OK, well that solves that one. People do spam your referrer logs. Enter one .htaccess file, stage left. Maybe a robots.txt file will help in the future, but locking it down will instantly stop the requests they were making too, so no more problem.

Amazing what they think of these days.

Referrer Spam - Why you shouldn't publish your Web logs - Best Practices Search Engine Forums

I've been evaluating a PHP/MySQL program called Booby for my own use. Styled as a 'Personal Information Manager', it stores bookmarks, contacts, calender entries, news feeds, to do lists, notes and more. Its released under the GNU GPL, and is actively developed, meaning that this could well be the answer to all my searching!

It comes pretty close to being what I want, so I've settled down into a little hacking to add my own bits in.

I've written a crude patch to handle parsing of HTML files full of links into the bookmarks table, which takes care of the chore of creating bookmarks from my links page, and now I'm working on an import/export routine for MS Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird contacts. I hope to create a full synchronization routine eventually, allowing me to easily access my data from my favourite email client at home, and the dross they force on us at work! (No points for guessing which is which!)

On the list of future plans for Booby hacks is:

1. Contacts Sync with MS Outlook and Thunderbird.
2. Layout changes to Dashboard, probably as a new theme.
3. Database backup and replication.
4. Contacts Sync with SyncML devices, like my mobile phone.
5. Email.
6. Calander Sync with MS Outlook and maybe Mozilla Sunbird.

Booby - A multithingy something

As part of the contacts sync bit, I've been deciphering the CSV export formats for the different programs.

Here's the format for Mozilla Thunderbird:
First Name,Last Name,Display Name,Nick Name,email1,email2,Work Phone,Home Phone,Fax,Pager,Mobile,Home Address1,Home Address2,Home City,Home State,Home ZIP,Home Country,Work Address1,Work Address2,Work City,Work State,Work ZIP,Work Country,Work Title,Work Department,Work Organisation,Work Website,Home Webpage,,,,Custom 1,Custom 2,Custom 3,Custom 4,Notes,

I don't know what the missing gaps are, if anyone does, please let me know.

Here's the format for Outlook:

"Title","First Name","Middle Name","Last Name","Suffix","Company","Department","Job Title","Business Street","Business Street 2","Business Street 3","Business City","Business State","Business Postal Code","Business Country","Home Street","Home Street 2","Home Street 3","Home City","Home State","Home Postal Code","Home Country","Other Street","Other Street 2","Other Street 3","Other City","Other State","Other Postal Code","Other Country","Assistant's Phone","Business Fax","Business Phone","Business Phone 2","Callback","Car Phone","Company Main Phone","Home Fax","Home Phone","Home Phone 2","ISDN","Mobile Phone","Other Fax","Other Phone","Pager","Primary Phone","Radio Phone","TTY/TDD Phone","Telex","Account","Anniversary","Assistant's Name","Billing Information","Birthday","Categories","Children","Directory Server","E-mail Address","E-mail Display Name","E-mail 2 Address","E-mail 2 Display Name","E-mail 3 Address","E-mail 3 Display Name","Gender","Government ID Number","Hobby","Initials","Internet Free Busy","Keywords","Language","Location","Manager's Name","Mileage","Notes","Office Location","Organizational ID Number","PO Box","Priority","Private","Profession","Referred By","Sensitivity","Spouse","User 1","User 2","User 3","User 4","Web Page"

Note MS Outlook has each entry in quotes.

I wonder what's been going on with my website in the last month? Regular requests are way down, but some clown at ah1-p4id-56.advancedhosters.com has requested one of my stats pages nearly 9000 times, and filled the referrer logs with links to porn sites. Is this some kind of pagerank spam?

Usage Statistics for thedruid.co.uk - October 2004