On the Soapbox

I know I haven't posted in a while. I've been busy and I've had a cold this past week, so I just didn't feel like posting anything, even though I have a growing backlog of things kicking around in my head. Which is why I suppose it's nice that Google Labs released Google Notebook this past week, so I could jot those ideas down on something other than scraps of paper that easily get lost. Actually, I hadn't been doing that for a few months now; I had started using a similar server-based (so it's accessible from any of my systems) post-and-edit note system a couple of months ago, but my system was just a quick hack job that I did and so it was nowhere as good as Google's system.

Speaking of hacking up code, I really should get around to finishing writing version 0.3.0 of my blogging software, especially now that I'm getting more comment spam, which unfortunately means that I'm going to have to add some anti-spam mechanisms to my system. Oh joy.

Oh, and I finally got around to fixing the hinges on my laptop, which had been broken since 2004 (the hinges lost resistance so that screen had to be literally propped up from the back). The downside was that the replacement parts--just a pair of replacement hinges--that I ordered cost me a bloody £25 (the only supplier was located on the wrong side of the pond; and the weak dollar wasn't very helpful), but the upside was that this was my first time disassembling a laptop, and, as such, it was oodles of fun.

Finally, I just want to point to this nice post about net neutrality, which is different from what most people have written about the topic in that it points out the role of the all-you-can-eat cross-subsidization pricing scheme of Internet access these days. I think that this would be a great reason to force net neutrality because it would give the telecoms more pressure to switch to a more sane pricing scheme by preventing them from shifting costs to content suppliers to avoid fixing their bad pricing structure.