Super Ginormous

Blog

  • Conduct

    So the idea of a blogger code of conduct is being tossed around… My first thought after reading it was “You’re kidding me, right? This is the Internet and trolls aren’t going away anytime soon.” Greg Storey’s response to it is the best I’ve seen so far…

    You’re on my site and these are my thoughts. I do not moderate comments, except in the event where someone has posted spam, obscene messages, hate speech, etc. that has somehow made it through Spam Karma, Bad Behavior and Akismet. If a comment is posted that I find objectionable, I will delete the comment and take steps to make sure you can’t comment here again. I’m not going to write something inflammatory about other bloggers, coworkers, clients, etc. on my site because it’s common sense not to do so. I am responsible for what I write online, and I know that.

    I don’t think a Blogger’s Code of Conduct is a terrible and/or outlandish idea, but it’s completely unnecessary.

    What do you think about the Blogger’s Code of Conduct? Is it necessary? Will you subscribe to its policies on your site?

  • 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.

  • Switch

    The one thing that has really surprised since moving this site to it’s new home is just how well WordPress works in the environment it was intended for.

    I had been running the site on a Windows 2000 Server under IIS 5 with PHP4 installed. For the most part, the site was usable, but little things either didn’t work at all or stopped working after a while. Stuff like notifications, paging, auto-creating thumbnails, etc. stopped working. In order to get cleaner URLs, I had to resort to PHP.ini and ISAPI filter hacks. It worked, but not like one would hope and/or expect.

    Now, everything just works. I should have made this switch a while ago.

  • Success

    If you’re seeing this post, you’re seeing the site on the new MediaTemple server.

  • Migration

    I’m in the process of moving my site and a few others under my control to their new home, over at MediaTemple. I’m not sure how long it will take for the DNS changes to propagate. Your patience is appreciated.

  • 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.

  • Cold Turkey

    I deleted my Twitter account last night.

    To some this was an odd and unexpected decision, so I’ll try to explain my rationale a bit…

    Some time ago, I mentioned reading a book called “Choosing to Cheat” by Andy Stanley. The basic premise behind the book is ‘Who wins when work and family collide?’. Andy talks more about finding a balance between work and family, but I think it can be more far-reaching than that. Every little thing we do in life takes time from something else. Twitter, for me, is one of those ‘little things’. It is a great web app that I have truly enjoyed using. It is, for the most part, a wonderful insight into other people’s lives.

    But, Twitter takes time, and that isn’t something I have a lot of these days. Time spent using Twitter takes time from work and it takes time from my family, and that’s not fair to either of them. So, my account is gone… but I am not.

    In all honesty, this has made me reconsider my usage of a lot of ‘Web 2.0’ services. Signing up, just for the sake of signing up, is really counter-productive. But that’s a post for another day.

  • 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.”

  • Masters Week

    Traffic was heavier than usual this morning, which can mean only one thing: the Masters is here. I drove by the main entrance to the Augusta National and parking lots along Washington Road were seeing pretty impressive activity. I’m so glad I don’t have to be anywhere near that area this week… it’s going to be a madhouse trying to get in and out of the National Hills area.

    Even if you’re not a golf fan, it’s worth it to at least see the course once in your life. (I went in 2001.) Of course, seeing as tickets are going for anywhere from $2500 on up… it’s probably not feasible for most people. I was lucky enough to marry into a family that’s had tickets since the 60’s – when the club had to basically beg people to come to the tournament.

    UPDATE: Looks like my boss got two Practice Round tickets for tomorrow. Too cool!

  • 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.