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This young tea leaf looks pretty fragile and hence makes a good candidate for this weeks PhotoFriday challenge. I took this picture in Sri Lanka.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Far From Home.” I’m entry number 143.

This weeks PhotoFriday theme is “Two.” Here is my entry.

This image was taken in Kandy, Sri Lanka. One of the first pictures I ever took on an SLR, it’s still one of my favourites.

This weeks PhotoFriday theme is “Silence.” Here is my entry.

I think this image, taken in Galle, Sri Lanka, speaks for itself!

Please vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “The City.” I’m entry number 109.

This weeks PhotoFriday theme is Loud. Here is my entry.

It must be loud in Galle, Sri Lanka otherwise they wouldn’t need these “no horns” signs. This picture was taken on Kodak ISO400 print film, hence the heavy grain.

Please vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, Vacation. I’m entry number 137.

This weeks PhotoFriday theme is “Busy.” Here is my entry.

This image was taken as the sun rose over Adams Peak in Sri Lanka, after our night climb to the top. Despite the unsociable hour, it was incredibly busy. Some of the older folk were very competitive, pushing us out of the way for a prime spot to see the sun-rise.

Some would say that it can only mean that I have far too much time on my hands. I claim that I’m merely interested. As is often the case, the truth maybe somewhere between the two. But the fact is, I do like to keep an eye how many people are visting ZX81.org.uk and what they’re looking at.

Sometimes people get here by the least obvious route. For example, most months I get a few hits from people searching for the words “my website.” What are they hoping to find? Are they expecting Google to figure out what they mean by “my”? Or is it just that there are an awful lot of very bored people just searching for random phrases?

There are also some oddities, I think anyway. My most popular picture is just of a tea leaf! (From when I was in the tea growing region of Sri Lanka.) It’s basically just a standard record shot, and even has a horizontal line across the middle where the lab scratched the negative. Not my greatest photograph. Some day I’ll invest the time to clean it up in Photoshop.

I figure I get a number of disappointed readers when they hop onto my site after searching for “Cuba girls.” I don’t know, maybe they are looking for girls chatting while leaning against a rusting old American car but somehow I suspect not. (This image from my time in Trinidad, Cuba.)

Most comments, it turns out, are not from “real” people at all. It was depressing to learn that most of my “readers” are just computer programs, and not very intelligent ones at that.

For a few months now I have been using the Akismet spam filter which has been doing an excellent job of removing such messages before you or I have to see them. I recently decided to bolster this with Paul Butler’s JS SpamBlock, which means that if you don’t have JavaScript enabled you may have to enter a random number when you post a comment. If you do have JavaScript enabled — and if you don’t know what I’m talking about you probably do — then everything should Just Work. In return I have seen my comment spam drop from around five thousand a month to virtually zero.

While I’m talking about changes you might see, I have also installed Imthiaz Rafiq’s WP-PDA which allows ZX81.org.uk to be readable on a PDA or smartphones web browser. Seems to work well from my phone.