My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.
I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.
This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.
Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii
Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media
Since January 12th:
I don't have a number for false positives, but given that I've received zero email complaints I'll assume the number is low if not zero. This gives Akismet about a 98% success rate on catching spam, which is pretty good. It makes my life better. Having more spam comments than real comments get through the gates can be really depressing for a blog owner.
At some point I'll post my Django newforms/Akismet integration code. It's very simple, and clearly worth the effort.
I suspect that there's a significant random component to the spam, so that it's not exactly the same junk everywhere. But given that good Bayesian email filters seem to be able to do better, I do agree that there seems to be room for improvement.
Nonetheless, I can't begrudge the free service that Akismet is giving me. As we've both experienced, comment spam is demoralizing, and it's nice to be (mostly) free of it.
Comments use Markdown syntax. Your comment will not appear until approved, which may take a few hours or more. Spammers will be torpedoed.
The iPhone keyboard doesn't suck
Python one-liner of the day
7 comments
How not to advocate via Google Code
2 comments
99 problems
3 comments
bitmonk
Obscure "svn mv" problem solved
33 days ago
Charlie
Book news: Rough Cuts and Amazon
34 days ago
Simon Griffee
Django Mercurial mirror tweaks
51 days ago
Jason Calleiro
From PHP to Python
52 days ago
Yuli
dpaste.com
55 days ago
bruce
Neat Python hack: infix operators
59 days ago
David Reynolds
The original Lego Star Wars
67 days ago
At least 29896 pieces of comment spam killed since January 12th. Thanks are mostly due to Akismet.
I like to say that comment spam is the reason I always quit blogging, but I suspect it's because no one wants to read what I write about :)
I guess one of these days, I'll get around to redoing my blog with Django.
Does anyone else think that Akismet should be doing better? For a distributed spam system, I would expect 99% or better catching spam. I say that based on my, perhaps incorrect, belief that comment spammers usually post the same junk on tons of sites all in a short period of time.
After the first 2 or 3 bloggers mark this stuff, shouldn't Akismet catch the rest? I probably just don't know enough about how it happens.