Rob Ferrer’s Thoughts and Writings

I’ve recently noticed in my logs lots of visits to my posts from a Microsoft IP block (the last one was 65.55.109.226), supposedly with a referrer of http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=[random keyword]&form=QBHP .

My posts never appear on the search results page, in fact some keywords are completely irrelevant.

The visits even show up in my Woopra log, which means the bots must support JavaScript. Annoyingly due the the low volume of visits to my site, this is really throwing off my statistics. In particular, because the bot is reporting a screen resolution of 800×600, my total stats show 14% of visitors have that resolution (which clearly isn’t accurate).

I found this post on Blogboing (and this older one), and this fuller explanation (including instructions on how to block it), which partially explains them, but the Microsoft response is clearly rubbish. As far as I’m concerned, this is just referrer spam, and another reason not to use Live Search!

I don’t think I’ll block them for now, but may do if it continues.

Please Note: [update 2008-08-20]: This has now been fixed as of Freshy 2.0.8, so you shouldn’t need to make any changes other than updating to the latest version. I am leaving this post for the sake of archive.

Any regular readers (although I don’t think I actually have any!) of this blog will notice I recently changed the theme to the fantastic Freshy 2 theme from Jide.fr. Together with the customise plugin it’s a great theme with many great features, including support for the Gravatar plugin.

Unfortunately as of version 2.0.6 there’s a very small error in the way the Gravatar function is implemented, which means the Gravatars aren’t displayed properly (and in fact it means commenter’s email addresses are displayed in the source).

Luckily the fix is very simple. You need to edit the file comments.php (using the theme editor or your favourite method), and find the following section (around line 37)(sorry about the indentation - Wordpress insists on removing it!):

<?php // gravatars
if (function_exists('gravatar')) {
if ('' == $comment->comment_type) {
echo '<img class="avatar" src="';
gravatar($comment->comment_author_email);
echo ‘” alt=”‘.$comment->comment_author.’” width=”40″ height=”40″ />’;
} elseif ( (’trackback’ == $comment->comment_type) || (’pingback’ == $comment->comment_type) ) {
echo ‘<img class=”avatar” src=”‘;
gravatar($comment->comment_author_url);
echo ‘” alt=”‘.$comment->comment_author.’” width=”40″ height=”40″ />’;
}
} else {
//echo ‘<img class=”avatar” src=”‘.get_bloginfo(’stylesheet_directory’).’/images/default_avatar.png” alt=”‘.$comment->comment_author.’” width=”40″ height=”40″ />’;
}
?>

And you need to change the two gravatar() function calls to look like this (remove the paramters):

gravatar();

If you prefer you can download a fixed comments.php to replace you existing one here:

coments.php.zip

These changes actually make a lot of the code redundant, as it’s not possible to display a Gravatar for a trackback (there is no email address)

Make the above changes and you should be able to see Gravatars for all your visitors!

I also note, it looks that as of Wordpress v2.5, that gravatar support is built in. Note, if you use this the get_avatar() function does require the email address of the user as a parameter!

Update: Please note, the above download is for the old Frshy 2.06. Freshy 2.07 may have a different comments.php file, although it still has the bug so you will need to make the repair manually (let me know if you have any questions)!

Update 2: The bug is now fixed as of version 2.0.8

I wrote last Tuesday that My Search Funds (the site that pays you for your web searches) was to become Homepages Friends. This change took place yesterday.

The biggest change is that Yahoo is now used for the searches. I haven’t done enough searches to be able to judge the quality of the results, but I doubt they are as good as Google. I would guess the cashback per search is likely to be similar though.

The other change is to the “personal homepage”. As well as the main search box, there are tabs for “My Gadgets”, “My Shops”, “My Bookmarks” and “My Blog”. None of these are functional yet, but they seem to be aiming at an iGoogle sort of service.

Interestingly, despite them quoting the domain homepagesfriends.com in their logo, the domain they are using is myhpf.co.uk!

Sign up here and take a look, and start earning. I’ve accumulated over £30 so far, and am close to £20 “past 45 days” threshold I need for my first payment!

Why is it that delivery people find it so hard to use doorbells? You’d have thought they would be more experienced than most, but they seem incapable of pressing that little button. Maybe it’s something missing from their basic training.

I suppose they are too used to doorbells not working, but surely people wouldn’t bother installing doorbells if they didn’t have a use for one. Why not knock and ring?

The reason this is such an annoyance for me is that I work from home in a log cabin at the bottom of the garden. This means I can’t hear anyone knocking on the door, which is why I installed a wireless doorbell. I’ve missed a lot of deliveries because of their fear of bells. Citylink seem to be the worst offenders, but I missed one from Royal Mail today.

I think I need to get myself a “Please Ring” sign, but I am reluctant to have to put up instructions for such a simple device. Maybe something like these from Dave Gorman’s Flickr set:

(see also this Flickr Group)

My Search Funds announced today in an email to their users (or at least me) that they are to become Homepages Friends. It seems they are moving away from just paid searches, to add more cashback services (like their existing eBay cashback).

One downside is that they are moving away from Google to use Yahoo as their search provider. It looks like they are hoping to add more Yahoo services to Homepages Friends in the future. Maybe we will see a service that pays you to check your mail?

The Homepages Friends domain (homepagesfriends.com according to the logo in the email) isn’t active yet, although similar domains redirect to www.whitedotbox.com which seems to be the same organisation and offers search income to sports clubs etc.

They promise changes over the next few days, in the meantime we can get paid to use Google.

I hope this continues to be a good service - I have over £30 accumulated so far!

[Update 2008-06-09:] The changeover has taken place - see my new post.

I was enjoying my lie in on Saturday morning when I was rudely awaken at 07:30 by the sound of a lawn mower coming from the front of our house. The strange thing is we don’t have any neighbours with a front lawn.

I looked out of the window to see someone cutting our neighbours hedge with a Flymo lawnmower! Sorry about the photo quality - I only had my phone on me and just snapped a quick pic (click for larger).

Not exactly the right tool for the job, but to be fair to him, the finished result was ok!

Our main problem with it was we were woken up before 8 on a Saturday morning - Abby was not happy at all!