Administrivia -- Spam and Other Things

Blogger is free but it isn't problem free. Recently the amount of spam coming into the comments has significantly increased. In a way it's educational since I can study the messages to learn the various techniques spammers use to evade filters, persuade the blog owner to publish the comment or tag their comments to discover which blogs are most susceptible to their efforts. It is also extremely annoying.

To make my life easier I have disabled anonymous comments. That means you must be registered with one of the several identity services Google honours on its Blogger platform. Comments remain moderated. I hope to disable the identification requirement sooner rather than later, in the hope that the spam sources tire of hitting a brick wall.

The reason I allow anonymous comments is that the Blogger platform has bugs in its commenting software and will often fail to recognize identity credentials when they're offered. I myself have great difficulty commenting under my Google credentials when I'm logged into Blogger. That's astounding. I have the same problem when I use their own browser: Chrome.

There's no point in complaining since Google doesn't listen and, well, you get what you pay for: nothing. In any case, close to 100% of my interactions with readers is direct email, not comments. I don't get many legitimate comments. In other words, few would notice the action I've taken if I hadn't bothered to write this article.

In other news, the big tower is up. I have Part 2 of that article appearing soon. With so much to get down before contest season I have been negligent in publishing articles. Be assured that it is not because I've tired of blogging. I'm just tired. For example, today I purchased a large quantity of parts for an antenna switching system and purchased and taken delivery of hundreds of pounds (or kg) of aluminum and steel material.

There are several more articles in draft and awaiting time for completion. It is time I don't have at the moment. I'll be back.