Rough Theory

Just a quick note that I’ve just realised there have been issues with the site’s feed for the past several days – which means that most of you won’t have been receiving updates for a little bit, and now may have a small burst of them all at once. For reasons not worth explaining, in order to get the feed to work, I had to truncate the posts (the “more” tag should already have been doing this, and at a more graceful location, but this doesn’t seem to have been working properly recently…). I’ll try turning this off again soon, and see if it stuffs up the feed again… ;-P

In the meantime, apologies for the flurry of posts all at once… Take care all…

So I meant to post something on Lukács tonight – but an urgent problem with the site meant that everything had to be taken down for an upgrade instead… ;-P If anyone notices any post-upgrade issues, please do let me know. I realise the site has been fairly quiet for some time now – actual content will resume soon, hopefully at something like the regular pace. For now, though, off to sleep…

Having just cleared out an interesting moderation queue, a small public service announcement to spammers who appear somewhat confused: it’s not that kind of fetish. But thanks for your interest.

Just a quick note that my web host will be carrying out various upgrades over the course of the week, and so the site may occasionally be down. In theory, there shouldn’t be more than a couple of outages, the longest of which should be for @90 minutes, and everything should be back to normal by Thursday. In practice, if people could please let me know if they notice anything not working as normal, it would be very helpful.

Since Sunday evening would usually be a low-traffic night, and I am organising a blog for one of my courses anyway, I’ve been playing around with the backend for this site – upgrading WordPress and playing around with a few new plugins and such. Apologies to folks who may have been trying to access the site – particularly when the upgrade broke the old pagination plugin, and the entire posting history of RoughTheory loaded onto the front page… That was one massive scroll bar! There have also been various moments (and will likely be others over the next couple of days) where database errors prevented some or all of the site from being accessible.

Apologies for all of this (since comments were actually being posted through some of the chaos, I know at least a few people were trying to view the site while some of this was going on). And do please let me know if you notice any lingering issues.

Just a quick apology – and warning – that comments from “regulars” seem to be sitting around in the moderation queue for me to approve, rather than going through automatically as they should. I assume this problem is iatrogenic: an update yesterday, which was intended to help reduce the massive spam surge that has hit the site over the past couple of weeks, seems to have generated this undesired side effect.

So: even if you have posted here before, I may still need to approve the next comment you make. After that, I think you’ll be able to comment normally. Apologies for the inconvenience, particularly for Joe and Rich, who are writing wonderful, thoughtful comments, and who have both found their work held up in the moderation queue for hours… This of course would happen at a point in the year when I can’t check in very often to clear things out of moderation…

If the update has caused any other artefacts – comments never showing up, other problems with the site – please do let me know. Many thanks for your patience.

I’ve noticed a new trend in comment spam recently: spammers plaintively begging me not to delete their spam because they need the money. The most recent one reads: “Do not delete it please. I need money urgent” before it then proceeds to advertise acts that are simply not appropriate for a family forum… I’ve decided to call it “bespamming” – and to send it, compassionately, to that same dark void to which I consign all the other spam…

Just a quick note that I’ve temporarily switched on a slightly stronger spam protection measure, as I’m getting somewhat tired of checking into the site, and discovering ads for products (and, in some cases, practices…) that seem somewhat anatomically pointless, from my perspective…

I’ll rig up something less intrusive when I have a bit more time but, for the moment, you may find your first comment gets trapped in the moderation queue until I approve it. In theory, this should affect only the first comment you make – once that comment is approved, all other comments should go through as normal. You all know, of course, what I think about the relationship between theory and practice… ;-P

Apologies in advance for any annoyance…

Just a quick note that I’ve just received a notice that the university email will be down from 5 p.m. today, and throughout the weekend. Anyone who needs to reach me over the weekend should instead use my personal address, linked off my name above.