The WEBADO Blog!

Want to buy some snow?

2008-03-09T14:42:00.005-04:00

Gawd, we've had a whopper of a snowstorm from Friday night until late last night. You'd measure it in feet, not inches.

And to make sure it's not oging to be forgotten any time soon, it's gotten good an cold now. Come June we'll still have all this snow.

I should sell it - if only to pay my snow removal contractor ....

I want global warming and I want it now, politicians be damned!

-----

Just a little tidying up for spring ...

Lovely Surprize from My Favorite Googlers

2008-01-17T21:43:00.000-05:00

Holy smokes!

Today I received this lovely card from the Googlers who comprise the Search Quality Team.

I am so moved!

Thanks, everybody! Love you all. You are just awesomely wonderful!

Kill these proxy sites

2008-01-02T18:13:00.003-05:00

Proxy Scraper Sites to Respider and Kill!

Why, you ask?

Just because they have been scraping my website AND let it get indexed.

So now that I've taken the trouble to identify this scum - let them croak. The sooner, the better.

Now you have to fight fire with fire. They got indexed with my content Ok, but they don't truly show up in a search except as omitted results.

Not that I have come up with a better way to identify what makes a scraper proxy, I am serving a special page to them.

I want this special page to be the one they get indexed with - so they can drop off the index for any of my content.

Not asking too much, am I?

So I've got a list of proxy scraper sites to kill.

There, let robots go and have their go at them. I've done my part.

Faireagle scum!

2007-11-05T00:46:00.001-05:00

OMG, like I didn't have enough problems as it is!

I just became aware of garbage being added to some web pages I visit (looking in the source code) and it really hit me when I found it on some of my own pages.

This apparently is something ISP's add to their subscribers' connections and some scripts get tacked on the end of pages. Supposedly then they are ripe for some ads - but I don't think I've seen those yet.

The company providing this despicable dis-service is none other than the scum called Fair Eagle descendants from the scummier yet Nebuad .

First time I contacted my ISP about this they denied it, saying it must be my website hoster - what garbage! I will be calling again tomorrow and I will raise a total stink with the head honcho.

The way this crap appears is a couple of scripts like this:


<script language="JavaScript">

faireagle_c="P1G46";faireagle_d="0000007";
faireagle_u="551975683915297952";faireagle_v="1.2"
;faireagle_ts="130504";faireagle_g="4087181573";>
faireagle_p="aHR0cDovL3d3dy5tZWxpbmFzLW11c2l
jLmNvbS9kaXNjb2dyYXBoeS5waHA_cz0yJnE9MQ==";
</script>
<script language="JavaScript" src="
http://a.faireagle.com/a?t=s&c=P1G46&d=0000007
&u=551975683915297952&v=1.2&ts=130504&g=4087181573
&p=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5tZWxpbmFzLW11c2ljLmNvbS9kaXNjb2
dyYXBoeS5waHA_cz0yJnE9MQ==">
</script>

This get added after the tag in the source code of the page as it gets served.

I know the code is not in the actual source code because:

Only I see it, other peolpe don't see it
The http://validator.w3.org/ doesn't see it either or it would complain.

I'm so tired of this. I spent hours scanning for viruses and whatnot.

Damn that ISP!

Getting Toasted and Grilled in Another Blog

2007-07-31T01:17:00.000-04:00

Must have been a rainy day in Switzerland or nothing good was showing on TV, when JohnMu decided to interview me for his blog. I guess I present an interesting pathology ....

John sent me a bunch of questions in a Google document (cool! I'd never seen one of those before) and as usual when I try to write something half-intelligent, with a purpose, I started out with writer's block. Oh, for all of 5 minutes ... which is kind of long in internet time.

How I managed to write 4-5 pages of that stuff beats me, but somehow I did. And here's the result: http://johnmu.com/webado-interview/ .

It wasn't long before the first comment appeared. Ouch! Too close to hide.

The conclusion I guess is that to get cured of Group-mania I will need to join a self-help Group. Suits me ;)

It's one of those days again...

2007-07-12T23:25:00.000-04:00

Blue funk, this is what it is.

It started out with a major foul up in one forum I mod, and me not understanding straight away what the foul up was about. Then I figured it out (better late than never), but I'd already made a fool of myself in a few asinine posts, so I had to backtrack.

Then tonight I discovered somebody got creative with a tool I and hundreds of thousands of webmasters use (http://www.statcounter.com/) and screwed up the code wizard generator. Why this should feel like it concerns me at all I don't know. Maybe because I will have to field loads of questions and explain how oops, the code is bad because you were given the wrong code.
Humbug and gobbledigook.

The blunder is akin to Google's blunder concerning the validation meta tag.

*Deep sigh*

And speaking of Google, in particular the Webmaster Help Group - I don't know, I got another case of the blahs. No, actually I got a case of being fed up with the reactions of some people I try to help and who turn around bitching. You'd think I was the one who had screwed up their sites, not themselves. As well as some other regulars who don't agree with my assessments even when they are the only thing that spells an actual course of action for the webmaster to attempt, as opposed to Google bashing.

Probably I just need to stay away for a while again from that place.

Yep, blue funk, again.

Rubbing Elbows with My Fav Googler Maile Ohye

2007-07-01T03:40:00.000-04:00

Fun, fun, fun! What is there to do in Montreal in the summer?

Last night I got to meet up close Miss Maile Ohye, who's just about my favorite Googler of all.

Maile came to Montreal for a few well chosen days combining work with hopefully a bit of fun.

The 2007 Montreal Jazz Festival is in full swing. The town is buzzing with people, music, exotic foods and FUN!

Last night we met in person for the first time and had some (health) drinks at a trendy and youthful club, the L2 Lounge. My poison was kiwi juice, which despite the unreal green color, tasted remarkably ... like kiwi. Today's youth are safe enough from 21st century's evils, I've got to tell you this, if the worst they do is hang out in places like the L2. Health, youth and purpose pour out of all the young patrons.

Woohoo! Got it cracked!

2007-01-26T14:38:00.000-05:00

Got what cracked, you ask?

Oh, I have just managed to get rid of that annoying MSIE message "Click to activate this control" when dealing with embedded flash or Windows Media Player.

I was a dunce for the longest time, not understanding how the famous swfobject solution worked until I actually saw it used on a site, as best example of the implementation of swfobject.

Then I decided I needed also the same thing for an embedded media player. My javascript knowledge is rather .. lacking .. so I wasn't able to concoct it myself but I had a flash of genius (hehe!) and contacted Geoff Stearns who made swfobject and he wonderfully helped me out by giving me scripts and examples for ... wmpobject. The wmpobject script was developed by Kovan Abdulla of www.imetasoft.com .

Yes, it only needed a tiny tweak, which even yours truly klutzy was able to make to have it work flawlessly the way I wanted it to work: with full controls or not, as desired.

After I got it all to work I got a bit braver and made extra tweaks to make it easier to use and more general, by adding a javascript function into the mix.

Both applications are documented and available for testing and downloading on my tutorial on embedding flash and tutorial on embedding video respectively. Ok, I've only tackled WMP video for now. The rest will follow .... hopefully.

Yes, I am quite pleased with myself and the outcome. :-)

Thank you Geoff and Kovan. You've saved my sanity and quite likely that of many other webmasters battling the same problem. All thumbs up to you.

The Only Validation Google Group

2006-12-25T00:32:00.000-05:00

Ok, I did it. I formed my own group. Grand total of 8 members including yours truly, and one unnamed individual in stereo. 5 topics, a total of 16 messages. Wow! We're going places, aren't we? LOL!

	Only Validation
	Browse Archives at groups.google.com

Over and Out - Fed up with the Google Webmaster Help Group

2006-12-22T03:15:00.000-05:00

That's right. I've had it up to my eyeballs with that lot.

Damn insufferable macho thick skulls!

It's not a healthy place for me to hang out in any more. I've been the target of some of the rudest insults ever hurled at anybody in cyberspace.

I'm fed up and can't take it any more. I have spent far too long on trying to help people and I've been getting too much crap in return.

I'll need to remember this tomorrow morning in case I should go there by force of habit to see who's answered my posts. Then I'll be remembering yet again just why I decided to send that lot to hell.

What's My Beef .... Revisited?

2006-12-20T10:11:00.000-05:00

Haven't posted anything here in a long time. Not for lack of things to say, but for lack of time to sit and compose a sensible post.

Kind of hard when most of what I want to say is mostly out of sheer frustration. It might come through as nasty and spiteful. Plus it would clash with some of my earlier rants.

But here it is: I am growing increasingly impatient with some people in the Google Webmaster group.

Those who drive me bonkers there are in 2 flavors: the ones displaying childish tantrums of denial of responsibility (and lash out at me and my posts) and those outright idiotically vicious (who are so incensed by my posts that they'll resort to insults and personal attacks, as the only thing that morons can articulate).

I won't name names. But I have to vent and my own blog is exactly that, crawled or not by Google et al.

Of course the disputes always revolve around any and all of my posts after I've spent time analyzing somebody's website in a bid to have whatever problems may be that result in the site not getting indexed or getting penalized by Google.

You'd think it would be appreciated, wouldn't you, when you're told what is wrong? Well some do but a few are totally in denial and refuse to acknowledge the problem is on their end. They prefer to think Google is playing favorites, the high tide or moon phase must be interfering and would rather do a rain dance than fix what I point out needs fixing.

Heck, I'm not alone in applying the same elementary methods - but I seem to draw the most ire from some of those misguided folks for my diagnoses. And the 2 or 3 fools who resort to hurling insults my way, no matter what I said and in response to whose post, are positively psychos in my view.

So why am I anathema?

Why, only because I advocate using the w3 validators to find problems on a website. Sheesh, you'd think they'd be thankful for knowing that they have an actual damn problem which can actually be fixed, rather than being told that they need to perform incantations and offer sacrifices to Google .. or sell their soul .. or buy links ... or whatever else.

It seems that some people think too highly of themselves to allow the possibility of having produced something that's built on a shaky foundation.

Some years ago I called a technician from my cable company because I had very poor TV reception. Instead of testing and repairing the wiring, he conned me into buying a new TV.... that's how silly I was. It took several attempts after that to convince them the cable was still rotted and no amount of me using better and pricier tv's would change that fundamental problem.

Anyway, since I can't name names, nor will I bother to point to threads as examples to substantiate what I'm griping about, LOL, the point is moot for the time being at least.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Another Birthday!

2006-09-24T23:05:00.000-04:00

Gosh, time flies!

My good friends on the Statcounter forum presented me with this beautiful card, creation of the multi-talented Sharron:

I was very, very touched.

Thank you, wonderful friends.

The Day I Was Interviewed by Sharron

2006-06-26T00:45:00.000-04:00

I was asked to give a web interview which was added to a fellow webmaster's flagship website: Sharron's amazingly eclectic site www.designbyatfb.com , in a bid to add content as part of an experiment.

So here's my interview in all its glory - just click the button below, LOL:

It joins there interviews by other webmasters, each handpicked by Sharron for this experiment, the purpose of which is perhaps a bit nebulous, but hopefully it will bring some nice results SEO-wise. Not to mention spreading the word about our existence out on the great www.

No matter, it was fun just doing it. Thanks Sharron!

Anatomy of A Spammer / Scammer / Fraudster

2006-06-13T14:21:00.000-04:00

Here's a run down on my spammer/scammer would-be client in the saga that started on Saturday, June 3rd, 2006 and ended (hopefully) on Sunday, June 11, 2006. Notice how the name walter keeps on appearing in various email addresses, and luxmail.com appears as email provider in the second of the order forms , the same as email appearing in the spam emails sent from the account opened by the first order. Also the name Martin as first name for the "client" and Martins as last name for the one signing the spam email. They kind of all tie in, after all. It seems crooks who play with different identities tend to stay on familiar grounds and won't vary too many of the lies all at the same time for fear of getting tripped.

June 3, 2006.
New order comes in from:

Martin Carvajal ( strow_001@yahoo.com )
Telephone: +1-201 785-1816
Address: 40 Barr Lane, Monroe, NY,10950
DOB: 1953-September-17
Domain: accessuawithya.org
Description:
RemoteAddr : 207.67.146.191
RemoteHost : 207.67.146.191
Country: USA (CA)

Payment made at 2CO and logged as:

Name: Martin Carvajal
Email: acesswalter1960@cs.com
Address: 40 Barr Lane Monroe NY, 10950 United States
Phone: 201-785-1816

IP: 207.67.146.191 ( United States )
Location: Wilmington, DE 19808
Country: United States (US)
Area Code: 302

Spam sent from newly created account.
Account closed, sent email confiscated.
2CO transaction cancelled.
June 7, 2006.
New order comes in from:

Michael Nelson ( walter1@luxmail.com )
Telephone: 714-538-4451
Address: 3933 e greenwood,orange, CA 92869 USA
DOB: 1964-December-17
Domain: adminsitess.biz
Description: i want to use these medium to developed my site for my company in LOs angelis
RemoteAddr : 207.67.146.32
Country: USA (CA)

No payment made
June 9, 2006
New order comes in from:

Kristin Carey ( acesswalter1960@cs.com )
Telephone: +1-404-805- 5069
Address: 360 Pharr Rd,#640 ,Atlanta ,GA,30305 USA
DOB: 1960-November-25
Domain:
Description:
RemoteAddr : 207.67.146.137
Country: USA (CA)

Payment made at 2CO and logged as:

Name: Lyon Security LLC
Email: acesswalter1960@cs.com
Address: 3838 nw 36th #100 Oklahoma OK, 73112 United States
Phone: 405-605-8085

IP: 207.67.146.137 ( United States )
Location: Wilmington, DE 19808
Country: United States (US)
Area Code: 302

2CO transaction cancelled. Rejected as fraud.
June 11, 2006.
New order comes in from:

Michael Kleba ( walter012435@aol.com )
Telephone: 262-780-6129
Address: 5000 S. Towne Dr.,,New Berlin,WI,53151 USA
DOB: 1950-November-25
Domain: acessadmin2.org
Description: i like hosting my website here.
RemoteAddr : 195.93.60.69
RemoteHost : cache-frr-ac05.proxy.aol.com
Country: UNITED STATES

Payment made at 2CO and logged as:

Name: Michael Kleba
Email: walter012435@aol.com
Address: 5000 S. Towne Dr New Berlin WI, 53151 United States
Phone: 262-780-6129

IP: 81.199.62.41 ( Satellite Provider )
Location: ???
Country: Satellite Provider (A2)
Area Code: ???

2CO transaction cancelled. Rejected as fraud.
Below is a sample of one of the emails this individual sent to hundreds of email addresses, from his newly created hosting account, until I closed it down.

Please note that I have no knowledge whether the company Uawithya is in any way involved with this, however their name and website were used by the spammer/scammer for this scheme.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am the Chief Executive Officer of Uawithya Machinery Co.,Ltd.UMCLT is the leading supplier of high quality Quarry Equipment in Thailand . Established since 1968 we have developed a skilled and dedicated team as well as a reliable network of 10 Service and Distribution Centers .

Uawithya is,sole Distributor for renowned World Class Manufacturers such as Furukawa, Metso Minerals,Liebherr,Sandvik, Rammer,Pewag,Terex and Wasagchemie,Due to long association with our suppliers and our thorough understanding of the working condition in Thai Quarries; we are able to offer a comprehensive service support for all of our products.Uawithya is the owner of Chai Explosives; a full range Explosives Manufacturer located in Pak Chong,Thailand.

It is upon this note that we are writing you this mail to seek your assistance in representing our company in your locality as our RECEIVING AGENT/REPRESENTATIVE.One who will act as a medium for our clients in those locality to be reaching us with their payments and so on.

Note that as a receiving Agent of our company,You will be entitled to a 10% commission of any amount you receive from our customers on behalf of the company as payments for outstanding debts or goods that they are wanting to buy

We seek your honest cooperation and assistance to establish a cordial relationship with our clients.To facilitate the conclusion of this transaction if accepted,do send me by this email address:... the following mailto:officeofbenjamin1@luxmail.com

1) Your Full name..............and present occupation............
2) Telephone number..............and Fax..............
3) Contact address................
4) Age................
5) Marital status................

Thanks in anticipation.

Regards,

Mr.Benjamin Martins chief executive
Uawithya Machinery Co. ,Ltd
http://www.uawithya.com

Battling the Fraudsters

2006-06-12T00:53:00.000-04:00

Can you see how furious I am? Like I've got nothing better to do than cancel fraudulent orders for webhosting services.

Some idiot (or a clan of idiots), driven by who know what absurd notion, have decided to keep on ordering hosting from me, paying for it as well, despite my knowing without the shadow of a doubt that it's one and the same fraudster doing it.

The jerk almost fooled me the first time. But when he didn't ask a single question as would be normal from a genuine client, that arouse my suspicions and I was well inspired to take a look at just what he was doing with his account. Oh, wow! What else, he was sending out tons of spam! The theme was a scam as well. Not just selling meds and stuff, no siree, more like a cross between a Nigeria Scam and the Enron Scam.

I of course canceled his account and reported him. But did he stop? No. A couple of days later he ordered again. He didn't get to pay though because I had added a checkbox "I have read and agree with he terms and conditions...". Yeah, well this only stopped him for a couple of days, while he must have consulted his ouija board . Then he again ordered and paid and I canceled it and reported him again. And again tonight. I must say the fraud team at www.2checkout.com will be having a ball with this character. Keeps them well oiled.

I've got a long list of names he's used as aliases, IP addresses and email addresses all just a little different yet all having one thing or another in common so that there's no doubt in my mind that it's one and the same pathetic crook.

My calling his bluff prematurely must have disturbed his plans . Oh, my! sent out all that spam and no place to from which to send follow up spam! Enough to make a stupid crook weep.

I'm debating whether I should post here all the information I have on my stupid spammer. Oh, I guess I will, but right now I need a rest and don't much feel like digging all that stuff up. Tomorrow I think I shall add this unsavoury data.

Hey , pal, if you read this , you're history. You're not using my server for your crap. I f I had my way, you and your acolytes would be doing 20 to life in a quarry with your legs and hands in shackles.

If you can't beat them, join them

2006-05-29T10:24:00.000-04:00

I have been noticing that my www.webado.com site was being accessed more for the few media-streaming related tutorials I have than any other content, so I decided to rewrite the tutorials and include them on my biz site in the tutorial section: www.webado.net/tutorials-streaming-media.php . I'll keep adding to them as I discover more and better things.

Then I figured that site also lacks a proper About Us page so I added www.webado.net/about.php .

Discussions in a forum I often visit about a fee structure for web design and other services led me to work on one so I put out www.webado.net/services.php . In fact I seem to deal a lot with little site fixes, tune-ups, so I made that a part of the services offered. Nothing new here, but spelling them out like that serves to crystallize the notions.

Whether this is a good move or not, search engine wise, time will tell.

PHP5 Coming Soon to A Server Near You

2006-03-23T10:44:00.000-05:00

I don't know how many people use php on their sites and how many have had their servers migrate to php5. I'd guess not too many, since php5 appears to be a major enough change that risks seeing many php applications break. But the move to php5 is coming soon everywhere I've been told. It's been out for about a year, so it's high time to bite the bullet.

I am facing such a migration by June - yikes! I am quite worried that suddenly my sites and those of my clients won't work any more or will work but be buggy every so often. So I have started collecting tidbits of information on what is changing and how it can be handled with minimal effort.

A few things that are changing are various defaults normally defined at the server level in the php configuration file php.ini:
1. register_globals=Off by default rather than On - This affects the availability of server environment variables, form field variables (POST and GET) and query string variables. With register_globals being off you have to first get their values by either $_GET[varname] or $_REQUEST[varname] or similar constructs.

2. short_open_tag = Off by default rather than On - Maybe the nastiest of all, as lots of php scripts rely on the short open tag .

Other more subtle changes affect how functions such as include_once and request_once are treated. For those who used them as they had been intended, not taking advantage of inhernet ambiguities that exist in earlier php versions thus allowing "creative" manipulation, they should continue working. Otherwise a shift in philosphy is needed it seems.

And other even more subtle changes are in the realm of what I call php geekdom. Stuff I've never myself used and have no clue what they are and how to use them and when and why. Probably what will do me in, in case I ever felt I was good enough in php progamming.

While it is probably safe to expect that those who wrote their own scripts can (albeit painstakingly and cursing all the way) fix their own stuff, it is less obvious what the effect will be on packaged scripts such as forums, guestbooks and other applications, especillay anything using MySql databases (which also face some changes). Hopefully their makers will provide timely upgrades to php5 compatible versions AND these upgrades will not be buggy - yeah, right!

Anyway, here are discussions on how to migrate to php5:
www.experts-exchange.com/Web/Web_Languages/PHP/Q_21493642.html .

More information yet:
www.php.net/manual/en/faq.migration5.php
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/migration5.incompatible.php

Good luck to all who have to face this in the near future. I know I'm going to need it, especially since I'm a very novice php programmer still .

It's About Time!

2006-03-13T01:11:00.000-05:00

Finally, the wave of brats who use MySpace has subsided in my fav hangout, the Statcounter forum. As a mod there I have had to spoon feed countless urchins who can't follow instructions if they involve more than one 3-word step.

All of them wanted to satisfy their craving for voyeurism and exhibitionism all the same time. After having concocted some god-awful page and blog and whatnot on MySpace, with all manner of inane information, then they spend the rest of the time wanting to peep in and see who else from MySpace or elsewhere would be checking out their page. This alternating with wanting to block this one or that one as well.

Somehow they got wind that they could use Statcounter tracking code, despite MySpace's policy against using scripting of that nature. It wasn't long before somebody with a lot more knowledge about web stuff than your average MySpace user (who mostly all seem to be pre-teens or teens) discovered a way around that. So all these kids started flocking to Statcounter looking for the miracle method.

I must have explained a hundred times the same thing over and over again. I rushed a few whose attention span was shorter than my cat's. Dammit, they should be doing their schoolwork instead of that garbage pastime.

A few days ago I sort of gave in and actually wrote a script to do all the work they somehow aren't able to do since they are so incapable of following simple instructions.

Feeling very proud and satisfied to have finally solved the MySpace problem once and for all so I can have some peace, LOL, MySpace finally plugged the loophole that allowed that method. It must have happened the same day. The irony of it! I had been praying for a long time that it would happen and when it did I didn't even know it in time to save myself all the trouble LOL!

And now I still have a few who come to ask about other possible ways to achieve the same thing. My goodness, don't they get it? MySpace doesn't allow it, which part of that don't they get?

Anyway, I actually feel vindicated. This has been a real PITA for so long, and I've been biting my tongue so many times not to explode at all the brainless requests. About time, I say.

Kudos to MySpace for finally plugging that damn loophole. If only they could clean up the site as well it would go a long way towards it becoming a respectable community. As it is, I pity the few right minded, intelligent adults who use it for the actual intended purpose. They are in deplorable company, sorry to say. Better get out while you can is my advice to them.

I know kids need their playgrounds. But as kids they also need supervision and guidance to stimulate their brains with useful activities. So far MySpace doesn't provide that. Instead of a healthy playground it is more of a dank back alley for all sorts of shady activities.

Bah, enough of this drivel.

Real Life Rant

2006-03-10T00:29:00.000-05:00

I've been back at work for exactly 9 weeks now. As they say, plus ça change, plus c'est pareil...

Few adventures in getting settled back into my digs, with network connections not quite working... the usual stuff. Changed window side. Facing the west now, so I get all the afternoon sun ... hmmmm... that helps lift the spirits a bit.

It's tough, I'd lost the habit of the 9-5 pace. Haven't quite found it yet either, LOL! I feel pretty jet-lagged most of the time, as I try to cram both the job and my web hobbies into the same 24 hours which are simply not enough. Oh, well... shouldn't complain, at least I still got a job.

Actually the part I hate the most about this deal is the commuting. Unfortunately my employer isn't open to the notion of telecommuting. I find I get anxiety attacks regularly while driving. Either because of some idiot who is riding my bumper, angry that I'm still ahead of him though already 20Km over the speed limit due to all the pushing, or due to our notoriously bad roads full of huge potholes combined with the high winds of late that seem to want to push my car off the road. They all contribute to me feeling queasy every so often, like when you ride a rollercosater. When that happens it's quite scary, I need to get off the road and calm down. Not good, not good at all. I wish I could just take the train but it's not working out schedule-wise.

I find I look forward to the end of the day and end of the week a lot more than I used to.

Going back to work....

2006-01-04T01:27:00.000-05:00

The fun is over. I'm going back to work tomorrow. *sigh* I won't have any more time to work dedicatedly on my websites, nor do support work in the forums where I mod.

It's going to be tough. I has been fun being free for a whole year on sabbatical. Now it's back to the grindstone. *sniff* *sob*

You'd think that having been off work all this time I'd be eager to get back to it, I'd have grown bored. Nope. It's been a wonderfully enlightening year. I've learned a lot of things, and grown in leaps and bounds in knowledge. Just barely scratching the surface to be sure, but a far sight further ahead than I was a year ago.

I've learned a fair bit of php. This satisfies my craving for programming. I've always been a programmer at heart, despite the label of "analyst" slapped on me by my employer who thinks there's such a thing as an analyst who doesn't need programming skills and a programmer who doesn't need analytical skills. What balderdash!

I have learned about W3 requirements, and am able to have an educated opinion of my own about them. I can now disagree with some of them and back my assertions intelligently, LOL!

I have learned the benefits of CSS in web design. I have learned ....

I have experienced the rush of seeing some of my websites take off and actually be found by Google with normal queries, not artificially made up ones. I have learned some of the ins and outs of SEO. Not to the point of obsession, as that's not my nature, but enough to feel comfortable knowing I've done what's right for my web sites and I have not overlooked anything that could have helped achieve more.

I have learned from some and taught others. Learning is meant to be shared with others. I have done that. That's comforting and its own reward.

Who Said Disaster Recovery?

2005-12-26T03:46:00.000-05:00

Just how on earth did I manage to lose not one, not two but three hard drives in as many weeks?

Easy. One just went poof! And is no longer readable. The two others are even worse off, they don't respond at all, consequence of a PSU's untimely death. I blame our power utility for numerous brownouts and surges. This despite having invested into a more than decent surge protector.

All three drives contain data which I'm very sorry to have lost. I don't have the money or the optimism to try data recovery by the experts, especially since a first estimate shows that for the two drives that died when the PSU expired there's not much hope at all. At least one of them is under warranty, so the manufacturer will have to send me a new one.

It's such a shame. Of the two drives that died simultaneously, one was a backup to the other one. The other drive that may not be totally dead (will have to try to see what may be doable with it), was itself a backup of an older video project that has been finalized.

My theory is that I am experiencing these HD deaths because I've taken to leaving my pc's on all the time. This, at least in my case, has resulted in way too many HD crashes. Of course the PSU expiring was the nail in the coffin for the last two drives. But it's death was also due to having been on for days and weeks without respite.

A couple of months ago I found out why one shouldn't leave a laptop on for extended periods of time, especially with the sleep feature disabled (as I had mine). They overheat and the drive can get damaged. I almost lost that laptop's hd that time too. In fact all I could do with it was use the restore cd, so in fact I lost all the data I had on that laptop - luckily it wasn't much. (Mental note to self to get that laptop cooling pad I've been meaning to get - and couldn't make up my mind on which model to order).

Off to the stores I am to get myself some external HD's to use for backing up other drives. No more backing up to a second internal drive, it hurts too much if both die at the same time.

Anonymous "Fan" Emails

2005-12-23T02:07:00.000-05:00

Well, not quite a fan I'd say. Rather the opposite.

I got a moderately venomous email through one of my contact forms. I'm used to it. Being a forum moderator tends to bring those on at times. Par for the course. Some kid I may have chastised for being rude and out of order. Usually happens mostly during school vacation. Regularly some swell-headed macho wannabe who thinks testosterone=brains. What I actually think of such guys is not printable.

Invariably they won't give their actual name (duh!), they will likely use proxies thinking I cannot trace them (as if I really cared) and their level of literacy hovers around gr. 6.

The last one wasn't quite so pathetic in his/her language skills, just in the content. So it's somebody sufficiently mature and sufficiently schooled to have made it over the heap of restaurant dishwashers into the pile of hopefully our "skilled" labor force.

I rather suspect this person thinks so highly of him/herself, that any suggestion that he/she may have erred causes such a reaction:

From: Statcounter Visitor <bgates@microsoft.com>
Dear Ms Know-It-All,
Your work, quite frankly, is crap.
You should stop talking down your nose at fourm visitors.
Even the picture you chose for your profile shows you looking down at the viewer.
Try climbing down from your aerie and go to a shrink for a personality adjustment dear.
Merry Christmas

I suppose that by talking down my nose he/she means pointing out their own mistakes in matters about which they came for help in the first place. Or rather more likely in cases where they irately barge into the forum screaming bloody murder, this product is buggy. Never do they think for a moment they are doing something wrong themselves. No, they are experts. And when I find the bug is in their own work, they still protest. They are never wrong. This thing should go the way they imagined it, not the way it actually does.

Oh, well. Can't win them all. Not even close.

How idiotic: Browsers masquerading as different user agents!

2005-11-18T14:25:00.000-05:00

Well, just as the title says.

You know, some of the "alternative" browsers tend to suffer from an identity crisis. They offer the option of masquerading as a different browser in their USER AGENT string.

Well, they only SAY they are a different browser, but they aren't. They don't behave like the browser they claim to be.

I use IE for all my browsing needs. I use Firefox, Netscape and Opera for test purposes only.

So it was that I had set Opera to masquerade as Mozilla, and forgot all about it.

To my great horror I visited one of my sites using Opera and Yikes! The display was all out of kilter, really messed up. Everything was showing up fine in IE, Firefox, Netscape. Just not in Opera.

So I'm looking at my code and the css. I had a patch in the css specific for Opera. My source code tests the browser and picks the proper style that includes the patch for Opera if it is Opera. This style was not being selected, the patch was nowhere to be seen. I was stumped!

Then I had a flash of Opera's capability to identify as a different user agent and checked that and sure enough I had told it to identify as Mozilla, so my detection script didn't detect Opera either.

Now obviously I have a flaw in my detection script because under the same circumstances Statcounter does pick it up still as Opera ... so I have some work to do on that yet.

But I can't help thinking how utterly stupid and counter-productive such a browser option is. Why in heavens' name? Especially when the browser obviously does not behave exactly the same as the one it's pretending to be in the user agent string. Grrrr......

What gets my goat?

2005-10-29T19:50:00.000-04:00

It's folks who cannot understand when something isn't working for whatever reason and have no patience until it gets fixed. And expect immediate action. And think they are alone to have this problem. And when you tell them they are not they get even more antsy and want a resolution now, now, now!

And what, pray, is this "thing" which is not working? Nothing more than a tracking script to track visitors to a website. A nice, sweet piece of software and a nifty database to keep the logs. Unfortunately it's hosted on a remote server. And like all machines, this too can fail. And it won't fail at the same time as your own site does of course LOL!

People always wanting more and more bells and whistles added to the service doesn't help either.

Anyway, I fail to see how this could be of such paramount importance as to get those folks all in a tizzy over its not working for a few hours. Big deal! So they won't have tracking stats for a while! So what? Sheesh!

Yes! I did it! All CSS, almost no tables!

2005-10-29T19:24:00.000-04:00

I finally got my personal website www.webado.com redone without tables or without as many tables as before!

It wasn't even all that hard, after all. It took only about 4-5 hours to convert my totally table driven layout to css-styles divs. Still got a few tweaks I could make, but I'm quite happy with the result as it is right now.

Still not sure why some things work and others don't but not going to be bothered all that much. It works OK now in all browsers I can test it in (IE, FF, Netscape Opera), that's what counts.