Thursday 13 March 2008

Help!

Having found my way back onto the blog, I lost it again. I've spent half the afternoon deciphering squiggles and remembering passwords, and now I'm here (IF I'm here) I don't know what to say. Except that the cover of Faye's PB looks great. Does anyone else have the kinds of technical problems I have (apart from Mags - thank you for your comment!)? And can anyone tell me why we have to decipher those squiggles before blogging? Is it to prove we can read? Or simply to keep us amused while we're not writing our novels?

4 comments:

Maggie Dana said...

Fran:

I always thought the squiggles were to prevent spammers from infecting a blog. Be nice if there was a way to prevent spamming that didn't involve driving legitimate users round the bend.

And now, in order to post this message I need to decipher this particular moment's code. I'm sure it'll change by the time I get to the end of this ...

Faye L. Booth said...

Mags is right, they're to ensure that the comments are being made by human beings instead of spam robots!

F x

David Isaak said...

Yep, they're to keep robots out. On Typepad accounts (rather than Blogger), a little explanation pops up that tells you the code is to prevent "automated robots" from posting. Is there such a thing as an unautomated robot"? WHat good would that be?

I don't have the squiggle feature turned on over on my blog, and I've only had a robot invasion once. Which is sort a of sad comment, really--even the robots don't bother with me.

Tim Stretton said...

I quite like the little verfication sequences, which occasionally fall into enjoyable configurations.

Today's appears to be 'qqbwlio', which could be a character from Calvino's "Cosmicomics".

Perhaps I'm too easily amused...