I've added functionality to remember the settings of a user in cookies, so that when you return, the choices you made are persisted. These choices include the use of important quotes, the presence of flies and cats on the blog as well as the use of dyslexic fonts! If you are dyslexic you should definitely check that option. The tools are available from both the left side of the blog as well as from the new toolbar (which doesn't seem to appear on tablets).

The toolbar I've added has more options than these tools, including a one button RSS subscription feature, a nice button for sharing the content with your friends, a list of people online on the blog, miscellaneous notifications, as well as a chat! I will try to be present in the chat so that I can answer your questions, but I am not promising anything.

Please tell me what you think of the new features. (especially if you are dyslexic :) )

As part of the blog revamp I've modified the styling and code for the board that displays chess PGNs and added file letters and rank numbers as well as highlighting of the last move. I've also sped up the move animation a little. Hopefully it will be more helpful this way.

Also, I noticed that the link overlay I added for external links was behind the YouTube videos. Thankfully there was a relative simple fix, albeit one that had to be made on each post. On this occasion I've created the new 'video' tag that complements the old 'picture' tag which applies to anything visual, be it video or just images, I've refreshed the videos that were removed, updated all the links to the new YouTube iframe embedding mode.

The tag system is something that evolved organically on this blog, starting with 'programming' and 'misc' (which actually is anything not related to programming) and ending with such ridiculous stuff like the 'picture' tag or the 'essay' and 'personal' tags, for which even I get confused about what they are. Perhaps some day I will reorganize it, but until then (and until Blogger finds a way to remove the restriction that only up to 50 posts can be affected by tag changes) try to remember the main tags on the blog:

• programming - refers to anything related to software development
• misc - unrelated to software development
• software - posts about specific software
• music, movies, books - relating to music, movies and books
• picture - containing embedded images or video
• video - containing embedded video
• administrative - related to this blog

I don't often have time to work on my blog so I took the opportunity of this personal time out to tweak the blog a little bit. Here are the new changes:

• I've added a new way of exploring the links in the posts, meaning that you click on them and a dialog appears and opens the link. It has the advantage that you get to stay on the page, without opening a million tabs. It has the disadvantage of looking a little off and using extra javascript. It only applies to left button clicks, so if you want to open the link in another tab or window, middle click or right click and select your option. This introduced jQuery UI to the blog, so you might have a little more javascript and CSS payload, but taken from the Google CDNs.
• The flies and cats have amused countless visitors, but I've decided to remove them. It streamlines the blog and makes it more accessible. You can still get them if you click on the Tools link "Bring back the animals!"
• Finally, I've removed the blog chat. It didn't work for quite some time and the Plugoo people just didn't offer any support.
• Some extra visual effects on the blog were removed as well.

Again, any suggestion on how you would like to improve the quality of your visits on my blog is very welcome and I am happy to implement all the reasonable requests.

When I first created my blog (oh, almost seven years ago), spam was something that automated software was posting, mindless comments that I can't imagine would inspire anyone to do anything. Cialis, Viagra, cheap fake Rolexes (as opposed to the expensive ones, I guess), pleasing my woman in bed, lasting longer; how could anyone imagine that, wanting all of these, I searched on the net, tried all the options, then still needed more? How much pleasing does my wife need anyway?(I'll have to look into that). Back then, I didn't even have a method to see all the comments for the blog and/or to delete the spam. Or any way to report it. I had to go to each post and remove them manually, even if they were identical texts and any tool could have noticed they were complete clones and, therefore, spam. Anyway CAPTCHAs were and are being used to stop these evil machines from polluting blog posts, yet sometimes they were not enough.

This was the first step in the blog spam evolution: if machines are stopping the spam machines, let's use humans. Getting so low that you need to have to write spam on people's blogs in order to win some money is something I thankfully never experienced or even understood and I hope I never will, but this is what I suppose happened. Some guy was randomly exploring the web, finding blogs that had enough visitors, then writing spammy comments in the hope that the blog master is not active enough to delete them as they are written. I hope I was active enough and, for those annoyed by post spam, I apologize. So, it didn't work too well for spammers on Siderite's blog.

Another mutation and the spam comments were now aimed at soothing my ego. "Thank you!","This info was great!","I am so glad that I read this post.". I felt wonderful the first few seconds before getting a comment email and opening it to see it riddled with links that had no connection to the content of the post. I felt so cheated that I created a javascript code to recognize any comment with the links I found and replace it with words acclaiming my work against spam. Now, THAT soothed my ego a little longer, thank you very much.

One of the feature of Blogger is that someone posts with a URL, their username appears as that link and goes to the person's "blog". So here I was, reading this comment that contained nothing bad, no links, but seemed a little too general. I mean, I know I am great and that my blog is wonderful, but how did other people find that out? I even replied to one or two such comments. My confusion was soon dispelled when going to see who wrote generic posts of praise for me and my blog. Cialis and Viagra were long gone. Instead, I had freemium software packages, trojan scams and fake antivirus packages. I deleted comments like that, even if, for a split second, I had the feeling that the text of the comment was OK and worth preserving. Oh, well.

And here I am, prompted to write this post by the latest wave of mutant spam: comments that are related to the content of the post! They seem very legit, at the limit of being vague. The links from the user name go to a site, but it is not necessarily a spam site. Today, for example, it was a completely free utility to help you play Scrabble. I don't know that it was a Trojan or was filled with ads; it could have been legit, an attempt by some Scrabble enthusiast to make himself known by attaching his web site to the Blogger comments. I always add the link of this blog to my comments elsewhere. I deleted it, anyway, but sometimes I find comments that are so far on the edge of legitimacy, that I don't have the certitude I need to delete them. So, I am pretty convinced that there are still spammy comments on the blog, but so well crafted that I failed to properly detect them.

This also means another thing, that sometimes there are false positives. I apologize to real people who found their comments removed. Try to leave more meaningful messages next time. And yes, it all boils down to that, doesn't it? If you have nothing to say, don't say it! It doesn't help anyone. And I already know the blog is great, tell me in what way it is so wonderful to you. Do tell :)

This is the point I've reached in my war against spam. It is still ongoing and far from over. I wonder when comments that will discuss real philosophical issues will appear, from people that were paid to have meaningful conversations on blogs and link to some site or another. I also wonder when, as people who can actually carry a conversation are expensive, I will find myself have a meaningful conversation with a spam bot.

Finally I have found the chess game viewer I wanted in order to publish my own PGN games in the blog! The name is Chess Tempo PGN Viewer and it is well written, fast, supports annotations and variations and is very configurable. Most of all, it is all Javascript (sorry for the occasional Java prompts. I almost caved in and did what I swore I wouldn't ever do: have Java applets in my blog).

Please tell me if you have issues with the new chess viewer.

I have been reviewing my blog posts for the last few months and I noticed a troubling trend: a lot more social commentary and hobby related stuff than actual tech work. Check out this statistic of posts in the last three months:

• TV and Movie: 5
• Books: 6
• Personal or hobby: 6
• Social commentary: 1
• Tech: 8

8 is marginally more than 6, but split them between misc and programming and you get 18 misc for 10 programming (with some overlapping). And consider that two of the tech posts were attempts to fix something that did not work so well.

What does this mean? Do I not learn new stuff at work? Am I not interested in tech work anymore? Am I working too much and not having time to blog? Well, it is a bit of all. I am interested in tech work, but right now I am fighting to adapt to the new job. I am learning new stuff, but that is mostly office related than new frontiers of programming. And I am a bit tired as well.

I have been thinking of cool tech stuff to share with you at least in this post, but I could find none. I am reading a lot of blogs with new information about stuff ranging from Windows 8, .Net 5, the future of C# and Visual Studio to videos of Vesta, things that verge on proving the dark matter model is wrong and amazing BIOS rootkits, but that is not what I am doing.

So let me summarize the technical state of my work so far:

• Scrum - my workplace uses Scrum as a development practice and invests a lot in maintaining the quality of its implementation. I've learned a lot about the advantages, but also the disadvantages of the practice (there is nothing as annoying as an Outlook alert that you need to do the daily scrum meeting when you are concentrated on a task)
• Visual Basic - as the original application that was bought by my employing company 5 years ago was written in Visual Basic, large portions of it are still VB. That only proves my point that refactoring code should be a priority, not a nice to have option. I wonder how many developing hours, research hours and hair roots could have been saved if the company would have invested in moving the application to a readable and canonical code form. I also wonder if the guy that invented Visual Basic is now burning in hell, as so many devs with whom I've talked about VB seem to want.
• Visual Basic - it just deserves two bullet points, for the bullet reason only at least. Also, try converting C# generic and lambda expression code to Visual Basic. Hilarious!
• Computing power - I am now working on a laptop that has a Quad Core I7 processor, 8Gb of RAM and a Solid State Drive. And I still want it 10 times faster. It seems to me that computing power is only keeping up with the size of the software projects and the complexity of the tools used to develop them, so that the total compile time for a project remains constant. Also, if for some reason the company issues you with a computer powerful enough to break the constant, they also need to enforce drive encryption as to compensate.
• Continuous Integration and Unit Testing - it gives one a good feeling of comfort to know that after "it works on my machine", the source control server can compile, test and run the software successfully (while you are working at something else, no less).
• Software Patterns - there are people who can think and visualize software patterns. They can architect any piece of code and make it really neat. However, it now seems to me that an over-architected software is just as hard to read and follow as a non-architected one. Fortunately for me, my colleagues are more the smart "let's make it work" type

That is about it. No magical silver bullet practices, no amazing software, no technological edge code, just plain software shop work.

When I was a kid, my grandfather taught me to play chess. I did play with him, with my father, with an aunt, with the game Chessmaster on my 386 computer. I was feeling very good at it at the time, even if no one was really teaching me the theory behind the game. Then I suddenly stopped, mainly for lack of people to play with.

But now I have found a new friend with a passion for chess and he reignited my original curiosity about this game. I've started to learn about the different openings, the theory behind them, the principles of chess and the way a person must prepare for really playing the game, end games and famous players and games. I still suck at chess, but at least I am better than most of my acquaintances and I think this is a little more than my usual one minute flames. I really am enjoying the academic side of the game and I believe the discipline required to truly play chess will transpire into other facets of my life, especially programming.

So, my plan is to learn more and share with you my findings. I am creating a new tag, chess, which will mark the entries discussing the game. I still have to learn how to embed chess tables in the entries and to learn enough to feel comfortable sharing my ideas with other people, so bear with me. If you are interested in the subject, please leave me a comment with your view on it.

So far I have looked for chess videos to teach me things. I find them most instructive while I am not yet used to reading a game as text and imagining it in my head (I doubt I ever will). Also a great resource is the game Chessmaster XI, the last version of the game I was playing against as a child. It features three academies, teaching the basics of the game as well as a natural language mentor that can analyse and explain some of the features of a game. Josh Waitzkin, the international Grand Master and the subject of Searching for Bobby Fischer, a fascinating man, is the guy that explains things in the first and most complete academy module. His book, The Art of Learning, seems really interesting and I will review it soon.

As chess resources go I've found these wonderful sites:

• The Chess Website, the site of Kevin Butler, who is a very nice guy.
• Chess Videos TV, where you may find great information in video format, but you must sift through the ones that have either bad audio quality or the presenter is too heavily accented.
• JRobi Chess, where you can find an actual study plan, three daily chess puzzles and an embedded chess game in Java.
• Chess.com is a site with reasonable resources, but it's strong point is the huge chess community and interesting forums. People from all over the world compete against each other and discuss the game

.

There are others, but less important. Bottom line: I am starting to blog about chess, too. I will leave you with a chess story that I really liked. It is about Bobby Fischer, the only American world champion at chess, with a very interesting and dramatic personal story. This one is about a chess opening called The King's Gambit. In 1961, Fischer writes an angry essay against this opening, called A Bust to the King's Gambit, allegedly annoyed by Boris Spassky who defeated him while using this opening. He publishes this article in the American Chess Quarterly, edited by one Larry Evans, also an international chess master. In 1963, Bobby Fischer is playing against Larry Evans, in the U.S. Chess Championship. He starts with the King's Gambit and wins. The moral of the story here, for me, was that chess is something that explodes off the board and into the real life. Competitive chess players mold their game strategy before they start the game, by preparing against the opponent as warriors would do before a battle, by analysing the flaws in previous games, in character, in personal history. In just three moves, Fischer told Evans "I am starting with an inferior opening. That is just how much I think of you!", striking a subtle blow even before starting to play.

Watch the analysis of the game as well, by Kevin Butler. Enjoy!

A user has noticed that in Google Chrome changing the hash of the url adds the address in the browser history. So no more cool ASCII eyes watching you from the address bar.

Also, I was greeted today by a warning (also from Google Chrome) that my blog contains content from www.hillarymason.com and that it is unsafe to open. I've removed that blog from the blog roll list, even if, for what is worth, I don't think that was an "evil blog".

You may have noticed problems with my blog (and others hosted by Blogger) during last week. This was an isolated incident that Google has apologized for and that I feel necessary to also mention and apologize myself. Well, wasn't much I could do except compete with Blogger, but you know me, I'm a nice guy, I wouldn't want to put them out of business or something. So I will continue to use their services.

Bruce Schneier says in his TED talk about security: I tell people "If it's in the news, don't worry about it", 'cause by definition, news is something that almost never happends. It is a great concept, although not completely correct. The switch from one state to another may not happen very often, but you are often worried whether you are in that state or not. But overall I agree and I have to say that it is a great news filter idea: just ignore news that are not about a change in state.

I will be going in vacation this Easter, so I won't be around until the 2nd of May. I apologize beforehand for the spam comments that I usually delete as they appear. Have a nice relaxing Easter holiday! Cause when you return to work, all hell has broken loose :)

As a small joke I've added a new feature to the blog. If you don't see it, it will see you, hee hee! Warning: the eyes are not visible when the pages first load, only if you spend some time reading.

I've noticed a nice feature on news sites: they take important quotes from their articles and highlight them in special boxes in their articles. Helps with the skimming of an article when you don't have the time to read it. I've added the same feature to my blog and I would like to know if you, my readers, find it useful as well.

Ok, I am working on the blog to make it more accessible. I've replaced the template, I made all changes in the template from javascript and CSS, not by editing it and I've removed many of the things clogging the site. Not the cats and flies, though :) The light (low band) version of the site is not working anymore. If you want just the content, you can open the RSS feed.

I would like to know what you are thinking about the new look and I hope I will find the time to write interesting posts.

I haven't been the most present of hosts, but then again, I haven't seen much interest for the collaboration page, with its open chat and whiteboard. Therefore I replaced the link to it with the Plugoo chat. The blog desperately needs some refactoring, but not likely that it will happend soon.