On the advice of the inestimable jwz, I spent today automating backups to an external drive from the source control system. I figure that that machine will eat its own drives sooner or later, and losing several months’ work would be extremely unpleasant.

The prototype registration frontend is coming along well. Certain people are trying (fairly successfully) to convince me that outsourcing registration and billing is a wise idea; having looked at the fundamental complexity of billing, I’m inclined to agree. Nevertheless we still need a way to create accounts during development and testing that’s more advanced than “INSERT INTO users …”.

Development’s slowed down a bit while I muse over the pieces I need for one of the harder problems. It turns out that allowing something that seemed harmless has compounded the difficulty elsewhere. Dastardly things, these computers, always full of traps for the unwary.