Thursday, March 7, 2013

I'm Starting a Collection


No, no. Put your wallets away...

It's not that kind of collection. I'm talking about these little gems:


Captured at Hog Day Afternoon
Captured at Susan Katz Keating


I've decided to start collecting these. Very esoteric hobby, I know. But what the heck, it's cheaper than collecting stamps. And some of these have an odd beauty all their own.

If you've ever commented on a blog, you've probably seen one of these. Some refer to these things as eye charts. Probably due to the near impossibility sometimes of making out what all those scrunched up letters say.


They're kind of an unfortunate thing when having one's own blog. Eventually you may need to institute these in order to cut down on the number of "spam hits" you take. These things are used to screen out the bots who lurk in the forests of the world wide web, just waiting to pounce and leave silly-ass comments like this:

Thanks in support of showing such a fastidious thinking, piece of writing is fastidious, thats why i have read it fully Here is my weblog www.h-vene.fi on I Had A Gut Feeling About This..
I mean sure, I'm as fastidious as the next guy but this is going overboard. "Fastidious thinking". "Writing is fastidious". There's a bot who apparently learned a new word on that particular day.

And yes, these weird comments are always accompanied by a link to a website. Said website is normally used to: (A) try to sell you something, (B) offer free sex with nubile Russian goats girls or (C) infect your computer with some weird virus which will then infect any computer it comes in contact with. Sometimes it's (D) All of the Above.

So there's a couple of things a blogger can do to cut down on the spam. One is to bar all comments by anyone who wishes to remain "Anonymous" and the other is to institute the "eye chart" noted above. Or you could do both. I don't know anyone that cruel.

For a while Chant du Départ had the eye chart screen. I didn't know it had that until one of my faithful readers bitched about it pointed it out. So I disabled that feature.

Next thing I know I'm getting the fractured comments noted above, all from some person in Eastern Europe with multiple websites but with the same name, Anonymous. Well, not really. But I was getting a lot of spam.

So I decided to bar "Anonymous" commenters. Not that I had a lot of those, but now I get none. In some ways I miss that, but if you go play with Google Translate enough you can get similar results. Start with a simple phrase in English, then run it through multiple languages and finally translate back to English. That can be amusing.

Oh and did you know that Google Translate will actually pronounce the phrases for you? You can have a lot of fun with that particular feature. Especially as some of the languages use a computer generated voice. It's kind of like hearing Stephen Hawking speak Vietnamese.

Not that I've ever done this, but you can also make Google Translate "talk dirty". This is also a hoot. Imagine your computer telling you "I am desperate to make love to your goat."

Not that I've ever done that, we're talking theory here. In theory you could do this.

Hhhmm, just had a thought. What would happen if one was to feed the eye chart text to Google Translate? I have so got to try THAT!

24 comments:

  1. wow, where have I been that I never knew about google translate? As they might say in Thailand
    saya harus tinggal di gua. I am sure future recipients of my email will come to regret that I ever read your blog!...But thank you, what are friends for?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bwaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaa!

      But remember: only use this power for good. And remember...

      As jy woon in 'n grot pasop van vlermuise!

      (Afrikaans)

      Delete
    2. Ah ha! γκουανό ρόπαλο! Τώρα ξέρω γιατί οι άνθρωποι έχουν με την αποφυγή (Greek) I'm having way too much fun, which says a lot about my age. ok ok...no more today, I promise. Time for me to try this out on some unsuspecting email contacts.

      Delete
    3. Надо было обладать гуано летучей мыши объяснить?

      Delete
    4. Menschen, die in einer Höhle leben müssen von Fledermäusen Vorsicht ... Ich nahm ich brauche, um sich der Fledermausguano mehr als die Fledermäuse ... lame Versuch Humor!

      Delete
    5. Probabilmente abbiamo fatto troppo lontano, ma non è Google Translate impressionante?

      Rollen auf dem Boden. Lachen meiner arsch aus.

      Delete
    6. si si me encanta el traductor de google....now i was trying to translate the german based on HS German...until I double checked Google Translate, I had the first part somewhat, recognized 'rollen', did not recall 'Boden'.....and I had confused 'lachen meiner...' with 'leck mich am....'one of those idioms that have stuck with me since the days of Herr Stoltze.....I've been trying to remember your yearbook slogan...something like 'Manne der tiefe, soll ganz toll sein'??...

      Delete
    7. That's quite an idiom to remember all these years. I did find my HS German very useful in my 7 1/2 years in Deutschland. Herr Stolze would've been so proud. And yes, "Männer der Tiefe, soll ganz Toll sein" was indeed my slogan in the yearbook. Kinda irked me at the time but now from the lofty perspective of years gone by, I love it. Suits me perfectly. (How did they know?)

      And it's nice to see that you haven't lost your zany sense of humor. You were a most humorous guy back in the day, as I recall!

      Delete
  2. I don't understand the spam stuff either. I do the disable anonymous thing as I have very few REAL Anon. comments.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was starting to see an increase in spam, so I disallowed the Anonymous types. I'm trying to stay away from the eye charts though.

      Delete
  3. You have too much time on your hands. Just sayin'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's all relative Kris.

      Time that is.

      Even my relatives have time on their hands.

      (Cue rim shot...)

      Delete
  4. hate the eye charts and half the time I can't see them

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ditto. Sometimes I have to zoom in to 300% or so before I can even begin to figure out what letters are there.

      Delete
  5. Wow. Your blog enable extraordinary power of knowledge. What system of logic brings this joy and learning to your site? My sister told me your blog high intelligence. Please visit my site, ZombieWorldAntiques+Pharmacy. Anonymouse.

    Sorry Sarge, couldn't resist.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I did, just now, spray coffee all over my monitor.

      So have you checked out that "ZombieWorldAntiques+Pharmacy" website? They have some really cool looking faux Louis XV armchairs made out of Viagra.

      Has your writing ever been classed as "fastidious"? Just trying to figure out where I fall on the blogging quality scale.

      Delete
  6. I liked the previous version of word verification much more than the crap we see now.
    In fact I collected a bunch of them in a file I have somewhere on the PC.
    Maybe I, too, will do a post about it since I have nothing else I particularly wish to reveal at this time.
    Thanks pal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You should do that. Perhaps I can steal some of yours for my collection. I am starting to get a big chuckle out of those. Like trying to make up a definition for what that scrambled text means. For example "eclicksh: n, the sound a Portuguese typewriter makes...".

      Maybe I'm trying too hard to make lemonade...

      Delete
    2. Blog-Bud IT had one hella collection goin', too, until Blogger changed the WV format. The old format, as Skip notes, was head and shoulders above the new one. Much better blog-fodder.

      Delete
    3. Cool, maybe we can get Ivan to share. Get a new meme going as it were.

      Delete
    4. I see where Uncle has posted some of his
      Mine look much the same
      I tried to do a meme but nobody really picked up on it

      Delete
    5. I will have to check those out.

      Delete
  7. Stephen Hawking speaking Vietnamese - oh dear Lord, I snorted Lex memorial Guinness with that one (and he likely would have paid to see that).

    You sir, are brilliant.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are too kind Madam.

      I too would've paid to see that.

      Delete

Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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