new commenting features...

Been foolin' around with the site today. You'll notice a new permanent feature on the main blog page, under the most recent entry and the rectangular advertisement: a purple box listing the 10 most recent comments. This box will not, alas, update dynamically -- if you post a comment on an entry and then surf right back to the main page, you probably won't see your comment listed immediately. This is a factor of some limitations of my Web host; I'm trying to find a way around it, but for now, it means I'll have to manual rebuild the main page a couple of times per day, and that's when the comments box will get updated. It's an imperfect solution, but better than nothing for the moment.

There's also now a little checkbox near the "preview"/"post" fields for comments -- if you check it, you'll get an email when someone else contributes to the thread. There's a double opt-in feature -- meaning that you'll receive a request to confirm your subscription, which should happen immediately, as long as you use a valid email address. With some comments threads getting quite long, this should be a very useful little tool for those of you who are commenting.

These additions should make it a little easier to keep up with the ongoing conversations that happening here.