Web Site News

136 entries

  • Internet Explorer Epidemic Traced to SiteMeter
    Many web sites are having problems with Internet Explorer. This includes the Michelle Malkin web complex and the entire Conservative Cat Blog Empire. The symptom is that the site appears fine, but you immediately see an error message, and when...

    # At August 1, 2008 9:10 PM | Tags:
  • Update on the Comment Problem
    I have been unable to fix the problem with the comment CAPTCHA codes, so I have simply turned the facility off. If you sign in, your comment will appear immediately; otherwise, it will be held for approval. This is necessary...

    # At May 26, 2008 1:14 AM | Tags:
  • Comments are Not Working
    The little program that generates our security images is not working.properly. I believe the problem is with a package called Image::Magick, which allows you to create graphical images very easily, but which in my experience is extremely unreliable. There are...

    # At May 24, 2008 11:24 PM | Tags:
  • Out Cold Without a Comment Script
    I don't know who is doing it or why, but someone keeps disabling our comment script. I suspect that our presence provider-- Hosting Matters-- is doing this because we are under attack by comment spammers. I wish they'd told us,...

    # At April 3, 2008 10:43 PM | Tags:
  • Be Back Soon
    Ferdy says that the practice of blogpaddling (explaining why you're not blogging) is considered lame, and therefore doing it is my responsibility as the inferior life form in this team. For the past two weeks I have been working very...

    # At March 17, 2008 8:36 PM | Tags:
  • An Important Paper on Blog Usage
    A recent paper by students at Carnegie-Mellon University used network modeling to determine which blogs you should read if you were limited to only a 100 and wanted to stay ahead of the news curve. The study must be pretty...

    # At October 26, 2007 5:23 PM | Tags:
  • Comments are Back
    It occurred to me that since we never use the email addresses people type in, we might as well not require them. I had Bruce turn off the email requirement feature, and this seems to have fixed our comment system....

    # At October 24, 2007 8:18 PM | Tags:
  • Sorry About the Comment Thing
    We've been having trouble with our comment facility: it was marking every comment as spam. Bruce has fixed the problem, and hopefully everything should be okay until the next software upgrade. The easiest way to do comments is to choose...

    # At October 15, 2007 8:39 PM | Tags:
  • Well, We're Back, Mostly
    We are now using Movable Type version 4, which is a significant update from version 3. It fixes several problems we had with the old software (tags, for example), but it did involve some changes, particularly in the handling of...

    # At September 26, 2007 3:49 AM | Tags:
  • Expect Weirdness for a While
    We are updating to a new version of Movable Type....

    # At September 25, 2007 5:05 PM
  • A Comment About the Movies Under the Peg
    Some people have noticed that in Peg-Eye Nate's movie reviews, he usually gives a fairly high rating to the movie. I want to make it clear that this is not because Nate likes everything he sees. It is, in fact,...

    # At September 12, 2007 4:59 PM | Tags:
  • This is a Test
    This is a test post to see if we can submit articles again. If this had been a real post, it would have combined useful political commentary with just enough snideness to make it funny. We believe that to be...

    # At July 23, 2007 11:10 AM | Tags:
  • Category Index Improvements
    Category indexes have always been a problem for us because of the need to balance performance with content. The more stuff we list about each article, the more time it takes to generate the page. Bruce has spent his spare...

    # At March 31, 2007 11:05 PM | Tags:
  • The Amazing Tag Cloud Page
    For the past few weeks, we have been using Movable Type tags instead of categories to organize our posts. This has required a major conversion effort that is still ongoing. Tags and categories are both submitted to Technorati for the...

    # At March 15, 2007 2:04 AM | Tags:
  • Spammers Gone Wild
    The Conservative Cat Blog Empire provides many important trackback services, including the Linkfest Haven open trackback parties, the Permanent Floating Ping Festival in our sidebar, and the Cat Lover Page. For this reason our throttle rate is much higher than...

    # At March 2, 2007 3:35 PM | Tags:
  • No Weekend Funny Stuff
    Due to the events surrounding Al Gore's Oscar victory tonight, I have decided there's no need for our traditional roundup of the off-beat, satirical, and bizarre. Respectfully submitted,Ferdinand T. Cat...

    # At February 25, 2007 11:11 PM | Tags:
  • Time to Reorganize
    I've decided we need to convert from our old category tagging system to real tags. The theory is that it will make the site more useful to people doing searches and cut down on the time spent publishing. As the...

    # At February 23, 2007 10:27 PM | Tags:
  • A New Addition to the Empire
    I am proud to announce the addition of another blog to the Conservative Cat Blogging Empire. A Few Shiny Pebbles features the work of Minta Morze. Minta thinks I'm very talented, which right there is all you need to know...

    # At February 13, 2007 9:59 AM | Tags:
  • Okay, so the Worst ISN'T Over
    Yesterday, the Bronze Empire got hacked. No information was lost, but several back door scripts were planted that allowed hackers to run their evil programs from this site. Because the scripts keep rebuilding themselves, the entire Bronze Empire web site...

    # At January 28, 2007 5:33 PM | Tags:
  • We Really Have Too Many of These Delays
    Bruce is in hour 23 of a complete system wipe and restore. The problem had to do with a security update at the lab where he works. It required him to install some new software that conflicted with his firewall....

    # At January 26, 2007 7:33 AM | Tags:
  • The Blog of the Day Awards
    One of the Blog of the Day Awards people left the following comment to one of our recent posts. Ferdinand, We loved you so much in the Blog of the Day Awards that we just nominated you for the Bloggies....

    # At January 6, 2007 11:29 AM | Tags:
  • Linkfest Haven Deluxe
    Bruce and the guys who run Linkfest Haven have put together a new Open Trackback Services site called Linkfest Haven Deluxe. It features custom Movable Type plugins designed to make it easier than ever to create Open Trackback articles and...

    # At December 9, 2006 2:18 AM | Tags:
  • In Which We are Blog of the Day Sometime Last Week
    Last Tuesday we were featured as the Blog of the Day on the Blog of the Day Awards Site. This shows a very sophisticated level of discernment on the part of the people who run that site, so we thought...

    # At October 29, 2006 3:48 PM | Tags:
  • Squirrel Pool
    We have jettisoned the creaky old miniature golf game on our Fun and Games page for a similar but superior game involving a more socially responsible goal-- killing squirrels. The new game is called Squirrel Pool.

    # At September 6, 2006 1:52 AM | Tags:
  • Upgrade In Progress
    I am going to spend the next few hours upgrading to the newest version of Movable Type (3.31). If you believe in the power of prayer, please put in a good word for me....

    # At August 11, 2006 1:08 PM
  • Dark Days for a Conservative Cat
    I would like to thank Peg-Eye Nate for helping to keep the blog going while I'm in a writing slump. Today's big news was the British Petroleum oil pipeline shutdown, and I wrote up an article lampooning the promised Congressional...

    # At August 7, 2006 10:57 PM | Tags:
  • The Next Trackback
    Lately we've been getting flooded by trackback spam. Our throttle rate is set to fifty an hour, which means we can handle a little less than one spam per minute without turning away somebody legitimate. (The default throttle rate for...

    # At July 29, 2006 1:43 PM | Tags:
  • Final Continue Takes Us Up and the Throttling Problem Takes Us Down
    We were thrown off a previous server because we were being flooded by trackbacks, so trackback throttling is an important tool to protect our new home. We have it set very high, because the legitimate trackbacks are important to me....

    # At July 21, 2006 9:35 PM | Tags:
  • We've Been Hacked
    Somebody has planted spyware all over the site. Thankfully, because we use Movable Type configured for static pages. Almost all of the damage can be undone by a single Movable Type command. The pages for Final Continue, FIG Research, and...

    # At July 18, 2006 9:28 PM | Tags:
  • Announcing the Illinois Blogger Community
    While at Ogmeet, Leslie of Leslie's Omnibus suggested to Bruce that he set up a community page for local bloggers similar to our Cat Lovers Page. I admit I have reservations about the idea: being owned by a cat is...

    # At July 16, 2006 6:03 PM | Tags:
  • In Which I Go On a Hunger Strike
    A group of Hollywood celebrities, including Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, are starting a rolling hunger strike to protest the Iraq War. In the late 1940s, hunger strikes were used by Mahatma Gandhi to sway public opinion in India. Ghandi...

    # At July 5, 2006 5:59 PM | Tags:
  • Unkymoods are Back
    Those cute little line-drawn mood icons are back. Unkymoods, created by Marc Lutz, are scribbles bloggers used once upon a time to display how they were feeling at any given moment. The moods range from normal feelings like agitation to...

    # At June 13, 2006 11:59 AM | Tags:
  • Pet Flight
    The blog Pet Flight has been added to our Research Central sidebar in the Knowledge section. Pet Flight is devoted to the needs of people who want to fly with their pets. This has always been a problem for me....

    # At June 5, 2006 12:52 AM | Tags:
  • The Important Thing Here is That It's Not My Fault
    Bruce has always been the weak link in this operation, and it's been a tough week. His main responsibility at work is maintaining a government web site dedicated to genetic research into pathogens. The site is part of a group...

    # At June 4, 2006 3:22 PM | Tags:
  • In Which We Begin a Protest Against a Popular Business Blog
    Many of you have probably noticed that when I do linkfesting, I change the names of the blogs to break up the monotony. I do it because it's fun, and because I want this blog to be entertaining as well...

    # At May 25, 2006 2:46 PM
  • Just So You'll Know
    In his spare time, Bruce is currently revamping the carnival system to try to make it more useful. Barring a nervous breakdown, we should be back to normal in a few days. Naturally, this affects me just as much as...

    # At May 14, 2006 8:24 PM
  • Aftershocks from the Friday Cyberterror Attack
    Over the weekend, we had some problems with our EMAIL configuration, but these have finally been fixed. I would like to especially thank Stacy of Hosting Matters Tech Support, who apparently works 8 days a week. Aaron's CC, the target...

    # At May 2, 2006 1:43 AM
  • A Rough Day to Be a Conservative Cat
    A denial of service attack originating in Saudi Arabia took down Hosting Matters today, beginning roughly at 10am ET. The target was Aaron's CC, but our server is on the same section of the network as his, so even though...

    # At April 28, 2006 9:45 PM
  • 11 Hours Without a Web Server
    We're back! We're back! The nightmare is over! We have our blogs, we have our Wiki, we have our calendar, we have EMAIL, the nightmare is OVER! Happy! Happy! Happy-full!...

    # At April 28, 2006 8:43 PM
  • A Brief Interruption
    Things will be unstable while I'm working on a way to thwart the evil Jhony, who has figured out how to get through our trackback spam filter....

    # At April 23, 2006 10:54 AM
  • The Curse Continues
    While I was busy trying to find something new to say about the immigration issue, a crisis of epic proportions has arisen: a scene from the latest episode of South Park may have been censored to protect the feelings of...

    # At April 14, 2006 6:16 AM
  • Bruce Under the Gun Again


    # At April 11, 2006 9:17 PM
  • New Background
    Thanks to Doll of Freedom Watch for our new background image. It's not a picture of me, of course, but I think it looks cool so we're using it anyway. The original image, which was designed as a button rather...

    # At April 4, 2006 5:29 PM
  • Trackbacks Are Forever
    The monthly archives for Conservative Cat now contain the month's trackback pings for Carnivals, Cat Posts, and the Ping Festival. This means that the trackbacks for a given list are not lost when they get old. The Ping Festival links...

    # At March 26, 2006 8:14 PM
  • A Bit of a Mess Involving a Truck Full of Cheese
    I'd like to apologize for Ferdy's paucity of posting over the last several days. He's been having trouble trying to find something interesting to say about what's going on in politics, since it all seems to be just more of...

    # At March 14, 2006 1:18 PM
  • Comments from Another Planet
    Boy, you take a week off and all hell breaks loose: we have over 2000 spam comments built up, plus a genuine Prophecy of Doom. Before I get to the Doom thing, I would like to point out that the...

    # At March 11, 2006 3:43 PM
  • In Which We Pause Due to a Design Flaw in Homo Sapiens
    Conservative Cat practices legitimate journalism, which means that every article we publish is verified and fact-checked by our editor (and my pet) Bruce. Unfortunately, Bruce is in the third day of an attack of the flu. Unfortunately, Bruce is one...

    # At March 6, 2006 7:16 PM
  • Best So Far Contest
    Our friends at Bloggin' Outloud are running a new contest called The Best So Far. If you head over there before February 1, you can nominate up to 5 blogs in each of 5 categories. I nominated myself five times...

    # At January 29, 2006 11:55 PM
  • It Just Keeps Getting Worse
    One of Bruce's jobs is to examine the search words used to get to this site. The words give us clues are to what people are looking for when they come here. For example, after Laura Ingraham got cancer, people...

    # At January 27, 2006 2:26 PM
  • Carnival Form Updates
    A bunch of Carnival form stuff piled up while I was busy. The Carnival of Liberal's Wrongs showcases posts which include opposition to liberalism. Any opposition to, bashing of or degredation of liberal arguments or people will be accepted. Submissions...

    # At January 25, 2006 6:33 PM
  • I'm Mostly Back
    I'm back. I apologize to everyone for getting so far behind. Right now I'm processing backed-up carnival updates. I will be doing Funny Stuff again starting later today. In the meantime, I'd like to invite everybody to browse through the...

    # At January 25, 2006 1:36 PM
  • Thanks to Annette of Hosting Matters
    Today we were notified that AT&T has finally removed the EMAIL block on our server. This was a very annoying problem. AT&T tells you to send them an EMAIL if you feel you've been unfairly blocked, and of course, the...

    # At January 10, 2006 4:18 PM
  • An Important Idea Involving Bruno Behrend
    Bruce was looking through our Site Meter page and noticed that we had a hit from the search phrase "extreme comics.com" via Google Canada. We showed up for this phrase because we have a link to Comics.com in our Research...

    # At January 7, 2006 1:20 PM
  • Recovering from the Spam Thing
    Both Bruce and I hope that this week we will spend more time blogging and less time tuning plugin software. The Illini Carnival will be back next week, and Funny Stuff will resume tomorrow. And if you should happen to...

    # At December 12, 2005 10:51 PM
  • Another Go-Round Versus the Spammers
    The web site will be funky for a while as Bruce goes through another cycle of anti-spam tuning. We did learn one important thing: when you're debugging the comment spam filter, you can't be signed into TypeKey. TypeKey customers bypass...

    # At December 11, 2005 11:32 PM
  • Adding an Annoying CAPTCHA Security Code Thing
    Comments may be iffy for a while. Bruce is making another attempt to install one of those graphic comment security verification display thingies. The difficulty is finding one that work reliably but can also be seen by a cat. Unfortunately,...

    # At December 7, 2005 3:49 PM
  • The Transition to Six Digits
    While I was panicking about the Interloper's latest outrage, we quietly passed the 100,000 visitor mark. The visitor in question was an AOL user with a Firefox browser, operating from somewhere in Kansas. Thanks to AOL's security features, we know...

    # At December 4, 2005 6:36 PM
  • The Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem Situation
    Shortly before Bruce and I left on vacation there was a change in the rules for the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Basically, NZ Bear, who runs the system, felt Open Trackback parties were distorting the results, so he implemented a...

    # At November 28, 2005 1:03 AM
  • Evil Spammers Take Down Submit Form
    Although Bruce did plan to spend Thursday and Friday relaxing with his family, it turned out to be a little more complicated. Bruce's daughter Barb has her own domain-- gigabarb.com-- using the Lunarpages hosting service. Bruce's whole family uses Barb's...

    # At November 26, 2005 3:27 PM
  • Happy Thanksgiving
    Bruce, Nate, and I would like to wish all our readers a Happy Thanksgiving. If you're not from the United States, we want to wish you a happy couple of days. We will be back this weekend with: What makes...

    # At November 24, 2005 12:26 PM
  • Catching up on Old Business
    A lot of stuff has been rotting on my to-do list for a while. Rather than do four small posts, I'm going to do one big post. Word of Blog is a blog designed specifically to allow people to post...

    # At November 19, 2005 3:35 PM
  • Trackback Wars
    Apparently Blue State Conservative, who founded the Open Trackback Providers, is upset about Samantha Burns' Open Trackback Alliance. There is some duplication of effort between the two organizations, but there are also differences, and as a free market conservative, I...

    # At November 19, 2005 1:15 PM
  • A Night without the Internet
    I sincerely hope that none of you ever have to endure anything like what I go through when my pet is deprived of the Internet. Many people make the mistake of thinking that Bruce is unusually well-informed on a large...

    # At November 9, 2005 6:39 AM
  • Don Surber Achieves Mortality
    Because I am a superior life form, and therefore immune to petty emotions like envy, I wish to congratulate Don Surber for making it to the rank of Mortal Human in the TTLB Ecosystem. This means that in terms of...

    # At November 6, 2005 10:43 AM
  • Inside the Workings of Conservative Cat
    Several people have reported a small but noticeable spike in traffic from being listed in our Funny Stuff articles. Since a traffic spike from being listed in Instapundit has a special term-- instalanche-- I thought we should come up with...

    # At November 4, 2005 1:03 AM
  • Catblogger Frappr Map
    Laurence Simon, the official godfather of catblogging, has created a Frappr Map for catbloggers. We have added a button on the Cat Lover's Page so you can visit the map at any time. Add your location (along with a picture...

    # At November 2, 2005 11:25 AM
  • Blogroll for Cat Lovers
    In order to keep showing my displeasure at the evil thoughts of J Kelly Nestruck, and as a public service, I would like to set up a blogroll for cat lovers. If you have exceptionally high intelligence and wisdom (which...

    # At October 24, 2005 8:09 AM
  • Two Disasters in One Day
    You may have noticed that a lot of blogs are slow or have large empty spaces. This is due to some sort of database problem at Blogrolling, the premiere service for managing blog links. Here at Conservative Cat we have...

    # At October 21, 2005 7:58 AM
  • On the Brink, Turning Yellow
    Some of you may have noticed that the background color of the blog has changed from blue to yellow. Bruce took one of those quizilla quizzes about what type of blog this is and it said we should be yellow....

    # At October 20, 2005 10:02 AM
  • Blogiversary 1
    Conservative Cat is one year old. Although the blog and domain had been around for a while, I didn't start posting in earnest until October 18. It's customary on this kind of occasion to reflect on the changes wrought by...

    # At October 18, 2005 3:27 AM
  • The Next Wave of Trackback Spam
    We've just received the most insidious trackback spam so far. As I have mentioned before, Movable Type 3.2 assigns a score to any incoming trackback, and if the score is too low, the trackback is placed in a special junk...

    # At October 16, 2005 8:32 PM
  • A Whole New World of Comment Spam
    There is a new type of comment spam out there. Because so many top-tier blogs use Movable Type, it remains a primary target for spammers. (This is why some presence providers won't allow Movable Type.) As of version 3.2, spam...

    # At October 4, 2005 4:39 PM
  • Blogrolling Won't Ping
    Blogrolling.com, the premiere service for maintaining lists of links on blogs, is currently undergoing maintenance. Their website had this to say on the subject. We are performing system maintenance on Friday. During this time your blogrolls will still display, however,...

    # At October 2, 2005 6:59 PM
  • Front Page Changes
    While fine-tuning Movable Type's new anti-spam features (which are much richer than what they used to be), I decided to make some changes to the front page. The biggest change is the new Permanent Floating Ping Festival. If you have...

    # At October 1, 2005 9:59 PM
  • A Turning Point in Human History
    Bruce is going to attempt to upgrade to Movable Type 3.2. This will either lead to improved performance and usability for the Conservative Cat blog empire, or it will send the Earth hurtling out of orbit and crash it into...

    # At September 30, 2005 8:23 PM
  • Gnome Homes from New Zealand
    Bruce's friend Murray of Silent Running is now selling Gnome Homes. Gnome homes are small decorations placed on trees or other garden fixtures that provide tiny supernatural creatures with a place of refuge from predatory cats. Apparently, gnomes are in...

    # At September 20, 2005 1:38 AM