Blog

  • Ripple

    It started with a simple post on Digg – “New Apple.com Design Coming”. (It has 1253 diggs as of right now.) A user reportedly found a design on someone’s site and posted it to Digg.com saying: “I found this image from desudesu.com. ‘It’s design test for Fantasy Interactive for the next generation of apple.com site’ says the caption. It looks quite great to me.”

    I caught it early, under Upcoming Stories,  before it even made it to the homepage. I posted the first comment:

    Looks nice, but I’m going to have to call BS. A “design test” doesn’t mean, “this is the new design for apple.com”. They probably asked the guy to submit a concept for a site he’d love to redesign.
    Sorry, no digg.

    All’s well and fine, right?

    Enter Kyle Neal of Warpspire.com. I subscribe to his feed (mainly because I’m interested in his work on Hemingway), and noticed a post from him within an hour: Spotting a fake: “New apple design”. Evidently, someone else noticed it too, because the story got Dugg. (Since yesterday, his post has received 1100 diggs.) Some of that traffic ended up bleeding over to my site because I had posted in the comments.

    I mention all of this, because yesterday I had double the amount of traffic (102 unique visitors) to my site than my previous high (56 visitors). (Yeah, I realize those aren’t real impressive numbers.) When you consider that my site doesn’t get a lot of traffic at all (maybe 30-35 unique visitors a day), this spike is pretty significant. People are always looking for ways to drive more traffic to their site, but sometimes all it takes is to get involved in a discussion. I’m sure Kyle’s site experienced a lot more traffic than that… but it’s interesting that the Digg effect rippled over to my own site to some extent.

    I use this site mainly for testing. I blog from time to time (fairly irregularly, I might add). But I’ve been able to boost my Google PageRank to a PR4 by continually gettting in on the discussion, whether it’s on Digg, Warpspire or any other number of sites. So if you’re looking for a good, legitimate way to drive traffic to your site, get involved, say something worthwhile, and people will take note.

  • Thirsty

    Full Throttle Family

    Lately I’ve been on an energy drink kick. If I had to choose a favorite, I’d probably say Full Throttle and its’ two other flavors, Blue Demon and Fury, would be it. (Sonic’s Full Throttle Fury Slush is awesome, BTW.) But I digress, that’s not really what I wanted to post about.

    At home, I drink a concoction that could be described as “Mud”, “Dirty Water”, “Dirty Toilet Water”, etc. It looks disgusting. Because the color of the beverage is a very – umm – odd-looking shade of brown. What is this odd concoction? It’s 50% Orange Juice, 50% Pepsi (or a cola of your choice). I’m not quite sure when or where I picked up the idea for this drink, but I love it. My wife, on the other hand, nearly gags everytime she sees me drink it. (And she didn’t appreciate how much Tyler seemed to like it either.) I’ll try to post a picture of it later. If I had thought about it, I would have snapped one last night while I was drinking it…

    I suppose it goes back to when I was a kid, when me and my brothers would mix “Suicides” together at fast food places. In Germany, we called them Mezzo Mixes, because Fanta actually had a soda out that was a combination of several soda flavors called a Mezzo Mix. Depending on my mood, I’ll mix most sodas together… Orange Fanta, Coke, and Sprite is a personal favorite, with Fruit Punch and Coke a close second. Funny thing is, the last time I ate at a Burger King I noticed something odd at their beverage counter… They have drink recipes decals on the soda dispensers! Mix 1 part X with 1 part Y and it makes Z. And here I thought I was the only sicko that enjoyed mixing it up a bit.

    What kind of weird drinks do you like?

    Speaking of beverages – check this out.

  • Interactive News

    The Augusta Chronicle This won’t be big news for people outside of the Augusta area, but I just noticed that if you are a registered user of the Augusta Chronicle website, you can comment on articles.This might make me visit their site more often. I know that newspapers have struggled with retaining subscribers as more and more people start to get their news online, and it’s going to take more innovation like this in order to grab eyes.

    I tend get my news from CNN.com, Google News, Digg, and a hundred other places. I usually avoid the local paper – partly because I don’t care too much for local news and partly because there hasn’t been any real reason for me to keep coming back to the Chronicle website.

    Now, if only they’d consider doing a daily digital delivery (via PDF or something)… I might subscribe to the paper all week long. (Right now, I only get Sunday papers delivered to me.) It would save trees…

  • Testing Live Writer

    This is just a test to see how well Windows Live Writer works. I’ve grown accustomed to using the WordPress backend, but if this makes life easier, I’ll definitely use it. This isn’t the first time I’ve used a third-party app to write to this blog. I used to use w.Bloggar for a time, and it worked well. I just thought it was a little too much for what I wanted to do.

    The interface is very Word-like. That’s not such a bad thing. I like the fact that you can toggle between Normal layout, Web Layout, Web Preview and HTML Code. Normal Layout doesn’t pull in any of your style information. Web Layout let’s you type your post(s) using your stylesheet. Web Preview let’s you preview the post within the context of your site design. It wasn’t perfect when I tried it, but that may be more of an issue with my code and IE than anything else.

    I’d say that all in all I like Writer. It’s easy to use, supports Plugins, writes fairly clean code…

  • CFMAIL and Dynamic Message Content

    Pardon me while I put on my geek hat. I’ve been hitting my head up against a wall trying to figure out the best way to dynamically include content into an email using ColdFusion.

    I tried the most logical solution first, define the URL with the data I wanted and pass that onto the SEND script.

     <input type="hidden" name="msgString" value="http://example.com/msg/test.cfm?subject=Hi&sender=joe@example.com&recip=john@example.com" />
    

    Then, I converted the string to a variable I could more easily work with…

    <cfset msgStr = "#form.messageString#" />
    <cfmail to="user@example.com"
     from="user@example.com"
     subject="Hey there!"
     server="mail.example.com"
     type="html">
      <cfinclude url="#msgStr#" />
    </cfmail>
    

    No luck. ColdFusion choked on the dynamic string everytime. When I tried to define the string as a variable and parse it with CFOUTPUT, ColdFusion choked again.

    So, I thought, why not try using CFHTTP to grab the data, and then have it render into the body of the email I wanted to send.

    <cfhttp resolveurl="yes" url="http://www.example.com/#form.messageString#" method="get"></cfhttp>
    <cfmail to="user@example.com"
     from="user@example.com"
     subject="Hey there!"
     server="mail.example.com"
     type="html">
      #CFHTTP.FileContent#
    </cfmail>
    

    BINGO! That worked. In retrospect, it seems pretty easy to do it this way… but I couldn’t get it to work right for quite some time. Now it works right, and the client should be happy.

  • Thankful

    It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., and there’s lots to be thankful for. Here’s what I’m thankful for this year:

    • I’m thankful for each day I’ve been given and every day I’ve yet to have.
    • I’m thankful for my friends and family.
    • I’m thankful for my wife – who continually puts up with me, when no human being should.
    • I’m thankful for my job, and the wonderful group of guys I get to work with each day.
    • I’m thankful for my son, who has made this year – the best year ever.
    • I’m thankful for that which I have, because I know it could be taken away in a second.
    • I’m thankful for …

    Well I could go on, but what are you thankful for? Hope you all have a wonderful holiday with your friends and family this year.

  • What the crap?

    If there is one thing I have learned as a WordPress user, it’s that there is certainly a plugin for everyone. Case in point, there’s now a plugin called Ploppy available for fecophiliacs.

    “[Ploppy is] a WordPress plugin for describing the state of your bowel movements using the Bristol Stool Scale“.

    Lovely. I’ll pass, but this is a true testament to the diversity of stuff out there currently available for WordPress.

  • Matthew Fox & Tenacious D on SNL

    Lost’s Matthew Fox (Jack) and the greatest band in the entire galaxy – Tenacious D – will be double-teaming SNL on December 2. Too awesome.

  • AIM 6.0 Beta

    The newest version of AOL’s instant messaging app is out. But, to be honest with you – I’m not that thrilled. Ever since Lighter AIM came out, I haven’t looked back.

  • FeedDemon 2.1 Released

    I’ve been using FeedDemon for Windows for a while now, and was very pleased to find out a new version was released today. You can read more about the changes in FeedDemon 2.1 here. I especially like the new ‘Blue Vista’ style that’s included.