Bugger Blogger

Blogger recently changed their word verification system for comments to a captcha system that uses almost illegible words, making it hard to comment. They didn't tell us they'd done this, so if you think you're using the old word verification system then I'm afraid you're wrong.

If you would like to turn off captcha on your Blogger blog, then on your Dashboard go to Settings, Comments, then most of the way down that page where it says 'Show word verification for comments?' choose no, then at the foot of the page click Save Settings. If you do that you may need to moderate older comments as you will be getting more spam. But at least your friends will be able to talk to you!


I've turned captcha off on this blog and because I don't want everyone who comments to be constantly spammed, I'm trying out Disqus instead. If you normally comment here, please could you test the system and see if it works for you, and if it doesn't then let me know on buggerdisqus.fairyhedgehog@recursor.net (or the email address in the sidebar).

Chicks in Science

I'm all for getting more women into science and for busting gender-boundaries in general, but I'm not sure that Chicks in Science is the best way to do it. It's a hugely popular scheme that gets girls interested in science by offering them pink hard hats to wear, cookery books with recipes "that Einstein might have cooked", and nail varnish*. Yup. No quarks or protons here, but get your pinny on, dear, if you want to be a scientist.

Or is it good because it's popular? What do you think?

*The nail varnish changes colour in the sun. But still.