Brain on Fire Tim McCormack, distilled.

While Alex was in town for the weekend, we used my camera's intervalometer to record tracks in my gravel driveway. I'm still playing with the images, but I've got a pretty sweet sample uploaded to BoF Labs.

Many sites require email verification to prevent impersonation by spammers (and to ensure that a user can retrieve their password, should they forget it.) Since this practice is a bit of a hassle for the user and does not require any thought on the user's part (sign into email, see registration email, click link), it should be automated. I've written a proposal of how to implement this.

When a GET hits your server, your RESTful webapp should not alter the database. Why not enforce this at the permissions level?

In my quest to bring the features of Livejournal (and other proprietary social networks) to the open, public internet, I'm stuck on how to properly implements friend groups. Friend groups determine which users are allowed to see your more sensitive blog entries. I've pulled together a description of several alternative models, and I'd like some input.

People are getting pissed at SixApart for their stupid modifications to LiveJournal, apparently in the name of cracking down on child porn. (They're doing it wrong.) The problem is that people want to move away from LJ to a decentralized system (such as the way email and web hosting works), but blogging software does not yet generally support locked posts. (Locked posts are blog entries that only selected friends have permission to read.) I'm thinking that OpenID could help with this situation.

Sorry for the disjointed, skimpy post: I just want to get these ideas out there for discussion.