FCHouse

Spam, Bots and visit count

Posted by Carlo - 10/03/07 at 01:03:53 pm

In these days the statistics of FCHouse are a mess! It’s more than a week when the number of daily visitors has risen up to the sky, at least ths is what my little plugin told me, but there are some strange point in this.

From a hundred unique daily visitors, with two pages visited per visitor, the site has moved to receive more than four hundreds unique visitors per day, but the medim number of visited pages dropped to 1.2. Numbers doesn’t lies: the number of spammers and bots have risen incredibly in the last period. Google Analytics shows me 40 unique visitors a day, not the 400 I can see from the plugin I’ve installed.

The number of spam that my Wordpress catches has reached an impressive level of more than 50 per day. I’m a little bit tired of these numbers, this blog is snowed under fake requests. I think I will have to implement a new .htaccess to limit the fake browsers, bot, spam sender and so on, but my time is very limited in these days :(

Releasing an application

Posted by Carlo - 07/03/07 at 06:03:20 pm

Today my company just released in internal beta an eCommerce product for a big customer. In these months I’ve worked on the platform that manages all the B2B integration with their Legacy System.

So, everyone, today, was waiting for the first comments about it.

Everything went very well, and our customer is very satisfied.

I’m tired now, too many things to do and a big pressure on last minute modifications and so on… I’m dreaming a good bed and a long sleep: next days will not be so easy as you can think. More modifications, but tracking and a lot of other things are coming…

Cheers

Locked out…

Posted by Carlo - 05/03/07 at 10:03:59 am

This morning the electronic doorlock of our office is quite lazy. More than quite I can say: it has simply decided to lock us out, without opening the main door.  Luckily we can stay in the corridor just outside the door (it’s warm) and the wireless is working, so I’m doing whatever I need just sitting outside the office door.

Today will be a very long day, and a start like this one was not the best I would have expected, indeed.

I hope someone will remember his or her normal keys to unlock the lazy technology. (And I miss some coffee too!)

Assassin’s Apprentice: The Farseer Trilogy book 1

Posted by Carlo - 05/03/07 at 07:03:48 am

Michela has gifted me Assassin Apprentice, the first book of the Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb. I have read it in the last few days, and I have to admit that, even if the comparison with The Lord of the Rings is not the right one, I have quite enjoied it.

The story is quite well managed, and I have appreciated the change of time in the story (over 10 years, but very well managed). Robin Hobb writes well, even if the most important passages of the book fade away without the great “pathos” JRR Tolkien or JK Rowling are capable of setting in their books. The story itself is well managed, even if after some hours it reveal itself quite easy, however I have appreciated the description of the royal families and the games for the power. The characters weren’t so strong, and a lot of times I found myself questioning who was who when I read his or her name.

Reading back this post I can see that the evaluation of this book is pretty poor, maybe lower than it has been during my reading time. The fact is that it hasn’t left me too many things. Overall I have enjoied it and I will probably buy the other two books of the trilogy. The story is in part concluded, in part still open, so I’d like to finish it completely.

Not a high mark, but a good “Book Underground” in the end!

By The Way: Thanks to Michela for her gift… I have appreciated a lot, as always when I receive a book!

This cannot be called winter! (and I feel fine)

Posted by Carlo - 04/03/07 at 10:03:16 pm

Today the weather is gloomy, a lot of rain and a bad weather throughout the day, but yesterday…

…yesterday we took some hours of relax from this busy weeks and we went to the Isle of Dogs to take a look at the small house we should rent (the final confirmation should arrive next week, I’m still keeping my fingers crossed) and we were blessed with a spectacular day. It wasn’t cold at all, and just behind the location we should move, we found a beautiful park, where the spring seems to have decided to arrive early this year!

The sun was warm and the scent of blossom was all around us. It seems to be living in April, not in the beginning of March!

In these days we are snowed under appointments, meetings, deadlines and much much more, but yesterday we have been able to relax a little, just to recharge our batteries for the week to come!

London is Beautiful!

London MiniBar: a nice place to meet people!

Posted by Carlo - 03/03/07 at 12:03:19 am

After the barcamp, I finally started moving on with some social (and geek) events in London. If some months ago I was quite relaxed in getting used to the life in UK, now my calendar is full of things to do, meeting to follow and beers to share.

This time was the MiniBar, a good place to meet people interested in technology and internet, and a good place for wanna-be-enterpreneurs like me, in order to both understand if my ideas can work and to meet someone who is ready to believe in my vision.

I finally met Ian Delaney (and I realized I’ve always mispronounced his name, Sorry Ian) after having known him by the thing he writes on his blog. It has been a real pleasure… even if I realized once more that I’m not so tall…

This week is over, but the things to do in the days to come are quite full: we have found a new house in which we should move at the end of this month, if everything will go to the right path, and we have to plan thousands of things. And of course this is only before monday, when the new week has already one event booked and other three in the “Maybe” state…

…time…

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Carlo Nicora is at home in London.