Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Back in Action, but for Captcha

Most of my grading is done until Saturday, when I give an 8:00 in the morning final exam. Yeah, really looking forward to it. I'm now figuring out all the grades to turn in, which will take time but is not so taxing as grading itself.

I even decided to visit blogs today and then found the captcha thing was apparently down.  After writing half a dozen comments on various blogs and then being unable to post them I gave up. Hopefully the verification system will be back up and working tomorrow and I will try any new blog posts that come up.

I'm looking forward to doing a little reading. Haven't had much chance in the past few days. I did write a flash fiction story yesterday. Only 438 words. It came right from a dream I had, with minimal changes. I'm calling it "See Your Night, and Raise You Hell."

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25 comments:

  1. I don't even know what Captcha is, but it must be working for me.

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  2. I put up a post in your honor. Check it out.

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  3. I guess I haven't hit a blog with word verification yet today.
    Hang in there, Charles!

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  4. I bet that story is a little gift from your Unconscious :-)


    I hate the whole capcha thing....

    Aloha

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  5. I sure wish I remembered my dreams although I have the suspicion there's not much of interest--even to me.

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  6. Snowbrush, it's the verification program used by some bloggers to assure they are not being spammed. Unfortunately, I can't tell who has it generally until after I write my comment and then try to post it. That gets old fast.

    Richard, lol. I love Mississippi Queen. Thanks!

    Alex, I commented on five or six blogs before I started having trouble. Of course, it could just be me.

    Cloudia, definitely the story was a nice gift.

    Patti, I often wonder where my dreams come from, but I'm glad to have them.

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  7. Yep, writing is writing, whether it is from a dream, social comment, or hardcore pursuit of a scene. It must be pursued. :)

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  8. Yet another reason I don't use captcha on my blogs. :P

    Good stuff on the writing!

    Angie

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  9. Wait Dude! Did I understand you? You're going to have the grades settled before the final? Oh man I hope you extrapolated that wisdom from my earlier tutorials on the Durfee grading system. Bravo sir, Bravo!!

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  10. Bernard, I like when they come fairly easily like that. It's not often the case for me.

    Angie, thankee.

    Mark, I have learned much for your wisdom oh revered one.

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  11. I didn't realize Captcha was down. Then again, I'm rarely here in cyberspace these days. Project ends third week of June.

    As for the hiatus, you know I understand that.

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  12. Charles-don't you just hate computer eff ups? Love the name of the new work!

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  13. I hate to be the low man on the totem pole of knowledge here, but what do you teach?

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  14. i gladly do not have captcha...
    i hate it...and what does it save you from...most spam gets caught in the filter anyway

    welcome back

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  15. X-Dell, it was down for me. Seemed to be working ok today.

    Jodi, they certainly do get in the way of things.

    goatman, thanks for visiting. I teach various experimental psychology classes. This semester I taught comparative psych, writing in Psych, and our senior capstone course, which is called Historical and Applied Perspectives.

    Brian, yeah, I've seldom had any problems with spam, though I know some bloggers have more difficulties.

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  16. As a data point, my Blogger blog gets probably... 4-6 spam comments per day, on the average, and the filter catches the vast majority of it. I only have to manually delete something a couple of times per week. I'd rather not put any speedbumps in the way of any legitimate readers who want to comment on my blogs, and letting the automatic systems handle spam -- on both the Blogger blog and the Wordpress blog (which gets a LOT more spam than the Blogger blog) -- works fine. Catching the overflow by hand is not onerous.

    Angie

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  17. I've only hit a couple in the past week or so. I seem to be lucky in that only the high traffic blogs have the annoying CAPTCHA.

    Father Nature's Corner

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  18. Angie, I probably don't get a lot of spam because of the low popularity of the blog or something. I don't mind people having the verification. After typing four or five different messages and loosing them because the system won't show me a captcha phrase, though, I'm just gonna move on.

    G. B., yeah, I guess it's a good thing sometime to not be so popular!

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  19. Judging by comments, I'd say your blog is a LOT more popular than either of mine. :) I get a lot of traffic (and incoming links) from the anthology market posts, but much less just organically for everything else.

    Angie

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  20. That is awesome to get an idea for fiction from a dream! Can't wait to read it.

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  21. Charles, I have no idea what purpose Captcha is meant to serve. Anyone can decipher the letters or numbers and key them in.

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  22. Prashant -- people can, but bots can't. Comment spam is usually left by bots, scripts that dash down a list of thousands or millions of URLs leaving their spammy comments with links to a site the spammer wants promoted in Google rankings. If you have a blog, you might've noticed that you get comment spam on posts that are several years old, or that never got any real comments, and wondered, Why are they advertising their wares on a page with no traffic? They don't care about traffic, or rather, it's very secondary. They want those incoming links to drive their Google rankings. And it takes so many comments (considering how few get through various blocking systems, and if they get through, how few of those stick around long enough to get spidered. These are huge operations, and usually run on bot nets.

    Angie

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  23. Angie, thanks for the detailed explanation. I don't use Captcha on my blog and I get very negligible spam comment, a couple of them every two or three months, though I don't know if blocking spam, as I have done, is the same as having Captcha.

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