December 2009 Archives

The number of google-able spam comments I have started to get on my blog in the past two weeks suggests that the CAPTCHA from Movable Type that I use is compromised; it looks as if there is an automatic way to identify CAPTCHA images. And googling for these comments shows that many WordPress blogs are falling for this, too. I'd be interested to see comments (but not spam comments!) on this point.

I had a GIT problem on GitHub. I had projects in a directory hierarchy like this:

    root/src/lang1/project1
    root/src/lang1/project2
    root/src/lang1/project3
    ...

that were in Git locally. Each was a separate Git repository. I then tried to (1) move the source to GitHub and (2) add other projects that were at the same level or higher:

    root/src/lang2/project-x
    root/src/lang3/project-y
    root/release/...
    root/docs/...
    ...

And Git took my intentions the wrong way. Instead of a single hierarchical repository from root/ down, I then had all of the stuff in root/ down except the lang1/ directories were all islands which GitHub thought of as submodules. Except not quite. These projects did not display with subfolders -- they displayed with the submodule icon, but I couldn't get the source from GitHub via them.

The fix was quite easy once I'd contacted tech support at github and exchanged email with Tekkub. He recommended this URL for a description of how to merge a subtree. I ended up with a script like this:

# Put repository at
#    ../temp/DazUtility/DazUtilitySetup
# into subtree at
#     vb.net/DazUtility/DazUtilitySetup
git remote add -f A ../temp/DazUtility/DazUtilitySetup
git merge -s ours --no-commit A/master
git read-tree --prefix=vb.net/DazUtility/DazUtilitySetup A/master
git commit -m "Merge with DazUtilitySetup"
git push
git remote rm A

Using the ours strategy for the merge did not work with all my projects and I ended up using resolve in one case:

git merge -s resolve --no-commit A/master

One final word: tech support at Github is awesome: fast and knowledgeable with great follow-up.

Okay, if you get this blog remark:

Dude.. I am not much into reading, but somehow I got to read lots of articles on your blog. Its amazing how interesting it is for me to visit you very often.

then you have spam.

Update 2009-12-03: Similarly, if you get

"Good post mate!! Keep 'em flowing!"

then you have spam. I guess comment spammers are going for generic remarks that look like they are paying attention to the blog's content as an alternative to, say, having a genuine interest in the blog's content.