Keri Henare

Before I started traveling around I handled all of my email from Mozilla Thunderbird on my Desktop PC using POP3. Thunderbird's spam filtering was great at filtering my spam client-side and I was content. But then I sold my PC and started traveling. I quickly switched to using the RoundCube webmail client (I could have used DreamHost's default SquirrelMail but it's ugly as hell) but ran out of time to configure SpamAssassin to protect my inbox from the torrent of junk floating through cyberspace. So I traveled the globe, often with little time to check with my email, sometimes weeks apart... and the spam piled up.

Now that I'm settled down in the UK I finally got to tackle the spam problem. I started with a new clean shell account on DreamHost and installed the latest versions of SpamAssassin and its dependencies. I directed all of my email addresses into the new account and moved all of my old emails over too. Finally I installed the latest Thunderbird onto my MacBook (yes I prefer it to OS X Mail) and am now using IMAP so that I can still access my email from anywhere. I'm slowly training SpamAssassin to filter my emails properly, it's already got things 90% right on a fresh install. This will improve week by week.

I also google'd my email address and removed it from various pages and websites to avoid it being picked up by spiders. On my contact page I've used some PHP to generate a unique email address based on the users IP address and the time and date. This should help me keep track of the spam coming in. The only place that I haven't hidden my email address is my C.V. as I think that'd do more harm then good.

I've finally got the upper hand in my battle with spam,

This is something that I've been meaning to post about for ages but haven't gotten around to, so I'll do it quickly now.

While surfing through my Mint Stats one day I found inbound links from Microformats + DOM / AJAX = Mashup Nirvana, a presentation by Kevin Lawver a developer at AOL. The reason for the links was that Kevin mentioned my C.V. as an example of the hResume microformat. I've been really committed to microformats so this is a great honour. Thanks Kevin.

Yes it's one of those double posting days. I've told you what the current status of the website is but what about me. A lot has been happening in the real world too.

When last we left our hero... Well I wasn't suspended over a large vat of lava at the mercy of the Joker. I was however on the other side of the world back home in New Zealand (forget Disneyland, New Zealand is the greatest place on Earth). I've travelled literally about as far from home as possible without leaving the planet. I'm now living in Preston (Lancashire, United Kingdom) with my beautiful girlfriend Carmen.

The weather is terrible here. For the first time in my life I own gloves, a scarf and an umbrella. Not to mention that when I try to have a Christmas Barbeque in shorts, a singlet and jandals I'm guessing that I'll likely freeze to death.

When I first got my MacBook I installed Transmission to look after my BitTorrent downloads but found it a little too lightweight for what I wanted. Bit Sticks has to get an honorable mention as a cool widget for for downloading torrents. Runner up was BitRocket but the top podium spot has to go to Xtorrent.

Xtorrent is made by the same team as the Inquisitor plugin for Safari. It is feature rich with a great search tool, organisation features and iTunes integration. Now if it would only hurry up and download my Ubunutu image for Parallels.

More than anything, this post is just about claiming my blog on Technorati. I don't really use Technorati, as exciting as it's release was it's just never really clicked with me. Apparently I don't visit the site nearly as much as I should as I never re-claimed the blog after switching domains last year. So while I'm at it, here's a chance for everyone to tell me what's so great about Technorati. So what is it?