Archive for August, 2004

Actually, there is no real need for the word why as it’s silent in the title when said as a sentence but it seemed to have a king of deep thought edge so I thought I would stick it in. The problem with this posts, as many of the previous posts on Nerd Federation is that there isn’t really one core point to it. Therefore it’s hard to come up with a title.

But anyway, I checked the stats for the site today. We have some popularity although the most requested page is actually the admin page for us posting lol. Still, we picked up a third search engine referral, this time for the term Nerd Federation. Checking Google we are second which isn’t too bad considering that the only one above us is the post on BuffyTalk plugging the site.

Elsewhere around our wacky lives, today I have to take a long journey (well 40 mins round trip actually) so I have enough money to continue my domain expansion. I have a few that I am keeping my eyes on and as I mentioned in my previous posts am developing a new content system although the planning is not going so well at the moment.

Nevertheless things go on, and eventually terror shall be rained from the sky by us! Erm, actually you should probably ignore that.

Inspired to create a new site and along with it a site engine, I have decided to redfine my roadmap into 3 channels which I am going to concentrate my online efforts on. So basically so I can remember my own thoughts and generally share opinons I am going to go through my three projects one at a time and discuss them a little.

Project Dreagon
This is a project I have worked furiously on all weekend and am really pleased with the progess providing I can keep it up. Myself and Ceon are developing an online game set in ye olden times think Legend of the Green Dragon time although it’s more like BlackNova in terms of game. Anyway it will be awesome when it’s finished.

Project erm, I forget
This project did have a codename, as pretty much all my projects do but to be honest I have forgotten it lol. Anyway this is a collaboration between all three of us here on Nerd Federation to build a content site will new content every day hopefully attracting visitors and search engine traffic. It will have 4 content channels – developer, reviews, cult and misc. Although the script needs some more work.

Project Grey Weed
This project didn’t actually have a name considering I only came up with the project when developing my new roadmap so I just thought of the code name now. BTW the idea came from a combination of thinking about the weeds in my pond (pond weed) mixed into a fusion of judge Grey from Judging Amy. Anyway the idea is to build a site engine inspired by the articles on Dev Shed to allow me to power and admin several sites from one location.

As I am working on a new project I decided it was time to write a new function to protect myself from SQL injection attacks. I wanted to do it right so I headed onto the net to find some advice and tutorials on how to do, which ways are best effective, methods to use and so forth. Anyway one of the results I came accross is from the PHP manual (at least I think).

The worrying thing though is that I am half way down and all that has been on the page so far are ways in which SQL injection attacks can happen on a side with full code reference and methods on how to do it! Lol, the problem with anything open source that is available to the public is that if you publish a bug fix, others will exploit sites that don’t yet have the bug fix.

Take a flick through the article at http://php.us.themoes.org/manual/en/security.database.sql-injection.php. I am sure there will be a fix at the bottom, but it is still worrying considering the amount of people who don’t secure themselves against SQL injections. Dreamweaver does pretty much nothing at least for ASP and JSP pages if memory serves.

I am tired, that is actually my reason for posting. Although I also also going to move on to some other topics including Judging Amy. Anyway so I am watching Ricky Gervas’s Animals. I have to say he is so much funnier than Peter Kay. I mean Peter Kay was ok but I didn’t find him that funny where as Gervas is really entertaining.

Anyway so the tired thing. I am just drained. I am working on a database connection class but it is confusing and there are just no tutorials out there – contact me if you know any OOP tutuorials dealing with databases because I can’t be bothered to deconstruct ADOdb and work out how it all works, I just want to do something simple.

Judging Amy isn’t out on DVD as far as I know, I even checked
TVShowsOnDVD to see what news there was on the show and it was empty.
And if that site doesn’t have news on it, there is no chance that it
exists.

It’s about time I started a forum for the site I think. I mean there seems to be very little out there and it’s a really popular show. Or so it would seem if it was returning for a 6th series next month.

There have been many times we have joked about a most wanted list. But I think it is time to actually get one listed on the website. Due to a lack of operatives with camera’s in the field, photos are, well there aren’t any really. But who knows we may find some or even get some artists impressions one. Still I have much more waffle to come.

I originally though where can I publish this? Of course after much thought my mind hit Nerd Federation the dumping ground for all the random content that we need to get online but don’t really know where to put it. So on with the list, consider the following people armed with internet access and not afraid to use it.

1. Paul Reichelt
Wanted for not yet restoring all the databases to the Linux server

2. Keith Worfolk
Wanted for squatting on domains

3. Coil
Wanted for abandoning BuffyTalk in 2003

4. Adam [ H.I.S. ]
Wanted for domain problems

5. Freddy Prince Junior
Wanted for marryingf Buffy Summers

6. Andrew Phillips
Wanted for failure to pay his hosting fees on time

7. Orrin Hatch
Wanted for introducing the Induce act

8. Andrew Hardy
Wanted for more That’s Our Hardy storylines

9. Bill Gates
Wanted because he is such a cool guy to meet

10. Martin Brunt
Wanted for squatting on domains

Activity on Nerd Federation isn’t too bad currently although I no
longer carry the lust to post I once did. Still it shall be kept alive
as now things appear to be starting up and we finally are getting
visitors I think. It really shows you that good old content is no
replacement for search engine optimisation tactics. Still, that’s
probably a bad moral to learn.

I have been working this morning on several things most notably a new
article for Inside Magazine which I think is the longest one ever
published by Inside Mag. I wanted to make it a feature on the Frinks
homepage too although I didn’t want to lose my existing feature due to
the fact updates aren’t really predictable. So I went back to a classic
system I used on M World of automatic content rotation.

Basically it works out what day it is and displays a different feature for that day. Currently however I only have two features in rotation but I will add more as I continue to expand the site. Although to be honest I haven’t worked on it much other than some new content ever since I started work on Particle Fusion. There will be more about that later.

A change for Nerd Federation now though is that with Ceon’s post 3 days ago, all the Nerd Federation members have now posted on the site. We will regain our former glory one day if I can ever get my databases back.

Wow, two posts in one day that have the words search engine in the title. Although of course it’s probably in the same twenty minute period also. But anyway, Nerd Federation now has search engine friendly URLs! Hopefully this should get more of our posts crawled as most of the bots have not spent too much time on Nerd Federation, it’s been the odd visit here or there with the exception of one.

I had tried to put search engine friendly URLs on before and everything worked other than the main blog link. The problem was that it requires custom 404 error pages and because I only skim read the documentation if that I missed the section about correcting the paths so it couldn’t find the custom error page. Still I solved it fairly quick once I looked into it so I stand by my skim reading.

Although it didn’t really have to be much of a problem at the start as Nerd Federation only has one blog entitled "Nerd Federation News." But as pLog supports multipul blogs, the link leading back to the home had to be slightly fancier. I wonder if there is a way to disable multiple blogs. I might have skim read right over that as well, lol.

As for the rest of Nerd Federation I still plan to get the forums back online one day, without the portal this time. It was cool but now that we have a blog at the front, I will just put the forums on a sub domain and everything shall be cool again.

I have had a theory for a while that you can tell someones age by what radio station you listen so. As you get older (or for the select few who time travel, possibly yonger) the radio station you listen to will change for different reasons. Just like you will write different movie scripts or talk about different subjects depending on your age (though the later is also large part to with with education).

So I finally decided to get my theory noted down. It being locally based and of no real interest there was only place for it – Nerd Federation! So sorry for those of you who have no idea what radio station is which around Leeds this will probably be lost on you. Although you can probably adapt it to your local radio stations. Anyway, on with the theory.

Under 20
These are mixed up years and so there is no clear radio station. However many young people go through a phase of being a scrubber and at that time listen to Galaxy 105. Don’t worry if you do, it’s quite common. Although don’t make the mistake of taking this comment to mean your not a loser who would make many peoples hate lists, mine included.

20 to 30
You have settled down, you are in the prime of your live and you drive around in a Ford Focus. Best of all you are finally listening to a good radio station such as 96.3 Radio Aire. Everything is cool and the commerical after commercial that is played doesn’t bother you. Or you could be listening to Radio 1, thinking I don’t really want good music, I just want to listen to Chris Moyles.

30 to 40
You like to pretend your still young but your radio dial has turned onto something not quite as good. Perhaps it’s Real Radio or an easy listening station that you like to think is still playing pop tunes but is actually just repeating the schedules from five years ago after being moderated for anything with load noises in.

40 to 50
You wake up one morning and suddenly realise that all your favourite JD’s have switched over to radio 2. Yes, you are now offically old and listening to the radio 1 dumping ground for DJ’s that can now longer keep up with the hip modern trends. You kid yourself that they play modern music but really, even the news is old.

50 to 60
Ok, your old, so what, everyone grows old. Might as well stimulate your mind with some quailty plays, talk shows and discussions on Radio 4.

60 to 70
It’s retirement time and you are planning to take it easy and just chill for a few years. You flick your radio onto Classic FM and sit on a sun lounger staring at the ceiling while the music carries you away to the memories of your last vacation with the family.

Over 70
You are now really old and your radio is set firmly on Radio Leeds. You like the friendly voices and constant routine. Even if you wanted to change to a different radio station you couldn’t because you have no idea how to operate the techno-crazy programmable radio that your kids got you last Christmas.

Wow, from not posting for days to three posts in one day and it’s still only 3:25. Or it it was when I started writing lol. Anyway I didn’t really want to post about this on the site itself but I have continued to throw more weight behind Google AdSense. On August 7th I made a post about trying Google AdSense again and putting ads on TV Forge.

The results haven’t been great but I need more revenue sources and a lot of my sites have placeholders for ads ready but don’t actually have ads on. So I recently added Google AdSense adverts to BuffyTalk (though that took some code modification) and I have just finished adding the ads to the spare skyscraper on Emo Movies, or at least select pages as I didn’t put them on the A to Z and other such which lack content.

One thing that did occur to me which is why I am using the ads more is that last year sometime I think it was I was listening to the Mary Goulet show on World Talk Radio your advantage. Was was said basically is that because it’s content targetted you can have lots of little niche sites all coming together to make money.

Now, a year down the line it occurs to me I have been building up these niche sites for years but have never really run anything other than banner exchange ads for them. In a sense, without realising it, I have built up a network of websites that is perfect for AdSense. But who knows that the future will bring. Hopefully money ;).

I am not singling MP3.com out for any particular reason. Many sites do it, even my own Emo Movies does it. But I just thought I would make a point about it. Make URL’s longer and adding in random code just to make sure you have your search engine positioning and keywords in there. Adding in that extra folder with a name on, changing your URL’s to form words, etc.

Is it right? The first answer you jump to is of course no. You are artifically inflating your search engine positioning with keywords. Although if you think about it, you are really just appropriatly naming your pages. It is only when people who abuse the system by putting too many keywords or unrelated keywords into the URLs that it really becomes wrong. Anyway, on to demonstraighting my point.

Take a look at these two URLs:

http://www.mp3.com/Avril-Lavigne/artists/485355/summary.html
http://www.mp3.com/Dire-Staits/artists/485355/summary.html

The top one is the standard link you are given when you click on or search for Avril. The second is however has been modified to replace Avril’s name with Dire Straits. What’s the difference in the page? Nothing. Because the artist is selected from the database based on the big number string after /artists/. The words at the start make no difference, they are just there for search engine positioning. Which is why the second link is also Avril’s page.

Although I am seeming critical, this is a valid thing to do make though. For instance on Emo Movies, the movie is also selected via an ID number. But how would people know what movie it is? They wouldn’t without the extra, irrevelant folder after it, which tells the user what movie it is. Such as /10/coyote-ugly/.