So much for my return to blogging. The problem still is work... last week the number of hours spent at the office was in the triple digits. These things happen now and then. It looks like the pace might be slackening now. Summer was supposed to be a slow period. However, I can take some satisfaction in that I've broken several EU directives on working hours.

My apologies to all for my protracted absence. There's no one major thing that's keeping me from blogging, but rather the confluence of a great many small things, interspersed with more travel and occasional peaks in workload. There's also the matter of getting back into the blogging habit. But this time around I am determined to return. Thank you for your patience.

I have returned. Regular blogging will resume very soon.

Blogging will be more irregular than usual for the coming week or so, as I'm off to various parts of the world once more. This trip includes a return to the wonderful madness of Manhattan; it's been over a year since my last visit. Far too long.

Updates will take place as and when opportunity allows. I wish they'd hurry with in-flight internet access.

I figure most of you here read USS Clueless, so you will have read Steven Den Beste's essay on blogrolling. As one of the lucky few who was on his blogroll until he refreshed it, I've always wanted to do an analysis of the actual benefit of the link. A full analysis will have to wait until more time has passed so I have more data following the removal of this blog from his blogroll.

So I will limit myself to just a short observation now, based on the aggregate statistics without delving into the raw logs. Steven Den Beste argues that having a short blogroll makes any single entry more valuable. That certainly sounds plausible, but ideally I'd like to be able to quantify it by comparing incoming visits from different blogs. Again, a fuller analysis will have to wait, so now I'll just focus on the two extremes: Den Beste and Samizdata. While Den Beste had a very short blogroll, Samizdata's stretches as far as the eye can see, to the horizon and beyond and then wraps itself around the planet a few times. During the month of April I had a total 1052 incoming hits from Den Beste, while I had 64 from Samizdata, which works out at 35 hits/day from Den Beste and 2 hits/day from Samizdata.

The other part of the story is the number of visitors the referring site gets. Den Beste's counter for yesterday stands at 8795. On weekdays he gets more hits. Assuming he gets 10,000 hits a day on average, that means about 0.3% of his visitors clicked through to here. Unfortunately, Samizdata does not have an open counter with access to the history. Its counter currently shows a total of 687,078, so I'll check back in a few weeks to determine an average. I'll also include other referring blogs in the statistics to see whether any relationship can be determined between blogroll length and click-through.

Addressing the concept of stickiness is going to be harder, but with some log-mangling it should be possible to address that as well, or at least give a first-order approximation.

UPDATE: I emailed Steven to inquire about aveage page loads, and he says that he's getting around 15,000 on weekdays and about 10,000 on weekends. So let's say it's 13,500 per day on average that works out to about 0.26% click-through on the blogroll. Of course, these are hits, not unique visitors, but that goes for the Samizdata numbers as well.

I have been tinkering with the blog over the weekend, and have activated categories. They were there right from the start, but I never exposed them on the blog, and a lot of the work was to clean them up and make them more consistent. In the left sidebar, you'll now find the Category Archives. Now you can see all posts relating to, say, Gretta Duisenberg on one page. At the bottom of each blog entry, there are links to all categories for that entry. I am still fine-tuning the category structure to weed out underutilized categories.

There have been many additional cosmetic changes in the archive pages to make the blog look more consistent. For instance, the Monthly and Category archive pages now have a sidebar listing all the entries. The only remaining item is to show secondary categories on the Category Archives, to fix the search results form and to add an "advanced search" option.

There'll be more tinkering, twiddling and tweaking (but no frobnicating) in the coming days, although I will be stuck in London part of the time. I don't think I broke anything with all these changes, but any feedback is welcome.

In the olden days, when I was but a Dilacerator-in-training, I used to revel in the thrill of living on the bleeding edge of technology. Now that I am older, more sedate (and senescent) I know better than to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of anything. With Movable Type arriving at version 2.63 and me stuck at 2.21, I though it was time to upgrade. So I did.

The biggest difference is that I immediately made use of the built-in search function, which you can now see in the left column. I've long wanted to add a search function, but it used to be external MT module, so I never bothered. Since version 2.5 it's been included in the distribution. Other than that, nothing should have changed, although I'll probably tinker with some details over the weekend. I have a full backup, but hopefully that won't be needed. I don't think I'm in danger of destroying anything. Such thoughts have usually been followed by catastrophic data losses in the past.

Time for a shot of Laphroaig Cask Strength. A small one.

It has been an interesting trip to the southern hemisphere. Especially the Chilean pension system proved of interest to me (obsessed as I am with the topic), so I'll write about that a bit more in the near future. Other countries such as Peru and Thailand are looking to the Chilean experiment in privatizing pensions as they try to set up their own funded pension programs. I assume that'll be of more interest than my experiences with drinking Brazilian caipirinhas.

Although I got back in the middle of last week, events have prevented me from blogging until now; I spent most of the weekend trying to work off the huge sleep deficit that has built up over the last two weeks or so. But a more normal pattern of blogging will resume now. I don't think I'll be writing too much about the war, since I missed most of it, being able to gathered only a few minutes of CNN a day while I was away. Besides, other bloggers are covering the war extremely well, and I don't think I can add much at this late stage and knowing so little. I was watching domestic BBC news last night, and it was not so much the bias but the vapdity of the reporting that struck me. John Simpson was being interviewed live by video phone at night, so all you saw was a blog of green on a black background, and he was saying how the US airforce had bombed Iraqi positions with huge bombs. Question from the anchor: "So what effect is that having on the Iraqi troops?"

They were slightly miffed, as it rattled some of their fine china during afternoon tea, and the cucumber sandwiches were somewhat stale too.

What do you think the effects were? Sheesh. It went on like this for a while, so I switched off the news and got caught up on the three episodes of 24 that I taped over the last three weeks.

It's good to be back though.

Yes, I am still alive, although business travel is keeping me from blogging much. My days currently begin with breakfast meetings and end with dinner meetings. Not that I'm complaining, because I do get to see new places I've never been before, such as Santiago de Chile, where I am at the moment getting ready for the next breakfast meeting. I hope to have some time to catch up with blogging over the weekend.

I'll keep this short. It's now been six months since I started to blog, and it's been a fun ride. the blog is a bigger success than I had thought possible. I'm getting several hundred unique site visits a day now, which puts me slightly ahead of the "total unknown" category. So I'd like to thank my readers for visiting this site and for commenting as well; there have been many good comments here. Also thanks to all those who've linked to me and put me on their blogroll. Which reminds me, I need to update mine as well; right now I am still way behind in reading my favorite blogs, but I hope to be able to catch up soon. On Saturday, I'm off to Miami on a business trip (yes, really. Stop the snickering.)

So here's to the next six months! (My celebration consists of some Pez followed by Jack Daniels. Who says I don't know how to party?)

Work is interfering again with my blogging I am sorry to say, so before I can return to expound on fixed income derivatives, you can read up on the wider topic of financial derivatives in general in Warren Buffet's latest comments. He calls derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction." I wouldn't go that far, but then again, I'm no Warren Buffet.

I wish I were.

Before I delve futher into fixed income derivatives, I'd like to take a bit of time and focus on the positive aspects of television. Deriding TV is very common, and I won't deny there's a lot of crap out there. But some people will go even further and agitate actively against TV as a medium, saying that it only makes people stupid and nothing worthwhile ever came of it. Well, they're wrong. Here's a first-hand account why. Yesterday morning I stacked the dishwasher full of plates, glasses and silverware. I closed the dishwasher. It popped open. I closed it again. It popped open again. I could not figure it out. Nothing was sticking out, the latch seemed OK, but it would released as soon as it caught. After half an hour's of futile tinkering, I started to panic. What if I can't get it work? What will happen with the dishes? With the lag times involved in getting an service engineer out here, it could be weeks before I could have clean dishes again. I'd have to buy more dishes in the interim. Disposable dishes? Good heavens! This was serious. And the current set of dishes would sit here until they could be washed again. I needed my dishwasher badly.

How does this relate to television? TV brought me the answer. I knew all those hours of TV watching in my youth would pay off someday, and this was the day. I used to watch MacGyver, and the one central lesson that he brought to America's (and the world's) TV watchers is that you can't have too much duct tape. All problems can be solved with duct tape, including my dishwasher problem. I just taped the door shut and let it run. Clean dishes! Thanks to duct tape, MacGyver and TV.

So there.

From the safe distance of six time zones, I really regret not witnessing the big storm that has hit the northeast firsthand. You see, having grown up in the Netherlands, I've never experienced a foot or more of snow. Sure, I've been skiing and such, but that's different. The climate here in the Netherlands, especially in the western parts of the country, is pretty horrible. It's long been one of my complaints, as it seems that rain and gray skies go on forever. Even on days like today, where we had blue skies, it still feels no different, because the threat of Grayness is always present. At some point in my life I will move to an area that has Real Winters and Real Summers, just so that I can experience the extremes of weather for a change.

Meanwhile, I still haven't managed to readjust completely from the 8 hour time difference between Amsterdam and Colorado. Usually I've been able to bounce right back from such distant travel, but this time I am having great trouble. Perhaps I am getting old. Perhaps I need to sleep more.

As for digging out from the metaphorical snow, I'd just like to apologize to those of you who've sent me email recently; I am working on the backlog. Fortunately, the emails I receive are polite, unlike the vitriol that more popular bloggers seem to receive. I guess the only reason I am not getting hate mail is because my blog is relatively obscure, but I would not be surprised to receive it either. It comes with the territory. Oh well. I do hope Megan will bounce back and continue to blog.

It's only 9 PM, but I am going to bed. Eventually I'll return to the proper time zone. Meanwhile, here's a cool gadget that will soon become a must-have: terahertz cameras, which finally fulfill with old cartoon favorite of X-Ray vision. You can be Superman too! (And you thought those pop-ups for webcams were annoying... wait till you see the advertizing for this one.)

Although I did take a laptop with me on vacation, I actually managed not to use it very much during my stay in Colorado. As an avid blog reader and a blogger myself, it was initially a bit strange to be cut off from the goings-on in the blogosphere, but it was no weirder than being cut off from my Bloomberg terminal and not watching CNBC or Bloomberg TV. In fact, I hardly watched any news at all, and I spent an inordinate amount of time tuned to the Weather Channel. As I had suspected, their longer-term forecasts were pretty bad. Predicting the weather more than a few days out is very, very hard. Those ten-day forecasts you get lose all predictive value after day four or so, unless you live in places like Los Angeles (75 and sunny for the next year) or Amsterdam (55 and rainy for the next year). I did get some weird weather while I was in Vail, starting off with a blizzard as I drove from Denver to Vail on I-70 followed by a veritable heat wave for a day or two. Temperatures hit 55 in Vail village, and Denver was up at almost 75. Fortunately, the weather returned to more winter-like conditions soon after, and there was a nice pack of 6 to 8 inches of fresh snow on Monday. Going out into the back bowls with that kind of snow is a skier's heaven. Especially the wide open expanses in Blue Sky Basin, Siberia Bowl, Mongolia Bowl and Teacup Bowl are great. You get incredible amounts of pristine snow to ski in. Vail may not have the most challenging or steepest slopes, but there's an awful lot of terrain there to explore.

I really wish I could have blogged while I was on the ski lifts. Those times always prove excellent for contemplation and I could have knocked out many a great blog entry. I direct transcription link within my brain would have been great; nanotechnology cannot come soon enough as far as I am concerned. The ideas are not gone, and I will write them up over the next days as I regain a firmer hold on the Central European Timezone. The adjustment from Mountain to CET has proved more difficult than usual this time. Perhaps I am getting old.

Vail is hardly an average Colorado town. Virtually none of the people on the slopes are local. I did meet a few, but the skiers are visitors from all over America, with some local Coloradans mixed in. I must say though that the people in Colorado (and not just in Vail) are extremely friendly. It's so completely unlike Manhattan. Coloradans also drive way too fast in white-out conditions. Since most people are vacationing, the hot topics of the day were kept out of conversations as if by a tacit pact. It's vacation, and we're not going to discuss the war or any other contentious issues. The only time this broke down was the morning when the Columbia was lost. The TV in the breakfast room was tuned to a news channel. What this all means is that I have no great insights into the psyche or disposition of the average vacationer in Vail. I guess it's a good sign people can forget the war at least temporarily. Or perhaps not. It certainly did not feel like there was an air of crisis hanging over the town or slopes.

Since I was utterly exhausted from all the skiing, I did spend more time than usual watching TV. Or, to put it more accurately, flipping through TV channels in a semi-comatose state. The thing that really, really annoyed me were all the food commercials. I had some excellent dinners while I was there, and by the time I was flipping through channels I was usually well-fed. Watching commercials for more food just evoked a gag reflex. I don't want golden crusts, country skillets, feed-3-for-$5 deals, whoppers, dollar menus or generic Tyson Chicken. I JUST HAD DINNER! Aaaargh! (sorry.)

Are there really more food commercials on these days? Or is just me watching more TV this time? And then there's the mysterious channel 76. All it shows, night and day, is an oscilloscope. I forgot (again) to ask what it was, but by the differences in the reading of the oscilloscope, it looks like it's measuring the spectral composition and intensity of incoming radiation. The pattern is very different during the day and night, and also different depending on cloudiness. So it looks like it's on there to show people how much radiation is coming in and what kind of radiation it is. When all your muscles hurt and your brain is shorted out from the wine, it's actually a fascinating channel to watch. (Ah, how easy it is to amuse a nerd: just show him an oscilloscope and he's happy!)

I am still trying to catch up on all the blogging that's been going on while I was in my self-imposed hiatus. This may take a while yet, but I am slowly getting up to speed with things again. (Work is not helping either; I feel like I already need another vacation.) I'm also trying to straighten out all things that I wanted to blog about while I was on the ski lifts. First though I am going to make another attempt to get myself back into the right time zone.

I'm back from a nice skiing trip to the Colorado Rockies, and aside from a sore shoulder, I have survived the entire expedition without any accidents. I got back earlier today, but had to go straight to the office, so I do feel a tad tired. Full-scale blogging will resume tomorrow. During my stay in Colorado I got a lot of snow, a heat wave and icy cold weather up on the mountain. When it's 15 below (in Fahrenheit) and there's a wind blowing, it gets real cold real fast. But that was just one day, and it did not impinge too much on the skiing.

It has certainly been an eventful period. I am amazed at how recklessly the French and the Germans are frittering away the NATO alliance. That NATO would be losing relevance did not come as a big surprise, but still it's astonishing to see the cavalier attitude these two countries are taking to the alliance that has kept them free and prosperous for the last half century. The new Franco-German axis is born of desperation. The Germans are desperate because they've lost any foreign policy clout they had before the last general election, and now that Schröder has become a big loser domestically, he has to try to cling on to some semblance of international respectability. He does not appear to care where he gets his tender loving care from internationally; it's clear he won't get it from the US, so he tries to ingratiate himself with Saddam. The French are desperate too: their entire post World War II policy of trying to counteract Anglo-Saxon power and influence is in complete tatters. America is by far the most powerful nation in the world, and regardless of the merits of America's case, in French eyes there needs to be a countervailing force. Even if this means de facto support for Saddam, that's fine. It's the price one has to pay in terms of Realpolitik. So we have a new Franco-German axis born of different sources of desperation. With Schröder so weak, it's Chirac who can drive the debate within Europe, and what he's trying to do there is to transfer the traditional French paranoia of Anglo-Saxon influence to the European stage. He's setting up a simple litmus test for Good Europeans: you can't be both a Good European and sympathetic to America. The negative self-definition of French identity (i.e. defined by what it is not:American) is being foisted on Europe, or at least, the French are trying. It's not going to fly, as the letter of support by eight European heads of state showed. But it's the big chance for France to cement its vision of a European identity on the wider EU before the new entrants get all sorts of ideas of their own. And that's another reason it's not going work, because this Franco-German Axis is treading on the sensibilities of too many of the smaller countries. They won't suddenly become rabidly pro-American, but I suspect they'll see Franco-German domination within the EU as a bigger threat than anything America might do. France and Germany are painting themselves into a corner here, and getting out of it is going to become harder the more they paint. They'd be well advised to open the windows and the let the paint dry for a while before trying to redecorate again.

The big winner out of all this could be Russia. How? Tune in tomorrow. I'm going to bed now.

It's 4:45 AM and I just got back from the office. Of course, it's partially my own fault that I was there at such ungodly hours, but still, it strongly adds to the thesis that I am seriously deranged. One amazing facet was this working day and night was the video conference. It worked. At the first try. Nor did it disconnect for the entire hour. This is something of a record, as video conferencing my experience is one of those technologies that is not quite there yet. Virtually every video conference I have attended prior to this one resulted in dropped connections if we managed to connect in the first place.

The reason I am running out of time is that at 8 AM my flight leaves. The good news is that I am going on vacation (finally!). The bad news is that I still have to pack. Over the next ten days I'll be doing some serious skiing in the Colorado Rockies, or more precisely, in Vail. I will be taking a laptop with me, but blogging will be very light until I return in a refreshed state and without any broken limbs if possible.

And now I really have to run off to stuff my suitcase.

When I arrived in Milan yesterday, I went into my usual autopilot mode and trundled over to the taxi stand. It turned out that the cab drivers were on strike and no taxis were operating. So there I was, stuck at Malpensa airport. In the end, I managed to get into town by various means, but it took much longer than planned. The strike extended to today as well, making my trek back to Malpensa eventful too. The reason the cab drivers were striking are the plans by the Milan city government to expand the number cab licenses. According to my Italian colleagues, the number of licenses has remained constant since the early 1980's, and the proposed increase is just 10% or so. I find it very hard to have any sympathy with the cab drivers in this instance. It's not like their business is going to be diluted dramatically as the city's economy has grown by much more than 10% in the last 20 or so years. And their protests were not winning them any sympathy from the Milanese either. Yesterday 2,000 cabs drove at walking speed from Linate airport to the center, snarling up traffic in the entire city for hours. Today they repeated the performance from Malpensa airport, also shutting down part of the beltway that encircles Milan. Not only is their cause rather weak (unless there are other facts which I am not aware of, but my cursory reading of Italian newspapers did not mention any), they're also alienating potential local support. Next time I am down there I am not going to be very generous with my tip, and I'll let the driver know why.

I almost forgot, I have to go to Italy today. I'll be back tomorrow night.

I've been having some trouble with my internet connection. The cable modem itself appears to be fine, but I was suffering 80% packet loss at my ISP yesterday. It seems to work normally again today although there are intermittent connection outages. They'd better have it sorted out by tonight.

Attentive readers may have noticed that the bloggin frequency has gone down a bit in the last week or so. Somehow my time has been evaporating around me with countless small things to attend to, as well as the suddenly increased pace of work at work. Certain days I've barely had time to read Instapundit, let alone produce new stuff here, and the list of blog-worthy items keeps on growing. Usually it's a sure sign of terminal decline when messages like this appear, but I will return in full force again soon.

Coming up later today will be a pre-election roundup and guide. Voting starts tomorrow morning.

So I'm finally back home after another mad dash to various cities around Europe, and I can't hear a damn thing. Just in time for this trip I developed cold. When I left, it was just a sore throat, but it duly developed into a wider afflictiong that has now reached my sinuses. It's nothing serious, and I can mostly function normally. Except of course for the fact that this particular trip included several speaking engagements for small audiences. My voice was mostly uncroaked and the frequency of coughs was thankfully low while I was at the lectern, but it was just enough to be annoying. And the spread of the cold to the sinuses has made aeroplane travel very unpleasant indeed. The pressure differences completely clog up my ears and it takes a few hours after landing for it clear up.

It's not entirely true that I can't hear anything. My hearing is just sufficiently impaired so that I can't follow a conversation very well or take phone calls, but it has no problems in picking up screaming children or annoying passengers. There's a corrolary of Murphy's Law in here somewhere.

I also managed to pick up an exchange between the passenger next to me and the stewardess. She asked what he'd like to drink, to which he replied "red wine." So asks, "Would you like the South African or the Chilean?" Unless every KLM passenger memorizes the exact wines they serve, distinguishing them only by country of origin gives very little useful information about the winesl. If it had been a question of Bordeaux or Burgundy it would make sense, or even Tuscany versus Piemonte. Of course, passengers react by furrowing their brow deeply, thinking a bit, and then gravely announcing their decision. "A wise choice, sir."

I need to get some sleep.

Work is keeping from doing much blogging at the moment, and I have a plane to catch fairly shortly. Normal blogging will resume probably late on Wednesday.

I seem to be losing days. Or living them twice, I'm not quite sure. For most of the day today, I was under the firm impression that it was Wedneday. This even went so far that while I was staring at one of my screens and saw the US unemployment data roll in, I actually thought to myself, "that's weird, unemployment claims on a Wednesday." Then I immediately rationalized it away by reminding myself that last week had some holidays in it, and who knows that they do the data release schedules. Jeeeez. It was not until 5 PM or so when one of my colleagues managed to convince me that it was actually a Thursday. That'll teach me to leave my Palm Pilot at home. Apparently I've come to the stage where I can't even keep the days of the week straight. At least it was a positive surprise. It could have been Tuesday.

It's been a long day, which started off with a conference call I had all but forgotten about and ended with a slight panic in our Tokyo office that was instigated by overzealous legal & compliance officers. That actually was rather amusing given the fact that it was much ado about nothing (it's a long story) and it still kept several people up until 2 AM Tokyo time. I had actually been hoping that the pre-Christmas lull in business would have started to set it by now, but somehow work just keeps piling up, which means I actually have to do things at work, for many hours on end.

In any case, I am not going to be blogging much today; instead, I'll try to vanquish the last vestiges of the cold that has been pestering me for some days now. So I'll stick to some short notes. As many of you will already know, Lileks has another brilliant screed up. Aside from the brilliance of his writing (when I grow up I want to be a Lileks - except it would have happened by now, so I'm not counting on it), there's a seredipitous typo: seculiar. I think that it should be elevated to neologism status. "Have you seen that seculiar interpretation of the Mahabharata?"

Meanwhile, for those interested in matters Dutch, I refer you to fellow Netherblogger Michiel Visser who has a lot of good stuff on the Pim Fortuyn investigation. On a slightly different tack, there's a great post on "Guns and Freedom" at Rachel Lucas's blog. While there are things in Bill Whittle's comments that can be quibbled with, it's a fantastic piece of writing. The comments also contain some vitriol from people who should be applauding this article; then again, morons who refer to Lincoln as "Abraham Lenin" are seriously unhinged. Beyond that, they only serve to perpetuate the left-wing stereotype of us who support gun-rights as dangerous nuts. It appears that guy is not even a troll.

Anyways, more regular blogging will resume when I have refilled my reservoirs of sleep, probably tomorrow (unless work intervenes again).

I'm on a ridiculously early flight to Italy tomorrow morning, and I won't be back till Thursday. This means blogging will resume around the time of my return.

I'm traveling to Germany tomorrow, and that will mean no blogging. I'll be in the state of Lower Saxony as it happens, so perhaps I'll be able to pick up on the mood in Schröder's home state. Thanksgiving in a German hotel. I wonder whether they'll have turkey on the menu.

How often is it that you arrive in London from Italy and are thankful for better weather? I just got here from Milan, where it's been raining for days on end. Serious flooding conditions are beginning to prevail. Over here, it's actually dry. Amazing. On my flight out of Amsterdam this morning I without getting my ID checked. The Italians were more assiduous in checking my credentials upon departure. The most thorough security check I've had recently was upon departure from Dulles last Sunday. They were taking the display of security quite seriously and they were even timing how long it took people to move through. The security guard actually made some conversation with my about my digital camera (pictures of the Giant Parking Chickens of Dulles to follow), which is a dangerous thing to do with someone with a nerdly past. I wonder how they deal with passengers who don't speak English though. I did enjoy how the guy in line in front of me, who was flying Saudi Airlines, was stopped at the metal detector by a female guard. I guess it was not done on purpose, but he did not seem very happy.

Time for dinner.

Due to various commitments and travel, the blogging schedule will be highly irregular for the next days although updates will continue on most days. A semblance of normal service should resume shortly though. There's quite a backlog of material that I want to post but I need to find the time first. Thank you for your patience.

Looks like the blog is accessible again. The connectivity problems were caused by failures on the name servers at Hosting Matters. The problems seem to have been fixed.

It's good to be back.

I'm off to Rome in a few hours, and will be back tomorrow. It's unlikely there'll be much blogging in the interim.

I have just returned from a weekend in Brussels, so blogging will resume shortly. Contrary to my earlier plans, I never had the time to post an appropriate warning to the blog about the forthcoming bloglessness, nor was the business center in my Brussels hotel open when I had time to blog. I knew I should have taken that laptop... Normal service will resume shortly.

A small administrative note: I've reduced the size of this page by having it show only the entries from the last 7 days. Previously it had been set at 14 days, but as blog entries have become bigger, this page had ballooned to almost 200K in size. This should speed up your page loads.

The monthly archives are still available in the left sidebar.

I'm off to London in a few hours, and will be there until Tuesday. So do not expect much blogging in the interim. I'll try to unglue myself from my computer after reading this cautionary tale.

I am back, hale and hearty (well, hale at least, to some extent...). In the comments below, Gunnar alerted me to the fact that long comments seem to get chopped off arbitrarily and without warning. I am looking into this, but for now the bug still exists. My apologies.

UPDATE: I don't seem to be able to duplicate the problem. I've posted some really long comments (and deleted them again) as a test, but it seems to work fine. I'll keep testing.

These announcements seem to come with depressing regularity now, but I'm off to sunny Italy again tomorrow. At least I hope it's sunny. I could use a respite from the rain here. In any case, blogging will be light to non-existent for a day or two.

It is quarter past six on Monday morning, and I just got back from the office. I also have a flight to catch in a bit, and won't be back till tomorrow. So blogging will on the light side of normal.

You may ask yourself it is that I find myself coming back from the office at this time of day. It is all due to my uncanny ability to procrastinate coupled with the fact that I am nocturnal. Usually I cannot indulge in my nocturnal lifestyle, as most meetings and business is conducted during daylight hours, but occassionally working through the night is a welcome relief, and my productivity is much higher. It also helps there are no phone calls to interrupt my thoughts and I can actually concentrate on work. This was one of those nights. A bit of deadline pressure also helps to focus. At times like these I truly wonder how much work I could get done if it weren't for the constant distractions of a normal working day. The problem there is that many of the distractions are functional and work-related, so they are not a complete waste of time.

Today won't be too bad though. I napped yesterday afternoon as part of the grand plan. And I can sleep on the plane in a bit... that'll give me enough rest to survive the lunch and meetings that will follow. I could, of course, have started to work in the afternoon, but that seldom produces the right kinds of results.

Procrastination is a wonderful thing. I do think I need more practice though. Ideally, I'd prefer to do everything at the last minute. Either that, or not to have to sleep at all. That would give me twice as much conscious time not to do things until I can't avoid doing them anymore. Procrastinating at this level is not easy. You may think there's nothing to it watching procrastinators performing on TV, but let me tell you, there is a lot of skill involved. If you just set out to procrastinate without giving it any thought at the last minute, you'll likely find yourself way past your deadline. The ideal act of procrastination lets you finish whatever needs to be done just in time for a small victory lap before hitting the send/print/save button.

Back to my verbs. I should have looked at them last week.

When you install your standard Blog Package, you also get the Vanity Add-On, which results in too many hours of cross-sectional analyses of the web server log files. Somebody ended up finding this web site through Google, looking for the keywords "12 year old sex." Great. Now I've got perverts looking for child pornography coming here because of this story I posted some time ago. This is really sick. And somewhat disturbing. At least I have the IP numbers lof the deviants logged.

Brrrrr.

It's not as though I can do anything with it, as there has obviously been no crime committed, at least as long as this site remains legal. So I am not going to do anything with it. But still... Hm. Yuck.

OK, yet more tinkering later, I think I am now sufficiently worn out to call it a day. I am more or less happy with the way the blog looks, so this is going to be it for a while.

This is really weird. Now that I am using tables, the page almost renders correctly in Netscape 4.x, except that the top logo does not appear. It's the first table that's missing.... very strange...

I've spent many an hour trying to get the css-driven layout to work, but to no avail. Despite the helpful links provided on the forum, I could not get this page to look right with css under Chimera, the OS X browser with the Gecko rendering engine. It did work with OmniWeb and IE, but not having Chimera rendering properly was a deal breaker. It is the engine used in Mozilla and the new Netscape, so I could not very well have it broken. Oh well. So it's now slightly table-driven, with a very simple structure. Not as ideologically satisfying as pure css, but it works for me.

I just noticed that I can't select any text in the blog body. The selection goes to the right. Very peculiar.

Designing a site like this is more work than I had thought. Especially if one's browser decides to act up, making one think that one's changes are not having any effect. Oh well. I seem to be making some progress, but it is slow. I still wonder whether to go to a table-driven layout though. It seems to be the thing to do... and I have not gotten this page to render well in OmniWeb. Hm. And I'm not happy with the font sizes either. So much to do, so little time...

Now I get it. It's the float:left combined with the width:60% in the content ID that makes it work the way it does. Clever. Now I have to figure out whether I want to build on this, or use my own stuff. Since I don't know much about HTML or CSS, it is tempting just to start with this, but I'm afraid it's going to be too Dr. Weevil-y. Oh well... let's see...

Well, it seems to work now, but I am still completely baffled by how the HTML and the CSS works. Most baffling is how the calendar ends up on the right of the page, when there is no table to tell it to do so. I guess I'll have to spend more time learning CSS, because this is very confusing indeed. Perhaps a longer blog entry will clarify things...