Bye-Bye Google Ads

Meta

The Google ads are gone on this site for the forseeable future. I did it mainly as an experiment, firstly in doing some server-side hacking on the javascript, which was later negated by them offering color choices, and secondly to see how they would do. The response was good, but the ads never seemed really relevant to my content, they slowed down page loading, and they wrote semi-invalid markup to the browser, which is violating standards but through javascript so the validator couldn’t see it. I am tempted to leave them up until I hit the $100 mark and get a check (I’m about halfway there now) but the response has been waning as I suppose my audience has gotten used to them and/or the relevancy of the ads has decreased. All of that, and I’d much rather put the Photo Matt endorsement on items I have personally reviewed and recommend, such as the two books that have returned to their place at the top of my page.

What I’ve decided to do is when I get a new CD or electronic toy that really strikes my fancy, I’ll make a small banner for it and put it at the top there. That way you get home-made “ads” of things I use myself and enjoy. This seems like a much more personal approach, and one that seems better suited to a personal site such as my own.

Just Like Mom

Humor

I’m a little late, but Evan Goer wrote a characteristically funny post and it looks like his mother left a comment that had me rolling in laughter, mostly because I could see my mom saying the exact same thing.

I followed your link to Chordiant’s home page, and I couldn’t figure out exactly what your new company does based on its self-description–other than it involves attractive women looking at computer screens. Still, I have no doubt that you will help them do it better.

I better get to sleep before this storm comes through and knocks me offline again. I have so much posting to do but it’ll have to wait until at least tomorrow. In the mean time oogle some pictures.

Whoops

Humor

Someone really messed up on this one:

Dear Evite Newsletter Subscriber,

Yesterday we mailed a newsletter to our subscribers with incorrect dates for three important Holidays. Please accept our sincerest apologies for these errors and note the following corrections:

Labor Day, September 1st
Rosh Hashanah, September 27th
Yom Kippur, October 6th

In addition, we also wish to apologize for having listed Yom Kippur as one of our “Reasons To Party”. We understand and respect that Yom Kippur is a Day of Atonement, a day to be taken seriously to reflect and fast, and as such, one of the most important Jewish Holidays in the year.

Emphasis mine.

Sometimes You Just Can’t Win

Personal

The last name “Mullenweg” has elicited various schoolyard permutations over the years, but by far the most enduring has been “Mulletwig,” presumably because mullets are so entertaining. Therefore it is with great trepidation that I point to Mulletwigs.com, “Business in the front, party in the back!” 🙂

It’s worth outlining how I came across this: Email → Politech posting → “It’s the Economics, stupid” post on spam whitelist → scroll down to Hairy Situation → Original Mullet Wig.

No More Outlook Express

Uncategorized

Microsoft abandons Outlook Express says ZDNet UK. I find this highly disappointing because I’ve really become attached to OE, mostly because of it’s enhanced IMAP functionality over Outlook 2003. However if you look at that bizarre out-of-context quote in the middle of the article,

“IMAP is just not a very rich protocol,” Steve Conn, Exchange Server product manager, told ZDNet Australia during the company’s Tech Ed conference. “The great majority of people used Outlook Express because they weren’t on a LAN environment, and Outlook was just too fat for them.”

It’s as out of place here as it is in the article. Basically though it sounds like they’re going to be focusing on Exchange functionality over IMAP. I’ve played around with Outlook 2003 and was very impressed but whether I use it or not is very dependent on how it works with IMAP, which I live on. I’ve been browsing the Evolution blog and the screenshots for the next version look really great, if reminiscent of Entourage. That would be fine for my desktop, and even my Mom’s desktop (I’m moving her over to Linux), but on my laptop which is tied to Windows by proprietary drivers and hardware, I’m still out of luck. Why is Microsoft abandoning the things that made them so prevalent on desktops? Hat tip: Leonard.

Refresh

Personal

I love when it rains because I feel like it soothes my soul.

Last night in the space between conciousness and sleep I wrote an entry. It was beautiful, exquisitely thought out and relevant, and I even imagined the markup I would use. My last thought before I drifted off was I should write something down before I forget it in the morning. I forgot it, and I’ve been trying to toggle my memory since then.

I was trying to toggle my memory while driving this morning. However when I drive I don’t think, I just listen. I couldn’t find the two CDs I had planned for the drive but an older album did the job nicely. When I listen to music the bass vibrates all of the mirrors in the car when it hits. Depending on what pants I’m wearing, it sometimes vibrates my pants as well, making me think that my phone is ringing, but not any more because my phone no longer vibrates. Watching the rearview mirror when it vibrates is fascinating, as a picture of the world behind you goes from near-perfect clarity to fuzziness as the music plays. If I even make a movie, the first shot will be of a rearview mirror vibrating with the music.

A replaced faceplate apparently crippled my phone’s ability to vibrate. Now it is a beautiful, vibrant blue. Can I have my blue and vibrate too? We shall see. Maybe it’s just time for new phone.

Netscape Crushes Competition

Uncategorized

Anyone else notice similar trends on their site? Here’s my browser stats for this month to date:

  1. Netscape — 40.23% (Version 6 mostly.)
  2. Internet Explorer — 29.46% (70% version 6.)
  3. SharpReader — 4.99%
  4. Mozilla — 4.81% (Mostly 1.4, but with 1.5 not far behind.)
  5. Googlebot — 3.11%

A Tweak Here

Meta

If you have a sharp eye you may have noticed a few changes to the site. The big change is we now have publicly accessible archives. I had removed all archive links because I didn’t (and still don’t) like the URL structure they currently use, but I was getting enough emails requesting them that they are now back up in all they’re ugly query-based glory. Besides, having a weblog without archives is a little funky.

The other biggie is that all the external links have moved to a portal page, which is currently just the same lists as before but will become brutally optimized and reorganized as I begin to use it as my home page, the most revered status any page can aspire to. Anyway I considered simply hiding the links through some sort of toggle mechanism but upon further consideration that would just give me all the added code and generation time of having the links on every page without the benefit of having the links handy. They are mostly for my personal use anyway, though Joe has mentioned to be he has used the list as a launching point on several occasions. We shall see how this works out.

Finally, the Google ads are no longer quite as ugly. Unfortunately aesthetically consistent ads seem to get less clicks. Either that or the ad’s seeming obsession with TiVo for the home page is less than effective. (Of course I probably didn’t help matters much with that juicy keyword there.)

New Accesibility Forums

Uncategorized

Everyone’s favorite Ian, who is at a new URL and finally blogging again, and friends hvae put together a sister forum to his excellent Accessify resource. The new Accessify Forums look like they could develop into a great resource and I’ve already registered. I might even post as soon as things calm down a bit here. I’m keeping very busy with four different kinds of work and most recently installing the new Gentoo. I’m considering setting up a semi-private Portage server for Houston friends. Would anyone else be interested in this?