Public Service Announcement

Micael Froomkin left a comment:

How nice to see my favorite under-appreciated blogger turn up at one of my favorite appreciated sites.

Now if you could only get them to spill the beans on how they implemented that anti-spam measure in the comments box?”

Like hell we are. Yes, we get mentions in Foreign Affairs and award nominations, yadayada, but we have like 800 (sitemeter defined) visits a day. And we’re one of the best damn blogs there is! That’s underappreciated.

…that’s not what I was gonna write about at all. Um. Well.

The anti-spam hack we use was written by Stefan Geens. It’s pretty easy to implement and seems to be quite effective. Instructions here. (Don’t miss the updates to the post if you want MT Blacklist or MT 3.x compatibility.)

On another note, several of you have said you miss Edward Hugh. Edward has much better things to do than blogging right now, but he thinks he’ll come back around easter.

Pin the capital on the country

It’s in German, but the idea behind this game should be obvious to everyone – it gives you a capital city and you have to ‘throw’ a dart to hit its location on the map. I was closest to the centre of Lisbon (just 18km out, which is effectively a direct hit, given the scale of the map) and a slightly embarrassing 406km away from Moscow. (found via The Ex-Communicator)

Brass Crescent Awards from alt.muslim

In addition to our own European blog awards, I note that via Crooked Timber (and in turn from The Head Heeb) the people at alt.muslim are taking votes for the First Annual Brass Crescent Awards. This selection of blogs and posts on Islam or by Muslims offers some much needed diversity in the discussion of Islam-related topics. Several blogs from our blogroll have been nominated under various headings (primarily Best Non-Muslim Blog), including Abu Aardvark, The Head Heeb, Amygdala and Informed Comment. One Fistful of Euros post (full disclosure: by me) has also been nominated in the Best Post category. It seems a little strange to be classed as part of the “Islamsphere”, but it’s not a badge I’m bothered to wear.

By all means, go over to alt.muslim and take a look at the nominated posts. Getting some sense of the breadth of Islamic opinion and of the perceptions of Muslims is something I would consider near to a civic duty these days, and I think they have assembled an excellent collect for those interested in doing so.