I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about commenting systems lately (no prizes for guessing why.) It occurs to me that my biggest problem with allowing comments is the vulnerability that it gives the site. By letting others post (in reply to my entries), I allow them the opportunity to inject malicious or malformed code.

To bypass this, I could strip_tags(). But that rather limits the ability of people to express themselves fully; I know I’d hate to have most of my XHTML vocabularly pulled out from underneath me. I could allow a limited textile style pseudo-markup language (which I probably will), but many are set in writing proper HTML.

I’ve settled on my last option: processing comments with various regular expressions (to get rid of the dangerous) and then sending it through Simon Willison’s safe HTML checker class. Playing with it earlier, it works a treat.

Now, I just need to find the time to implement it and the rest of the commenting system.

Now for something a little different: the Wario Ware website is eating my time. To sum it up as a series of 5 second microgames does not do it justice. Each game is a miniworld in itself, devouring time like peasant devours turnip.

The GBA version promises over 200 such games. Oh dear; I’m supposed to be working at some point within the next year.

No funny heading. It doesn’t deserve one. Things I learned whilst watching Legally Blonde 2:

• You can’t will yourself into a coma,
• You really can get away with passing off excrement as art (perhaps a bit strong),
• I really need to trust my instincts when getting dragged to see films: if you think it looks dire before seeing it, chances are you’re right,
• Maxibons are tasty.

Ok, so I’ve known the last one for quite some time, but the rest are true.

Terminator 3 surprised me somewhat. It played the mix of action and comedy perfectly: a lot of the former, a smidgen of the latter. Without taking itself completely seriously, it still did a good job of updating the skynet world.

My biggest problem with it is the changed premise (something that should be avoided in any series) which is unconvincingly explained later, particularly given the reasons for pulling the “happy” ending from T2 (anyone who has the Ultimate Edition DVD can watch it.) It doesn’t get in the way too much, however.

What I enjoyed most was the action sequences. No clever special effects, no highly stylised martial arts, just robots throwing each other around like the brutes they are. Fantastic.

Worth seeing, especially in anticipation for the inevitable T4.

Yes, time for some more random links, from random places… randomly.

The Copyright Cage is a long article about peculiarites in the copyright system, how arbitary it is, and how copyright law is being shifted away from society. Worth slogging through.

Over on Digital Web, Dave Shea is defending Fehrner Image Replacement. It uses powerful examples, way beyond the scope that I’d thought was possible from the technique. This could be something worth playing with some more.

There is an interesting article on Idle Words about the RSS “conflict”, or lack of.

And finally, trained hawks attack a dog. Fun.