The original purpose of this here web journal was to force me to write something at least once a week, that I could go head to head with my writer's block. The only way I can do this is by believing that nobody will read what I write. At the same time, I have to put the URL in my email signature and various other places because there's no reason to spend all this time writing all this unless someone can read it, right? That contradiction finally came together at Christmas when my sister got me a daily Sudoku calendar—I said, "that's funny, I just started doing Sudoku"; she replied, "I know, I read your blog." After a quick panic, I thought, "it's not a blog!" and then, "oh crap, I can't pretend no one reads this any more."

Where am I going with this? Comments. I didn't code up a comments system because, well, it's easier not to, but also because the comment spammers always find them. I had a simple "post a message" script running on the opaque.net front page and it soon enough filled up with links to Chinese portal sites even though it was totally custom and Google didn't even index the links. Way to go, link spammer! You've annoyed me at no benefit to yourself! (I'd go off on a tangent about zero-sum thinking here, but.. meh.)

Maybe I really want comments. It's hard to see Cabel puts up his BLOGLOL and get twenty comments in an hour telling him how great he is. Just because it's true doesn't mean I can't be jealous. To date I've avoided checking referers and counting hits, and I aim to keep it that way. But, well.. I could fix the spam problem by holding new comments and whitelisting by IP address. I don't really expect or want high praise, but maybe it will add value to what I write here (value to me—remember, nobody actually reads this) to have comments.

Comments?

Ha!