Why has my comment turned into a unicorn?

One of the most annoying aspects of producing this blog is a "feature" of Blogger itself.  Blogger is the Google-provided, freely-hosted blog system through which all this mindless drivel boundless creativity finds its way to your eyeballs.  Blogger has been going gently along, being a convenient crutch all-in-one blog-writer's toolset for people like me, for nigh-on twenty years, which makes it almost inconceivably ancient in the fast-moving world of the internet.

Alas, internet misdeeds have moved on apace in the last twenty years, and so, consequently, have internet browsers.  Nowadays, it seems, it is necessary to block all sorts of once-useful things from one's browser to avoid being cloned in cyberspace, having one's personal history aired online like so much dirty washing, or having one's bank account unwittingly drained into a mysterious Bitcoin wallet somewhere in Russian cyberspace.  And one consequence of all that is that the way Blogger does comments doesn't work properly any more.

The reasons seem to be:

1. Blogger uses various cookies to find out whether you are logged into a Google account, and some modern browsers don't like them.  To a modern browser, they look like a cross-site tracking exploit, because of the external links they contain, and so the browser blocks them.  It is possible to re-enable their use by switching off cross-site protection, but obviously this exposes you to a whole raft of mysterious evil practices.  If the internet had any warranties, this would surely invalidate them.  Just as well it doesn't then!
   
   
2. Apple.
   As we all know, Apple products are - different.  And they don't play nicely with arch-rival Google's nasty old blogging system.  Apparently this applies to their entire iOS operating system, not just the Safari browser.  You can use an Apple product to look at my blog, but you can't post a comment with it!

I must admit that finding this out has come as a bit of a shock.  I don't know all that many "Apple people" (unless they're hiding it - oh, no; that's a bit like meeting someone from Yorkshire and having to ask them where they are from - doesn't happen) but I'm dismayed that none of them has complained that they can't post a comment.  Maybe they are above that sort of thing.  Or maybe they tried to, but their comment disappeared...

SO...  if you are an Android, or Windows, or Linux user and your have been frustrated by my blog's irritating habit of "disappearing" your carefully curated comments before your very eyes, there MAY be a solution for you, which would be to use Chrome.  Chrome is Google's very own modern browser, and works very well, but of course it does let all those naughty Google bits through, so everything works just fine.  The otherwise admirable Brave (which I use myself), on the other hand, is a complete non-starter, and Firefox is too, unless you are prepared to deliberately expose yourself, so to speak.  Others I can't speak for.

For Apple people, it seems there is currently no hope.  Please email me instead - you all know me personally anyway (or know someone who does).  

Clearly this situation is no good, going forward, so I have been experimenting with a Wordpress site hosted on a virtual server I already use.  Alas, the reliability of that setup is not proving to be so great - this morning it went down, taking the estimable DrBannonsBlog (newly moved to my server to solve just these problems) with it.  It appeared for a moment, but it's gone again right now.  Not really good enough.

So one way or another, it's all go, in the hectic world of blogging technical support.  If anyone knows a supplier of really reliable Linux hosting (preferably with cPanel), I'd love to hear about it, so please let me know in the comments.  Oh, hang on...

This has turned out to be one of those boring technical posts which doesn't naturally have any pictures in it.  Having been brought up on Alice in Wonderland etc, I know that a blog post without pictures is like a screwdriver with no handle, so I offer in consolation the following conversational exchange, which took place this morning, complete with illustrations.  Layla (who is now four years old) was talking to the lovely Jackie about unicorns, and the idea that they are magical creatures because they don't really exist.

Jackie: Are there any animals with a horn in the middle of their head?

A unicorn

Me: Rhinocerous?

A rhinocerous

Layla:  Triceratopses?

Two triceratops(es)

Yes indeed.  Plurals can certainly be tricky; but you've got to admire her breadth and accuracy of knowledge.