Is const-correctness paranoia good?

Yes, definitely. Lets see this simple example:

$ cat test.cpp
int test(int x) {
 if (x = 1)
  return 42;
 else
  return 0;
}
$ g++ -c test.cpp
$ g++ -c -Wall test.cpp
int test(int x) {
 if (x = 1)
  return 42;
 else
  return 0;
}

Only when we turn on warnings, compiler tell us about a possible error. Making the parameter const shows us error:

$ cat test2.cpp
int test(int x) {
 if (x = 1)
  return 42;
 else
  return 0;
}
$ g++ -c test.cpp
test2.cpp: In function ‘int test(int)’:
test2.cpp:2:8: error: assignment of read-only parameter ‘x’
  if (x = 1)
        ^

All input parameters should be const, all write-once variables serving as a parameters for some computations should be also const.

Quick and dirty ad-hoc git hosting

Recently I needed to synchronize my local repository with a remote machine, just for full backup. It's really simple if you have standard Linux tools (Cygwin works too, of course).

1. in a working directory run:

$ pwd
/home/foo/project
$ git update-server-info

2. in a parent directory start HTTP server:

$ cd ..
$ pwd
/home/foo
$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ...

3. on a remote machine clone/pull/whatever:

$ git clone http://your_ip:8000/project/.git

Step 1 have to be executed manually when local repository has changed.