phpBB3 and ReCaptcha

June 13th, 2009

Ok - so the 750formula site was getting the same adult spam which IMOC used to have to deal with - so out comes recaptcha again. This time, I’ll show how I did it. This was pretty quickly hacked in, so somebody with more knowledge of how to make proper mods for phpBB could do it ‘correctly’, but this works enough for me for now..

This was done with phpBB version 3.0.5 (the most recent version at the time of writing) Since the code modifications below give line number references, if you do it with a different version, things may be in *slightly* different places, YMMV etc..

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alex www

Sping is.. springing

April 4th, 2009

Good to see that spring is finally here, few pictures snapped in the garden.

alex fun stuff

Small is better

February 13th, 2009

It’s a special day, so I’ll actually update this thing for once..

Yeah, it’s another TED talk, how imaginative of me. pfft.

Watch it, tell me that isn’t cool :)

Enjoy

alex fun stuff

You never know what you have

September 19th, 2008

Until it’s gone.. or stops working for no reason.

Spam spam spam spam - thank goodness for GMail

How good is the Spam filtering on GMail? Really fricking good, that’s how good. At a given moment, I’ve got around 10k in the spam box, and it tends to be 99.999% effective in only removing the things it should. So good in fact, that I suggest that if you aren’t using it already, you should at the very least bounce your email through GMail on it’s way somewhere else. Anyway, sales pitch over.

For some reason, the GMail spam filtering stopped working yesterday and for most of this morning. My inbox was absolutley overloaded with utter junk. It really is the difference between email being useful, and being so overwhelmed with crud that you seriously consider selecting all and deleting the lot..

So, thanks for fixing it so my email works again. I wish it wasn’t the case, but certainly for my email address, without industrial strength spam filtering it would be utterly useless.

alex www

What apple (probably) should have announced.

September 18th, 2008

Loads of speculation recently around the press event at which Apple launched a bunch of new iPods. While these will no doubt go on to continue to change the world like their predecessors, I don’t think that they are really what Apple needs..

Awwww, how cute

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alex mac

What about the Semantics?

September 10th, 2008

Replicating table layouts with CSS

While I like to read about what people are up to with CSS, for some reason the article on Sitepoint about replicating table layouts with a bunch of markup and CSS features which will be implemented in IE8, just seemed wrong somehow.

Isn’t the point of CSS to take markup which is semantic - markup which means something - and turn it into something which has asthetic. Using more markup to replicate tables seems a little bit backwards.. perhaps it’s just me..

alex www

Consolidating Captcha

September 9th, 2008

ReCaptcha

We recently upgraded the image captcha solution on imoc to use ReCaptcha, instead of the built in phpBB driven one.

We did have a fairly serious problem with adult weblinks being posted on the board by automated phpBB bots, which was a minor annoyance compared to when they worked out how to post images of their wares.. (not to mention the waste of volunteer moderating time).

So, in the space of half an hour or so, I added ReCaptcha to the site. Result - no automated spam since we did it, really, really impressed.

Which is what makes it all the more depressing when you read things like Inside India’s CAPTCHA solving economy (via WebmasterWorld).

No CAPTCHA can survive a human that’s receiving financial incentives for solving it, and with an army of low-wagedIndia CAPTCHA breakers human CAPTCHA solvers officially in the business of “data processing” while earning a mere $2 for solving a thousand CAPTCHA’s,

Oh joy. Although thankfully, IMOC must be low enough to not warrant it.. yet..

alex www

Happy birthday GNU

September 4th, 2008

Never has so much been owed by so many, to so few.

Well, maybe once before - but those behind the scene coders who have developed the GNU toolset and operating system have changed the world in their own way, and this year, the project is 25 years old. So, happy birthday GNU!

(via BoingBoing)

alex Welcome

Hybrids just got hot

September 4th, 2008

Now Honda are entering the game with their Prius competitor, it could get good.

Honda Hybrid

Well, it could.

Ok, the technology will be interesting anyway..

alex cars

Google Chrome

September 3rd, 2008

Competition drives things forward. Even though IE still commands a large share of the market, it’s glacial slow-progression forwards means that even non-techy users are looking for something else to surf the web with. Until now, people have had the choice between Firefox, Safari or Opera.. (stats).

Google Chrome

Now they have another choice - Google Chrome.

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alex www