Google banned rae.tnir.org

Posted by rae in Reid, the Net, web site
at 10:17 am on Thursday, 28 August 2008

Well, I think it’s more of a combination of Google and Firefox.

My site was hacked via a Wordpress exploit. I’ve updated to the latest (I was at 2.5, now at 2.6.1), which should fix the issue.

I’ve applied to Google to get rae.tnir.org re-evaluated. But their form for re-evaluation says it will take “several weeks”! So until then, my site will be red-eye-banned by all Firefox users.

Ye gods.

2008-09-18 13:05 Update:
Found out that Google is in cahoots with stopbadware.org, and applied to them to get my blog reviewed. Their turnaround was significantly faster than that of Google (which hasn’t done anything yet). I got this email reply from them a day or two after I asked them for a review:

We have received and processed your request for review of your website, rae.tnir.org/. Google’s most recent test of your website found no badware behaviors on the site. As such, the Google warning page for your site has either already been removed or should be removed shortly. In addition, if your site has been listed in our Badware Website Clearinghouse, we will remove your site from the Clearinghouse list.

Sometimes website owners are confused about why Google placed a warning in the search results for their site. In many cases, a website run by an innocent site owner has been hacked by a malicious third party, causing the site to distribute badware without the site owner’s knowledge. If your site was distributing badware because it has been hacked, then simply removing the bad code from your site is not enough to keep your site clean in the future. You will also need to work with your hosting provider to fix all security vulnerabilities associated with your site.

Please note that we will be retesting your website at periodic intervals in order to monitor that it remains free from badware. If we find that you are hosting or distributing badware in the future, the reviews process may take considerably longer than the original review.

Answers to commonly asked questions from site owners who are the subject of Google warnings can be found at: http://stopbadware.org/home/faq#partnerwarnings For tips on keeping your website clean and secure, please visit: http://stopbadware.org/home/security

The StopBadware Team

So with any luck, this blog will be out from under Googles Red Screen of Death sometime soon.

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Like the Google Ads?

Posted by rae in web site
at 12:39 pm on Thursday, 14 February 2008

I found out that I managed to earn $17 over the last 2 years via Google ads. Then I noticed that I had removed them a while back. So I just plopped one up to see how it looks.

Right now it’s pretty ugly and in the wrong place, but hey, at least it’s using relevant terms! I love that it advertises Rogers if you read the article about Rogers “unlimited” data plan.

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It’s time for the annual changing of the internet provider

Posted by rae in Reid, family, hardware, the Net, web site
at 2:27 pm on Tuesday, 26 June 2007

Well, it’s that time of year again.

Last year at this time, our then-internet-provider, istop.com, dumped all of its DSL customers into the lap of another provider, known variously as cia.com, 3web.com, igs.net and other names. I just call them 3Web. It seemed okay for a while, but then we started getting outages, and then they became more frequent.

I checked my logs for last night and we had a one-minute outage about once every 45 minutes. Needless to say, when Michael and Ronnie are plying WoW, a one minute outage is a major pain. Especially when they have to spend 45 minutes waiting to do something in the game.

Michael did some research à la Google and found a place called TekSavvy. They offer 5 Mbps DSL, have a no-throttling policy, and also offer static IPs. Sounds good to me!

So today I ordered our DSL from them to be activated on Mon Jul 16, 2007. Which DSL provider you use is selected solely by the login id you use, so for a couple of weeks I can go back and forth between them.

Hope it works out!

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No more twitter posts

Posted by rae in Reid, web site
at 1:33 am on Monday, 2 April 2007

At Luisa’s request, I’ve disabled the posting of daily twitter digests. Instead, you can see recent twitters in the sidebar to the right.

Update: I’ve also deleted all but one of the twitter posts from my blog.

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Vacation posts and Twitter updates

Posted by rae in Reid, family, web site
at 8:54 pm on Tuesday, 27 March 2007

I’ve posted two blog entries I wrote while aboard ship: A Day at Sea, and Mayan Ruins. They don’t have any pictures yet, though. I may add them later or maybe do a separate post about the pictures.

I posted them with the date when I wrote them, which is why they didn’t appear at the top of the page. I have no idea how the RSS feeds will react to them!

I have installed the “twitter-tools” WordPress plugin, which amongst other things posts once a day to my blog with all my twitters. Now you, too, can experience the ephemeral world of twitter by proxy. Or you can just visit my Twitter page ☺.

Update:
Oh, I’ve also installed a “Show unread comments” plugin. I think it uses a cookie to show you commetns you haven’t read yet in the side bar there. When you are reading a post there is a little blocky thingee to the right of each comment to show you its read/unread status. Hope it’s useful for people. Let me know! (Um, by leaving a comment, obviously!)

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I’ve installed the “Audio Player” WordPress plugin

Posted by rae in podcast, web site
at 5:29 pm on Thursday, 22 March 2007

It’s quite snazzy! A couple of my recording play back at double-speed with squeeky chipmunk voices, but most are ok.

Check out the podcast category for several posts with audio in them. My ReidNews podcast for Fri Jan 14 2005 is a good one to try out.

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Upgraded ReidNews to WordPress 2.1

Posted by rae in Reid, web site
at 10:38 am on Thursday, 25 January 2007

.. not that you will notice at all.

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Continuing internet problems

Posted by rae in family, hardware, web site
at 12:18 pm on Tuesday, 23 January 2007

Although our connection came back up on Sunday, it was only a 500 kbps connection, and it remains so today. It *should* be a 5,000 kbps connection. So for some reason, we’ve been throttled to 1/10th of our paid-for speed.

When I tried to access igs.net today, I encountered a new page that redirected me to cia.com, which is some sort of parent company of IGS and other DSL providers. So it looks like they were doing some sort of big switcheroo and it screwed up, big time.

We’ve been looking around for another DSL provider, and are looking closely at TekSavvy. If anyone has any opinions on other providers, feel free to comment!

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Internet down

Posted by rae in family, hardware, the Net, web site
at 4:19 am on Saturday, 20 January 2007

Late on Friday afternoon our internet service went down. It’s still down now, but I can access our ISP’s site at least, from which I got a phone number. I called and an automated (but constantly-cutting-out) voice semi-squaked that service was out for many customers in southern Ontario, and that the office is open on Saturdays at 10am. I stopped listening at that point since I now knew when to call back.

Our ISP is (mostly) igs.net. It’s kind of weird. We’re also under 3web.com and cybersurf.net. When istop.com gave up on its residential DSL service in August of 2006, the company in control of our destiny was never quite clear. CyberSurf was mentioned prominently in related email, but the company itself is very minimalistic online. At some point I was redirected to 3Web, which seems to be some sort of joint Rogers/Bell thing, offering both DSL and Cable high-speed access.

Ah well, hopefully it will be all sorted by tomorrow. We’ll see.

2 Comments

WordPress catching on

Posted by rae in software, web site
at 3:33 pm on Tuesday, 21 November 2006

It’s heartening to see the rest of the world climbing on board the WordPress bandwagon.

Of course, *I’m* thinking of moving now to Typo. Bwah hah-hahhh.

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