I am on an insta break right now …and biting the sour apple…
I clumsily dropped my phone and the front glass shattered. It’s being repaired, but in the meantime I am having a bad case of iphone abstinence. As with everything this proves what I already knew: it’s not until you loose something that you notice how much you love it (or need it, depend upon it or use it).
I am not obsessed with my phone, but now that I don’t have it I understand how often I use it to distract my thoughts, to waste time or to check for messages! I especially miss taking phone photos and sharing my favorite ones straight away on instagram. But also taking a walk and having the endless possibility of podcast and radio shows via internet in my ears! But in a week or two I will get my phone back and everything will be back to normal. Except maybe, I’ll try not to waste as much time on it when I shouldn’t…
This week I kind of lost interest in blogging for a few days too, since I turned off comments for a while… I so love the comments I get, they’re like food to me… Maybe it shouldn’t be like that, but loosing the ability to get comments here felt horrible…
I got a warning from my web hotel that my blog was being under spam bot attack! A spam bot is a program that automatically fills in all the required fields as a blog comment, but super fast and without much meaning. The constant attacks were slowing down and disturbing traffic for the other sites hosted on the same server. Surftown (the company that host my blog), as always lovingly caring about me as a customer, threatened to just shut my site down if I didn’t take care of it!
So I turned of comments totally for 24 hours while trying to figure it out. All spam comments, from real people and bots, were directed into the spam folder (thank you Akismet!), so for me personally this wasn’t actually a problem. But there were a lot of spam comments coming in, about 2-3 per second for a while! In the end I caved in an installed a plugin that stops bots from making any comments at all, and so far it’s working. Yay!
The plugin is called Sweet Captcha, and looks like this:
The only problem is that it also slows you down, my dear reader, who sometimes and so kindly, wants to comment on a post here… But then, all you do is drag the correct image to the right, and then you can post your comment as usual. Feel free to give it a try. It’s quite funny that this happened right now, because I have always hated CAPTCHA codes or having to log into an account just to leave a comment… but this week I’ve been raving about how they’re the barbwire of blogging, to my twitter followers.
Ooh, the irony of telling others to remove their captcha barbwire (tweeting out links to articles explaining “How To Make Your Blog More Comment Friendly“) – and then needing it for my self. Though at least I hope the one I picked is isn’t a difficult, unreadable code to figure out?
When I couldn’t get any comments I got abstinence for those too.
I want to make it as easy as possible to leave comments and feedback here, because I love that you guys write me comments! So hopefully I can remove the picture question captcha some day, but for now it’s staying. Rather have that thing here than my whole blog disappearing, right?
Have you ever lost something you didn’t know you were dependent upon? Or even addicted to perhaps? Maybe a short break is a good thing, a wake up call, a note from the geek god that you should be grateful for what you have got – while you got it…
So sorry to hear about your phone mishap and website issues. Hopefully both will be resolved quickly. (And personally, I think the captcha you found is adorable!) Wishing you a wonderful upcoming week and sending lots of creative happy thoughts your way!
I can’t believe you have to wait up to 2 weeks to get your phone fixed. I would DIE from withdrawl.
This is the best of those crazy security things I’ve seen, this one looks like it might be fun!
I can totally understand you with the abstinence. While being abroad this christmas I did not have any Internet for one week. It was terrible. I missed talking to my friends on Whatsapp and Instagram AND PINTEREST. :o)
I hope your phone will be back soon! And in good shape!
I hope you can get your phone back fast. I depend on my phone but that’s just because it’s the only one that I have to use [I gave up my landline almost a year ago.]
Debi
P.S. It is a cute CAPTCHA! : )
oh hanna, a double whammy! so sorry to hear about your phone and the spam issue. truth be told-i HAD to leave a comment just so i could use the captcha! “drag the cigar to the piggy” lol. i’ve never seen this before. i have a feeling you will make the best of not having your phone for a few weeks. so many times i’ve reached for my phone to “capture the moment” and realized i actually “missed the moment” because of trying to get a good shot. i hope your serenaded by birds on your walks. i think it’s human nature to take for granted those things we love, need, depend on, and use, until they’re gone. i’ve been guilty of it countless times. you’ve already gained much by having this positive attitude. i hope this time out brings you new observations, time to reflect, and lots of creative juice :D
Ja verkligen kul med legot:)
Fint du har det här. Kikar runt lite!
Dear hanna, i visit your blog every day and i get so much out of it. I should leave a comment more often. Thank you so much for yor never ending generosity. You are wonderful.
Hello there!
I, who almost never ever comments on anything online, I have to try the drag the juice to the glass.
Lots of love,
Charlotte
I hate that I have to use word (or nowadays number) verification on my blog to let people comment, but the spam monsters make me do it. As far as I know there’s no choices as to a different type of verification on Blogger, so I’m stuck with the numbers or whatever else they make up in thet future. Yours is so much cuter!
I hope you can stand waiting for your phone repair! That Captcha is the cutest one I’ve seen – I hope its available for Typepad soon.