Good discussion on linux-elitists bashing broken challenge-response systems (or, to clarify “challenge-response systems, which are by definition broken”). Including an excellent explanation of the problem by Karsten Self.
Incidentally, if you don’t know what the Joe Job is, here’s a good definition.
I’ve decided it’s time to jettison the background image (“wallpaper”) for this weblog. Time to move on to bigger and better things.
I’m actually shopping for new blog software, as I’ve decided I’d rather not be maintaining the software that generates this thing for the rest of my life. And it doesn’t do a very good job at generating good URLs, and the comments feature is broken.
I’ve been experimenting with b2, b2++, WordPress, pyblosxom, and blosxom. So far blosxom seems to be the winner, but I’m open to suggestions. Anyone want to advocate for a particular package? Requirements are free software license (DFSG approved, for example—so no MoveableType) and able to run on a standard GNU/Linux server. I’d also like it to have a good (and sustainable) URL system, permit more than one keyword or topic to be associated with each blog entry, and be an extensible framework where you don’t have to spend a year studying the code before you can write a plug-in.
I’m returning from dinner with an old friend at the Greens, a fantastic San Francisco vegetarian restaurant (strangely, they no longer use their old URL, greensrestaurant.com). It’s been years since I’ve seen this friend, and she’s now a medical doctor, and I’m on the verge of being able to call myself a lawyer. Dinner was her treat, with the excuse that she’s actually finished school.
There’s a certain comfortable pleasure in talking about old things that have become fuzzy and no longer painful. Having been out of college now for substantially longer than I actually spent there, the experience has shrunk down to size and now makes sense. Thinking about taking a job that might last many years seems reasonable in a way that it hasn’t before.
This evening—and really to some extent the past several weeks living here in California—have caused me to realize that, whatever this last transitional life phase was, it’s now over. I’m now “here,” and I know what “here” feels like.
The funny thing about life transitions is you often don’t recognize them until they’re over.
