After several years of very little comment spam, I’ve started getting a reasonable amount, particularly on old posts. Going in and manually deleting it is getting to be a bit annoying so I’ve decided to experiment with filtering.

I’m going to start with a very simple solution and make it more and more complex as each level fails (I can see a Bayesian filter in my future).

Right now, all you have to do to comment is type in a generated number which is so ludicrously simple as to nearly not be there. It’s essentially the numerical values for the year, month and day added together; a very low pass filter, I think. Let’s see how that works.

As a bonus for those commenting near midnight, it has a leniency of +1 on the value. If you take longer than a full day to comment, then… well… tough. You can just damn well go back and get a new number.

Someone was asking me not too long ago about the best way to approach an assignment in Computing Science. Well, I’ll tell you, and the same approach works for most decent specification documents for any project in which you’re going to build something. I believe we call this process “engineering” or “design”, but let’s not get hung up on that.

First, get a hard copy of the spec, something you can readily annotate, because the first step is to do exactly that. Comb through the document, word by word, and underline every noun and do a dashed underline of all the verbs connected to those nouns (in a well written spec, this will cover pretty much every verb). Why have we just done this? Well, now you have the basis of the model you’re building. All those nouns represent the things you’re going to need to build, and all the verbs represent all the actions that they perform; in OO-programming, those are your Objects and methods.

For step two, find yourself a pen and some paper. Now draw a circle for all of those nouns and connect them with lines which represent the verbs. Think carefully about this! Which objects should be interacting with each other? What are your verbs actually saying? You should now have a pretty good rough design for a system.

Now, take note, this is only a rough design. We’ve only designed the architecture as a whole, so care still needs to be taken over the implementation of each object and verb (data structures and algorithms). It should, however, give you a decent platform to start from.

Despite all the usual bravado one would expect from the Proctor and Gamble lot, the Gilette M3 Power Nitro (one assumes marketing came up with a name that bad) is surprisingly good. I’m not one to gush about razors (this is a first for me), but it really does make a difference in the number of strokes, which I’m reliably informed means less irritation.

It’s different from it’s big brother, the Mach 3, in that it has a vibrating motor inside. The outcome of using this is that it just glides through the hair. Now previously, it took me a good while to slice through the hair (particularly when trimming my goatee a bit). The downside? Shaving with a brand new blade can be dangerous at the best of times because it tends to be, as one would expect, razor-sharp. With additional vibrations, it tends to go a bit awry. Worth a go, though.

In an extremely tenuous link to the last post, I recently managed to get a hold of an album, “Megaton Shotblast”, by Texan outfit De Facto. Why am I mentioning this? Because they are the band who were more influential in forming prog-rock supremos The Mars Volta than their prior band, At The Drive-In.

Formed as a side project while At The Drive-In were still going strong (that split causing the well-documented Mars Volta/Sparta divide), De Facto make an interesting sound: mixing up dub influences, with jazz, salsa, electronica and the tiniest smattering of prog. The album is the obvious pre-cursor to the long instrumental sections found on both Mars Volta albums (as well as their live shows, where 20 minutes is not too long for a solo), as the vocals are near non-existent.

If you’re a Mars Volta fan, it’s well worth it, but not necessarily if you’re just an At The Drive-In fan; this is self-indulgence at it’s most powerful and worst, if you don’t like lengthy solos.

After hearing two other stories about this and having done it myself before that, it seems like there is a de facto standard for testing hi-fi and home entertainment systems. It’s rather simple:

1. Turn up your equipment as loud as you can, and ramp up the bass.
2. Whack in a copy of the film Swordfish.
3. Enjoy the madness that is the opening “human claymore” scene.

If the ball bearings don’t feel like they’re going past your head and the floor doesn’t rumble enough to upset the neighbours when the car lands, your equipment isn’t good enough.