Archive for December, 2004

News Years Eve in review

Friday, December 31st, 2004 | Life

Well the Matrix disk has just entered by DVD player. It just wouldn’t be New Years Eve without it. I am not sure how the tradition got started for me but this is the 4th year I believe that I have watched the Matrix on New Years Eve and even though I can’t say it is the movie I would pick to watch, I would hate to break tradition.

I have also got Hell’s Kitchen to watch which has Angelina Jolie who played Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider movies. I bought it for myself at Christmas but haven’t watched it yet. So busy doing nothing and writing random news stories that I have done jack all holiday – I feel like I need a holiday from my holiday!

Anyway, I remember last New Years Eve I think it was that I watched Red Dwarf at like 1 in the morning followed by some carry on film or something. This year I can watch Red Dwarf on DVD as I got series 1 and I have one episode on it that I haven’t seen yet (well I have probably seen it ages ago but no recently or on the DVD). I also have some commentary to watch from episode 5.

I was actually going to do something this year though. I was going to head off to a party at Dean‘s but we never got it organized. I really need more friends who aren’t nerds, but then again I would hate for people to think I was losing my nerdish routes. I do need to network though for a certain little project. That is going to be kept secret for the moment though.

A tale of two web servers

Thursday, December 30th, 2004 | Life

mworld.us is back baby! After the Audio Senate revivial on December 6th (turns out Nerd Federations track back system isn’t what I thought it was 😉 I didn’t think a revival could get much sweeter. But now M World is back it is a great feeling. Even if it did take so many hours.

To begin the story, I renewed by web hosting back at the end of October. My web host, onedollarhost.net, didn’t seem to notice though and deleted everything. Files, databases, apparently they don’t even keep backups. Hmm, so as you can image I wasn’t happy. M World has like a hundred sub-sites so I can’t just upload them all again.

Anyway I emailed them several times asking if they had backups and if so use them to restore the files from that. The response I got over and over was:

"Files were deleted.  You will need to re-upload the files."

Another thing I wanted from that host was stats as I had none. It is a shame I didn’t as it was quite a high traffic site with over 6,000 pages in Google so I would be interested to see what the traffic was like. That is no longer a problem though, as I took the decision to move over to my new Windows host.

I have been with them ages although I didn’t want to move M World because of the data loss (and there has been a lot of data loss). Still it didn’t seem to matter now, so I moved it over and so from now on I will be able to track everything from Awstats. There is some good in every situation I guess.

I have also spend hours last night and most of today putting together all of the sub-sites. I found all but one although there may be a load not listed. Still, I have put all the others online and with no content, hopefully M World will eventually regain it’s former glory.

So although it has not been a good experiance – two months of missing files, most of it is back online now. There are still a few bits I keep remembering but overall, I think M World can now move forward, safe on a new server.

Google Adsense actually making money?

Wednesday, December 29th, 2004 | Life

Well I appear to have lost all my channels on Google Adsense. None of them display any data when I select a channel to view, which really sucks as I had them all configured to different websites. Still, some good has come of my long term chance that I took in the program.

Although I can’t say how much I earned per click (due to the terms and such), my income yesterday was awesome. Well not mega amounts but let’s say like 10, 20 times what I normally could. Could have been a fluke but I really hope not. I added the code to a new site yesterday so I think that is the reason.

If so then I can finally understand why everyone likes Adsense. I must have been running it like forever now and never really made anything substantial although this changes things. I earned more off Adsense yesterday than I did using Mamma, which has traditionally been a far, far bigger earner.

Still, that said, that hasn’t earned much either recently. I am getting a good rate but over 50% of the ads are unsold – most of the ads I display for them are default redirects back to my own ads.

Problems with Firefox 1.0

Sunday, December 26th, 2004 | Life

Ok, I am starting to think that Mozilla have actually gone backwards with Firefox 1.0 since I upgraded from Firefox 0.9. I am still without my IE View extension although there are bigger problems emerging.

The first is that when I went to find something and I typed it into the bar at the top right of the screen it searched Google instead. I though, oh it must have defaulted back to Google. But no, find on this page is missing from there totally!

Secondly, is the random screen space taken up. When it blocks a pop-up or when you go to find on this page from the edit menu, it brings up this huge toolbar on your page. How is this better than what is was before?

Thirdly, and post annoyingly, Firefox has gone Internet Explorer on us. When you click a link in Outlook Express, it opens up in your current window rather than opening up a new window. Is there a way to fix this? This is terrible!

Adventures with Firefox 1.0

Sunday, December 26th, 2004 | Life

I have just upgraded from Firefox 0.9 to Firefox 1.0. Everything downloaded ok and the installation seemed to go fine I did a full install thing with the extra web developer component though I haven’t played around with it yet. The installation kept all my settings from what I can see so far too.

I did run into a problem with the extensions though. I have three installed, an RSS reader, a proxy tool and a view this page in IE tool. Though I have to compliment it on being able to look for compatible extensions and install them I am still without Sage and ieview. The latter of which I use a lot.

I am almost tempted to switch back to get the functionality back. Still maybe I will hold out and see if an updated version comes out or there is something else to do the job. From what I here, compatibility problems with sites site GameSpot are less in 1.0 than in 0.9. The homepage finally works in 1.0 at least.

I still need to make a GameSpot rant sometime but anyway. Firefox 1.0 seems ok, the menu bar lights up when your in a secure area and the go button looks strangely new. I managed to find a new version of Sage that seemed to install ok, though my new version of IE View is still not compatible apparently. That’s not what the website says.

Where the Smith is everybody?

Saturday, December 25th, 2004 | Life

There was much talk before today about who would be hanging around on the internet on Christmas Day. Well I’m on now and I appear to be all by my lonesome. No posts on Buffy Talk, nobody on the instant messager networks (ok I have plenty of people on just none of the people I want to me on).

Still I guess nothing went to plan. I was going to be on all day from around 9 am onwards. However due to family interuptions I was distracted and only got in 30 minutes online before it was time to eat. That look almost 4 hours and I have only now got away.

Still this should free up some time although no doubt I will be dragged back in and out of the frey severals times before the day is over. All I really want is to play my guitar, download some porn and chat to some friends. Still, that is Christmas Day for you.

Bad, "don’t think I can’t hear you playing my guitar." People treat it like public property, just like the way we all use my mum’s camera. Well except me as I got mine back from the service centre recently. That is a post I had already made though.

Anyway, I think I made my point, I might go on a little to talk about Chrismukka in a later post. My sister didn’t even get that when I wrote it in her card though, she needs to watch more of The O.C.

Happy Chrismukka!

Friday, December 24th, 2004 | Life

For those of you who are not in the know (shame on you, watch more TV!) Chrismukka is a hybrid of Christmas and Hannukah created by Seth on The O.C. Great show. Anyway, I was going to do this post tommorow but we are well past midnight anyway. I will probably do some more tommorow as well as I will be working online tommorow too.

I had to stay up till at least midnight as it was reset day for both Black Nova Traders and Paranormal Deathmatch on Fallen Nation. So I did these just before midnight and though I can finally go to sleep. Then I remembered I hadn’t updated my daily news sites :o.

Well that took another 20 minutes out of me. Ah well, once I rule the web it will be all worth it – right? Finally it is all wrapped up though and everything else can weight for tommorow or maybe the day after. Except domains and daily news which will have to come tommorow. I need to freeze time somehow.

Not that I am complaining though. Well I am but I still enjoy it. Running websites, no matter how annoying and stressfull is still what I want to do. How did this post get emo? Anyway, the Chrismukka celebrations stuff can wait until the morning. Or maybe this is the morning and I won’t post till afternoon. Whatever it is, I will post – later!

My camera is back

Thursday, December 23rd, 2004 | Life

Towards the end of the afternoon today there was a knock at the door. I was going to ignored if but I decided it might be some kind of knife salesman so I decided to see who it was. As it happened, it was a delivery for me, returning my digitial camera to me which is good news.

I sent it back to the Nikon service centre as it broke while in the case (how does that happen)? They not only repaired it but they did it in time for Christmas which was really cool of them. Will be cool if it snows as that should provide some pictures for my I-will-start-eventually stock photography site.

As for what else is happening, I am tempted to do something new and crazy for Christmas. After all I will be updating my websites and generally working on Christmas day. Out of choice, as that is the kind of dedicated person I am ;). Plus it gives me bragging power which I need to make extensive use of.

Frinks should really have Christmas content although it should have had it by now. There is also the should I post happy Christmas on each of the daily news sites. They will all look the same though and online, I don’t even know how much of the readership base for each site actually celebrates Christmas.

I mean, not being Christian I don’t want to seem like I am advocating it. Then again I do celebrate Christmas, as a commerical holiday but that is a whole different story. Encoria rules!

Random shopping lists

Thursday, December 23rd, 2004 | Life

I am still bitter about Suprnova, although I never got round to making another post about it. Still there is plenty of time. Well that is what I thought but by know there was loads of work I had planned to do and haven’t even with the free time I have this Christmas. But anyway I am sort of doing something now even if it isn’t what I was planning to do.

End result is that I found a list on a bit of paper in the giant pile of stuff I have to sort through about all the random stuff I spent my birthday money on back in October. Interestingly enough, I ordered a DVD from Play near the end of October and didn’t get it until the middle of December. Rare stock huh?

Hmm, I might make a post about the alternative spellings (well 2) of the word hu. Traditionally I used hu although I have started to use huh more now too. Anyway, I have bought so much recently the list doesn’t really cover anything I bought in November or December – this is just the last week of October.

I picked up both Tomb Raider movies in HMV for £15 as I wasn’t going to go all the way into town and not buy anything. I got some online bargins in eBay too though with Antitrust for £2.70 and £4.50.

My order list from Play.com isn’t exactly sort either. In like a week I ordered So Little Time volumne 2 (£10), Justine (£6.50), Father Ted series 3 (£9), Skater Girl (£10) and Miss Congeniality (£6). I would like to say I stopped buying so much after that first week but…

Oh god no, not Suprnova!

Sunday, December 19th, 2004 | Life

Suprnova is for the moment no more! It is hard to beleive that after years of Suprnova being probably (or in other peoples opinion, easily) the best source of torrents on the internet the site has closed down.

Not that I would ever use the content on Suprnova or condone the behaviour of people who used it, I am sure that there will be millions of people who will continue the site a huger loss to the online community.

The message from sloncek and the rest of the team said that the site may return although if it did it would not be carrying torrents so you have to wonder exactly it would be doing if it did relaunch.

Still though, Suprnova is a part of the internet and now it is gone! It has become a legend in advocacy against the music industry all their all consuming profits (ok that is just the excuse we all give). Rest in peace Suprnova, rest in peace.