I finally got around today to making some minor tweaks to the site; I changed the front page a bit, to make it clear that most content is here in the blog and not anywhere else, and I monkeyed around with the CSS that’s behind the scenes a little, to try and make the site look less ugly on mobile browsers.

Unfortunately it’s still pretty ugly on mobiles, and I should really do a lot more, but that would involve digging into the blog templates that I haven’t looked at in a couple of years, and that just seems a bit too much like work for a hobby project that I’m pretty sure nobody reads anyway. So for now, it is what it is.

Eventually I may stick a “Contact Me” link on the main index page, if I ever get around to putting together a decent webform that won’t get me spammed, allow others to use it to send spam, or be too onerous for casual drive-bys to use. What I’m thinking of is something that automatically encrypts messages sent via the form to me, using my PGP public key; that would make it pretty useless for most kinds of spam, as well as giving it some security (if the encryption were done in JavaScript, on the client side). Maybe sometime later this month or next, if work is slow.

If anyone happens to notice any bugs in the CSS, please let me know by posting a comment below; I have tried to test it on a few browsers (and it’s pretty dead simple to boot), but I’ve heard IE has some strange bugs in its CSS rendering that can make even simple layouts barf.

I just finished reading an email from one of the sysops here on the SDF (the system this website is hosted on, among many other more important things) announcing that the SDF’s original hardware has found a new home at the Museum of Communications in Seattle, Washington.

I’d never heard of the museum before, but it seems like a very cool place and it’s definitely on my list for the next time I’m on that coast with a Tuesday (it’s only open on Tuesdays) to spare. Aside from the SDF hardware — an AT&T 3B2 — they also seem to have a huge variety of telephone and telecommunications-related equipment, spanning decades.

Their collection of central office equipment is perhaps the most impressive, especially because they are — at least according to the web site — all operational. (Since the organization behind the museum is composed at least in large part of ex-telecom workers, this is not as hard to believe as it might otherwise be.) Check out all the Strowger switches! And as a bonus, the museum is located entirely inside a working switching center — probably one of the only times you’ll ever set foot in one. (The modern digital switches are not on display.)

Unfortunately, I probably won’t be making it out to Seattle any time soon, but I’m glad to see this sort of history being preserved so competently.