Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Captcha Monster

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I like to follow other people’s blogs. Interacting with others is, after all part of the fun of blogging as sooner or later you get bored talking to yourself! Likewise I love receiving comments and commenting on other people’s blogs. To me a blog which does not accept comments is a dead entity. It may well contain interesting content but without the ability to interact with the blogger his/her site does, in my view lack a certain vibrancy.

One of the difficulties with allowing comments is separating the wheat from the chaff. My site receives a fair number of wheaty (have I just invented that word)?! Comments, however the blog also gets bombarded by chaff (spam)! Akismet (the spam filter used by WordPress) captures the overwhelming majority of junk mail consigning it to a dedicated folder where it can be reviewed by the blog owner. The beauty of Akismet is that it does not entail the person commenting attempting (often unsuccessfully) to solve a visual Captcha. Captchas are visual puzzles which must be solved prior to those wishing to comment or contact the site owner being able to do so. For a brief period I maintained a site on Blogger. Blogger employs Captcha and low and behold not a single comment did I receive on my site hosted there. Given that I receive a fair number of comments on my WordPress hosted site (which does not utilise Captcha) and I had none while using Blogger, I attribute my success in attracting comments (on WordPress) to the lack of Captcha. Unless a person feels extremely strongly on a given issue they are, when faced by a tricky Captcha likely to give up and move onto a blog where the Captcha monster is not lurking ready to pounce on the unlucky would be commenter!

As a blind computer user I have a particular detestation of Captcha. Screen reading software such as Jaws (the package I use to convert text into speech and Braille enabling me to use a standard Windows computer) only recognises text (it is not able to recognise images). Many sites have no alternative to a visual Captcha. Others do have audio alternatives, however most of these are, in my experience more or less unintelligible so, if you employ Captcha on your site you are, albeit unintentionally locking out many visually impaired people from the possibility of participating fully on your site.

As a blogger I do understand the problem posed by spam. Spammers are selfish individuals who ought to earn an honest living rather than spending their time bombarding site owners and e-mail users with solicitations for fake products. However spam is not going to disappear any time soon and we will continue to be faced with the issue of how best to minimise it’s pernicious effects. Given the existence of Akismet I can not see a valid reason for anyone relying on clunky old Captcha. If you must use Captcha then please choose a non-visual version. For example “prior to posting please add four and 3 and type your answer”. Such a Captcha can be read by screen reading software and is intelligible to the overwhelming majority of the human population. It also has the benefit of preventing automated spam bots from wreaking havoc by spraying your site with spam. Better still use a programme like Akismet which dispenses with the need for Captcha altogether!

People Don’t Read Round Here

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Over the festive season I fell into conversation with a lady. The conversation ranged far and wide and at one juncture touched on the subject of books. My partner at the dinner table remarked that she had only read 2 books, (I don’t recollect the title of both works but one of the books was “Flowers in the Attic”). My companion went on to ask me for recommendations regarding what she should read. I responded that literary tastes are highly personal matters (I return to Wuthering Heights again and again because it is, in my view a wonderful work of fiction while others find nothing of merit in it). I went on to describe how I’d enjoyed reading Kevin Cooper’s thriller Meido and recommended his book to my companion. At one point during the conversation another of those present said that “it isn’t like that round here” by which she meant that people don’t read books in this area.

The above conversation took place in a fairly typical suburb of Liverpool. I don’t like using the term but for want of anything better the area is “working class” comprised of (mainly) owner occupied houses inhabited by people engaged in occupations ranging from barmaids and cleaners to those employed in clerical work.

The implication that people living in a given area do not read books is, of course a sweeping generalisation. My grandfather who had never gone on to higher education and lived in a council house throughout his life spent many hours reading to me. I well recall the glass bookcase which stood in the spare bedroom chock full of books ranging from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five to works of poetry. It is, I believe largely due to my grandfather who was “working class” (oh how I hate to use that term as people are, at bottom individuals not social groups), that I gained my love of literature and went onto university to read history and politics.

Sadly there is among certain people a lack of aspiration which is exemplified by the view that people round here don’t read. This can, if we fail to take care become a self fulfilling prophecy (I.E. many homes contain few, if any books but are replete with wide screen televisions to which parents consign their children rather than spending precious time reading to them). A house full of books won’t guarantee happiness but it will assist in producing rounded individuals with a love of literature and a broad perspective on the world.

There are, fortunately organisations working to promote education among all people. Perhaps the most notable of these is The Workers’ Education Association which has, since 1903 been striving to uplift the aspirations, through education of all segments of society with particular emphasis on those of (that term again) “the working class”). All power to their elbo. For information on the WEA please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Educational_Association.

Getting in Contact

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If you have queries regarding my writing or would like to do a guest post on newauthoronline please e-mail me at newauthoronline @ gmail.com (the address is given in this manner in an attempt to defeat the scourge of the internet, spammers. Alternatively please feel free to comment on any of my posts.

 

Kevin

Prostitution In India

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Two of my short stories, “Samantha” and “The First Time” deal with the lives of women engaged in prostitution. In “Samantha” Sam is trapped in the world of prostitution and it is touch and go as to whether she will survive or end her days in the cold and murky waters of the river Mersey. In “The First Time” we meet Becky, a young graduat who enters the arena of prostitution as an escort in order to pay her creditors. Becky fears becoming homeless and the dread of sleeping on the streets leads her to take up sex work.

Given my interest in prostitution I was interested to read the following post on the issue in India, http://cupitonians.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/guest-blog-legalizing-prostitution/. The post is worth a read and I recommend it to you.

For my Amazon author’s page please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/K.-Morris/e/B00CEECWHY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

So you want to be a what??? (For all aspiring writers out there)

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A great post not only for new authors but for established writers as well.

Chris The Story Reading Ape's avatarChris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

writer

This morning I woke with the idea this was going to be a normal, productive, writing day. I knew I wanted to add a couple of things to my website, and I had some non-writing stuff to get out of the way first, but my main idea was to sit down in front of my computer and write for ten or twelve hours. Well, things didn’t quite work out that way.

I did my non-scribbling things hastily, driven by the need to take up the current novel where I’d left it last night. Then I spent an hour on my web update. Then the day-changer happened.

I e-mail with fellow fiction writers and my own readers fairly frequently. I spend quite a bit of time responding to the latter group. Hell, if they have taken the time and made the effort to write to me, I should do the same…

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Updated Author Profile On Goodreads

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I have updated my Goodreads author profile to include my latest collection of short stories, “Street Walker And Other Stories”. For my Goodreads author profile please visit https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6879063.K_Morris.

 

Kevin

Thank You Dear Spammer

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On visiting my Dashboard I was intrigued to observe that there are 4,106 comments in my spam queue. Does this mean that I have arrived as a blogger? I mean surely one could argue that the more spam one receives the greater the interest your blog is attracting. Then again perhaps not! To all those lovely spammers a big thank you for choosing my blog. My heart fills with joy whenever I see advertisements, in my spam folder for fake branded products. I no longer need to visit Marks and Spencers or any other store as, with one click of a mouse I am able to access a plethora of dodgy products which would make Delboy from Only Fools and Horses green with envy. Thank you dear spammers, it is good to know that instead of earning an honest living you choose rather to enliven my dull world with all those items I never knew I needed. Thank you!

Why I Write – Guest Post On Cupitonians

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Many thanks to A (http://cupitonians.wordpress.com/) for inviting me to post on her excellent blog. You can find my post below

http://cupitonians.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/guest-blog-why-i-write/

 

Sexbots are Persons, Too?

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Just because it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck is it, in fact a duck? I am not sure that it is, although if it could be demonstrated that advanced robots of the future feel (as opposed to simulate pain) then there would be a case for according them similar treatment to humans, I.E. some kind of human rights.

Michael LaBossiere's avatarA Philosopher's Blog

Page_1In my previous essays on sexbots I focused on versions that are clearly mere objects. If the sexbot is merely an object, then the morality of having sex with it is the same as having sex with any other object (such as a vibrator or sex doll).  As such, a human could do anything to such a sexbot without the sexbot being wronged. This is because such sexbots would lack the moral status needed to be wronged. Obviously enough, the sexbots of the near future will be in the class of objects. However, science fiction has routinely featured intelligent, human-like robots (commonly known as androids). Intelligent beings, even artificial ones, would seem to have an excellent claim on being persons. In terms of sorting out when a robot should be treated as person, the reasonable test is the Cartesian test. Descartes, in his discussion of whether or not animals have…

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