bits and random pieces

A couple of days ago I was trying to dig up dirt on someone using Google but I encountered an annoyance from websites which spam search engine results by nefarious SEO techniques or other methods. Two of these sites come to my mind:
The first is the dreaded expertsexchange.com (ha ha expert sex change) which allows the google search bot to index subscriber only pages. This actually means that I can search for something on Google, get the accurate result from expertsexchange visit that link and find out that I need to pay in order to access the restricted area where the info is located.
The second is Last.fm which has localized versions (lastfm.jp/es/fr/etc) but provides the same content in all of them, obviously.

One single operator is needed in google searches to remove unwanted items from search results: -site

Example uses:

1. Removing links that point to a specific domain - expertsexchange.com in the example above:
   search term -site:expertsexchange.com
2. Removing links that point to a specific TLD - .com in the example above:
   search term -site:com or search term -site:*.com
   Note that adding www. in front of the domain is useless
3. Removing links that point to domains which have a specific string in their name - lastfm in the example above:
   search term -site:lastfm.*

Additionally, a cheat sheet with a lot of other useful operators can be found here.

I’ve recently stumbled upon a great freeware tool called Lorem Ipscream. It’s not going to save the planet, it’s just an upgraded version of the classic Lorem Ipsum random text generator. Nicely branded, the generator comes in sufficient flavors to suit just about every need one might have.

By far the most interesting one is the Soylent People flavor which generates a complete US resident identity including Social Security Number and mother’s maiden name; even more interesting is the fact that all the data generated is valid i.e. the address and zip code exist and match each other and the SSN has a valid format and is within standard ranges.

Example:
Gilbert Saenz
Male
431-21-8761
8/13/1946
Coleman
746 Annawan Street
La Pine, OR 97739

is an ambient real-time strategy game with abstract visuals. Remotely command semi-autonomous self-replicating mining machines to take over an entire asteroid belt.

It’s still under heavy development so don’t expect something polished but it is worth the download and the time. Get it here.

I fail to understand how crappy software such as Wordpress has managed to be the de facto platform for blogging. Starting with the incredibly annoying WYSYWIG editor and ending with the 100% AJAX bloatware interface of the latest version everything sucks.
I have decided to move on to something simpler, which suits my needs, so I moved on to Flatpress - the plaintext, databaseless blogging system. It’s got a great wiki-like syntax for editing posts and a couple of nice widgets… and that’s just about everything I need.

FlatPress is an open-source standard-compliant multi-lingual extensible blogging engine which does not require a DataBase Management System to work.
You don’t need MySQL because FlatPress stores all of its content on text files.
All you need is some web space supporting PHP4 (or later).

So, at its two year anniversary, the blog gets a new name and a clean cut. The old one is no longer online, it’s stuffed in a zip archive on my hard drive - it was too much of a hassle to move it/keep it online.

Simple is better.