Louise and I went to St Petersburg. It was pretty interesting to see what Russia is like these days, pounded by Tsars and communists, and finally starting to get some freedom, though of a limited sort. They love Putin, he’s increased salaries by 10x on average. I took some pictures.

I’ve also started using Intense Debate, a 3rd party comment system which allows OpenID and should prevent spam a bit more. I may not stick with it, but I’ve been trying to find time to build an OpenID-powered comments system for a year now and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon! This is an excellent stop-gap.