Spam, Comments, Commenting, and Lurking

Spam and Comments

Do you get spam comments? My blog seems to be a favorite with Russian spammers. Thankfully, all wordpress.com blogs come with Akismet, a spam-protection software, so those are caught.

Very rarely, a real comment gets caught by Akismet but since I can see the comments classified as spam, I then can approve them so they appear on the blog. So far, this only happened maybe four times.

In general, my setting is that I don’t need to approve comments on the blog; they should show up right away on the blog. Exception: comments with more than two links need to be approved.

But despite Akismet, I’m thinking about requiring an email-address when you comment. Most leave their email-address anyway, so there shouldn’t be much difference.

Of course, most spammers usually leave theirs as well, so…hmm, I’m actually not sure if that would stop them.

Commenting and Lurking

Since I’m on the topic of comments, let’s talk about my commenting on other blogs.

Quite frankly, I’m bad at leaving comments at other blogs. There are two reasons for this:

• Around the time I turned my blog public, I really got into using a feed reader because I discovered quite a few new blogs then. Reading posts in a feed reader is so much faster than visiting all the blogs in real. Now, instead of visiting blogs, I just look at the posts in my feed reader. Sometimes I mark them as a post I want to leave a comment – only to remove that post weeks later because I didn’t.
  But even if I click through to the post that’s no guarantee that I’ll comment
• because I’m actually such a lurker by nature that I shouldn’t have my own public blog. Really. There’s nothing more to say about that.
  (Though I’m rather proud of the number of comments I managed to leave in the last two days. Of course, this usually means I’m done with commenting for at least the next week. *g*)
• Plus, there are a very few blogs where I tried to leave a comment but for the life of me couldn’t figure out how. It appears that on top of it all, I’m dumb.

And since I’m talking about blog stuff – we don’t have a summer here. Most of the days you’d think it’s April with all the rain and clouds and temperatures that seldom rise above 25 C (77 F). So I’m thinking about changing the colors of the blog. All that brown is too depressing right now.

I need sunny.

OOPS, I Did It Again! – New Blog Theme

I actually don’t know how that happened – for example, I have yet to read my book for Nath’s Re-Read Challenge – but I was bored yesterday afternoon. Before I knew it, I found myself playing around with a new WordPress blog theme, Vigilance.

Actually, this theme is around since February and I was tempted right away when I first saw it. It gives you more options than you usually have with WordPress themes. I now can change the background color and the link color, for example. It also features a customizable header and I think the sidebar is rather versatile.

Of course, there are things I’m not too happy about. For example, I really liked the time stamp on posts and comments my previous theme offered and the font on the sidebar is too small with Vigilance. But on the plus side IMO are the new color options I have, the post body is now broader and, IMO, the text is easier on the eye, plus the link to leave a comment is more obvious (but still at the top of the post).

I’m actually not sure how long I’ll keep these colors, though. The brown background makes it rather dark, IMO. But *g* that’s easily changed with this theme.

Really, I don’t know why I can’t stick with things for more than a few months; I’m even tempted to change my blog title from time to time, lol.

If you notice anything wrong, or you don’t like the colors, please let me know.

Today: Joint Commentary On Anne Stuart’s “Cold As Ice” @ “Jace Scribbles”

Jace from the blog Jace Scribbles suggested buddy-reading Anne Stuart’s Ice-series when I went on a mini-glom for other Anne Stuart (Ice) novels after I fell totally in love with Black Ice, the first in the series. Jace had all the other books in the series, too, and buddy reading and joint reviews are fun, so soon we were exchanging emails, discussing our impressions of Cold as Ice, the second book in the Ice-series.

For me, it was the second time I read Cold as Ice and I’m afraid, it didn’t do as good as the first time but nevertheless – and as expected – I had a lot of fun buddy-reading with Jace. Thank you, Jace.

You can read our joint commentary here.

The back blurb of Cold as Ice:

The job was supposed to be dead easy–hand deliver some legal papers to billionaire philanthropist Harry Van Dorn’s extravagant yacht, get his signature and be done. But Manhattan lawyer Genevieve Spenser soon realizes she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that the publicly benevolent playboy has a sick, vicious side. As he tries to make her his plaything for the evening, eager to use and abuse her until he discards her with the rest of his victims, Genevieve must keep her wits if she intends to survive the night.

But there’s someone else on the ship who knows the true depths of Van Dorn’s evil. Peter Jensen is far more than the unassuming personal assistant he pretends to be–he’s a secret operative who will stop at nothing to ensure Harry’s deadly Rule of Seven terror campaign dies with him. But Genevieve’s presence has thrown a wrench into his plans, and now he must decide whether to risk his mission to keep her alive, or allow her to become collateral damage…

To Cheer Me Up*

Where Is My Mind? by The Pixies

(my favorite song)

ETA: For the youtube video I wanted (without scenes from the film Fight Club) embedding is deactivated.
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* This morning, I found out (WordPress forum) that my shiny, not-even-one-week-in-use blog theme Neo Sapien has an annoying quirk: the sidebars on the right disappear to the bottom of the page when the browser window is set too narrow or when the screen resolution is not high enough.

*SIGH*

New blog theme.