Tracking Comments

Seems like I post on a bunch of topics which causes different people to reply to my posts. For example, I wrote one on Andre Agassi's impending retirment. Someone followed up to that saying she(?) expressed similar sentiments.

By the way, I have to detour a bit to talk about Wimbledon. Right now, no Americans are playing in the singles of either the men or women's draw. Croatian player Mario Ancic got dismissed in straight sets by Federer, but you have to imagine that his biggest match up to this point was the fourth round.

Ancic had been playing a World Cup of sorts himself, defeating Almagro-Sanchez of Spain, Sanguinetti of Spain, Wawrinka of Switzerland, but most importantly, Novak Djokovic. Who? Djokovic is from Serbia/Montenegro. In the post-communist era, Yugoslavia broke up into several countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia. Indeed, the separation of Serbia and Montenegro from one another is really recently, like a month ago.

In any case, Croatians and Serbians didn't get along so well, so one would have to imagine that Ancic had additional incentive to beat Djokovic. In any case, he had been the last guy to beat Federer at Wimbledon, defeating him in the first round in 2002, before falling in the second round. Ancic's a decent player, really, seeded 7th, so it was not surprising he should get this far.

If you want a surprise at Wimbledon, it has to be Jonas Bjorkman. If you follow tennis at all, you ought to know Bjorkman. Long a doubles player, he's one of the few Swedes that have stayed somewhat competitive in the game. Bjorkman was born in 1972, which makes him about 34. He's a little younger than Agassi, and indeed, younger than the group of Swedes that followed Borg (Wilander, Edberg). This is only his second semifinals in a Grand Slam event. Not bad for the old guy. He's expected to lose rather handily to Federer (as is anyone). However, he does play serve and volley, so maybe he can do something.

The key match people are going to look at is Nadal vs. Finnish Nieminen. Nadal has recently been accused, along with the bicyclists at the Tour de France, of doping. It hasn't quite caused a scandal among tennis circles, but it'll be interesting to see what happens. Can Nadal get to the final? It's possible. Clearly grass is Nadal's weakest surface. He's as far as he's ever been at Wimbledon. His opponents are tough, but Nadal may be able to handle them, to set up a dream final between him and Nadal to see if he can knock of Federer on grass.

Ah, but there's a lot of tennis to be played until then.

Anyway, I also received comments on some reviews I'd written. Blogger emails the comments to me, which is nice, but they don't have an interface that makes it easy to track blog comments. I should be able to click on a "Comments" tab, which lists a brief title of the article, plus the comment just added. I should be able to expand to read the full article, as well as all the comments. Right now, I have to hunt and peck to find the comments. It doesn't make sense.

Also, if I'm logged in, I'm not sure I should have to fill out the authentication step (the one where you read the funny characters with a funny background to prevent bots from spamming the site).

Really, this would be a nice improvement.