I think I just fixed a glitch where captcha’s would fail sometimes, even when they were correct. I’ve fixed the problem, so if you’ve tried to post a comment or create an account since I enabled captcha’s, then try again and it should work.
Sorry!
Oops.. I just now noticed that in the upgrade to Geeklog 1.5 I forgot to re-enable the gallery plugin I was using.
Sorry about that, it’s fixed now and the "Inmemoriam" link is back at the top. Enjoy 
Since I’m posting alot right now (about the Fairbanks trip and such), I noticed that the website is both cluttered & simply "dated" looking. So I hit the geeklog.net site and downloaded a new theme to give it a fresh look, and I rearranged the sidebars a bit to get the important stuff a bit higher on the page.
Hope you like it, and post a general thumbs-up/thumbs-down in the comments.
10/29/2007 – I just went through and disabled alot of the clutter that wasn’t really useful before. You’ll notice the top-right block is alot ligher now, all of the "Add to X" buttons and Technorati stuff is gone. Also, the menu bar has been reorganized & cleaned up, and alot of the unnecessary options removed.
[tag:geeklog][tag:website]
I know it’s been a while since I updated, but I’ve spent the last week in Fairbanks, Alaska! Between the travel & the trip itself, I’ve got a fair bit to post… To break it down:
So keep checking back, I’ll try to post at least one or two of these a day over the next week.
One of my New Year’s Resolutions this year was to lose weight & get in better shape. With alot of help from Laura, I’m starting to do alot better. My biggest problem has always been in simply figuring out if what you’re doing is helping. Sure, everyone says "Eat less, exercise more" but never how much less or more. I can run on the treadmill until my knees give out, but I feel like I never lose any weight. I can fast for 3 days and again, feel like I’m not losing any weight. So how does one know?
Given that I’m an engineer by training and geek by trade, numbers make everything make sense. To that means, I discovered the Harris-Benedict equations and the Basal Metabolic Rate formula. It’s a simple formula that computes the number of calories you burn in a day doing nothing based on your age, weight, and height. That number can be used as a maximum for daily calorie intake. When I run those numbers, I come up with roughly 3000 calories a day so when I look and see something is 100 calories or 500 calories, I know how much of my "daily allotment" I’m using up. It makes things alot easier to keep straight in your head, and gives you a target to aim for.
Also, I decided to go ahead and script it up and throw it up on my website. If you look up top you’ll see a new "Scripts" link with a link to the "BMR & Caloric Intake Calculator". Hope you like it [tag:exercise][tag:health][tag:bmr][tag:calorie][tag:diet]
So I did some research and found a plugin that can add “Blogger API” support into Geeklog, meaning you can use it with tools like Ecto and such. Supposedly it’s a “shareware” plugin, but only $5 to register (for a personal site), so if it works out I might start to use it. Currently I’m using it with Performancing integrated into the spiffy new FireFox 2, and this is my first post with it. Hopefully it will work well, and I might start using it more often.
[tag:firefox][tag:geeklog][tag:performancing][tag:blogger]
Update: When this message was posted, the Title I set was overwritten with the first few words of the post. So it’s not 100%.
Update 11/04/06: I did some more digging around, and found that evidently Performancing just doesn’t support Titles with the Blogger API. A bit of reading in the documentation (and a pointer from Dirk) got me to install w.bloggar, which fully supports all of the bells & whistles of Geeklog & the blog plugin. It’s Java Based, so it runs pretty much anywhere, and seems to integrate beautifully with all the functions. In fact, I’m editing & publishing this post with it. I think I’m gonna make this my blogging “tool of choice” when the Website won’t do. [tag:wbloggar]
Well, if you visit the website you’ll see a new feature: Meebo Chat.
If you’re not familiar with it, Meebo is a great web-based Instant Messenger tool that works with AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber (including Google), and ICQ chat. Since it’s web-based, it requires no web install and is accessible anywhere. Just last night they rolled out a nifty embed-friendly flash widget for use on Web Pages. I couldn’t resist, and quickly placed one on my website here (on the right) and on my Myspace page. I’ve been using centerICQ for IM, but I think I’m going to start trying to use Meebo. We’ll see how well it works.
If the chat thing annoys you (it does add a fair bit to page loadtime), then simply create an account. Once you have an account, you can use the “Preferences” to disable the “Chat” box (and the ad boxes as well if they bother you). But be warned, make it a legitimate account and pitch in on a few comments. If your account looks suspicious or goes unused, I’ll probably delete it.
[tag:meebo][tag:chat][tag:instantmessenger][tag:web]
So I’ve finally received my PIN number from Google Adsense, and having topped $75 in revenue things are looking decent. I’ve also sold a small spot on the left of my site with Text-Link-Ads.com. It’s currently raking in about $7 a month, but hopefully it’ll grow some soon. So, I’ve started making some change with my website, but I definately can’t quit my day-job just yet.
So far, i’m really liking the Text-Link-Ads.com setup. They give you a small snippet of code in your language of choice that you can drop in. From then on out, it’s all raw HTML. No fancy javascript, no IFrames, no annoying blinking flash junk. Just nice muted HTML links, with a decent payout. Plus, they let you review the ads so you can decline ones you find offensive or ridiculous.
[tag:advertising][tag:adsense][tag:textlinkads]
This afternoon I got a puzzling email from the folks at the Google Adsense department. Apparently it’s been detected that I have “invalid clicks” on my website.
| It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). As a reminder, any method of generating invalid clicks is strictly |
Alrighty then.. That’s remarkably vague and unhelpful. I replied back asking for what information may make them think they are invalid? What site are then on? What ads were they? Where were they coming from (ip address)? I got another form letter telling me to read their Terms and Policies.
Right now I’m at a loss as to what I should do next. I’m guessing that either this is an error, or it’s from Laura clicking on the various pregnancy-related ads that have appeared since I announced our new bundle of joy. Either way, I don’t think I’ve broken 5 clicks in a day yet, usually averaging about 1. How can this possibly be “fraud” ?
Well, it seems I’m not the only one asking this question. Just a little bit of digging around and you’ll find lots of storires. The most popular seems to be Benjamin Cohen’s story on Times Online where his account was revoked with little to no information as to why, but there are hundreds others. “rcd01″ on Sitepoint Forums and BrianHehe at Geek Village are both in the same situation as I, warned but not yet banned, but how can we prevent bans with no information on what we’re doing wrong? Google is no help, as any correspondence (whether reporting invalid clicks or asking for clarification) seems to result in the same form-letter responsed.
Although it does violate Adsense’s TOS, I’ve found instructions on how to modify the javascript to exclude certain IP’s (namely myself). I might try that in a bit to see if it helps. But that will do little to stop the click-bombs of angry visitors madly clicking on ads? Seems I’m just at google’s mercy at this point, hoping they won’t pull my account.
There’s an interview with Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety, where he discusses a bit of click-fraud in the light of their recent settlement. Could it be that this is a paranoid knee-jerk response to the problem of click-fraud?
[tag:adsense][tag:google][tag:clickfraud]
I’ve been noticing alot of hits to my site looking for the Ventrilo Server setup information. For those of you who don’t know, I used to run a Ventrilo server here on this server but I eventually took it down because they started limiting it to only 8 users per channel unless you paid for it, and then they wouldn’t even sell it to you but rather send you to a 3rd party hosting provider. It all seemed pretty silly to me, so I switched to Teamspeak.
Unfortunately, now Teamspeak is starting to turn toward the dark side like Ventrilo did, selling the server and referring people to 3rd party hosters. In the meantime tho, I still use it as does the rest of my guild. It’s a great program and has alot of configurable options. I also use Teamspeak Overlay. In fact, according to my statistics, the #1 article on my site is the original article I wrote on it. Hey, Just noticed that they’ve finally released TSO Beta, upgraded from TSO Alpha. Have to check that out tonight
Well, with so many people getting sent to my site it seemed silly not to have the page up. I went ahead and put it back up as a static page, inside Geeklog, at the url above. There’s also a rewrite rule that will redirect the old link ( http://www.yeraze.com/ventrilo/ventrilo_srv.html ) to the new page. Here’s hopin some of these folks will click on some ads
[tag:ventrilo][tag:teamspeak][tag:teamspeakoverlay][tag:meta]
