I have finally managed a fortification against the zombie hordes of comment spam. I've written about it before, less than coherently and far less than eloquently. There are people who are literally paid experts in managing this new scourge now.

The free market responding to Sturgeon's Revelation in full force.

I have now gone about 4 days without any spam making it through the various elaborate and Batman-themed nets.

To accomplish this, I have chosen the option that will make the blog anti-spam measures unreadable to those who are visually impaired, or "blind" as they are sometimes called in old-timey movies. Sorry, folks. Market research. I consulted heavily with the delegate from my blind readership, and given that he failed to exist, I decided to forgo all the rest of you in order to have a chance at sanely shoring up my blog against phentermine peddlers and mortgage refinanciers. In one year's time I will call another meeting of the delegates, and decide what to do then. Until then, I am afraid you will be unable to comment on these ramblings instantaneously.

For those of you who can read without the aid of specialized machinery, there is still a new hurdle to commenting. You now have to enter a CAPTCHA or "security code" on the comment form. I had long ago considered adding one of these, back when they were new and confusing. These are all the rage now, though, and you've probably seen them elsewhere. It's just an image with a number that you can easily see but that confuses a machine. If you enter it incorrectly, fear not, the comment is merely queued, not outright discarded. This would apply to the blind, as well - if you enter no code at all, the comment is still saved, just not immediately displayed.

This is also the first blog entry to make use of the tags system in my blog software, and I am tagging it as 'meta' because it is hip to do so.

[actually centimate, but how do you count gradations of zero]