You’ll notice that I’m now using TinyURLs for all external links on this site – including those in comments/trackbacks. There is no great sinister plot involved, it’s just that a 24-character TinyURL loads faster than a 75- or 80-character W3C validator link. It also helps for copy-pasting links into your browser’s address bar. For commenters/trackbackers: this is NOT nofollow by the back door, your contributions ARE welcome on this site – Google and other search engines will give the link credit to the page they end up at, not the TinyURL (works the same as all those RedirectPermanent codes I had to write when I switched blogging systems).