So Excited!

Ahhh I was so excited just then. You know when you go to publish a comment online sometimes, and you're given a series of letters to type in before you can post it? The whole 'prove you're not a robot' thing, do you know the one? You get them on blogs mainly... Do you know what I'm on about? They're to stop computer-generated spam and whatnot. A blog I used to get paid for writing had a few spam comments, usually about knock-off handbags and stuff. No penis-enlargement techniques, strangely. I guess they're more of an email phenomenon. Oh yeah, and those damn casinos too! I checked my junk the other day and found that I'd won £500. Normally I'd be like, 'yeah right' but since I'd entered a competition recently I checked it out. It was £500 free when you set-up an account and gamble with 'CasinoPlus' or 'MoneyX' or whateverthehell... But yeah I'm getting off track. This wasn't spam on another blog, or email junk, it's just a way of stopping the website you're on getting unwanted computer-generated messages when you comment. For all they know you could be deviant computer or something, so they have to make sure by testing you. Have you seen these things? Sometimes they have a sort-of picture of numbers, then these awkwardly printed letters. If they were put on screen in regular font, I guess a computer could interpret them, but they abstract the symbols a little, meaning only 'humans' can decipher them and type them in. Do you know the ones I mean? Often the word part of it is a kind of amalgamation of two existing words, have you seen them? They have a company that runs it, Captcha I think. See that right there is an abstraction of the word 'capture' so you get the idea. If you've not already come across them, you get the idea that they are weirding things up so humans can understand but computers can't. Do you understand? Have you seen these things, the ones I'm on about?

I had to prove I wasn't a computer today. The number picture was easy enough, but then, to my surprise, the letters had the word 'wank' in them! I was so excited. Well, it wasn't actually the word 'wank', but it looked like it because of the abstraction of it all, if you see what I mean.