I happened to notice these entries in the logs while looking for something else:

208.85.175.27 - - [16/Dec/2011:07:04:13 +0000] "POST /wp-comments-post.php HTTP/1.0" 500 2367

81.17.23.117 - - [16/Dec/2011:07:04:14 +0000] "POST /wp-comments-post.php HTTP/1.1" 500 2367

194.8.26.147 - - [16/Dec/2011:07:04:15 +0000] "POST /wp-comments-post.php HTTP/1.1" 500 2367

93.187.17.200 - - [16/Dec/2011:07:04:16 +0000] "POST /wp-comments-post.php HTTP/1.1" 500 2367

213.186.122.27 - - [16/Dec/2011:07:04:17 +0000] "POST /wp-comments-post.php HTTP/1.1" 500 2367

It’s highly unlikely that five people would all be making a comment at one second intervals, so I can only assume that it’s some sort of spam network.

And sure enough, these IP addresses appear at regular intervals making similar attempts, all of which fail.

Remember: All spammers must die.

I’ve seen some amazing fireworks shows, particularly at Les Grands Feux du Casino du Lac-Leamy, but I’ve never seen anything like this daytime explosives and smoke show in this YouTube video:

The Singing Driver’s fans respond to his being muzzled by the city:

This photo is  of Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto, which is being covered in chalk as people express their tributes to the late Jack Layton. It’s one of several photos in a Flickr stream by Jackman Chiu.

A tip o’ the hat to Trashy for sending me a link to it.

The last launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery took place a few days ago with the launch of STS-133. There have been a lot of photos and videos of the launch floating around the ‘net, and some of the most impressive were taken by Robonaut-1, a high-altitude balloon launched by Quest for Stars.

The photo in this post is from their photostream on Flickr and shows the exhaust trail left by Discovery as seen from an altitude of 22.8 km (about 74,800′). At that altitude you can see the curvature of the Earth against the darkness of space and the edge of the atmosphere where the blue fades to black.

The second photo is similar, but you can see the end of the exhaust trail where Discovery is punching through the atmosphere into space.

Having chased a couple of high-altitude balloons myself, I could related to the frustration of the searchers when the balloon’s payload returned to Earth and they had to wait until morning to retrieve it.

So, congratulations to the Quest for Stars group on their balloon launch and managing to capture a shuttle launch from the edge of space!

As you’ve probably heard, there was a fairly significant earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. It hit in the middle of the day, so there were a lot more people out and about. Some buildings have collapsed and some deaths have been reported.

There’s a Google App called Person Finder who are either looking for people in Christchurch or have information about people in Christchurch available at http://christchurch-2011.person-finder.appspot.com.

I hope that anyone you know who is in Christchurch is safe and sound.

@DaniGirl retweeted a link to an article about the pitfalls of installing free WordPress themes that you find by searching for them on Google. In a nutshell, the author of the article, Siobhan, found that all but one of the first ten links Google returned pointed at themes that were incredibly dodgey. Most of them used obfuscated code in the theme to insert links and ads that the owner of the blog had no control over.

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