mth·ology : a weblog by Matt Hamer
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Jun 11
royal.pingdom.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
dashes.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
teddziuba.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
factoryjoe.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
May 12
princesslasertron.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
Princess Lasertron (I know!) was was my tablemate at the Big Omaha lunch. #
37signals.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
Apr 28
readwriteweb.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
Apr 2
aws.amazon.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
Apr 1
jezebel.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
Mar 25
en.battlestarwiki.org · via My Delicious Bookmarks
Mar 22
factoryjoe.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
Mar 17
Matt Hamer

While using Attribyte to do some research for my next post, I found an article on Real Tech News that looked relevant. Unfortunately, when I clicked through I was presented with this "precondition failed" error page. What an arrogant error response. Because my HTTP request didn’t meet certain vague preconditions I should…

 

  • Scan my computer for viruses, Trojan horses and spyware?
  • Mess around with the settings of my personal firewall?
  • Turn-off or bypass my proxy server?
  • Turn off any download accelerators? (“they actually run slower!”)
  • Switch to Firefox?

 

I should try these things so that I can read a blog post? How much time might someone less tech-savvy waste after seeing this error message - thinking they had been infected with a virus?

 

I’m sure I’m getting these errors because Attribyte’s bot is running behind the same router as my home network. Sure enough. Three of the hourly checks in the past day have failed with the HTTP 412 (Precondition Failed) error. Not all. Three. Why? After a bit of research, I’m pretty sure this message is generated by a PHP plug-in, BadBehavior. It seems to think Attribyte is, well, behaving badly.

 

For the record:

 

  • Attribyte’s bots send an appropriate User-Agent string with all requests.
  • The bots do run behind a caching proxy server – one that is very common. One of the reasons they are behind this proxy is to try to reduce remote server bandwidth.
  • The robots.txt file is checked before requests, but it may be cached for up to 24 hours. Because Attribyte also functions as a personal feed-reader, directives excluding feeds are ignored unless the agent is explicitly excluded. However, entries are not displayed on public pages when the feed is excluded. I think this is fair. Anyway, the RTN robots.txt does not exclude any of the resources that are being requested.
Mar 10
caterina ·  caterina.net
Mar 9
bits.blogs.nytimes.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
Mar 8
twine.com · via My Delicious Bookmarks
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About

I'm Matt Hamer. Mth·ology started as a "home page" and became my personal weblog in 1999. I've been a sporadic blogger, but made a career working with blog-related ventures that include Pyra Labs, the creator of Blogger, Kinja and Gawker Media. I've just started a new company, Attribyte. You can contact me by sending mail to or by AIM at If you are a long lost friend or relative, I'm the Matt Hamer on Facebook. For whimsy, like my 140 character synopsis of La Traviata, follow me on Twitter.

Attribyte

Attribyte's software continuously scans, analyzes and indexes thousands of blogs and news sites. From this stream of content, topic-specific, searchable digests are published with editorial input that ranges from (almost) zero for the flagship site, Attribyte, to quaint human-powered blogs like this one.

Blogroll

These are the sites I follow with Attribyte's feed-reader. As I add sites, Attribyte analyzes their links to discover the most popular entries.

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