Finally. I’ve been working on a new layout for the site for a couple weeks now, and it’s finally ready to roll out. There are still some rough edges that need sanded off, there are a few things I’m not quite happy with, and I still need to go back and readjust some of the old posts to better fit the new layout. But I’ve been holding back some posts until I had the new layout up, so I decided to go ahead with it even if it wasn’t quite finished. Expect the site to continue to change subtly over the coming weeks.

The main goal with the design change was to get rid of the sidebar and widen the main column, so that I could post larger photos without having to play Javascript lightbox tricks. This has been bothering me for a while now; it’s discouraging to work on a photo at full size on my computer and then shrink it down to a tiny 480 pixels wide for web display. I’ve got a few photos in the hopper that I think will benefit from the larger display, so they should be coming soon.

You might need to force your browser to fully refresh the page (ctrl-shift-R in most browsers) in order to get the new layout to fully load. If you see things that are obviously broken or that look wrong on your system please let me know. You might give me a couple weeks though; there are already a few things on my list to fix.  Otherwise, comments and feedback are always welcome!

Sorry for the rather lengthy outage on this page. Here’s the story. As I posted before, I’d been getting an increasing volume of comment spam for a while, and it was getting completely out of hand. To the point where I was getting more emails in my inbox telling me there was new comment spam posted than I was getting normal email spam, or indeed legit emails. And disallowing new comments wasn’t even helping; there was apparently some other vector into the site than the comment box. So I had to do something.

So I took advantage of the opportunity to take the site down for a while, and upgrade to the latest version of WordPress, and do some reorganization behind the scenes while I was at it. Unfortunately it took a lot longer than I expected, since I got quite busy and then went on vacation, and I’m just now getting around to fixing it. Sorry to all three of my faithful readers.

Also, I apologize for breaking any permanent links, bookmarks, and RSS feeds you might have been using. The RSS feed can now be found here, and you can email me if there are previous posts or other stuff that you can’t find. Also if you find broken links let me know.

Also also, I know the new all-white minimalistic theme is something of a departure from the previous look, but it’s just a placeholder that I pulled off the web until I can put something new together. I liked the old one, but it was getting a bit dated and didn’t support the new features in WordPress 2.0. We’ll see if I manage to come up with a replacement in a reasonable timeframe, but I wouldn’t hold my breath…

I’ve been dealing with an outrageous amount of comment spam on this blog lately, despite not updating it very often. So this is just a reminder that I’ve got comment moderation enabled, which means that comments get emailed to me for approval before they show up. After having to log in and remove over 100 spam comments in the past week or so (each of which generates an email in my inbox) I’ve decided to add some words to the blacklist, meaning that if these words appear in your comments they’ll be deleted and I’ll never even see them.

Not to worry though, none of the words on the blacklist show up in legit comments. Anybody looking to discuss ringtones, “swingers” or any of a wide variety of prescription drugs is out of luck, I’m afraid. Everybody else should be fine.

So I’ve been pretty much shirking my bloggerly duties for the past month or so, and I apologize to my regular readers (both of them). In an attempt to rectify this situation for the future, I’ve decided to open up the posting a bit and allow some others to post to the site. So please welcome my first guest poster, who also happens to be my brother…

As Ross pointed out in the comments to my last post, the RIAA has dropped the suit mentioned in my previous post. I’m sure it had everything to do with “an abundance of sensitivity”, and nothing at all to do with the deluge of bad press they were getting…

Anybody who’s been following the various copyright battles over the last few years is aware that the Recording Industry Ass. of America has been on a campaign of extortion litigation against alleged filesharers, where they contact you demanding that you settle for some thousands of dollars, with the threat of taking you to court if you don’t settle. It’s been working pretty well for them, since the cost of going to court to defend yourself would typically be higher than the amount they’re asking in settlement.

Well, it’s been working well if you believe that there’s no such thing as bad press. We’ve seen such gems as the RIAA pursuing a Snoop-Dogg loving grandmother, a 12-year-old girl, and suggesting that students drop out of college to pay their settlements. It’s like they’re actively aspiring to be moustache-twisting silent movie villains, cackling wildly as they evict the helpless heroine and her children from their home.

I think the latest one takes the cake though. When the defendant dies partway through the suit, what do you do? Why, go after the family, of course! To be fair, they magnanimously granted the family sixty whole days to grieve before they haul them in front of the court for the sins of the father. How gracious of them.

It’s unbelievable to me. Even if they’re not sensitive to the demands of common decency, you’d think they’d have some sensitivity to the fact that these cases make the entire recording industry look like a bunch of heartless, money-grubbing middle men. I know every time I see another one of these stories it makes me think twice about buying more CDs and continuing to pump money into the industry that may turn around and sue me for my troubles…