I didn’t manage to get on and post at all yesterday, though that’s not though lack of topics. Some of the connections that our webhost uses got DDOS attacked so the IP’s has to be null routed for most of the day – leaving Nerd Federation, Branch Planet the new version of Worfolk News and several other sites offline. When they did come back online they were hideously slow.
I spent most of the night getting Worfolk News back online. The database is still in Windows server due it not requring to setup access hosts and because many other sites are set to loo there. But the main site is now on the Linux server. Hopefully Worfolk News can get included into Google News this month. After all it does have stories posted daily most of the time.
What else is going on then? It’s currently pelting it down with rain. I need to make it to Crossgates sometime today which isn’t looking too hopeful. I have several pictures and posts that I want to make that I will get round to eventually. As soon as I get all my thoughts out of the way.
I think I set the timer right to adjust for the sever location but anyway it is 8 am here. It feels like 6-7 though as when I first woke up I was wasted. Not sure why, I wasn’t up that late. I signed off messenger about 11:30 and watched the last 20 mins of She’s All That (well I watched it all, just the last 20 mins I was in bed). Then I read though an ASP.Net tutorial. Not the smartest thing to do at near midnight but I got some good information ;).
I am going to write some more articles for Cool Forge I think. Once I get my head around ASP.Net properly, I will write a first steps type article as I found it really confusing so I am guessing there are others in my situation. I mean ASP is my main scripting language and I still found it confusing. It looks simple enough when explained though.
This first paragraph you can skip if you are familiar with Google AdSense. I’m not too sure how well know AdSense is outside of the webmaster community so I thought I better mention it here. After Google launched AdWords, the boxes on the right of your search results that people pay for they decided to expand – Google AdSense was born, allowing webmasters to put AdWords adverts on their websites and get paid.
That’s the basics out of the way, now for the story. I was excited about AdSense when it first came out. Though Google rejected Audio Senate, they did accept Fallen Nation into the programme. So I logged and and added the code to the site, then sat back and waited for the revenue to roll in. But it never did. I served around 50,000 ads and made something like $0.20.
I had soon scrapped AdSense. Though logging into my account the other day I realised I must have it in circulation somewhere. But that isn’t the point – the point is I got rid of almost of all it, it earned me no money. The problem was that Fallen Nation is an online gaming site – very little content. So, finally after months of not using AdSense I decided to give it a chance of TV Forge.
TV Forge is very content based – the average page has over 500 words on it, with the episode guides ranging from 500 to over 1,000 words per page so Google has plenty on track onto. Hopefully then, this time I will get plenty of good ads (the ads I have seen seem nice and relevant in most cases) and if successful I will extend the tests to Emo Movies too.
Well I had to watch it. If for nothing else than being able to make jokes about the people who rescheduled their entire lives around Big Brother. Not that Big Brother is anything specially, many other shows could and do provide such fixation. But Big Brother was geared for it – almost 24 hour coverage on E4 and complete coverage online allows your live to disappear into the show addication.
Anyway more on the social commentary at some later point in my life. If for some reason you don’t know what the result was and are waiting then you will probably not want to click the more link. Still, I am guessing pretty much everyone will want to know. Of course my mum on holiday will so I am seriously tempted to make something up :D.
I guess deep down we all knew Nardia was going to win – in reality it is not like it was close so the tension built around was false. If this year has shown us anything though it that it is likely to get eviler, tackier and with more characters in next year until the show finally dies a long and drawn out death.
Hmm, depressing and down beat I know but that’s the truth. I mean there are few shows that end with dignity, either drawn out or on the other side prematurely canceled. Endings like X-Files, Fraiser and to quite an extent Friends are welcome in today’s network executive ruled culture even if it does mean the show ending.
Today has been a pretty slow but I guess productive day. I updated Branch Planet and did a database backup. I also added Leann Rimes lyrics to Lyrics Burger. But anyway the result of this left me with a whole of TV to fill while I worked. So after eating Lunch while watching a classic episode of Frasier, I left Channel 4 on to see what was on.
Anyway the result is it was Without a Trace. I had seen the trailers for it a few days ago and thought, hmm, that seems pretty cool though my understanding of then was it was just an FBI drama about finding people who had run away from home and such. I actually really liked it though.
Today’s episodes (or possibly episode I think it was a double bill but anyway) a guy held up a bookstore with a load of hostages. As usual the cops managed to diffuse the situation and sort everything out though. That’s why I like Law & Order – bad things happen. Whereas in shows like CSI and I am guessing Without a Trace, the cops always win.
Still it still makes for a quite entertaining show.
Well sort of anyway. But an explanation of that later. The important thing is, after only starting to explore RSS this morning, I know have built a working feed for one of my websites, Branch Planet. The sort of refers to the fact that Nerd Federation already has several. But they came with the package, I custom coded this one.
My basic problem was, I didn’t want to, well to be more correct, wasn’t going to update it manually – it had to be done automatically, taking stories from the database. Therefore I needed a server side script with a content header. Thanks to a PHP script and mod_rewrite, it now has a .xml address too!
You can check out the feed at http://www.branchplanet.com/recent.xml. It contains the latest 10 updates with the post date / time, the first 50 words of the story and a link to the full page. So it’s a good job I added that individual news stories page a few days ago.
RSS is here to stay according to Apple so I am happy that I have got into it. I am probably going to do a feed for Worfolk News sometime in the near future. If you are producing a feed, there is a primer by Who Is Hosting This, check it out here.
Well, I managed my quest to find a way to get RSS, and it’s integrated into Firefox too. I went back to that original Firefox plug-in page and found it had been replaced by a link to a new page – http://sage.mozdev.org. After a quick install and figuring out how to use it I was RSS’ing away.
A quick Alt+S brings up the sidebar – I have already added SitePoint.com, M_Branch Yahoo Group, Ask Yahoo, Wired, Slate, News.com, CNet Reviews, BBC News, GameSpot, MSDN and Nerd Federation.
Of course, I realise my use currently is due to the novelty factor which will inevitably die down. How much practical use I will get out of it I do not know, although I would like to think some.
The reason I got RSS was not so much for the practical use, though. I mean sure lots of websites now do RSS which I would find useful but I mainly wanted it to remain at the forefront of technology. I am a nerd after all and I think I should know about these things.
I was thinking about Microsoft Studio and hopped along to MSDN to look at some stuff. The end result is I found a link I had not seen before, a link to MSDN Blogs – http://blogs.msdn.com. I guess deep down we all knew it was only time before Nerd Federation caught on. First the Onion and now MSDN :D.
The end result is though that between writing blogs and making short videos for MSDN’s new website, Channel 9, does anyone at Microsoft actually do any work? If the experience we have had, running Nerd Federation is any guidance, the answer is no. Sure it looks like we are working but really we just post random stuff here and discuss Buffy (occasionally) on BuffyTalk.
Check out this blog on MSDN. The author is Alex Barnett who seems to talk to himself more than I do. Still, maybe it is more a thing aimed at other MSDN developers. After all, few probably understand all the comments and phrases on Nerd Federation other than the other authors of the site. And sometimes, even we are not sure ;).
I guess what I am really trying to say is, when will Robert Hess make a new video for Channel 9?
Of yes, we have a grouping with names and everything now. Like the 3 musketeers or the 3 Amego’s, we all have fancy names that have no meanings and a vague understanding but no more of what we actually do. Making plenty of sense? I knew it would!
There is Joe, aka, rawpulse. But from now on he shall be better known as Snitch Boy. Reporting problems, spam and bad messages to GameSpot earned him points towards his next level and even moderation of some far off Middle Eastern message board.
Then there is Carl, aka, ceon. Still yet to post on Nerd Federation
even though he has an account to do so, Carl eats fast – he can
constume fish and chips like a duck. None of this chewing business,
just straight swallowing. This led to him eating way too many pot
noodles, it’s like an addiction. I thought I was bad with ice pops, but
he just never stops! Therefore he shall herein be known as Pot Noodle
Boy.
Finally we come to me. Despite the fact I have been clean of registering new domains for over 48 hours now, my constant patrols of eBay and RegisterFly’s marketplace have even opened my eyes to the slight possiblity I maybe registering too many. Especially as my dad, who has no idea what domains and websites I have has even begun to question if I have too many domains. Therefore I shall be known as Domain Boy.
Our mission, to rid the world of the evils of non-amatur movies, natzis and all the major world religions. We will not stop until we get a bit tired or the new series of QI begins. We are… well we don’t have a name yet – but we will get one, oh yes, just you wait!
Wow this is depressing. After watching Peter Kay live I neglected to turn the TV off and the enivitable happened. After all, you can’t leave Channel 4 on for over an hour at any time in the day without running into yet more Big Brother. But there are only 2 days left to go. Well maybe not with all the winner follow up that they are planning this year.
One thing did occur to me to mention however. For all Ben Elton fans, read Dead Famous? Great book, but the point is – Woggle, Kitten?!? I mean wow, Kitten is everything that Woggle was. And Woggle was a complete overblown joke, what kind of television is being produced today?
Moving onto other news, tommorow is the 5th attempt at a gathering – hopefully this time we will actually get stuff sorted. I made a purchase form CafeShops Worfolk Store today which should arrive within 3 weeks hopefully, so I want to delay the start of filming till then – I will post some photos when I get my deliver :D.
Hmm, time for another blog entry I believe. I have a few things to share so I might as well combine them into one super-blog. Like you know, whatever. Lol, anyway enough with the Simpsons quotes. I had a post to make last night but I forgot what it was going to be about. If for some reason you do, post it in the comments.
I got my copy of the Onion’s Weekly Dispatch this morning and found a great story continued therein. "CIA Asks Bush to Discontinue Blog." They really do, do some fantastically funny stuff the Onion. Check the news report out here. They have even created a page that is a screenshot from Bush’s blog :D. BTW I think that page will only be around until next issue.
What else did I want to share? Oh yes, I can’t remember if I posted this link but if you ever need a guide to regular expressions, then go here, I have been using it to work out all the mod_rewrite stuff and found it really helpful.
As for what else needed to be discussed that’s about it. Although I am experiencing problems with Awstats currently, not always showing the full page – it stops around days of the week which really sucks when you need to see some stats. BTW that code I tried for the distinct thing didn’t work but I didn’t go on testing as I realised I could filter it through a standard where clause.