Super Ginormous

Category: Technology

Articles on Technology, Gadgets and more.

  • Ending AdSense

    Last month, I decided to place Google AdSense ads onto single entries on the site. 1.5 weeks later I’m ending the AdSense Experiment. In practice, AdSense is a good idea, but for a small site like this it’s unnecessary and adds nothing to my site. I learned a few things during the experiment:

    1. Ads aren’t always relevent. As a matter of fact, I’ve found that most of the ads that appeared on this site were very irrelevant and border-line offensive. Ads asking “Are You Gay?” don’t have anything to do with anything on this site.
    2. I don’t get enough traffic to warrant sufficient click-throughs. One or two clicks here and there doesn’t equate to much. Over time, it might add up, but at what cost?

    Why even bother with this sort of stuff? Well, this site’s always been a place where I could experiment. Whether it’s trying to get better at HTML, PHP and/or CSS; search engine optimization; site monetization; etc… I’ve tried to use this site to learn ways to add value to customers I service at my day job. After all, why suggest anything to a client if you haven’t tried something and succeeded at it yourself? You should never be content with what you know in this field. If you are, you’re going to get left behind.

  • Naked Day

    Nope, you’re not seeing things: Today is April 5th and that means it’s NAKED DAY! The stylesheet has been disabled on this site in support of the 2nd Annual CSS Naked Day. (This is the first year that I’ve participated in the event. Last year had 763 official participants!) The idea behind NAKED DAY is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. To learn more more about why styles are disabled on this website visit the Annual CSS Naked Day website for more information.

  • WordPress 2.1.3 Released

    An update to WordPress has been released for both the 2.1 and 2.0 branches. You can get the 2.1.3 release from here and the 2.0.10 release from here.

    According to the WordPress announcement, these releases “include fixes for several publicly known minor XSS issues, one major XML-RPC issue, and a proactive full sweep of the WordPress codebase to protect against future problems.”

  • Avalonstar

    I’ve been following Bryan Veloso for a couple of years now. He’s one of the most talented designers I’ve seen online. It saddens me to know that Avalonstar is offline… I’m not sure what’s going on, but I hope Bryan (and Jen) know that there are people praying for them… Hopefully they can work through whatever’s going on…

    The last thing anyone’s heard from Bryan was a Twitter post three days ago:

    says — It’s something that I can’t really control at the moment… not really in the mood to talk about it. Thanks for the concern though.

    Between that blurb, and the note currently on the site, I’m definitely concerned for them.

  • Abomination

    Outlook Must DieIf I didn’t have to have Microsoft Outlook 2007 installed on my system for testing purposes, I would uninstall it and burn the disks and packaging the installer came on. I’m not kidding. Outlook 2007 is one of the worst “upgrades” I have ever used.

    I’ve come close to uninstalling it several times now. I had to disable the one feature I really loved – icalendar syncing – because I discovered it was the cause of some data corruption issues I was having. Other than the slightly nicer GUI, there is no reason for me to use the app.

    I may just have to unleash this demon upon a coworker and/or a machine not regularly used for production purposes. I’m not sure I can stand Outlook much longer.

  • Twitter

    TwitterDave Seah had a great post last night/early this morning on Twitter Productivity. I’m still trying to figure out how I want to use Twitter… That’s one of the cooler things about it: no two people use Twitter the same way. Some people use it to micro-blog, others use it to just update what they are doing, and others still use it to share news and events.

    Some people don’t get Twitter and that’s alright. Those that do “get it” know that there isn’t anything to get: Twitter is whatever we want it to be. I suppose that’s why it’s so popular right now.

    The real questions, though, are:

    BTW, you can follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/cdharrison

  • Have I mentioned I hate Outlook 2007?

    Outlook Must DieHave I mentioned how much I hate Outlook 2007 lately?

    1. Daylight Savings Time: I knew that there would be issues with the Daylight Savings Times this year… but figured my calendar would be safe since I use Google Calendar to manage my appointments and whatnot. WRONG. Outlook 2007 has decided to be really, REALLY helpful and change the time of all of my appointments so that they appear an hour later. Never mind the fact that all of the events show the proper time in Google Calendar.
    2. Performance: I almost laughed typing that word. Performance and reliability are atrocious. Every time I shut down this infernal application and reopen it, I get this lovely error that says a ‘data file was closed improperly’ and that Outlook will need to scan it for corruption. Said scan takes hours. I have 4Gb RAM installed on my system. Every time I restart Outlook the same error occurs. I have no idea if my data is safe…
    3. Instant Search: I want you to go away and die. I know you want me to click you and download Windows Desktop Search so the two of you can play together, but I did that once, and the two of you brought my system to it’s knees. I want to turn you off. I should have an option to turn you off, but the only way I’ve seen to get rid of you is by installing Windows Desktop Search. Curse you.
    4. Internet Calendars: Did I mention Outlook 2007 screwed up my calendars? Thankfully Outlook 2007 can’t write to my online calendars, otherwise I would’ve been really screwed. With the DST update, all of the appointments in calendars I am subscribed to got modified locally. All appointments are now an hour later than they actually should be.

    I want to like Outlook 2007, really. I am really, really trying. But this application is grating my last nerves. I’m hoping a decrease in RAM will help some. A coworker recently got a computer with Vista infected, err, pre-installed with only 1Gb RAM, so I am going to give him 2 1Gb DDR2-4200 sticks in exchange for his two 512Mb DDR-4200 sticks. I have a feeling, though, I may be downgrading soon. I can’t stand this application much longer.

  • Daylight Savings

    Daylight Savings Time 2007 In case you missed it, this weekend your clock will be springing forward an hour. DST will occur earlier that usual this year, due to a law passed by Congress called the Energy Policy Act of 2005. From this point forward, DST will begin on the second Sunday of March at 2:00am, and will end on the first Sunday of November at 2:00am.

    “Consider any calendar items in the extended DST period to be suspect. If you are not sure, verify the correct time with the organizer” – Microsoft

    This year, the DST switch is going to cause some potential software problems you need to be aware about. If you use an application that is date-dependent, such as Outlook, check with the manufacturer to see if an update exists for the program. In most cases, DST information is hard-coded into the application. Translation: your software app and/or operating system might not update DST until the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October based on the previous DST schedule that was in placed 1987 through 2006.

    Here are some tips I received from a colleague:

    Here are a few steps which you as an Outlook user should take to assure that your information is accurate:

    1. First, check to make sure your calendar events are right. (look at the time in “calendar view” and compare it to the time once you’ve opened it. Just chose some at random and make sure you check a couple of reoccurring events.)
    2. Print your calendar to refer to after the change.
    3. IT will be installing a program and changing the DST pattern tomorrow.
    4. After DST begins, compare your printed calendar to your digital calendar.
    5. Do it again in 3 weeks to make sure your events have not changed when DST used to begin.

    For more information, please check out, this article: “Prepare Outlook calendar items for daylight saving time changes in 2007” on the Microsoft Office website. Information in the article applies to Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2002.

  • Permalinks

    Permalinks on the site have been updated, thanks to this great tutorial and this ISAPI Filter from Dean Lee. The old link structures: http://cdharrison.com/index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ and http://cdharrison.com/index.php/%page%/ will still continue to function. (Amen!) But now, the index.php is no longer required in the URL. This has been one of the things that I have absolutely hated about my install of WordPress, and now, it’s a thing of the past.

    Now I need to figure out why notifications aren’t being sent from my server…

  • W3C Relaunches HTML Activity

    Wow… this was one of the geekier things I read today… but it’s important to those of that work on the web. There’s news from the W3C that work on HTML is going to be relaunched…

    Recognizing the importance of an open forum for the development of the predominant Web content technology, W3C today invites browser vendors, application developers, and content designers to help design the next version of HTML by participating in the new W3C HTML Working Group. Based on significant input from the design and developer communities within and outside the W3C Membership, W3C has chartered the group to conduct its work in public and to solicit broad participation from W3C Members and non-Members alike.

    “HTML started simply, with structured markup, no licensing requirements, and the ability to link to anything. More than anything, this simplicity and openness has led to its tremendous and continued success,” explained Tim Berners-Lee, W3C director and inventor of HTML. “It’s time to revisit the standard and see what we can do to meet the current community needs, and to do so effectively with commitments from browser manufacturers in a visible and open way.”

    Read the Full Release

    This is pretty big news… The impact of this work won’t be felt, potentially, for years… perhaps a decade or more from now… I’m not sure if this announcement means that the W3C will officially start working on a HTML 5.0 Spec or not. Only time will tell. XHTML is not going away, and it will continue to evolve as well. I’m sort of baffleded at the reasoning behind the move to develop HTML further:

    But due to the significant legacy of Web content that is some variant of HTML, traditional browser vendors moved slowly to adopt XHTML. This, in turn, has meant little motivation for content developers to adopt XHTML for the traditional desktop environment. Leaders in the Web developer and design communities therefore urged W3C to renew its commitment to HTML by adding new features (starting with the HTML 4 standard) in a manner that is consistent with community practice and backward compatible.

    Considering how data-oriented the web is becoming, does it make sense to improve a standard that was improved upon by XHTML? I understand that browser manufacturers are hesitant to adopt more progressive specifications, but I don’t understand how further developing the HTML Spec is going to change anything. If they’re hesitant to support XHTML, what good does revising and updating the HTML Spec going to accomplish? Additional tags and attributes in HTML are going to require people to tweak their code if they want to take advantage of them. So what’s the point?

    Legacy HTML is going to exist on the web for ages to come. This fact should not stop Mozilla, Microsoft, Opera, Apple, etc. from continuing to push forward on supporting XHTML. We need to keep taking steps forward, and to me, this seems like a huge step back.

    Thanks, JD, for pointing this out.