Assorted Changes to Slashdot

Ah yes the fun of debugging.. you might have noticed strange behavior today, but hopefully its all fixed now. Most of the changes were fixes of longstanding bugs, but I added one new feature that might matter to some of you: "Max Comment Size" is a limit for (surprise!) the size of comments. If a comment exceeds that size, it is truncated and you can click a link to read the rest. Sidesteps several of the more childish system abuses quite nicely. SQL optimizations and a new version of mysql will hopefully speed stuff up. I've also been slowly but surely fixing the bug where you get logged out when you visit 'Ask Slashdot' or the Book Reviews pages. Lots of other backend changes that won't matter much to anyone. Oh, and the Geeks in Space section demonstrates some of the new custom section code. I can redefine colors on a section-by-section basis. No big deal right now, but as we bring new sections online, it'll add some variety. CowboyNeal also reports that we now have Slashboxes for PDA Buzz, and Jack Stowage's Useful Links. Now methinks its time to microwave a pizza and have a nice glass of whiskey.