Vanity Foul : Latest Comments

Commenting on Perl 6:

Here it is, nearly 2008 and Perl 6 is still a work in progress.

Posted by Lance (66.187.202.115) on December 18, 2007 at 12:46 PM CST

I18N support was added more recently to the Velocity macros. Unfortunately I don't have access to the source from my current location, but if you do you can look at weblog.vm for some help with this.

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (198.74.20.73) on June 30, 2005 at 08:29 AM CDT

Commenting on Re: showRecentEntries():

Hi, Lance, the macro #showRecentEntries( 20 ) seems work good for English Locale, but captions contain CJK charactors will not work at all.

Posted by Gorden Lin (192.18.200.10) on June 28, 2005 at 09:02 PM CDT

Commenting on Re: Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak:

I totally agree about the WeblogEdit page, it needs work. Most of the requests I'm hearing for new features are really requests to make things simpler and easier and that's a good thing.

Posted by Dave Johnson on June 14, 2005 at 01:53 PM CDT
Website: http://rollerweblogger.org/page/roller

Commenting on Re: Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak:

It isn't so much recent history, though I have concerns over the podcasting additions (disclaimer: I haven't actually seen the interface for this). In particular I think we've done a clumsy job adding options to the Weblog:Entry page - I'm just as guilty as anyone else. I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about how to make it more intuitive but failed. That said, I think the collapsable sections is the best compromise. The default interface doesn't have too many options and allows for fairly straight-forward posting, I just worry about it getting out of control. Then there are all the options available under the other tabs. I think this 'hides' them fairly well, but I think Allen's recent suggestions about retooling the menu is well advised. Again, perhaps I was too harsh. I don't think Roller has gotten "out of control", but I fear that the potention for such is easily available. And I hold myself accountable for that as well.

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (198.74.20.77) on June 14, 2005 at 10:58 AM CDT

Commenting on Re: Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak:

That's an interesting quote, but I don't think it applies to Roller. The Roller user experience hasn't changed much in the last year or so (I think that is unfortunte). The features we've added are mainly valuable to admnistrators (e.g. planet and better config subsystem). What features have we added that make Roller harder to use from a user's point of view?

Posted by Dave Johnson on June 14, 2005 at 08:48 AM CDT
Website: http://rollerweblogger.org/page/roller

Commenting on Regards to Ila Fern:

How unreasonably wonderful to be a friend to my child. Thank you more than words can say. You have just given me the most perfect gift possible.

Posted by Mom on May 06, 2005 at 09:16 PM CDT

Commenting on Empty Post Day?:

I hereby declare today, the 18th of March, Empty Post Day. Let this day be celebrated every year by posting an entry with no content, not even a title.

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (192.168.0.14) on March 18, 2005 at 07:33 PM CST

Commenting on Empty Post Day?:

It wasn't on purpose (rather, it was MT momentarily deciding that it wouldn't work properly), but "empty post day" doesn't sound like a bad idea now. The empty post was up on the site for only a few minutes, but some aggregators (including bloglines) still managed to grab it. Quite the coincidence!

Posted by Diego Doval (64.81.64.246) on March 18, 2005 at 03:04 PM CST
Website: http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/

Commenting on Buzzed?:

I noticed that on my blog too. Yahoo wouldn't stoop to referrer spamming would they? I did notice that the word "roller" (as in rollerball) appears on the Buzz index. I wonder if there is some correlation there.

Posted by Dave Johnson on March 15, 2005 at 12:35 PM CST
Website: http://rollerweblogger.org/page/roller

Commenting on it's worse when they're a friend:

Thanks for your comment. We take your thoughts and comments seriously, and we're trying to learn from this experience. Dave

Posted by David Sifry on March 10, 2005 at 10:54 AM CST
Website: http://www.sifry.com/alerts

Commenting on board game recommendations:

I came across a link to BoardGameGeek today. I'll have to look up your games there: Bootlegger Cityscape Tantrix Citadels Twilight Imperium 3rd Ed. From Hixie's Jan 24th entry: Attack! Blokus 1856 Richochet Robots Acquire Power Grid Quicksand Carcassone looks interesting. From Jan 10: Euphrat & Tigris From Dec 12th, 2004: Bohnanza Alhambra

Posted by Lance (198.74.20.78) on March 10, 2005 at 08:55 AM CST

Commenting on Re: The Contribution Society:

Please do when your thoughts have "gelled". I'm always impressed at how well you express yourself!

Posted by Mom on March 01, 2005 at 04:16 PM CST

Commenting on board game recommendations:

because you are better than me, of course (and much less lazy :-)).

Posted by Lance (192.168.0.12) on February 21, 2005 at 04:54 PM CST

Commenting on board game recommendations:

I haven't been including links because I've mostly been writing the blog entries off-line. Also, if it's hard for you to find sites about the games, why would it be easy for me? :-P

Posted by Ian Hickson on February 21, 2005 at 03:58 PM CST
Website: http://ln.hixie.ch/

Commenting on I'm a wealthy miser!:

I started an account last month. I'm currently averaging about 38 cents a day. Not bad, but I wouldn't mind seeing more like 50 cents. I should take up the idea you and others are doing. Only show the ads to search engine referrals. They are the most likely to want to click on one than my regular readers. :)

Posted by Dave M. on February 16, 2005 at 04:14 PM CST
Website: http://www.daveschalkboard.com

Commenting on SourceBeat, for magazines:

This is an extension of an idea I already pitched to Matt and Jim (the SourceBeat publishers). http://jira.sourcebeat.com/browse/SB-3 I think it's a great idea.

Posted by Bruce Snyder (24.8.139.227) on January 03, 2005 at 11:09 PM CST

Commenting on SourceBeat, for magazines:

Is there an On Java publication? Now that you mention it, perhaps O'Reilly would be another natural source for a periodical.

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (192.168.0.10) on January 03, 2005 at 10:09 PM CST

Commenting on Meet me in St. Louis:

Sounds good to me, I love brewpubs! I think I should be able to find my way there :-)

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (192.168.0.10) on January 03, 2005 at 09:58 PM CST

Commenting on Meet me in St. Louis:

I'd love to hookup. How about CB Potts on Monday night?

Posted by Matt Raible on January 03, 2005 at 04:26 PM CST
Website: http://raibledesigns.com

Commenting on SourceBeat, for magazines:

How would it differentiate from onjava.com?

You seem to pretty much just be suggesting a sourcebeat version of that.

Posted by Henri Yandell on January 03, 2005 at 08:38 AM CST
Website: http://blog.generationjava.com/roller/page/bayard/

Commenting on SourceBeat, for magazines:

Hmmm, that's definitely an interesting idea.

Posted by Matt Raible on December 18, 2004 at 04:08 PM CST

Commenting on I'm A Functional Idiot:

Thanks Abhijit for reading my blatherings (though I'm still not sure why anyone bothers :-) ). I'm going to give the article another go, as once I progressed to the "closures for business rules" part it made sense again to me. I think the problem I was encountering was that the example (page 8 or so) was just too dense. By using the Apache-supplied classes the example becomes more opaque. Whether the 'solution' is to reimplement them (code is worth a thousand words?) or just spend more time describing them I am not sure. As I mentioned in the main post, I think doing a bit of code with explanation (rather than 'all the code' then 'explain it all') would work better *for me*. BTW: the last section of the article, on closures, was much better. I hadn't got that far yet when I posted (read on the bus). I particularly liked how it demonstrated composition of predicates.

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (198.74.20.78) on December 17, 2004 at 09:39 AM CST

Commenting on I'm A Functional Idiot:

Hello Lance, I have been a reader of your blog for some time now. I'm sorry that my article wasn't very successful in explaining FP (at least the support for it in the Jakarta Functor project) to you. If you like, I'll be more than happy to go over the specific points in it that were unclear. Best regards, Abhijit

Posted by Abhijit Belapurkar on December 16, 2004 at 10:24 PM CST

Commenting on Re: CVS Hosting:

Thanks to the miracles of search engines and referrers I discovered two more CVS hosting solution.

Project Locker $40/month
CVSDudeFrom Free to $30/month

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (198.74.20.78) on December 16, 2004 at 02:16 PM CST

Commenting on I'm A Functional Idiot:

Thanks Brian. I've seen closures in Python and Groovy, and liked what I saw.

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (198.74.20.78) on December 16, 2004 at 02:07 PM CST

Commenting on I'm A Functional Idiot:

Java makes it inconvenient to do most FP type things, possible (like objects in C) but inconvenient. I would suggest trying out Ruby to get a good feel, blocks come pretty naturally to most Java folks. The best overall thing to make the lightbulb go off is probably a small book called "The Little Schemer" which uses, wait for it, Scheme =) It is as much about thinking recursively as it is about functional abstraction, but the two go hand in hand.

Posted by Brian McCallister on December 16, 2004 at 12:13 PM CST
Website: http://blog.skife.org/

Commenting on Sorry For All The Political Content:

No need to apologize for the recent politcal nature of your blog. There are many people in the same boat as you, trying to reconcile the country's attitudes/beliefs with personal ones. It makes for an interesting, introspective read which I've been sharing with anyone I meet.

Posted by Jason Graff (192.168.0.20) on December 15, 2004 at 10:37 PM CST

Commenting on Hate Apache much?:

That was about the dumbest thing I have ever read on the internet. Too bad there isn't a way to post negative links.

Posted by Tim McGuire on December 14, 2004 at 02:34 PM CST
Website: http://www.phpsolvent.com/wordpress

Commenting on Hate Apache much?:

True, I guess I am just encouraging them by linking to it. Still, the tone was just so snotty that I couldn't resisted. I am easily baited, which is why I stay away from newsgroups and IRC.

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (171.72.5.226) on December 08, 2004 at 11:45 AM CST

Commenting on Hate Apache much?:

Weird, I thought it had been pulled. The original interview was with John Ribeiro and was on a completely different website. The Techworld.com people took that interview and rebranded it on their site with Kieren McCarthy's editorial comments (ie the last line and the title). Sadly, these kinds of publications are all about advertising and the best thing that could happen for them is that an article will create lots of buzz and drive lots of people to their site. Contraversial articles are encouraged.

Posted by Henri Yandell (12.220.74.99) on December 07, 2004 at 09:56 PM CST

Commenting on Custom favicon.ico:

Thanks for the posting. I hope that it helped and let me know if you need any more information on it.

dl

Posted by Dan Lacher on December 06, 2004 at 06:54 PM CST
Website: http://blogs.sun.com/dlacher/

Commenting on Fighting Words For A Secular America:

I'm not anonymous, this is my blog. Arguably, the USA is not currently forcing a religion on its citizens. What I "fear" is our government moving in that direction. Some policies and policy directions declared by our leaders (particularly in Congress) appear to be in support of such a move. As to "arguably", an example: in the 1950's (sorry, I forget the exact year) the words "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge should be restored to its original state so as to not advocate a State religion (or at least monotheism).

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (171.72.5.133) on December 06, 2004 at 09:58 AM CST

Commenting on Hate Apache much?:

For real. So the ASF is paying for hosting. So what? Next they'll notice that the ASF pays for bandwidth too. Some people just don't get it. It's about whether people get paid, it's about the damn code.

Posted by Glenn (65.6.14.169) on December 03, 2004 at 09:40 PM CST
Website: http://haikudojo.com

Commenting on Fighting Words For A Secular America:

Excuse me "Lance", you are posting just as anonymously. What government is forcing a religion on you? America isn't forcing it on their citizens. Middle East countries are forcing it on their citizens.

Posted by on December 03, 2004 at 04:34 PM CST

Commenting on Tomorrow may be too late:

And what does that have to do with arrogance?

Posted by Lance (192.168.0.20) on November 26, 2004 at 03:28 PM CST

Commenting on Fighting Words For A Secular America:

It's exactly the point of forcing a religion that concerns me. And it is easy to comment anonymously.

Posted by Lance (192.168.0.20) on November 26, 2004 at 03:27 PM CST

Commenting on Tomorrow may be too late:

Would that be the REVEREND Martin Luther King???

Posted by t123b456 on November 26, 2004 at 11:53 AM CST

Commenting on Fighting Words For A Secular America:

But -- Mr. Lincoln may not agree with you. It's easy to pick out the ones you like and ignore the ones you may not like. The first amendment doesn't mean what you imply, it just means the state cannot FORCE or Proclaim a state religion. I have no idea why people fear Christians. Not being one myself, I can't fathom the reasons. Read Lincolns proclamation about Thanksgiving then get back with me.

Posted by t123b456 on November 26, 2004 at 11:52 AM CST

Commenting on RSYA:

Thank you very much. I just added roller to my site and was wondering if a list of known spammers was available.

Posted by bree (216.231.208.128) on November 03, 2004 at 11:14 AM CST

Commenting on The Referer Spam battle rages on:

you might want to look at openbsd firewall with it's spam deferal daemon, spamd

Posted by mike on November 01, 2004 at 05:29 PM CST

Commenting on TCJUG: Advanced Hibernate:

Mmmm, beer! It was interesting to hear about Hibernate for a large enterprise perspective. I had heard rumors of a TC Java's Users drinking group but didn't have the inside info that Will just posted. I will have to check that out. :) It was really great to get a chance to talk to with Will and Lance. I don't have a lot of chances to interact with great developers since I work at a small company so it is always great to meet with talented people like Lance and Will.

Posted by Kurt Wiersma on October 21, 2004 at 02:31 PM CDT
Website: http://jroller.com/page/kwiersma

Commenting on Re: Re: The Referer Spam battle rages on:

On your last point: yes, this stops them from getting any google-juice, but would it stop them from pounding on my site? I dunno how selective these scripts are.

Posted by Lance (198.74.20.78) on October 18, 2004 at 11:34 AM CDT

Commenting on Re: Re: The Referer Spam battle rages on:

For displaying referrers like your site does, this is a suitable method. It was one I suggested a couple of months ago to Rick at ExpressionEngine to deal with all the crap I was getting. If you are trying to filter referral spam so that it doesn't appear in a referrer list on a spiderable webpage, another method would be to have a central clearing house of keywords that can be shared by all jroller users. EE does this as well. The white list method is a good one, but there is a problem with someone not being listed until they are added to the list. Meaning that someone has to constantly look at the list to make sure that good referrals are cleared. Another idea I have seen floating around is to put all the referrals into a database and use a redirection method to send the person clicking on the referral link to the referral site. From what I understand of spider bots, this won't gain the referral site anything in search engines.

Posted by Dave M. on October 15, 2004 at 02:42 PM CDT
Website: http://www.metzener.com/chalkboard

Commenting on The Referer Spam battle rages on:

I've been fighting referral spam for months now. For a while I was editing the .htaccess file to block as much as I could. However, every day I would put 3 or 4 new keywords in, and get a fresh batch of 10 or so the next day. I almost gave up the site due to it. Howeve, I have decided to just ignore the referral spam now. It's not visible on the site anywhere for a spider to aid their search height, so I don't really care. This month, I have received ove 7000 referral spams that have cost the site over 3.5GB's of bandwidth. Fortunatly, I have more than enough bandwidth to handle that. I first tried blocking IP's and IP ranges. I found a few people that lived in Asia that were getting blocked because I was blocking ip's in the range x.0.0.0 - x.255.255.255, simply because that range was that evil area that sends out millions and millions of spam messages a day and must have hundreds of referral spam bots running too. I later opted for the keywork blocks with .htaccess, but just got sick of dealing with it. I feel your pain.

Posted by Dave M. on October 15, 2004 at 12:45 AM CDT
Website: http://www.metzener.com/chalkboard

Commenting on War is a Racket:

Awesome link. Thanks!

Posted by on September 24, 2004 at 03:14 PM CDT

Commenting on Referer Spammer Management in Roller:

Actually there is such a thing for Comment Spammers, served by the creator of MT-Blacklist. Roller uses it, downloading a new list nightly if it has changed. I've suggested something similar for Referer Spammers but haven't taken the initiative of creating one (discounting that I publish my personal < a href="/roller/page/lance/linkspammers">list).

Posted by Lance Lavandowska (198.74.20.118) on September 16, 2004 at 09:25 AM CDT

Commenting on Tree of Life, Tree of Death:

Quite intriguing. Imagine all the trees there would be in Europe if this had been done for centuries!

Posted by Mom on September 15, 2004 at 09:32 PM CDT

Commenting on Referer Spammer Management in Roller:

It would be nice to have a blacklist for blogs that is similar to the email server blacklists (e.g. open relays, etc.).

Posted by Bruce Snyder (216.32.201.125) on September 15, 2004 at 03:42 PM CDT
Website: http://jroller.org/page/bsnyder

Commenting on Block By IP:

Make ip banning a configurable option. I think that this coupled with url banning will be far more powerful.

Posted by Bruce Snyder (216.32.201.125) on September 15, 2004 at 03:39 PM CDT
Website: http://jroller.org/page/bsnyder