Remove message verification?

Hi everybody, just a quick post to all of you who has been annoyed by Blogger’s recent change in word verification of post messages. You know, those often impossible to read words you have to write, in order to send your message. These words are called captcha and are meant to prevent spam, but they seem to prevent legitimate people from leaving messages too, as sometimes it is just impossible to find out what the words are!

05.11. Post number 100!

Hello and welcome to post number 100! When I started this blog in early January this year, I wasn’t sure whether I would be able and interested enough to continue writing to the end of that month, let alone the rest of the year. And here I am, in November, writing post number one hundred. I find it strangely addictive and it certainly means a lot to me to see the visitor numbers steadily go up and up. I mean, that’s why I am spending all this time making the posts; so that people out there can look at the photos and videos and read my words :-)

Viewing Blog Movies

Do the movies on YouTube and elsewhere on the Internet 

play ‘catch-up’ all the time when you try to watch them? 

Or do you have to view them in the lowest quality to be 

able to view them at all? There are several ways to work 

around a slow Internet connection, but here is one way

to watch the movies in high quality.

13.04. Meet Ayla the AR

I saw an interview with a writer on the telly here the other day, a writer named Jean M. Auel. She is most famous for a series of novels set in prehistoric Europe that explores interactions of Cro-Magnon people with Neanderthals. She has just published her sixth book in this series and the interview was about this new book. Her first book in the series called ‘Earth’s Children’ came out as early as 1980, and I read it a few years later when it had been translated into Norwegian. You might have heard about it, the first book was called ‘The Clan of the Cave Bear’ and was filmed with Daryl Hannah as Ayla. The next couple of books came out at regular intervals, number 2 in 1982, number 3 in 1985, number 4 in 1990...and then there was a long wait for the next book. I thought I had missed the book launch, or perhaps because I had moved to Britain maybe these books weren’t as popular here as they were in Norway. But finally, in 2002, book number 5 was released, and I read this one in English. I have to tell you these books are not exactly small things you tuck into your pocket on the tube...they are huge! And so is book number 6 too, just published, 9 years after number 5 and long awaited :-) The book is 660 pages and just as much a brick as all the other ones, but I bet that when I get to the last page I will feel exactly the same way as with all the other books in the series; wishing that there were many more pages still!

31.01. Letter from Iraq

I got an email late last night that I thought I would share with you, as a follow up on my post from last Friday regarding scams. The email couldn’t have come at a better time, since I promised to write more about scams and hoaxes. This email is a new twist on the Nigerian scam, but has better grammar (less spelling errors!) and is more contemporary I suppose...well, you can see for yourself, I am copying the whole lot here below:

28.01. Microsoft scam

Have you heard about the Nigerian Scam? Or maybe you have heard it as the Nigerian Letter or the 419 fraud? Or what about the Nigerian bank scam or Nigerian money offer? Anyone with an Internet access is probably nodding now! All these scams are modern versions based on much older scams, like the Spanish Prisoner and the Black Money scam. The modern 419 scam originated in the early 1980s as the oil-based Nigerian economy declined. Unemployed university students first used this scam as a means of manipulating business visitors interested in shady deals in the Nigerian oil sector before targeting businessmen in the west, and later the wider population. Scammers in the early 1990s targeted companies, sending scam messages via letter, fax, or Telex. The spread of e-mail and easy access to e-mail-harvesting software significantly lowered the cost of sending scam letters by using the