use”), and fixes the above-mentioned issue by assigning a simple “WordPress” user-agent to your WordPress blog. If you do not want to apply the patch, disabling Bad Behavior’s blank user-agent block, as mentioned above, is still a valid solution to this issue.

Update 2: Bug #1713 has been officially addressed and fixed by Changeset #2933. Thanks, Ryan!

The Grand Finale of a Grand Adventure

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Myst V: The End of Ages was released not too long ago (September 20th, to be exact). Myst V is the final chapter of the Myst saga, though “the ending has not yet been written”, as the Myst Franchise will continue through other mediums. I just received my copy of Myst V today, but it will be quite some time before Sarah and I will be able to get through the entire game. It should, as always, be a fun experience.

Blogroll Dive: 9/26/05

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Here are the highlights from today’s Blogroll dive:

Owen reviews some of the new TV shows that have premiered during this year’s fall season.
Brian discusses the three kinds of “free” softwares.
Khaled gives us an update on the progress of the Shuttle project.
Jon reports that Google is testing a new “remove result” feature.
Craig is looking for a new tag line for his blog.
Orson ruminates on “Freakonomics”.
Sarah publishes a new FAQ page, primarily dedicated to parents who are interested in starting violin lessons for their children.
Angsuman briefly discusses designing for usability and aesthetics.
Mark discusses some of the truth, lies, and stupidity that followed Hurricane Katrina.
And, Tom discovers Netvibes, a highly customizable portal service.

Favored Freeware: Doom Legacy

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Doom Legacy is an enhanced version of Doom with 3D OpenGL graphics.

We don’t want to create another Doom-clone with the sources. First, we’ll bring a lot of bug-fixes – updates – features that should have been in Doom since the beginning. Then, we’ll try to ‘refresh’ Doom’s visual aspects so that it looks better on today’s machines. And last but not least, we will extend the engine with enhancements for map and ‘mods’ creation.

Pros: Doom Legacy is a fun time-wasting game. I can’t explain it any further. Doom Legacy is a cross-platform game for Mac, Windows, Linux, DOS, and OpenBSD.

Cons: The Mac port of Doom Legacy exhibits a few minor graphical glitches.