Charlemagne Stavanger

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Monday Traffic

Many web developer I have know all say monday is the peak of the week's
traffic as people return to work after the weekend. However, my experience
says the contrary. I recently optimized my forum Blogcrowds.com to be more
search engine friendly and I have to say the results are great, I'm getting
more and more visitors via Google. From the 1 guest constantly showing up at
my forum status display, I suspect Googlebot visits the forum quite a bit.

This upbeat traffic peaked over the Thanksgiving long weekend last week as I
added some content. Looking over the traffic reports, I thought "this is
Thanksgiving, most people wouldn't even be online right now, so monday
should be even better!" So Sunday night, I added a lot more useful content
and checked the traffic again Monday night. To my great surprise, the number
of visits to my forum remained constant, my pageview gone done, and there I
was expecting a huge jump. Even more surprising is that I only had 2 visiter
from Google while before almost half my visitor came from Google! That made
me look at my referers to my forum, it happens my Custom Template blog is
the leading contributor. So, this made conclude probably at the beginning of
the week, mondays, more people check news, read blogs etc. Over the weekend,
especially long weekend, people finally found time to tweak there blog (as
most of my Google traffic was from template fixes etc) change their layouts
etc.

I'm not sure if this is accurate but I'm waiting for next monday to try to
jump my traffic again, so wish me luck!

Labels: , , , ,

posted by Stavanger at 6:04 PM | 2 comments




Sunday, November 26, 2006

Nuclear Poisoning

Investigation continues over the death of Ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko due to nuclear poisoning from Polonium 210.
An investigation was under way last night into Russia's black market trade in radioactive materials amid concern that significant quantities of polonium 210, the substance that killed former spy Alexander Litvinenko, are being stolen from poorly protected Russian nuclear sites.

As I track this story over the last week, I couldn't stop making a connection to the 2003 movie Cradle 2 The Grave with Jet Li, featuring rapper DMX.

DMX and his professional heisters stole some extremely rare black diamonds that turns out to be top secret Taiwanese military project for stable plutonium until its enriched. Becuase of this, DMX is swept into a storm of people trying to get there hands on these diamonds namingly Jet Li - Taiwanese Agent who tries to destroy the diamond - and of course his evil traitor counter part Mark Dacascos, who kidnapped DMX's daughter.

The most relevant part of this movie is when Dacasco enriched the black diamonds with a green laser and read out its potential to a whole bunch of international terrorist representation...tomahawk missile, hiroshima, 2 hiroshima...new world order from one black diamond. Then Jet Li flies in and in an ultimant show down against Dacasco, Jet Li made the villian swallow a enrich black diamond. The special effect shows plutonium begin to radiate and light up as Dacasco quickly begin to quickly disintegrate atom by atom.

Labels: , , ,

posted by Stavanger at 3:19 PM | 1 comments




Fog


This photo is taken at noon yesterday, the lights that you can barely see are either store lights or lights from cars. With this much fog at the end of November you may think I live in London or something.

Labels:

posted by Stavanger at 11:36 AM | 0 comments




Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Pilgrim Thansgiving

Digg!
In less than twenty-four hours, the world will approach the fourth Thursday of November (clarified by Franklin D. Roosevelt) and the Thanksgiving in the United States! Thanksgiving will of course feature the traditional turkey, stuffing, family, football etc. However, here are some interesting things about Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving & Pilgrims
According to The History Channel, the pilgrims like today's families would prepare for the feast starting to cook in the early dawns and some turning the spit over a open fire hours at a time. When the food is done, the pilgrims would have a largely buffet style feast with their hands, spoons, knives, but no forks. What's most interesting though is that pilgrims did not eat some of what we thought are traditional Thanksgiving food. Of course not everything is accurate as the first the pilgrim feast did occur hundreds of years ago. Something for sure though, pumpkin pie and maybe cranberry sauce, one Thanksgiving favorite is not on the menu.

Probably to some's liking, there were more meat and far less vegetables on the tables of the pilgrims than there is today. And not just turkey either, there were far more types of meat including lobster and seal!

Foods That May Have Been on the Menu
Seafood:
Cod, Eel, Clams, Lobster
Wild Fowl: Wild Turkey, Goose, Duck, Crane, Swan, Partridge, Eagles
Meat: Venison, Seal
Grain: Wheat Flour, Indian Corn
Vegetables: Pumpkin, Peas, Beans, Onions, Lettuce, Radishes, Carrots
Fruit: Plums, Grapes
Nuts: Walnuts, Chestnuts, Acorns
Herbs and Seasonings: Olive Oil, Liverwort, Leeks, Dried Currants, Parsnips

What Was Not on the Menu
Ham, Sweet Potatoe, Corn on the Cob, Cranberry Sauce, Pumpkin Pie, Chicken/Egg
Source


Of Course, I don't have to go into the Thankgiving today in the United States, thinking of it makes me hungry. And for those who do not celebrate Thanksgiving or live in the United States, there is of course the official beginning of the holiday shopping season with price cuts and big holiday spending!

Labels:

posted by Stavanger at 6:58 PM | 1 comments




Saturday, November 18, 2006

Title Problem Resolved

A few day or maybe a week ago, I posted an entry regarding switching to Blogger Beta and a particular problem I was having with Blogger not showing a title for my entries. Today when I was giong through the Blogger help section I came across this article. As it happens, I turned the title off in the Setting --> Formatting section, why I don't know, I don't even remember doing so. Anyways, good job man, you are really smart, this should teach you about complaining without looking things up first :D

Labels: ,

posted by Stavanger at 5:06 PM | 1 comments




Monday, November 13, 2006

Windows Vienna

Digg!
Today, Microsoft announces it will start selling Windows Vista and Office 2007 through CompUSA stores starting Nov. 30, two month before general release date in January 2007. As we get closer to Vista's releasing date, Vista will become commonplace and old news; So now, I'll take a look at the Windows Vienna, the Windows OS following Vista.

In Feburary 2000, Microsoft announced Windows Vienna then codenamed Blackcomb as the version of Windows following Windows XP codenamed Whistler. Of course, it suffered major delay and Microsoft introduced Windows Vista codenamed Longhorn as the OS between XP and Vienna. Its very interesting that Microsoft codenamed all their operating system after Whistler-Blackcomb resort in British Columbia.

Some of the features of Vienna include the entire replacement of Windows explorer shell as well as well as a new Start Menu taskbar. Vienna may also include a 'Sandbox' approach probably similar to running a virtual machine inside the operating system to improve security. Finally there will be different ways of input methods such as type auto-complete or voice command. These and other features are of course all tentative, noone, probably not even Microsoft, will know until Vienna comes out in...who knows...ten years?

For more information visit the Windows Vienna Wikipedia Page

Labels: ,

posted by Stavanger at 4:51 PM | 5 comments




Sunday, November 12, 2006

Blogger Beta Switch

I signed up in August to check out the new Blogger Beta and a few days ago migrated my other blogs to Beta as Blogger completes its beta phrase (why am I still calling it Beta? I guess the name stick huh?). So far so good, except that in my personal blog I'm still unable to enter a title for my entries. I don't have this problem with any other Blogspot blogs and switching to Beta haven't fixed it either. Before, I just bold a section of my post to make it stand out, but this is becoming more and more of a problem as I'm hoping to get into some more robust things and its totally out of my control, so hopefully I'll find a solution somewhere on the World Wide Web :)

On the other beat, not much have changed since migrating to Beta. I still use the classic template, and to my pleasant surprise I see labels now at the bottom of my entries. Eventually, I think I will recode this template to Beta to support labels in the sidebar etc.

Labels:

posted by Stavanger at 4:39 PM | 0 comments





MacBook Pricing
Digg!
They used to say Windows 90% of the computer market, however now with Intel Macs, iPods becoming more and more popular, the percentage should have changed a bit. I don't know exactly how much, but by the number of times Macs appear in my day, I would say 50% of all computer are Macs now. I know that's an exaggeration of exaggerations, and I'm gonna be seriously flamed if I don't explain myself. The more modest guess would probably somewhere an increase around 3% to 5%, but the thing is, the sleek titanium Mac with glowing Apple insignia appears everywhere: in hands of random guys sitting on a bench in the park somewhere, in the hands of Rudolph Murdoch in Fortune, on TV, ads, commercials, random photo of an operating room in a science magazine...


Anyway, back on track, the fact there is a black and white MacBook, commonly advertised as 'The World's Newest Power Couples", shouldn't be news for you or me. What is news for me as I checked out the Apple Online Store is that the black MacBook is $200 more expensive than the white MacBook with the exact same hardware configuration except for a 40 gig larger hard drive. When do you start getting charged $200 extra for a different color of the same thing? All the different colored Nanos and iPods are priced equally. Of course, it might be the larger hard drive and if in 2006 not 1996 hard drives come at 5/gig then you might as well upgrade to a MacBook Pro for the better spec.

I'm not an expert on metal works, so forgive me for asking me this: Should I start stenciling "Comes with 40 gigabit larger hard drive at $5 per gigabit" on MacBook ads and upload the video somewhere just like that guy did with the iPod batteries having ridiculously short life span?

Labels: , ,

posted by Stavanger at 12:29 PM | 1 comments




Friday, November 10, 2006

Unsolicited Adsense Email
Digg!
A few days ago, I received an unsolicited email from someone titled "Earning Money Through Google Adsense". This email was obviously targeted at me specifically as its not in my spam folder and I'm its only adressee, so I took some time and read it. After reading it, my eyebrow was all the way up in the sky.
Hello,
You receive this email because we have just visited your website/blog and we would like to invite you to join our fast making money program.

We have a huge number of members joining us since 2005 and each of them is making a good earning until now.So,what actually is the concept?It's easy,each of the member clicks on each other Google Adsense Advertisements once in a day.Now,you might be wondering that Google Adsense Team might find it out and they will ban your account instantly.But to tell you the fact,not only our accounts not getting banned,but on the contrary we are making almost $5000 monthly.

Certainly,we have our own clicking methods and it's almost impossible for Google to detect it.Well,before we tell you how it's done,we want you to consider first and then give us a favorable reply as soon as possible.Your reply is either yes or no.Thank you.

Yours sincerely,
AdsenseForumAdmin

I have to say, I was curious after reading this. Now, my Google Adsense earnings for my site Blogcrowds.com are so embarrassing, I won't even further elaborate; however I'm not interested in blackmarket scheme. If you offer me valuable returning visitors for my forum, that's another thing. But as I said before, I was curious, so, I read the email over and over and over again. In doing so I found many interesting things along with all the spelling mistakes (I won't say grammar as mine aren't perfect either) etc.


In Depth Analysis
Hello,
You receive this email because we have just visited your website/blog and we would like to invite you to join our fast making money program.

Yes, hum, I have been wondering how you got my email...It can't really be my site Blogcrowds since I added Adsense ages ago, but I just added Adsense to two of my blogs Custom Templates and this blog just days ago.
We have a huge number of members joining us since 2005 and each of them is making a good earning until now.So,what actually is the concept?It's easy,each of the member clicks on each other Google Adsense Advertisements once in a day.

Oh yes, the ultimate scheme
Now,you might be wondering that Google Adsense Team might find it out and they will ban your account instantly.But to tell you the fact,not only our accounts not getting banned,but on the contrary we are making almost $5000 monthly.

Yes I have been wondering about that, but I'm more puzzled at what you mean by 'on the contrary we are making almost $5000 monthly'. If 'we are' means collectively people participating in the scheme is almost making $5000 monthly, I have to say you guys aren't making alot. If I feel like doing math right now, I can try calculate how much each person makes a month if you guys have 100 members, 500 members and so on. But of course you have a huge number of members join since 2005 so I won't have to do the math.
Certainly,we have our own clicking methods and it's almost impossible for Google to detect it.

Oh man, even more conspiracy, I thought you mentioned your scheme before already.
Well,before we tell you how it's done,we want you to consider first and then give us a favorable reply as soon as possible.Your reply is either yes or no.

Why do I feel I'm conned into something? Yes or No huh? So no more details...aw that's too bad.
Thank you.

Thany you as well, but no thanks.


After reading the email over and over again, I was still not satisfied. The email was signed AdsenseForumAdmin and I varied many search terms in Google but came up with nothing. The closest is AdsenseForum.com which is a domain owned by NamesPro.com for their Google Adsense sub forum. I guess this is either a covert email operation or the domain has a low pagerank which is good for remaining obscure.

Entry also mirrored here.

Labels: , ,

posted by Stavanger at 7:05 PM | 2 comments




Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Cross-Browser CSS Tips - IE 7 Part III

As I continue to code CSS & HTML for multiple browsers, I find that if you follow two 'simple' rules, your design will most of the time come out pretty much the same in all browsers.


1.) Never use padding along with width
This is probably the cause of the biggest headaches as IE 6 renders padding incorrectly. To make everything look the same in browsers, you will probably have to do some extra math and use an underscore or star html hack to set the width differently for IE. So it is advisable to never use paddings with width. If you absolutely have to use padding, create another container (div, span, p etc) and set its margins.

2.) Always remember to clear your floats
This is an IE problem that shows up most commonly in Firefox or Opera. Confused? Now let me explain. In IE 6 even when you don't clear your floats, the parent container will still rap around the inner content. However rendered correctly, the parent container would only appear for maybe five pixel at the top of the page and your child container seems to break out of its parent container and extend to the bottom of the page. So in Firefox when you see your parent container appearing only at the top of the page for a few pixel, remember to check if you cleared your floats or not.


Please keep in mind that these are tips for rendering designs the same in different browsers and not tips for how to code CSS. For example with tip number one, if you put a div that is 800 pixels wide with 10 pixels margin all around in a div that is only 800 pixels you will still get an expanded parent div, but at least it shows up the same in all browsers; whereas if you put a div that is 800 pixels wide in a div that is 800 pixels with 10 pixels padding, who knows what's gonna show up.

posted by Stavanger at 12:40 PM | 0 comments