//beconfused

There are many ways of reducing spam, you can download all the plugins and start activating them. But why not just shut off comments and pings for posts that have almost no chance of people commenting anyway?

In order to reduce spam, I start disallowing comments and pings for posts before 2007 that has receive comments. Since it hasn’t got any comments for so long, it’s probably a boring or personal (not mutually exclusive of course) post so I’ll just disallow comments and pings.

SQL Statement to close comments and pings:

UPDATE `wp_posts` SET `comment_status` = 'closed', `ping_status` = 'closed' WHERE `comment_count` = 0 AND `post_date` < "2006-12-31 00:00:00"

The above SQL statement finds all the posts before 2007 with no comments and closes all the comment and ping discussion. I hope that would minimize the amount of incoming spam per day. Use the above command at your own risk, make sure you know what you are doing. You might have named the table wp_posts differently from me.

I use in on WordPress 2.3.1 (latest version).

With that SQL command, 430 of my 1663 posts have their comments and pings closed.

It’s a little depressing to log in and see Akismet catch 1000s of spam per day. To date, Akismet has protected //beconfused from 142,299 spam comments. Akismet just updated their plugin too by the way.

How to change out of your clothes real fast?

Hmmmp, I’ve been thinking, does the Japanese spend all their time thinking about all these weird stuff? It’s pretty cool though.

After a week of Ubuntu, I still couldn’t get used to the fonts. I guess I just didn’t like those fonts too much. Here is how you can install the Microsoft TrueType core fonts which include the following:

• Andale Mono
• Arial Black
• Arial (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Comic Sans MS (Bold)
• Courier New (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Georgia (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Impact
• Times New Roman (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Trebuchet (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Verdana (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Webdings

I am using Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) to do the installation.

1. Open the Synaptic Package Manager. You can find that in System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.
2. Search for “microsoft truetype”. You can access search through the toolbar. Alternatively, you can press CTRL + F for that.
3. Right click on “msttcorefonts” and you choose “Mark for installation”. You may be prompted to install “cabextract” which is a program to extract Microsoft Cabinet files. “cabextract” is required for installation of Microsoft TrueType core fonts.
4. Click on Apply on the toolbar. Alternatively, you can press CTRL + P.

Just finish the installation and your familiar Microsoft core fonts such as Georgia, Verdana and Trebuchet MS would be back. I prefer surfing the internet with Trebuchet MS. Hope it helps.

I have been running into troubles logging in to WordPress and was kinda frustrated all morning.

Basically each time I use tried to log in, I get:

You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.

I could not edit the blog, nothing works except the front page. I did a couple of searches at Google but the solutions didn’t seem to work for me.

In the end, I did a new installation of WordPress and scrutinized every damn thing in the users and usermeta table between a database that worked and a database that doesn’t.

Did you change the prefix of your table names in WordPress after the migration?

(more…)

LiveScience ran an article on how to overcome shyness tentatively. It’s a rather interesting writeup. Here’s an abstract of what it’s about in point form:

• shyness may affect up to 40 percent of the population
• shy people want to be outgoing and friendly, but can’t seem to figure out how to do it, Carducci said
• [shy people] may be social and have friends, but they tend to do the same things over and over again with the same small circle of people, rather than exposing themselves to new social situations.
• shyness is not related to self-esteem. People can be confident in certain aspects of their livesâ??they may be able to give presentations in front of hundreds of peopleâ??but the thought of making small talk with a stranger might make them extremely anxious.
• and of course - how to solve shyness tentatively:
  • imagining themselves in different social situations while taking slow, deep breaths to keep calm
  • volunteering as a good way to do this. “When you volunteer, [people] don’t really care your level of skill; they’re just after your time, so there’s no critical self-evaluation,” [Carducci] explained.
  • People should also realize that “they need not take all the responsibility for any failure they might encounter,” Cheek said. “Sometimes another person is unresponsive for reasons that have nothing to do with the shy person.”

I think volunteering really works. I don’t consider myself shy but I sometimes have problems talking to people about personal things. I do horrible small talk too. Well, I’m still trying.

You can read more at LiveScience.
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Your baby is crying and you’re stressed up? The Japanese shows you how they calm their babies. The babies are cute. I wonder if that would actually work. Do try it and tell me about it.

Seems convincing enough.

Previously I posted a Dr. Chris Steele video on How to check your breasts for breast cancer. On men’s health, there is how to check your testicles for cancer. Note that this video involves a live model and is therefore NSFW.

Dr Chris Steele demonstrates how to properly examine your testicles for cancer. This shows how to carry out a testicular examination.

I won’t be surprised if you can’t view this video through //beconfused, go to YouTube and view it directly. It may require you to be above 18.

Visit his website for more information. Keep your eye on the ball - left one and right one. Well… It’s always interesting to know.