Geek Speak

A perfect example of sincere comment spam, only this one apparently was having some technical difficulties:

Oh, I'm so glad they like my %BLOGURL%!

Like anyone at all involved in the business of making websites work, I’ve witnessed and participated in a number of intense debates this week regarding the future of Flash. Apple’s iPad will not be supporting Flash, and many have speculated that this is the beginning of the end for Flash. (more…)

My blog has always been a random hodgepodge of whatever happens to be on my mind. Luckily, WordPress allows you to subscribe to a single tag. Posts tagged with DGM2740 are responses to reading assignments from my Web Design class. You’re welcome to stick around if you’d like. (more…)

Who doesn’t love a kind comment, and yet who likes to support a spammer? Consider this comment, for example:

Just Googled and read the whole article and i must have to say that me and my husband loved reading your post. I liked your site because of the easy language you used to explain things here. Now i can stop my research having found my answer in this awesome article. We bookmarked and will regularly check more quality tips to come from your website. Thanks alot.

How sweet, right? Until you notice her name is “Watch Movies Online!”

Assuming your blogging software already has some good anti-bot intelligence going for it so the spam is few and far between, probably the easiest way to find a spammer out is to google their comment, in quotes. Disheartening, isn’t it?

A few other tell-tale signs:

- Keywords instead of a name
- Links in the comment body
- Name and email address both appear to based on real names that are totally unrelated

And of course you could click on their site to see what they’re selling, but I personally avoid that if I can.

To cut to the chase: This worked best for me in a pinch:

tail -n 100 /var/log/logfile > tempfile
cat tempfile > /var/log/logfile
rm -f tempfile
… and then restart the process that’s doing the logging.

If you want to read my long winded journey to that solution, I’ve preserved it in the rest of this post. (more…)