Over the last few days I got some serious traffic (from stumbleupon.com) landing on on my plausible explanation for why Emma Watson’s boobs look bigger in one version of the poster than another, garnering a few new comments.  Including my favorite comment ever (from someone I don’t know):

Aldrea said:

You all are neglecting to take one fact into consideration on this Hot Emma Watson Boob Analysis

SHE’S NOT EVEN 18 YET, YOU PEDOPHILE FREAKS.

As a result of this rather huge burst of traffic, I had to turn off the thingy that puts little user pictures in the comments. Smoke was coming out of Dreamhost’s server.   Hopefully I can turn it back on at some point, but it’s clear to me now that it is rather inefficiently written, so I may have to think about other options.  I miss seeing all your smiling faces.

Speaking of comments on old posts: I recently switched out the really crappy CAPTCHA spam protection thingy I was using for the much better reCAPTCHA system.  I did this for two reasons:  1) half the time that I tried to use the old one it wouldn’t work, and 2) reCAPTCHA is very, very cool.  Those words it asks you to type in?  Those are robot-scanned from actual books, but are words that the robot was unable to to read on its own. Since those words need to be read by humans, and because I need to make sure you’re a human before you post comments (after a week or so, anyway) reCAPTCHA combines those two problems into one neat solution.  When you have to type in the words it asks, you’re actually helping to digitize books in addition to proving to my blog software that you’re not shilling penis enlargement pills and barnyard pornography.  It’s win/win, really.  So next time you find yourself typing in those words in that little red box (on posts older than a week old), you should feel at least partially as happy that you’re helping robots read books as you are annoyed at having to type them.  Bookless robots thank you.