for months now, i've been receiving more spam comments than real comments. maybe you've seen them: they typically show up as lists of links to porn sites or sites about prescription drugs. sometimes they even politely ask me not to delete them, but i pay no attention to that.

i've been diligently deleting these comments when i come across them, but enough is enough. the comment spam has forced me to start using captchas.

the geeky will likely know that captchas are a form of turing test (or reverse turing test if you want to get really geeky) used to differentiate humans from machines. the less-geeky might be more familiar with terms like word verification (the term blogger uses) or simply as those mangled letters you sometimes need to read and retype when posting comments or signing up for stuff.

this will inconvenience some of you slightly, but rest assured that i deliberated for months before giving in and doing this. if you're blind or visually impaired, there should still be a way for you to get through and authenticate yourself as human. but if for some reason you just can't prove your humanity to the captcha, feel free to email me your comment or complaint. ¶