Some housekeeping

I’m always on the lookout for simple ways of making this blog a bit more interactive without compromising its security, and so for the past 24 hours I’ve been beating my head against a wall of techie talk and failing to get a contact form to work. If, by any chance you used the form to contact me during any of its iterations since yesterday evening, then I’m sorry but your message is out there in limbo.

I’m aware that some readers have made comments or asked questions that aren’t specifically connected to a posting – which means they go directly to the spam filter. Given that (if I catch them in time) many of these comments have been very nice it’s a shame that I’m not able to respond, and it probably feels a bit churlish if you’ve taken the trouble to write. I can’t see any way of getting back except through public comments on the blog – which may not always be appropriate. If I just put my private email address up I’ll drown in spam – see the dilemma?

So I’ll keep trying to set up something that’s both interactive and secure for all of us, and the only way I can do that is to master a language that’s so obscure it makes the Athenasian Creed look simple. It seems that the blogosphere is a bit like the wild west – there are a lot of hucksters and snake oil sales reps out there. In answer to one of the anonymous questions, no I can’t give much help on technical issues because my usual way of dealing with them is to keep going round in circles uttering threats and curses until I finally (and accidentally) press the right button – at which point I slam down the lid and get on with the writing. Meanwhile I’ve removed the offending form so I can get on with what I really enjoy.