Years of Poems and Spirits

When I use RSS aggregator to read my own blog, there is always some spam messages around. It started about a couple of month ago. If I set the feed option to display whole text, then the spam message has a link to a “imaginaria.com.ar” site (Argentinian?) If I set the feed option to display only the summary, then the spam appears on the first message that doesn’t have an “excerpt” field.

Update: actually, only Google Reader and My Yahoo! … Client programs don’t seem to have this problem, or when I just type in http://wuyibing.com/feed directly on my browser.

It is driving me crazy now. WordPress is nice. But like all nice things, it is so only when it is working.

Latest: solution found – (see also http://wordpress.org/support/topic/282365?replies=3)

Read the newer postings in http://groups.google.com/group/google-reader-troubleshoot/browse_thread/thread/39a7eef288c65dd0.

Search for comments from the users “Today I read … something” and “John Wennerberg”.

In short, here is what you need to do:
1. Find a database client and use it to connect to your WP database directly. If you do not know how to do this, ask your ISP for help.
2. Search in the wp_options table and delete rows whose “optiona_name” field looks like: rss_[a long hex number] (some with _ts suffix)
3. Search in the wp_users table, if you find a suspicious user (e.g. url is www.com or email you don’t recognize), delete it

Also, I would not search or try a plugin unless I know for sure it is safe. It looks like plugin is a backdoor for unauthorized content to sneak into the system.

I would also disallow anyone to register with the site.

Many thanks to the contributors on the Google Group thread.

After volunteering for Wokai for a while, I thought I could finally write something.

Casey asked me whether I could merge my mfi-china blog with Wokai’s main blog, I said yes. But it took me a while to decide to still keep mine going, as a separate blog–even just a carbon copy.

Here is what I said there -

At the request of Casey, I am going to post directly to Wokai’s blog site. However, I am leaning towards keeping a copy of my posts on this blog.

As of now, Wokai’s blog entry doesn’t carry a byline. I am not sure why. Not that I care for the credit as much as I want to have my own “brand”: I am a volunteer of Wokai and I care about Microfinance in China. Yet I don’t represent Wokai.

My attitude toward Wokai is complicated. Wokai is an ambitious grassroots organization started by two young social entrepreneurs (now mostly just Casey). It certainly identifies a niche–microfinance in China through foreign funding. The fact that it still exists today, given the limited resources it started with, is a strong testament of a need for such an organization.

However, Wokai, as MF in China in general, is struggling to have its voice heard, due largely to an economy that is used to state intervention–those who think China is the ultimate success story of unbridled entrepreneurship don’t know China at all. Even worse, such an economy–however unbalanced or exhaustive–is still doing wonders. As a result, such a development model crowds out other alternatives, such as grassroots financial self-help. I wouldn’t be surprised that having heard others’ success stories, even the poorest farmers in the farthest corner still pin their hopes mostly on the government.

In this context, it is difficult for an organization like Wokai to gain traction, let along to expand. One critical issue is the lack of operational resource. We have a young founder who is working overtime, without pay, and has to rely on volunteers’ good faith to get anything done.

But volunteers come and go. More than once, I have seen new volunteers joining Wokai with high hopes only to fade away months later. I myself am struggling to stay committed. But it is not because all the volunteers are hot-headed dreamers. Personally, I believe in microfinance, I believe that to many who want to “make it”, to start is the hardest part. And credit is the biggest problem at that stage. Every bit of money helps. But compared to aid or subsidy, microfinance is about forging a social bond, is about the difference between a outsider and a participant.

In other words, I can see the logic, I can envision the end. But because of lack of operational fund, I do not see the results. Without results, there is a lack of sense of achievement. Without a sense of achievement, it is difficult to keep the troop marching, so to speak.

This is a long story to explain why I decided, despite the lack of time, to keep two sites for the same topic.

For the last month or so, I have had a strange problem: the desktop will occasionally just die. Power out. Not even a blue screen.

What is more, I found out that it happened mostly when I was about to leave my desk, when I was in the middle of sitting up from the chair and turning away from the desk (the unit is on the lower left of my desk).  Then Poof! the noise level suddenly dropped, I turn back and the screen went blank.  I didn’t believe those two events (leaving and sudden death) were linked. But once I started to have this connection in mind, they never failed to take place together. Not that every time I left the desk the computer died. But every time this sudden death occurred, I was in the middle of leaving.

The only thing I can think of is that somehow the act of me leaving disturbed the unit in some way that the power supply or the motherboard just reset. But I am a good foot away from it, never physically in contact with it (not even through the desk). The fans run OK and the temperature readings are normal. The computer is surge protected–on the same power strip that another two are plugged in but never had any problem.

That has to be the strangest thing in a while. Do I have a magnetic field around me?! For a moment I thought about sending this as a story to Dave Barry. Unbelievable.  I searched the Net but couldn’t find any related incidents, let along to say solution.