Bhu, Empire Opurrator

This week we interview the handsome Bhu from the Pattyskypants & Bhu blog.   He was not originally  intended to be a part of the blog, but he's just so darn cute, he quickly became  the S-T-A-R. You can read the in-depth interview exclusively at Mousebreath, Bhu, V..P. for Empire Opurrations. 

We'd like to add a couple of links for bloggers.

1)  We have written a number of times about the frustrations of word verification, so we were glad to see this story on The Real Blogger Status - If you Use CAPTCHA .. Try Publishing a Comment as a Guest.

2) If you have ads or write reviews on your blog, you need to be aware of and follow the latest FTC regulations.  They've made the rules stricter.

Be Safe, Dry and Warm

Hey, Merci, Sam & Buddy here. The felines will be back on Friday, but we wanted to say we hope you all had a great Christmas with lots of family, friends, love and laughter.  Or maybe one like ours, quiet and cold ... we mean, cozy.

And we don't want you to forget what handsome dudes and a dudette we are. 

We're sorry we can't get around to visit as often as we like.  You know what a computer hog Jan is.  So we try to visit different blogs so we spread our handsomeness around.  But we are amazed at the number that are still turning on word verification.  Inevitably, we go by to leave condolences or well wishes and we can't leave a comment.

When humans invite other humans over to visit or to share a meal, they don't lock the gate and then issue an invitation, so the poor sucker ... um, guest has to climb a 6' fence to reach the door.  No, they want the guest to feel welcome, so they unlock the gate and throw open the door to greet them.
So how come so many blogs are inviting readers to come by and then when they click "publish," SURPRISE!!  Up pops word verification. This is one mean time consuming unwelcome mat!

We know we've said it before... and before ... and before.  But it bears repeating.  And as long as no one speaks up, Blgoger's illegible word verification will continue to spread.  So, if you have a problem with it, don't just battle through to leave a comment.  Help those who can't read it by speaking up against word verification when you leave a comment.  There are other ways to stop spam!

There is a lot of severe weather in the US, so everybody and their furries be safe, dry and warm!

Oh, and we almost forgot -

For those of you who enjoy poetry, we met a non-pet blogger the other day you might enjoy.  The blog is called Today Someone ... and it's written by Doreen Hardie of South Africa. She writes lovely inspirational poetry and articles but hasn't had many visitors.  It's a shame to let such talent go unnoticed, so we hope you will stop by and say hello.

FFF Interview Au, Target and Guido

The Funny Farmer Felines' interview, Katz Tales Starring Au, Target & Guido, is now posted on Mousebreath. We hope you will go by to read it and then drop by Katz Tales to congratulate the Golden Guys.

We weren't aware of this at the time we planned the interview, but their Mummy Cat has books available at Smashwords, so you might want to check out the new Katz Tales books Adventures of Scoop and Au and Au and Target: The Early Years: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ellenwhyte Each is available in formats for your Kindle, Apple iPad or iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions and more! Normal price is US $1.99 but please use the code SSW25 at checkout for 25% off! Offer good through July 31, 2012.

TBT - Ayla, Iza & Marley's human - has joined our campaign to guillotine Blogger word verification.   TBT was good at deciphering wv until he ran into this one.  Hope he doesn't mind our sharing it, but for you folks who can't live without wv on your blog, try this one.  We're sorry you were stumped, TBT, but we're really happy you've joined our protest.

Blogger word verification sucks.  There isn't anything nice to say about it.

We know the cat and dog Olympics are going on but we've just not had the time to participate this year.  It was kind of information overload when we tried to figure out the schedule.  We hope you are participating and having some fun.

WV Support and Riding Thunder

Hey, Sam here.  It's just a tad "cooler" so far today, probably because it's more overcast.  We deserve a break after recent humidity and heat suffocation days.  But it's not noon yet, so the worst is yet to come.

Yesterday we posted on the evil Blogger word verification. We even had Jan make a badge you can use on your own blog to join the rebellion against its use Um, rebellion against the use of word verification, not our badge. The guillotine badge is in our sidebar if you want to grab it to tell your readers how you feel about wv.. 

Although we have posted on settings before, we received a request to post it again.

Blogger has a very good spam filter. We repeat, a very good one! Just because you receive spam doesn't mean it's being published. There is a huge difference. Spam is filed in the spam folder. Once a week or so, take a quick look through it to be sure none of your friends have accidentally been misfiled. Then delete all the spam. It takes a minute of your time. (We just checked our spam folder and there was no spam but one of our friends was trapped there, so we marked it as Not Spam so it could post.)

IF -- IF a spam comment should ever get published, do not delete it through comments. You want to tell Blogger it's spam so you go into the published comments in your interface and mark it as spam.

Most of the spam comes from Anonymous or name / url. Blogger can't detect name / url as spam.

The easiest way to stop both Anonymous and name / url is to not allow these types of comments.

If you want to allow them, then we suggest changing your settings to put comment moderation on posts over xxx (you choose - perhaps over 5) days old since spammers will target older posts, likely figuring they won't be noticed. (They would most likely end up in the spam folder anyway, but it pays to have Blogger send an email every time you get a comment. So be sure to keep your email address updated.)

If you want to stop Anonymous and name / url comments, we suggest you go into Settings / posts and comments and  change to -
Registered Users (includes Open ID)

And make sure the Show Word Verification answer is NO.

Don't forget to click Save Settings in upper right before you leave Settings.

We recently disallowed Anonymous because we were receiving so many spam messages we decided it was time.  They were not being published.  But that setting also allows name / url and those were being published.  We have been using Registered Users (includes Open ID) for several weeks again and haven't received any spam.  We were allowing Anonymous so a few of our non-blogging friends could comment, but they can still email us.  Many non-bloggers already have a Google profile because they're using gmail, Google+ or some other Google service, so this setting isn't really a hardship for most who will comment.  Open ID includes Wordpress,

We'd like to thank all of you who have expressed your support of our guillotine wv protest.  We hope many, many, many of you will take up the cause and whenever you manage to make it through the maze of one, to let the blogger know wv is on and suggest they turn it off.   If they aren't aware, they can't do anything.


Now for something more interesting.

Are you having a bad day? Then we'd like to share this video with you. It isn't cat or dog related, but you'll definitely feel a lot better about your own day after watching what happened to William Rankin, the man who rode Thunder.


If the video doesn't play, click here.

Compared to William Rankin, you're actually having a good day, aren't you!

Guillotine Blogger WV

Hey, Merci here with today's news from the Funny Farmers.  It's really too hot to type but I have a mission so I got stuck with the post. Well, actually it's a mission for all of us but those lazy bums um, hot and tired furries forgot we were supposed to meet at the typing chair at 12 noon and they're all sacked out.  So here goes, but this is from all of us.

This is what we think of Google / Blogger's illegible word verification.  Send it to the guillotine!  The mess across the center is an actual word verification.  Even borrowing Jan's reading glasses and magnifying glass didn't help us. So we made this graphic to help spread the word that readers are tired of dealing with it.

Please note that Eric and Flynn are correct in their comment that this wv is easier to read than most.  But that's because it's been blown up in this post.    

Blog owners can't see wv on their own blogs; they must be signed out, clean their cache and cookies, then go to their own blog and click on comments.  If they use the full page comments, wv will not show up until after they click to publish, so be sure to actually leave yourself a comment.

It doesn't matter whether you did not have wv on in the past.  Blogger turned a lot on by default when they made the big switch to the new interface about 3 (?) months ago.  We can not stress this enough: CHECK YOUR BLOG FOR WV!!!!!!  

Well, if you really don't want comments or visitors, don't check.  Leave wv on.

We continued to visit and read but Friday we visited yet another kazillion blogs with wv on, many of them with the big SURPRISE wv after we wrote a comment and clicked on "publish."  We reached the snapping point.  We are now in process of deleting blogs using wv from our Google Reader and moving their blog link to a WV folder in bookmarks so we don't bookmark them or visit again. Not even if there will be serious illness or a death because, frankly, they've put out the UNWELCOME mat and we can't leave a message anyway.

Kimo & Sabi, Bogden - old or new friends, they're removed from our reading list.  We're not being mean.  We have been blogging about this for months.  When we were still able to struggle through, we left hundreds of comments and wrote innumerable emails (if we could find an email address).  Now we're pulling the plug.

We've seen long discussions on facebook about hating wv and not leaving comments on those blogs that use it, so we know we're not alone.  But are you willing to do something about it besides complain?  We made the word verification guillotine graphic.  You are welcome to use it if you want to help stop the spreading use of this frustrating, time-wasting menace.  There is a smaller size in our sidebar.

Guillotine Blogger word verification!

UPDATE:  A suggestion for setting changes to stop the spam when word verification is off is in tomorrow's post, WV Support and Riding Thunder.  

Yesterday was Gracie's mom's birthday.  Percy and Rusty asked Jan to throw something together to post on the Tabby Cat Club since her mom has helped her set up and keep the TCC running.  This is on the TCC but we didn't do a post yesterday so we thought we'd share this today.  One can't ever have too many birthday cards and we do love Gracie and her mom.