These google ads really aren't worth the pixels their printed on. In the ten minutes since selling out and putting them on my site, I'm still not looking at millions of dollars in revenue.
This sucks. I'm moving the ad further up the page. I want it to stand out a damn mile away. I may even just substitute ads in place of real content, from now on. The so called 'real content' wasn't much chop anyhow.
Here's an ironic little book advertisment I found at Amazon:
The en-dash is plain wrong (I'm certain the author would've used an em-dash), and a comma (or em-dash) is missing after the first 'or two' and I'd favour a hyphen in 'closely-related' (just personal preference there). But ouch! that elipsis sure saps the sentence of any residual Stun.
And even then, the sentence is particularly UN-STUNNING.
Here is the original:
MOST sentences should convey one idea-or two or two closely related ideas..."
While here is a far more STUNNING version:
Most sentences convey one idea, you poop-face.
Stunned? I know I am. Here's how I'd continue:
Some sentences convey two ideas, damn I like ice-cream.
See that? I'm telling a story and demonstrating it all at once. Then I'd finish like this:
And some sentences convey two closely-related ideas, like a snug pair of breasts or a sweaty set of testicles.
Pow! Whammo! Stun Plus Plus!
I've really gotta write a book on grammmer, one o' these days.
Yeh, so I'm a sell out. Google Ads now appear on the lower right of the page.
One of the conditions is that I shouldn't 'artificially' inflate my click-through rates, by doing things like clicking on the ads...
But what if I am genuinely interested in the product being advertised? The very first ad I saw on my page was for WayPath which is an interesting blog-related product. Of course I clicked it, waypath is just the sort of thing I like. But now i'm terrified that big brother at Google will withdraw the service from me and burn down my gmail account...
(Thank you, the Simpsons (Tree House of Horror III )
Mac interfaces are pretty damn cool.
Check out this mp3 playa called 'moodLogic'
i don't know how it works, but i think the mood bar in the middle must be pivotal to its operation.
Aggressive | Upbeat | Happy | Romantic | Mellow | Sad
While this is a, um... nice summary of the full emotional spectrum it is certainly missing a few of my own favourite moods including:
And of course, real people (like you and I) are not simple creatures. We often experience combinations of the above moods. Perhaps:
or
and the all too common:
I guess the Emotional Sciences still have a lot of work to do in the realm of classifying MP3's.
I really really like the social bookmarking (linking) tool: Del.Icio.us. Del.icio.us is... very... y'know, delicious. But the more I visit it, the more I see certain Biases of the del.icio.us crowd.
They love to procrastinate. (Actually, they probably HATE to procrastinate, but they do it any way.) Articles about procrastination occur again and again.
They love CSS and Javascript. (Call it DHTML if you must, u old-skool phool). Delicious itself relies on a nifty CSS trick (commonly linked items show up a brighter shade of pink) hence, the site acts as a magnet for CSS and javascipt fans (myself included).
Fans of a computing system known as, I think, the Apple Macintosh (?) or 'Mac' seem to have a large representation there. And they seem to also attract people interested in graphic design.
Del.icio.us users like talking about (other) systems for social bookmarking and (of course) blogging. And they loving finding new information.
But putting their biases aside, they are a very loosely connected group of people, really, who continually bring a variety of fascinating stories to the fore.
You find all kinds of things there. When you want to find something new and interesting I recommend del.icio.us. A handy tool for finding news, storing links and working out what sort of CSS is being spat out from javascript written by Mac designers busy procrastinating over their blogs about social bookmarking.
Get Del.Icio.us today.
(Thanks to Craig Box.)
This kind of situation happens all too often.
Some starry-eyed foolish biz-freak staggers, dazed, into your cubicle and, on some kind of naive, mindless, phantasmagorical whim, poses an outlandish technignorant question.
The sort of question you'd slap your mother for asking...
But before you have a chance to crush their ridiculous fantasy, before you politely smack them out of their stupidity... Suddenly! Some tiny voice inside your geeky head pipes up and finds a way to try and fulfill their impish, pathetic, dream.
I recently got my hands on a very handy .NET book: Best Kept Secrets in .NET by Deborah Kurata (released by Apress).
This one's a keeper. I rank it alongside 'Coder to Developer' (from Mike Gunderloy) as one of the few .Net books that every .Net development team should have a physical copy of, regardless of what your specialty is within .Net.
Wise developers and beginners will all be able to locate something useful in this book, in mere seconds. Even if you know most of the stuff in here -- there will be a lot of times you say "oh, I'd been meaning to look into that..."
Intelligent use of headings, images, captions, pull-quotes and tips, make the book especially easy to scan, which is crucial in this era of the short attention span. Where was I?
It's hard to put down. In fact the only reason I tend to put it down is to try out some tip I've just read.
At first I didn't like the title. "Best Kept Secrets? What a load of rhetorical nonsense!"
But in fact a lot .Net information is secreted away and easily overlooked. These 'Secrets' are not government-conspiracies, or "DaVinci code" style oaths of blood; more like secrecy through obscurity. And .NET (like any technical field) is brimming with obscurity.
Deborah has an entertaining style, she says in the introduction that it was "great fun to write". She's a member of the ineta speaker's bureau (which Julia Lerman is so enthusiastic about) and the book is apparently based on a series of talks (link to a .pdf...) Deborah enjoys giving.
But enough of the gushing admiration. Time for a little brutal criticism.
A few things are curious for their omission. A chapter on Web Forms is sorely needed. (There's a chapter on windows forms, but none on web forms. Why?). The final chapter, titled 'Defensive Development', feels a little out of place, as it races over big topics far too quickly to uncover any helpful tips. Maybe this material could be taken out and expanded into a whole new book, or just slowed down a bit.
For a future edition (and I hope that there is one) I'd like to see some in-depth coverage of streams (they're one of those topics that everyone uses, but few can master). Serialization tips would be nice, because every developer can find a use for it. SQL injection (and cross site scripting) are two topics that deserve coverage in every single coding book, and a few tips on application deployment would add value.
All up -- it's a great book. Enlightening and fun. Cheap too (about US$20 ). A good read on the train, or while trying to put off calling a customer.
This year I have only one goal: I intend to take up smoking.
I've tried to take up smoking in other years, but I've always failed. I keep it up for a month or two, but then during a stressful time I stop buying for a day or two. Next thing I've given up entirely.
Well this time things will be different. I'll start with a few of those nicotine patches. Then I'll chew some nicotine gum. How hard can that be? If there's some kind of nicotine-milkshake on the market, then I'll quaff down one or two of those each morning. The target: cigars in June.
This is gonna be so good for me. Nicotine reduces stress, does wonders for your weight and gives you a sexier, more gravelly voice. Should've done it years ago.
Even if you are the cheapest, nastiest geek in town, please consider donating some of your hoarded gold to the people affected by the Tsunami in the Indian ocean. 
Two good places to donate are OxFam and the Red Cross (Australia) (or Red Cross United States). I expect that you could also walk into pretty much any bank and pledge some money.
You know you want to.
secretGeek.net