Let the games begin!
;-}

Dan - As a guy who knows computers, you really ought to get some web space and try Movable Type or Wordpress. I'm partial to MT, and the new version, MT4, that just came out sounds amazing. It had built in podcasting support now, so it would be good for your JIMM blog.

You can get web space fairly cheap too. I'm with Total Choice Hosting and I pay about $60 a year for more space than I'll ever use.

For those of you on Blogger who don't want to mess with web space and software installs, there's the free Wordpress solution, Wordpress.com.

I hear that the WP Spam Karma plugin is highly effective and I use the MT Ccode plugin, which creates a hidden 'word verification' field. That field is passed to the software when you click the post button. Since spammers don't actually visit the site, they just send comments straight to the software, their comments don't have the secret word and they get blocked.

There are other anti-spam plugins for TM and WP as well, and some MT and WP blogs use something like the blogger word verification. I used to here, it was very effective.

If I understand right, Blogger without the Word Verification results in the comments section overrun with spam pretty quickly. The problem with Blogger, I think, is that folks don't have a choice. Either word verification or nothing.

That's kind of like having a man in the tropics a fur coat to wear ad nothing else. Either sweat or go naked.