I thought Wednesday’s arrival in Westchester was a miracle, but it turns out I didn’t know what that word meant. Not only did I make my connection to Portland at Dulles despite a mere 29 minute layover and a long sprint from Gate G to Gate C, but my luggage made it with me. Unbelievable.
I was fully expecting to stay the night in the Hilton by Dulles which smelled of mildew last time I was there – indeed, I called from Westchester to check availability, but instead I touched down in Portland at a bit before midnight. I don’t usually have kind words for you, United, but I can’t say anything this time but thanks and great work. Good cap to a good week.
Anyway, enough with the travel; I had a few other quick thoughts and items:
* Nofollow: I was interested in seeing what impact implementing the Nofollow patch from MT had had on our blogs, so I ran some quick numbers from our MT-Blacklist and found that it’s too early to judge whether it’s had any appreciable impact. Here’s a couple of days prior and post implementation in which are traffic is already down a bit – we’re usually at several hundred blocked spams per day:
1.22.05 – 104
1.21.05 – 486
1.20.05 – 309
1.19.05 – 453
1.18.05 – 398
1.17.05 – 194
1.16.05 – 247
1.15.05 – 156
1.14.05 – 160
1.13.05 – 90
1.12.05 – 109
1.11.05 – 104
1.10.05 – 181
Since the plugin was installed on the 18th there’s actually a mild spike. But overall, we’re pleased that as of January our overall comment spam volume is down – occasionally even into the double digits. Hopefully Nofollow will continue that trend.
* Favorite Flickr Group: Jeremy asked, so I thought I’d answer. Much as I’d love to say it’s my own creation, the Wired Travel group, I’m DQing it from group status since I’m the only member (I did manage to get new shots of Cincinnati, Orlando, Portland and Westchester in this week, however – Philly/SFO next week). No, my favorite thus far is Abandoned, which has cool shots of stuff that’s been, well, abandoned. Very interesting mix of urban decay, ancient ruins and random interesting junk.
* Technorati Watchlists: Like many bloggers out there, I was excited to see the introduction of Technorati’s Keyword Watchlists, mainly because I’d forget to visit regularly. While it’s an interesting service, however – and I’m a fan of their new tags feature even if I haven’t decided just how significant it is yet – I’m getting a lot of false-positive relistings in my watchlist feeds. My ego feed, for example, which is a search on (“stephen o’grady” OR “steve o’grady”) seems to return this entry from Ephblog, a blog run by some folks from my Alma Mater nearly every day. This post from Sun’s Jim Grisanzio, has also appeared multiple times. I thought at first it was merely reflecting updated posts, but near as I can determine that’s not the case – and the problem is more widespread than that. Anybody else having similar problems?
Update: Misspelled Cincy – thx Joe 😉
