we haven’t had much of a problem with comment spam here on thraxil.org. there have been a couple half-assed attempts but nothing like the 500 attempts at a time several times a week that i’ve seen at other sites like mfr and pretty much any popular movable type or wordpress powered blog with open comments is likely to see.

what we have had a bit of a problem with ever since i opened up comments is with… well… bored idiots. i delete them when i spot them, but there seems to be a surprisingly large population out there of people who land on thraxil via some google search or another and see the comment box as an open invitation to spew their garbage all over us. thraxil used to be a little island of intelligent discussion on the web and i’d like it to get back to that. garbage piling up everywhere doesn’t make for that kind of environment; it just attracts cockroaches and rats.

so i’ve made it a little harder to litter here. now, when you post a comment, it will ask you a very simple question which you will have to answer correctly for your comment to go up. anyone who’s been here a while will already know the answer. anyone new who really wants to contribute should be able to figure out the answer without much effort. but it’s some effort, and that should hopefully be enough to keep out the trash. if it proves to be too easy, i’ll raise the bar even higher. you’ll only be asked the question the first time you post from a particular browser, after that it will remember you and everything will work just like it used to.

(i don’t expect this to really block any comment spam; thraxil’s relative obscurity and the fact that it’s not built on a common weblog engine do more to prevent spam than any code i could write. )

i guess i should mention that music (for robots) didn’t win the PLUG award. Pitchfork Media beat us :(

we weren’t really surprised. after all, pitchfork (and the other sites nominated) actually have things like… a staff… and a budget. mfr has a free copy of MT, some donated bandwidth, and the spare time of a couple music geeks. seriously, we were incredibly surprised and honored just to be nominated for the same award. hell, we were nominated for an award on the same page as artists like Tom Waits and Nick Cave. Nick Cave was nominated for a PLUG award and lost too! company doesn’t get much better than that.

we did get free VIP passes to the PLUG awards ceremony in new york last week which was pretty cool. much cooler than the grammies. i have pictures up (including our celebratory pre-awards dinner at our favorite japanese place). we didn’t really meet anyone famous (Christina Ricci’s on the PLUG advisory board so i had my hopes up), but getting to watch from the VIP lounge as Dillinger Escape Plan terrified a hall full of hipsters was pretty sweet. (go see DEP if you ever get a chance. they were nominated for the ‘live act of the year’ award for good reason)

For some time-wasting Michael Jackson Humor:

<p>http://www.cagle.com/news/MichaelJacksonTrial/main.asp</p>

<p>I wonder how much time MJ spends in <span class="caps">AOL</span> chat rooms :-)</p> 

MTV (and MTV2 + MTVU) is currently airing a short piece that features music (for robots). it’s one of those hourly news break things that they’ll repeat over and over again for a few days. i haven’t actually seen it yet, but i heard that it first ran during TRL (hah!).

the story is mostly about this kid in one of jP’s classes and his band who are getting famous because of the exposure we gave them on the site.

last week they interviewed jP, blair and myself. the interview lasted about an hour. the piece was supposed to be edited down to a 2 minute segment of which we would be a small part. unfortunately, because of the presidential inauguration, they had to edit it down even further to 1 minute. as a result, jP was the only one of us that actually had any time on screen (and only a few seconds).

still, between this and being nominated for a PLUG award, we’re pretty damn surprised at all the attention we’ve been getting.

now it remains to be seen whether the site will manage to hold up to the increased traffic.

thraxil’s engine now supports the nofollow anti comment spam technique.

yeah, we haven’t really gotten any comment spam on here yet, but i prefer to remain proactive.

enjoy.

buyblue.com lists a bunch of companies and which political parties they contribute to.

it actually crossed my mind a couple weeks ago to build a very similar site. since elections are won by the party with the most money. actual votes don’t seem to matter in comparison. it was going to be a “who you really voted for” calculator. you would enter in estimates of how much money you spent with certain companies over the last month or so and it would weigh those numbers based on the amount and percentage that those companies donated to the parties and tell you who you actually voted for with your purchases. these guys beat me to the general idea, but it might still be worth building the calculator just for fun.

the buyblue site also seems focused on holiday gift purchasing so they miss some of the big ones like tobacco companies.

update: Choose The Blue has a more complete list, but still no calculator.

released a new version of cgi_app today.

new features include support for simpleTAL templates, a more pythonic approach to mapping runmodes to methods, and smoother mod_python support. see the release notes for more details.

we‘re looking to hire a new junior programmer.

if you’re a good web backend programmer and you want to work next to me, apply now. we have applications deployed using: python, perl, java, zope, plone, mod_perl, tomcat, postgresql, oracle, db2 (but we’re moving away from it), wxPython, Flash. having some familiarity with a subset of those would be a good start.

it’s academia so the pay isn’t quite what you would see for the equivalent position in the private sector, but it’s enough to live on comfortably in manhattan plus the benefits are good, you get to take free classes at Columbia, and you get to work with a very cool bunch of people in a pretty laid back environment working on software to help educate the next generation (not just to make some rich guys even richer like some industries).

I’m not really about to go into it now. I’m at my parents’, and am about to go to my bro’s, but you MSSM guys will smile at this thought…. Jesse Anderson, Dave Lydon, and Jeff Spencer running into one another all at once from seperate directions in a bar/club called “Bubba’s.” Then… of all things…. Jesse dancing to 80’s music, Jeff Spencer’s girlfriend (Nadine) talking about how Jeff almost made state representative last year, and Dave Lydon… well shit… being Dave. I just sat back and watched the three, mostly Jesse getting jiggy with it on a disco-style flashing dance flor – his twisted/braided up beard and all. What a god time. Hey Anders… we should make something explode when you come home for Xmas!

the trees here are really something else. parts of the woods here give new meaning to cathedral, and when the fog rolls in over the lowlands on a misty night the scenery is perfectly creepy. being around the massive tulip trees and oaks has rekindled a long-standing interest in arboriculture, and to my great delight, i finally met an arborist willing to show me the ropes. (pun intended.)

enter last sunday: my first day in training. basically this involved ground work in all its various forms, but with perks. sure there was some clearing of detritus and hand-saw type removal of lower branches, but there was also fun with a chainsaw. i’d never used a chainsaw before, but sunday was a day of firsts. stumps require a great deal more skill and subtlty than logs, i discovered, but chainsaws are really just satisfying tools. i also have to admit a strange sense of pleasure associated with the scent of mixed gasoline, which i smelled like for the rest of the day, and that may have had something to do with said satisfaction.

after the chainsaw came knot tying. the clove hitch, the slip clove hitch, the bowline, the monkey’s fist, the “if you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot” school of thinking–the list is endless. and the fun you can have with knots! picture a 20 foot tall rotten tree hull. picture tying a rope around it, and then around another tree 30 feet away, and holding tension on the rope while the guy who knows what he’s doing with the chainsaw goes and cuts just enough of the tree so that you can then with some effort pull it over in the direction you want it to fall. lots of noise, yes, and splintering tree bits everywhere. and there’s so much more about knots–the physics in rope tying, mnemonics with the rabbit in the hole running around the tree…

…but then there’s tree climbing. this was the highlight of the day, bar none. it’s hard to beat chainsaws and splintering trees, but playing tarzan was bliss. climbing the branchless split trunk of a 15 foot diameter tree was not quite bliss, but the effort really was half the fun. the climbing part deserves description simply because it involved caribiners, a harness, and lots of neat bits. and knots. ascending a tree using a harness involves essentially “sitting” as if a chair were placed horizontally out from the trunk and then thrusting the hips up in what is supposed to be a series of fluid motions while continuously sliding a holding knot up a standing rope. if one is not strong enough to hold onto the upper ropes however, one does not feel very fluid because stopping every five thrusts to rest tired arms is a hindrance. to climb roughly 20 feet in the air ended up being a fair amount of effort, but it was so worth it to swing from one trunk to a branch on the other trunk. the best though was letting go completely and swinging out from the trunk like a monkey on a vine. it’s always a good idea to have someone holding the other end of the rope at this point, however. otherwise you smash into the trunk, no thanks to gravity. fortunately that didn’t happen, and as i sat there suspended and swinging, the (absence of thought)/bliss was really remarkable.

reading back through the archives, i’m really glad to see the log of posts hovering around the intuition/sensibility theme…it’s kind of like discovering (for myself) other people’s joy. well, some of it anyway.