The Cluttering of the Internet and Blog Pages

I have see it get progressively harder to find what I am looking for on search engines. This is the result of their slant toward commercial products. Look up 'quantum' and the top listing that turns up is a computer company, a little bit down the page is fishing tackle. And so it goes, a lot of misdirected searches. Spam is another thing that happens--the desire  to gain free advertisement without paying for it. Advertisement kills the entertainment media. I no longer watch television, except for an occasional  weather forecast. A movie on TV is a pain to watch whenever it is littered with too many, too long commercials. I would rather rent a DVD, and watch it without interruptions on the big screen.

Spam and Web Maintenance

The effect of scam on my blog is a tax on my time. I could buy a spam filter for WordPress; but otherwise I have to spend my own time hacking out the spam. I would rather be composing blogs. The effect of spam is like a swarm of flies at a picknick--not a pretty sight. As web traffic increases on my site, so does the spam. The time tax is on individuals. If you are creative, the drag of dealing with spam is a drag on creativity. Maybe the answer to this problem is to shut down the comment section of my blog. At the present, that seems not to be a great inconvenience, because I have very few real responses from my readers. In fact, I may have no real readers at all--only spammers flooding me with computer-generated comments.

The Vision of Operating Globally from Home

I was very excited about personal computers in combination with the Internet back in the 90s. I thought that they offered a means for an individual to globalize his talent, and thereby make a living from home. Some people have been able to realize that dream. I know of one person who lives in the mountains and does animation drawings for Hollywood. He does quite well, and he enjoys the tranquil life in the mountains. Somehow, this does not seem to happen in science; although I remain optimistic that it is possible.

My Blog is a Way of Letting Others Look over my Shoulder

I consider myself as being fairly self driven, and there are a lot of things that I want to do with my time. I like to write, and there are many ideas that I want to share. To write well requires that one write, all the time if possible. At the moment, there are some subjects that I do not write about in my blog. because they are private matters. I am interested in writing a book about physics, or on physics, and that lends itself to the blog format. In books of that type, it is best to have feedback from those who read such a book. Without feedback, I tend to race ahead leave out a lot of details. In this case, I write for a person such as I was as a young student. There is a lot of discussion in  physics that needs motivation. Without knowing where an abstruse mathematical discussion is going, the reader tends to lose interest fast. The required motivation is different for different people, and that is why feedback is important. The increased load of useless spam is something that tends to hobble such a discussion, and it detracts from creative development because it creates a load of drudge work.

Wrap up

For the moment, I will search for better solutions in automatically filtering users' comments and continue the blog. The discouraging part is that most of the comments, perhaps all of them, are spam in one form or another, and that I am wasting my time with them toward no good purpose. If necessary, I will continue the blog, but not allow comments. Those who look over my shoulder must do so silently. In the short run, I may create a special e-mail account where all comments are directed. In that way I can use e-mail controls to eliminate spam and trash. I will then have a few remaining comments that I can deal with personally, and manually enter in the blogs.

I am an optimist. I am sure that I can solve the problem of an exponentially increasing stream of spam and still continue to blog.