December 20, 2005
Motherfuckers
Fuck me that was a lot of trackback spam. I really don't want to, but apparently circumstances beyond my control dictate it. At some point I might even move up to 3.2. But then I'd have to figure things out again, back things up. So yes, Motherfuckers.
Posted by subtitles at 2:35 PM
July 2, 2005
spammers to go suck my kiss
With the upcoming release of MT 3.2, I get that itchy sensation again that I might like to move to using a MySQL backend. I have no doubt it would be no end of painful, but the twinge is there.
And so the experiment of prominent front page ads ends. It seems people who come here (usually the goggle freaks, I suspect), tend to click on the ads that are on the individual post pages rather than anything else.
I always suspect I should sub-categorise, but the more I think of it, there's plenty to be happy about with huge archive pages - I've always found that to be the most useful view for rifling through a new bog you've found. Part of the many reasons I still haven't moved to WordPress. Sure MT could do a better job of allowing you to edit posts from the post view, and could do a better job of ordering and listing archives, but for all its faults, it's still quite pleasing. And I can play with WordPress elsewhere.
Oh, and with the advent of .htaccess, or at least my discover of it, I can tell the referrer spammers to go suck my kiss. Some drama with ICDsoft, but nothing that I'd expect not to find anywhere else - and. I'm still a bit obsessive about my forum spam, but at least I'm letting go of those who don't go out of their way to authorise themselves, and only swatting the rest - like my trackback swarms, which I'll get around to addressing some day.
In the perpetual ping-pong that is Louis' penchant for switching search engines, I'm back to using MSN - especially since Grypen's filters now block their ads as well.
I wonder if WMich has good classes on php and MySQL. Speaking of which I really need to have words with them about the browser sniffing on their portal.
Posted by subtitles at 3:48 AM
June 9, 2005
3.17 - MT-Notifier
I always feel silly doing this, but I've done the upgrade to 3.17, for whatever reason. Followed these instructions. NoFollow still doesn't seem to work, but I'm not really concerned, presumably it won't affect anything. I hope to install the notifier when I work up the nerve.
Ok, found the nerve, and installed MT-Notifier. You can now subscribe to my comments and be notified when someone else posts. I can't for the life of me quite figure out how it all works, but if it gets annoying, just tell me and tweaking will occur. The check box is with the typekey comments box, and only there, since I can't be bothered to try again to fix the preview template. I'm assured that everything is very easily opt-out, so if you complain I will just mock you.
I've set it now that you're only notified of new comments, since RSS feeds are there for a reason. You will, however, be notified if the post is modified/changed/saved again.
Posted by subtitles at 2:17 AM | Comments (5)
May 17, 2005
Louis Now Has His Own Bittorrent Tracker!
Who's a clever monkey? The wonderful tutorial is here. The source/files are here. Not even as difficult as installing say Movable Type, though I did get a number of things messed up. The database stuff was pretty confusing, since my ISP sets things up so that things are much simpler than they represent.
But yes, voila, biffing.fallingbeam.org. Currently the only thing I'm seeding is Dion's Nikon Booth Babes, but all are welcome to it. It's a registration only tracker, so deal with it. For this, I only provide telephone support, my typing can't handle it otherwise - but it's simple, just sign up and things should just work out.
Posted by subtitles at 1:06 AM | TrackBack
May 12, 2005
SpelChek added
Just because it seems that it's come to be expected, or at least common with things like forums etc., it seemed like a good idea to slot a spelling check facility, which is now voguishly supplied by SpelChek.com. I suppose I might add it to the forum as well, especially since it come bundled along with easymod, but we'll see. It's ad supported, but I haven't seen anything which says to me that it'll cause trouble. If you use proxomitron, you'll want to add spelcheck.com to your bypass list. I'm sure there's a more elegant way, but bypass is just easy.
Oh, and because my typing some times slips up. Fun fun fun.
Posted by subtitles at 12:30 AM | TrackBack
May 7, 2005
Forum Updating is *Fun*
Gah. I mean at least now I know how it's done, but it was pretty annoying. Make sure to run the install directory each time to update database etc. even with the patch file. Of course it's all me doing it for a lark, but it can get hair-ily annoying at times. And figured out that always turning on Gzip compression is a very good thing. Have a ways to go yet as server maven, but steps are alway fun. God damn it why can't planet just work. Forum, as always, is at forum.fallingbeam.org.
Shall resolve to set up a server some time to fiddle with.
Posted by subtitles at 9:42 PM
May 6, 2005
Unofficial Opera Blogs Forum - Forum RSS Feed - Spamproofed Memberlist Page
I just find it a bit annoying having to write about Opera Blogs as a subsection of the MyOpera Community forum. Sure it'll get seen more, but blah. So: The Unofficial Opera Blogs Forum.
My new RSS feed for the Fallingbeam.org forums is up - easiest mod *ever*. Pretty RSS icon doesn't show up in the address bar, but that's because I haven't a clue how to edit my headers. But now I do, thanks to this. The actual feed url is http://forum.fallingbeam.org/forum/rss.php. Oh, and now non-active users no longer show up on my userlist, so the spam bastards can bite me. I also trimmed my users, I've deleted everyone who had zero posts.
Posted by subtitles at 6:52 PM | TrackBack
May 4, 2005
Fallingbeam Forums Re-Opened - Opera Bogglers Welcome - Unofficial Optool Forum
I finally got off my ass and updated everything and got rid of all the spam I know about - the guys who pwned me for a bit were sneakier than I thought. Anyway, I know I'm a poor cousin compared to MyOpera, but I don't think they have a specific place to talk about Opera Blogs, or about Optool, so since I already have a forum, I thought I'd make it available. It's accessable via forum.fallingbeam.org, or just go straight to the Opera forum, or the Optool forum.
Posted by subtitles at 11:30 AM | TrackBack
May 2, 2005
Forum Funtime
I've finally gotten around to updating PhpBB, so it's now at 2.0.14, which is the latest. I also installed a mod (pretty easy) that allows me to view users and delete the fuckers who were using me to spam. I won't enable admin approval for new users unless things get out of hand again. The downloads folder is gone.
The Optool bits are just me jumping the gun, trying to show Martin what he could have. The testing forum is hidden and private, for testers only. It's also very easy to delete, so...
Otherwise, fora are open again, though now with comments, they become a bit less central. Whatever, they're there.
Posted by subtitles at 10:22 PM | TrackBack
So Easy I Could Spit - Special Hell Pah - The Lovely Emma Watson
Isn't Emma Watson lovely? You can find more pictures, as well as more recent ones, at Yahoo, though this is the most fetching of the recent ones.
Special Hell pah. I'm basically doing this to use my newfound powers of aligning pictures so text can flow around it. I'd always wondered how, but it's so easy I could spit.
I should take this chance to point out that the recent innovations on the site are due to me realising moving to WordPress might be more annoying than I'd think, and porting some of what attracted me to WordPress back into MT. Not bad if I do say so myself. I'm particularly happy with the framing of the pictures (stolen, actually, from Boggler.com) and the new blockquote styling.
The archive link (also under Archives on the sidebar) isn't as cool as WordPress', but more useful than some. Oh, and posts now announce which category they belong to. And after all, viewing long category pages is better than having to click-trawl.
Yeah, the problem with the picture then is that there has to be enough text to flow around it, even at 1280 and above, if not it looks unsightly with the picture peeking out the bottom past the margin.
A Thousand Oceans.
Oh, I could be mistaken, but it looks as if MessageCast, where you can get updates from this site via MSN Messenger, has gotten rid of its awful frames. Every reason to use it now then.
Posted by subtitles at 7:29 PM | TrackBack
April 27, 2005
Smooth Upgrade to MT 3.16
I'm hoping it is - apparently all I had to do was upload the files, since I'm already running MT 3.15. I'll see how things are - I'm sure it'll all be fine.
Again, things seem fine, but I still can't quite figure out where the template for my post preview page is - I need to add some CSS formating so that the banner doesn't look odd.
Posted by subtitles at 8:55 AM | TrackBack
March 27, 2005
How To Link Back To Here, Because So Many People Do.
If you want to display this lovely button:
You'd paste this code on your site (if you don't want the image loading lag, you might want to save the image locally and link to it that way):
If you want a text link like this:
You can paste this:
<a href="http://blog.fallingbeam.org">subtitles</a>
The button was made with this. The instructions on how to display code can be found here. An idiot-proof-ish code generator can be found, referred from the last link, here.
Posted by subtitles at 7:35 PM | TrackBack
To See If I Can Make It Not Ugly
I'm pretty damn sure that installing graphics drivers is going to piss me off. To be fair, I saw behaviour with Nvidia drivers that I wasn't too wild about, but I can't imagine how things could ever be quite as bad as with ATI - and the process is annoyingly painful. Makes me wonder if a clean install would even fix it. I think there are good reasons why I've become lazy about clean installing, not least of which is that it's a pain. I'm ever so slightly disappointed that no one's tried skypeing me via my link, I've even hooked up my telemarketing gear.
And so I'm getting ever closer to removing most of the ads from my site - the search boxes are annoying me now, and to be honest, their search is pitiful - unless it's just that indexing the site too difficult - the built in search is much better. The ring tones will be gone - I'll just stick to the adsense ads, maybe even cut out the economist link, or at least the image link, along with the other bits from CJ. The buttons I'm also getting annoyed with. Basically I'm just concerned at how long the page load for the main page is.
And so it's done. The old site I can't be bothered. I'm thinking of getting rid of the forum and auditioning WordPress, to see if I can make it not be ugly. I'm also reminded now that my junk fastmail address is starting to piss me off, so I might move to another one and abandon that one. Anyway it shouldn't really matter to anyone other than me, since I tend to send mail and give the address that is personal, and the e-mail link on the site will always be active.
Posted by subtitles at 3:43 PM | TrackBack
March 24, 2005
TypeKey Registration
I'm just sick of having to moderate anonymous comments, and to be honest, I've still not recieved a comment that's made it all worth it, so from now on, you need to go to TypeKey.com and register before you can post - it's not a big deal and you can then comment on any typepad or MT blog that uses this. And so far I've not had a spammer who bothers to sign up, so yay. The easiest way is to just follow the link when you're at a post, it'll ask you to 'sign up'. Any grammar geeks out there can now enlighten me on the circumstances under which you use "" rather than ''. But yes, I allow registered users to post and it'll show up immediately, so no more moderation in that sense, though once you're banned, that's it.
Posted by subtitles at 4:25 PM | TrackBack
March 14, 2005
The Giant Sucking Sound that is Broadvoice
I've updated my Broadvoice post to reflect my recent problems with the scum sucking bastards, you can find it here. I was going to do a proper write-up on my issues, but got lazy and annoyed so I just posted the latest e-mail with the attached history of e-mails. Hello Broadvoice employees - your service, and your customer service, SUCKS ASS.
Posted by subtitles at 9:35 AM | TrackBack
March 11, 2005
Sermons in Stones, Books in the Running Brooks
I suppose I'm getting a little disillusioned with Adsense - there seem to be a whole bunch of other smaller players getting into the market - I wonder what they compete on. Basically my problem is that the ads they serve aren't exactly that relevant, and not surprisingly, because I have so much new content, it doesn't tend to show relevant ads straight away. And the empty banners are always a bit annoying. Though now that I think about it, a lot of things use adsense but mask it - the other players tend to be those annoying smart-tag-like idiots.
So I'm a little obsessed. I've also pinned the UK DVDs to the bottom of the page, though I'm sure most of the clicks I attribute to my phantom audience were probably mine. To be honest I'm sure I'm a bit happy that people (by which I mean random people) aren't reading this, because gauging by what people are writing on these things, that's not company I want to keep. My delusional mind views this more as me being responsible and maintaining at least some form of historical record.
Oh and despite the fact that I found the W3Schools guide to XHTML totally useless, I'm still proud of the fact that at least I'm not a pansy and am able to set dynamic widths on my pages - people who stick to the assumption of 800x600 are just lazy. I'm not saying you don't test at that resolution, because you should, but as evidenced, some people think 1600 is a good idea, so there's the future waving the ride.
Bite the bullet baby, bite the bullet.
Posted by subtitles at 2:24 AM | TrackBack
March 10, 2005
Where's Heat When You Need It?
I'm finding right-click scroll rather useful in my quest to scam BlogClicker, something useful to do while trying to not watch too much of Dr. Who. I mean, Neverwhere can't have been that much more expensive, but it was hell of a lot better. Maybe they should bring back Greg Dyke, if only because he hated this crap.
Though really, I get the feeling I'm the one getting scammed - at a rate of 2 clicks to 1 view, it's sustainable (I suppose) but not terribly worth it for me yes/no? And really, who are these cocksuckers who keep getting impressions - don't tell me they actually paid to get on. Though this is pretty sad too. It's not actually pyramid selling, but I'm sure there's a name for it somewhere.
If only Billie could be on something worth a damn. She's supposed to start singing again, which might be fun. You just hope she doesn't stray that far. And yes I'm reminded that I don't read Heat anymore.
Posted by subtitles at 3:36 PM | TrackBack
March 9, 2005
Mind 'Boggling'
I should really do a post about the various bog directories and search engines - so much crap so little time. I'm also thinking of moving all the buttons etc. to the bottom of the page or something, cuz they're really starting to piss me off. Cruising people's little boggling endeavours is enough to make me want to stab myself - and not in a fun way.
Okay, I've done my lovely compromise and everything is tucked away that the bottom of the sidebar.
This is now going to become the post of retired code:
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Manga Site
Posted by subtitles at 5:59 AM | TrackBack
Blog Explosion
Believe it or not this was the least annoying banner I could find of theirs.
So they pay you to read other people's bogs - by making other people read yours. Fun huh? So not the fun kind of payment. Anyway, if you sign up by clicking on the banner (or the button), or even this link, I get part of the fruits of your labour. I was even conscientious enough to do the same for the guy who commented on my post - which is how this whole pyramid thing works, in case you were wondering.
It's pretty painful trying to do it with 8x6, and really it's pretty painful regardless because of the frames. I'll have to see how's best to scam it - it'll be better than obsessing about my ads. Though now my pagess seem a bit empty when I see one with proxo and can't see the banner ad.
But yes, if bog-smurfing is your thing (it's not mine), and also an attention whore/slut (like me, though I'm not sure which is more appropriate - hence the /) - then this is just the drive-by colonoscopy you were looking for all your life.
I'm really loving the LiveMessage Alerts by the way - very prompt and effective - though I think you have to be slightly less aggressive with your ad patching if you want the alerts to show up in your contact list.
Posted by subtitles at 3:44 AM | TrackBack
March 8, 2005
allaboardgloria@aol.com
My aversion to watching films is getting a bit pathological. allaboardgloria@aol.com Well aren't you a good sport.
I'm wondering what buttons to tack at the bottom of the individual pages, but I'm starting to lean towards none. But with no ring tones, what *will* I do. Last thing you want is to wind up with a hump. At least when the formatting fucks up in Opera with the LiveMessage frame, it's easy to break out. Ok, I take it back - someone in Norway just bought a ring tone!! How sad is my pathetic excitement.
I tell you one thing, I am *not* paying for dinner. Great - you broke him. Yes, we get it, Pavlov's Bar.
I have the sudden urge to webcam. I'm also wondering if certain sex sites are linking to me, since I keep getting referrals off them. Someone signed me up? They hacked into my super-sexy webcam? Can't quite get an inkling of what that's about, so I've decided to ignore it - I'm sure all I get are horny disappointed people. I get the feeling though, that somehow my stats are being spammed - god knows how - as my old bog is full of referrers from poker sites.
Holland Taylor does the tartness just right.
Abrupt skip to a few seconds of Dr Who, where you realise Billie has learnt that being rich-married means you don't have to be aspiringly svelte any more.
Krista Allen is pretty okay in 2.5 Men - manages to be pretty straight/funny. Very commited - and the slitty eye thing was good.
Posted by subtitles at 3:53 AM | TrackBack
Hack Me
Of all the advertising I get, I think I like the political advertising best. If I see another ad for boggling paraphenalia, I'm going to boggle *you*. I'm also wondering if I should get rid of at least one of the lower banners on the individual page - I'm wondering if it makes it less likely than it already is that people discover the comments. I resolve that the next time I fix code, I'm getting rid of the ring tones. Directory still needs to be done, and I get the feeling I should concentrate more on the google ads and less on the amazon links. The amazon stuff is probably more useful through the customised files I make.
I get the feeling that it's not so much my ads being more effective, but more that my friends now understand the nature of them and are doing me a favour - am I wrong? Or are they just paying more attention?
The LiveMessage updates are sort of fun - though the frames annoy the fuck out of me. A lot of these services have a bunch of customisation options, but I really wonder if I can be bothered to pretty them up unless specifically requested. I wonder when I'll capitulate and start using all Feedburner all the time - I take Rice's point that it's probably good to have stats for your feeds to help track traffic/subscriptions for advertisers - but, well, I'll burn the bridge when I get to it, as I always say.
But getting back to the politics thing, it really does encourage me to write more about politics - such an interesting phenomenon, capitalism, in how it directs so subtly our responses. Or some such.
Posted by subtitles at 1:46 AM | TrackBack
March 7, 2005
Feeds Feeds Feeds - How to add Useless Crap to clutter up your sidebar
I've just added a bunch of buttons for feed readers/feed aggregation services. All of which seem to about as useful as painting the ceiling. Which brings me to the question - who uses this crap? So far the MSN and Yahoo ones are fine, they do what you ask, it adds it to your personalised portal page as another news source, which you can push way higher as it fits your unseemly desires. Newsgator, Feedster and Bloglines are super-duper incredibly opague in actually showing feeds so the question again is who the fuck uses these absolutely cock-addled pit-holes. LiveMessage sounds fun, but they don't seem to be able to send me the welcome pack. Idiots. Okay, now they've sent it and it seems to do what it says - it sends updates to messenger - which is pretty cool.
I did this so people could use whatever they wanted to syndicate the site, basically to make it all easier - so there. Honestly, the most straightforward way is to just use the RSS icon in your Opera address bar, or use the URL for "Syndicate this Site" - that's the default Movable Type feed. There's Atom and RSS 2 - but you know what those are I'm sure you'll know where to find it (Opera's address bar, again, does a bang up job of it, by the way).
Below are the various button making pages for the various services, in case you're interested, MSN I couldn't find and just figured it out.
Skype
Yahoo
NewsGator
Bloglines
Feedster
LiveMessage Alerts
Well I've since figured out where all the buttons were found in one easy place - FeedBurner does it for you under "publicize", giving you code for all the various services you can shove feeds into. The stats feature makes me consider FeedBurner again, but really I'm only interested in hits for the advertising aren't I? Or for people to post comments or whatever nonsense. When my paid site-manager appears in the future, I could get him to do it for me, in the mean time, Rock'n'roll.
Posted by subtitles at 2:32 PM | TrackBack
March 3, 2005
Bandwidth Left
Apparently blog pimping, even on the now defunct mufftorrent.com, is ever so slightly frowned upon - even if you were helping peeps out to find new places. Not that having an account there would mean anything now. People actually came round though and some guy posted in forums. I don't know, I can't say it's not fun having strangers manhandle my site, it's probably lonely and wants to be touched. The traffic on comments.cgi makes me worried that people are trying me to spam, but hopefully movable type's not that silly. Well, whatever it is, there's still plenty of bandwidth left, so bring it on.
Posted by subtitles at 1:54 AM | TrackBack
March 2, 2005
Do you think Invisible Hands get RSI?
I'm looking at my old bog and it really looks incredibly awful to me now. New one is *much* prettier. I've pretty much inundated the old one with ads, just because that's what it should be good for now. There are links to this place, and a link to the subtitles post, so as long as they're not blind, hopefully they'll move over.
I've put ads in the banner here, only because the space kept staring back at me, so it had to be done. It was a bitch of process, but at least now I know more about CSS - really very good fun. If I say so myself, at least my ads are conscientiously laid out. All the spaces aren't showing ads all the time, which is mystifying, but I assume it has to do with the need for more crawling etc.
I'm wondering when I'm going to stop obsessively clicking through the site - most of the ad serving is me being *really crazy*. I'm also quite taken with the whole thing of my personalised ad-serving Opera. I don't think I'm too cheeky to put this site in the exclusion list for my custom proxo - that's the way it is on my setup, and anyway it cuts out the "ads by google" bits.
Silly OC shop declined, which is probably all for the best. I keep telling myself to get rid of the ring tone ads, but I suppose I should just give it all time. I keep seeing articles recently on how huge the market for ring tones is. A bit mortified at the idea su-lin might have actually though I was serious about asking her to buy ring tones.
Been very conscientious about exploring the ads on RealWorld, if only because they're now the only real repository for TV, and I think this whole experience has been an empathising one, much like seeing 24 woman on Boomtown.
I realise I'm being endlessly repetitive, but I suppose that's what happens when you're doing that much writing in such a short period of time. I'm probably going to change back to 2 days on the main page.
Posted by subtitles at 2:29 AM | TrackBack
February 28, 2005
Do Something
Long posts are tiring. And I'm always so lazy to tidy things up. I've still to mail the guy about the Sports Night/West Wing stuff. The idea of bitching about Broadvoice more today is making me squint.
On the upside, Tori's doing very well at the moment, certain unnamed reviewers are full of shit. The site is doing pretty well, I've tidied more things up, gotten rid of some awful tables etc. I think I'll give the ringtones a couple of months, but I doubt they're gonna do much. I'm still waiting for TheOCinsider Shop to get back to me. I'd be very happy to put Chrismukkah links on the site :).
I'll at some point do a bunch of pinned posts at the right hand side, basically things like my DVD links page etc.
I'm pretty happy to do my little TV things, it's just fun. That probably is the only category feed worth subscribing to exclusively at the moment I'm afraid.
Google seems to be taking its time indexing the site, they just did a once over of the main index, not the archives yet. But at least searching the domain returns at least that one page so far.
The various clicks are registering, which is nice - I'll have to wait till I appear on the search engines before my traffic goes anywhere worth mentioning. Hopefully the Broadvoice post will do something.
I think what I might do is move my Google search boxes where the ring tones are now on the individual pages, and the intersperse the adsense banners - the search clicks just don't pay as well.
The ads are now more intrusive on the Monthly and Category pages, only because there's that much more content on them. For individual posts, you only see ads if you scroll to check trackback or comments.
Just felt like mentioning that since Google's started indexing the site more properly, the adsense is showing slightly more relevant ads on the page. The double banner will probably take time to ramp up. Unfortunately, google also has a tendency to read the top index and serve ads for all the pages like it's the top page - annoying, so many many blog and RSS ads.
Posted by subtitles at 6:19 PM | TrackBack
Advertising Flurry
I'm now wondering whether I should just do away with the ring tone crap, but at the moment that would just be too much work. Adsense is actually working, there appear to be a least a trickle of clicks - god knows from where. I'm assuming that none of my behavious counts as clicks, since I've been trying my darndest not to click on my own ads.
But other than that, I've put up a subscription to the Economist, if only so I can have the cover on my page. It's the same price you'd get anywhere else for a subscription in the US - even on the Economist.com, where you could subscribe if you're in another country.
If you're a student or an academic, then things are different and you can try here. The academic price is $77 as opposed to the normal price of $129 via my link - and come to think of it, they don't seem particularly stringent about checking if you're a student or not, so whatever. For a while now I've just been loth to refer to myself as a student, so whatever.
The Amazon links are also sort of a bit of fun, to show Sports Night and Murder One. Unfortunately the Murder One cover isn't as nice as it should be, but it points to the full series set rather than the pokey season one set available on Amazon.com. I'll probably do a page for stuff like Spooks etc. Basically the stuff that I actually think is worth getting on DVD rather than leeching off http://www.the-realworld.de/.
The Comcast links were one of the few legitimate ISPs I could see - and 4 megabits is nothing to sneeze at, if I remember correctly their upstream wasn't bad either. SBC I'd be too ambivalent about to recommend anyway. Even if alot of the fault was probably my router, come to think of it.
Annoying thing is that I'd probably have to do 2 different pages, one for US stuff and one for UK stuff. But then I'm not sure I could recommend the MI-5 sets - I've not really checked them out. And anyway, shipping to the US from the UK is pretty okay, and things are that much cheaper without VAT, so...
In the interests of full disclosure, when I eventually do my search.ini tutorial, my customised search.ini will have my own affiliate searches on there - for amazon, google etc. That'd be what you help me out with for getting a customised dictionary.com wikipedia search.ini.
Posted by subtitles at 9:26 AM | TrackBack
February 26, 2005
Category Feeds
I found this little helper to create category based RSS feeds - so if you're just interested in a particular category, you can subscribe to the relevant feed.
You can find the list of categories as folders here, and just get the respective feed inside - index.rdf.
Pretty spanky if I should say so myself.
Feedburner Feeds: Television
Feedburner I find a bit annoying, but since it's there what the hell. The ads only really show up in IE, but then that serves people right. In other browsers it's just a neater page to browse - in feed readers it just shows the content. I'm wondering who would continually read in IE that they'd see the amazon links though.
Posted by subtitles at 10:41 AM | TrackBack
February 25, 2005
Bottom Up
I've been thinking for bit now that it's actually smart to put my adsense banner at the bottom of category pages etc. because, if they're reading through by date, then they would start at the bottom. Of course already my ardour for boggling 12 times a day has waned, but, well, that was to be expected. It was a lot of expectorant anyway. It's a pity that google isn't indexing my site faster, I'd much wish that the google search boxes be useful - but it'll happen eventually. At the moment it just shows nothing.
The political bent of the media focus on boggling is quite a bit binky, and it's starting to piss me off. The fact that blogads also seems to push that idea is a bit silly, I would think, like riding a wave.
Posted by subtitles at 4:50 AM | TrackBack
Pingomatic
I'm basically making up a post to try out Pingomatic, which supposedly pings a whole bunch of blog update services at the same time - and it can be automated through movable type. Traffic, baby, traffic :).
Posted by subtitles at 12:43 AM | TrackBack
It's spelt centre.
Is anyone else starting to get a bit annoyed by the advertising on the site? And it appears once you stop clicking on your own links (sorry google, I was just testing it out), they're not *quite* as effective. We'll see, it might just be a bit of a shock to the system. What is rather annoying is that comments are so low now on the page, I'm wondering if they're noticeable. Though I suppose people would be getting at them via the comments link if they see them on the main page. I'll just try an get used to it.
On a related note, I'm getting really rather embarassed by how inelegant some of the coding I do for the templates is - lots and lots of center tags.
Posted by subtitles at 12:29 AM | TrackBack
February 23, 2005
Adsense!!
Oh me of little faith. I'm now serving google ads. I think, until their bot crawls my new pages, the ads will be a bit limited. At the moment they seem to be rather tasteful public service ads. I've taken off the more annoying ads now that these guys have stepped up.
I refuse to put things above the fold - that's not the kind of site this is. The search box will be more useful, again, once they've crawled. It's also useful now to demarcate where the pinned posts end.
I'm now going to put ads all over my old blog, arr.
Posted by subtitles at 10:52 PM | TrackBack
Zip
Now that I'm back in bed, let's just say I'm a little pleased by how tasteful the ringtone banners are, and how the other mobile content banners really aren't - I think I'm particularly happy about the naughty bits. I now have a minisite of my own featuring "adult" mobile content, happy day. I suppose these are particularly useful in that they aren't blocked by my proxomitron filters, or Firefox's CSS blocker. Though really these aren't going to pay for anything unless there's a epidemic of ringtone junkies coming here. I'm still waiting for adsense, but I get the feeling that's not going to pan out. Anyway this just helps me feel a bit more fun about things, so whatever. Lik-Sang's banner was just too annoying, so well, neh.
Posted by subtitles at 6:38 PM | TrackBack
Most Annoying Banner Ad *Ever*
It's an affiliate program with Lik-Sang, I think I heard about them when they used to be on the Sharereactor page. I'm really only doing this for fun, I don't expect anyone would actually click on it, much less buy anything. And for me it's not an issue since it's conveniently blocking in everything except IE - so boo-ya suckas. I'm still hoping to find something that pays for advertising, not for results :). Adsense is so not bothering, and neither is blogads. We'll have to see. If I don't hear anything back from anyone good, I'll start putting the lik sang ads on the individual pages.
I now also sell ring tones. *Sexy* ring tones :).
Posted by subtitles at 2:11 PM | TrackBack
February 22, 2005
I'm so full of crap
This was my pitch to Blogads:
I write about a range of subjects, obviously some personal, but also on technology, media, books, television, film, hardware and software, internet technology, online shopping, VOIP; as well as whatever topics my readers request of me, including lifestyle, food suggestions, political and economic opinions. I write about things I know, and people trust my opinions because of it.
I am a technology evangelist, and my site reflects that. People who discover my site do so by links in forums, other weblogs, trackbacks - many discussing technology purchase decisions - and they come looking for information. My search strings regularly feature interest in television, software, and technology products of all kinds.
I provide information in the best way possible, in an environment that is sincere, un-self-conscious, personal, opinionated and anecdotal - in a form that is meandering instead of direct, engaging rather than alienating. People actually spend time here, figuring things out.
Posted by subtitles at 9:18 PM | TrackBack
Everything Sucks
I'm quite interested in the idea of people bogging for profit. Eric Rice tries to do it. Robert Scoble does it so well that he gets an article in the Economist. I wouldn't mind being an evangelist - talking about things, using them, being objective in a way that's at least open, in a tone that's not hackish. So I've decided to start writing about the things I use. I want to write about ICDSoft, but they don't seem to have an affiliate program. I'd write about Opera, but there are tonnes of fanboys out there - I'd save that for later, and I'd want it to be a fantastic article that is able to enjoy it's own pith. So I'm going to write about Broadvoice. I'll probably put it in a seperate post later, and be sure to include the phrase Broadvoice Sucks somewhere so that people who are searching for the downside will click through. I think the line will be, Broadvoice sucks - sometimes. Or Broadvoice sucks if you don't manage your bandwidth properly. And of course I'd compare it to Kazaa, and do a Broadvoice vs. Kazaa thing. Then maybe a Phoneconnector section: using Broadvoice with Phoneconnector. Coming soon.
Posted by subtitles at 5:46 PM | TrackBack
News, Articles.
I'm also wondering if I should write about news more - have a news category, comment on articles etc. I'm sure I've done this in the past, but only in passing, and not surprisingly dealing mostly with the Economist. I mostly get my news from Reuters, scan Google News for headlines, sometimes go to the Post and the Times, occasionally Fox News. I'm just wondering how fruitful the endeavour would be. Of course Louis doen't necessarily subscribe to his own fiction that people actually read this/give a crap - all this, if nothing else, occupies me. If I'm doing it, and reading it, why not write about it. One of the big reasons why not is that daily news annoys me. But then that would be what I'm doing, parsing news I actually think merits it, much as the Economist is able to do by publishing weekly.
Working on 800x600 again, I realise how useful the drop down search in Opera is, since I can't have all my searches so readily available. Which reminds me I'd also like to do little tutorials, like how to do more with the search.ini - probably the most convincing reason I know that differentiates Opera from Firefox. I am quite happy to leave the RSS entry up though, since that's something that needs more exposure. I'd probably end up pinning a post that acts as an index of important tech articles - or some such. I suppose I could move the entry to Articles, but then I'd feel the need to polish it up a bit.
Just to say though, part of the appeal of writing about the news is also to keep a kind of record - I'm wondering whether silence really is that compelling a response to activity.
Posted by subtitles at 2:57 PM | TrackBack
Swap
A new category for file sharing updates perhaps? Links to sites, new alternatives as the old ones get bent over? Perhaps trying out newer apps like DC++ and the Gnutella 2 network?
Posted by subtitles at 1:11 PM | TrackBack
about:bog
Hi. You found me by smurfing the interweb, or you know me. Just below this post are a couple of "pinned" posts, that I want to keep at the top, either because they're important, or they're particularly useful. Previous pinned posts can be found under the category "Previously Pinned".
After those posts, the rest are arranged as per normal, the latest coming first. You can also browse the most recent posts by the menu on the right, or via categories or by date.
The easiest way to recieve updates is to use my RSS feed, which you can access from your address bar if you're using Opera, or under "syndication" on the bottom right of the main page, or you can just download my Klip to use with Serence's Klipfolio. The search function/local google search both do a rather good job of indexing the site, so they can be useful as well.
If you're new here you might want to take a look at a number of things, for instance the main site page: www.fallingbeam.org, also accessible via the link on the right side menu on the main page. There's also an e-mail link, and a link to the forums.
Comments are enabled on posts, but I moderate all anonymous comments - if you want you can get a TypeKey account, which gets around the need for moderation.
Posted by subtitles at 8:35 AM | TrackBack
RSS Freedom
I think I will also consider finding the plugin that allows random entries - make my front page more of a introduction rather than just being the most recent posts. People who actually care or bother would be coming in via the RSS feed anyway, and there's always the Recent Entries thing. And the first pinned post could be a sort of About:Bog thing. Things to be considered.
Posted by subtitles at 7:59 AM | TrackBack
February 21, 2005
The Song is Called Sweet Blindness
I'm concerned that people understand the nature of the pinned posts - that they don't just see that the top post hasn't changed and move on. It'd be nice to be able to set them off somehow, but I can't think of anything pleasing/easy. I suppose it doesn't help that the first view doesn't have a pinned post and a non-pinned post. I suppose the best way of viewing the site would really be through the RSS feed, and perhaps via the monthly archives.
Which reminds me that the google ads would have to be at the bottom of the individual post pages.
What the pinned posts help with is that the front page won't be so empty that way - even when this incontinence stops.
I'm really going to have to find the time to do a little search.ini proselytizing. Things like my own search.ini, ctrl-d, highlight right click etc.
Posted by subtitles at 3:32 PM | TrackBack
Google Adsense
I'm considering adding Google ads to the site, just under the "powered by movable type" link on the right. It'd be unobtrusive, and you'd actually have to be vaguely interested in the site to encounter the ads. I'd probably end up having to put ads on the individual archives etc. if only so that people who keep bumping into me via search incur some opportunity cost. I'd probably tailor it to fit in as much to the site as possible. I might then also end up putting links to the actual posts people are looking for - things like finding subtitles etc.
Of course you realise that like all other forms of advertising on this site, it's just for fun - if I actually got any money from any of it I'd be more than surprised. Which is probably why I wouldn't insert adverts into RSS feeds, or those fucking annoying ads that pop up as if they were links in your site text - evil evil evil.
Posted by subtitles at 2:53 PM | TrackBack
Like Nipples
Yay, I've fixed the CSS so that those god-damn trackback and comment links aren't so obtrusive, and the side panel is more to my liking. Post titles are also bigger. I was going to mess with the headline, but I'm now quite fond of it wedged in the corner, the lower case making it seem more insignificant.
In other words, isn't my site even more handsome? I get the feeling that using odd values for the width of the panels is making the calender look squashed - I'll have to look in to it, but I'm leaning towards not giving a crap. Or maybe extending the range of the non-background area.
Posted by subtitles at 1:08 AM | TrackBack
Pinned Entries!! (Short tutorial included)
Louis has finally figured out how to pin important entries to the beginning of his bog!!! The required plugin can be found here. Louis is also such a hack at doing these things. But yes, there will now be about 2 pinned posts at the beginning of this page, everything below that is as per normal. Just be glad I didn't refer to them as "sticky".
It is a bit crazy that this requires you to hack around in the templates, but it's done, so I'm not complaining. For those looking at this as trackback, using this is pretty simple - try adding the sample code from the original "MTEntry" post to your Main Index Template - just below the line div class="content". Once you rebuild you'll see how it turns out.
If you want your posts to look like they normally would, just copy and paste everything between the MTEntries tags within MTEntry - it's that simple. If you want more than one post on top, just duplicate. That is my super-inelegant way of doing it. Comment if you need help.
Posted by subtitles at 12:27 AM | TrackBack
February 20, 2005
Communism
Oh, and just in case you're interested, I have turned on the Creative Commons license that comes with Movable Type, you can have a look at the button for it on the right. It just seems sensible really - I honestly couldn't care less if my writing was circulated for personal use, as long as it was attributed to me. Books are really only useful to me because they're good at what they do. Like a paper subscription to the Economist - it's really a service that I subscribe to. My future publishers take note.
Oh, and Su-lin said spanky to me - I'm very gratified.
Posted by subtitles at 6:17 PM | TrackBack
February 19, 2005
Trackback
I've also decided to enable Trackback, just for the heck of it.
Posted by subtitles at 10:58 PM | TrackBack
Klip Updating Fixed
As of 1.2, my klip updates correctly. In order to get 1.2, which will update by itself in the future, click on the klip button on the right. Thanks to the people at the Serence forums, the actual post that discusses the functionality is here.
Oh, and the link for Opera is now fixed - it sends you to the download page, but it also gives you my reference no. I'm still not that sure it works, but it's the principle of it. For a while I had forgotten to put in my ID no. which means I was doing it in vain. Not that that's not what I'm doing now.
Posted by subtitles at 5:00 PM
February 18, 2005
Done
I appear to be as done as I want to be at the moment. My links are done, the RSS feed has been changed, you can get the new klip from the klip button. I'm not sure why it's not updating automatically. I've decided the Opera button will now point to the download page.
Must remember to check up on my stats, and protect the folder.
Posted by subtitles at 1:55 AM
*Monkeys*
Oh my. I've just upgraded fully to Movable Type 3.15!!!
Better yet, I've even been able to import (finally) my blogspot entries, so it's all together now in this one place. The last post was just for completeness, I'm now sticking with MT 3. Okay now to finish things up, I'm still going to have to fix things like links and the RSS feed.
Yay!
Posted by subtitles at 12:29 AM
September 15, 2003
Subtitles (Finally)
I've finally tracked down a copy of The Rules of Attraction - unfortunately not my copy where the quote was conveniently underlined I'm sure. So I've read a hundred pages of the book to further complete what I set out on my Main Page: a little extract you can find here.
It was so memorable to me, and I use it so much nowadays as my online persona, mainly because when I was reading the novel for the second time, I remember pissing myself with laughter at two particular points: this one, and the earlier one with the lovely phrase "yeah, cream in it".
The thing is, re-reading it now, it really just seems so tinged with longing, that kind of desperate sadness that I suppose I never quite appreciated about the book - though significant portions of it still make me cackle.
Still, I think I have a healthy enough sense of my own revisionism that it should go up as it had been intended - in a particular spirit that has simply been made more complex by my changed response.
Posted by subtitles at 12:03 PM
August 7, 2003
Notes to Myself
In case I forget, pet peeves should include something about antivirus products/firewalls and why I really dislike them, along with spyware detectors. Also diatribes against support personnel and shitty support. And how the devil should take both Flash animation, animated gifs, and embedded audio. Oh and blocking of pop-ups - which Opera does so admirably. Maybe a day by day newbie's guide to Opera or something, or outstanding complaints about the browser.
Product Activation and corrupt CD's (copy protection).
Posted by subtitles at 12:22 AM
August 6, 2003
Room 101
Since I've been so "grumpy", I've decided to put up a "What would Louis put into Room 101" page in the not too distant future. Highlights will include:
DVD intros/menus
AMD stock heatsinks
Jeff Goldblum
Posted by subtitles at 8:25 PM
Opera Fanboy
I've posted what are the beginnings of my Opera Fanboy site here. Suggestions are more than welcome.
I've also posted about this on the MyOpera forums.
Posted by subtitles at 5:28 PM
July 24, 2003
Resume
My Resume Site has gone live. Let's hope Google hires me.
Posted by subtitles at 12:51 PM
July 17, 2003
Front Page Changes
I've updated the front page with The Flitcraft Parable, as well as a small rethink of how to lay out the page. Made some small corrections to other pages.
Posted by subtitles at 12:41 AM
July 15, 2003
SMTP, Site Plans, 'In A Lonely Place'
Hmm... checking out using my fallingbeam account for SMTP so again I don't have to be dependant on an ISP for sending mail. Finding out that actually the features of the hosting plan mail is quite cool, they actually allow both pop and imap, so if and when I ever migrate new addresses, they'll probably be fallingbeam addresses.
I know my site's been a bit neglected of late, except perhaps for the blog, but as I'm now in Chicago and ordering a sinful amount of computer hardware (RAM and 2 SATA drives for my RAID setup) I should be paying more attention to it. And also I no longer have the excuse of the books not being around for the front page quotes on my site. And all the assessment rubbish should be going too. Really need the RAID setup, since the IBM drive seems less than capable of dealing with the demands of video editing.
Found out that it's probably better to record Once and Again on analog cable rather than digital, less jerkiness. Oh and I'm taping Red Cap since it's not on DVD. I really wonder when I'll get around to watching all the crap I bought.
Oh and I've been using K++, not noticing too much difference from Kazaalite, been busy downloading the absolutely hot Liz Phair (thanks Tag and Rename) and getting the unaired episodes of Firefly. November seems a long way away to wait for the DVD.
Editing video is a bit tedious, but I suppose the policy is that I don't record to keep stuff unless it's not available to buy (yet at least) hence the taping of Once and Again season 2.
Gave Su-lin a little tutorial on using Kazaa. Su-lin seems to get it better than Peishan, though both had to be handholded - Su-lin just seems more intuitive about it. I get the feeling Su-lin takes issue with me railing against York, but then, as 'In a Lonely Place' suggests, there is every reason for being not 'normal'.
I'm still quite swayed by the idea that the film uncovers the futility of reading signs as if they were traffic-stop-signs, that the element of faith and belief - the appreciation of the unseen/unproven - is the post-lapsarian frustration of spirit in being unable to quite divorce the self from the need for interpretation, the need for reading and proof.
I don't think I'm wrong in asserting the urgency or primacy of this semiotic engagement in the period, I would assume that the detective fiction genre is merely a happy coincidence and convenient catalyst for these impulses.
Maybe Waugh can convince me to convert to Catholicism :P.
Posted by subtitles at 4:16 PM
June 24, 2003
Assessment
I've just sent my assessment e-mail to my course tutor so he can grade my website. Hoorah. Only 5 hours of assessment to go... Hopefully once he's had a look at it I can take off all the temporary links on the main page, and I can become bothered to polish off the other sections of the site.
Posted by subtitles at 10:39 AM
June 22, 2003
Site Plans
Hmm... thinking of putting up Klips for a number of my favorite sites, like Whedonesque.com, CDFreaks.com, Showtalkers.com, Opera Skins... (all soon to be found here: Links Basically all this things for which I'm using this klip, which you can use to read any rdf/php/rss/xml feed.
Including my brand spanking new site built with php-nuke. I'm trialing it on opera.fallingbeam.org, but if it pans out it could replace my existing home page (though I doubt it). Unless I'm running a news site, the content management stuff is just a bit extraneous to my needs. Something nice to pick up though.
Posted by subtitles at 4:21 PM
June 19, 2003
Images
I've put up a little image page, with a couple pictures of Anna Paquin, just because I had them on my hard-disk, and I wanted to test out putting up images, and automating it through ThumbsPlus, which is okay, but probably not the best way of doing it. Suggestions would be welcome.
I won't update my navigation bar or anything until I make sure I want to put these things up. What it'll probably become is a collection of wallpapers that I've resized and rather like.
Unfortunately the pictures are arranged using tables, I'll have to find out how to do it using CSS, which I suppose is another reason why I'm not going live with it too prominently. Basically if your screen's too small the right column overlaps, and there's wasted space since the tables are a bit rigid. Well that and the fact that the images aren't mine and I've not acknowledged the sites I got them from.
Also it's not really meant to be an Anna Paquin picture page by any means... I'll have to update my links page with references to Anna Paquin, Katherine Heigl etc. pages...
Posted by subtitles at 6:27 PM
Surprise in the forums
Okay, in order to get people to register to my forums, I've got something special that can be viewed only by registered users. You can find more details here. Enjoy.
Posted by subtitles at 12:58 PM
June 18, 2003
CSS is good, and TOC's
Hoorah, I've managed to insert TOC's using Mozilla Composer, clever me. And they even update when things change, which is shiny.
And yes, the wonder of CSS struck me today as I managed to get rid of the grey background from the content and right columns. CSS rocks. Deal with it.
Posted by subtitles at 9:36 AM
Old blog still alive
I've added an archive of my old blog here. And will be adding links to it from this blog. There's a static link already in the About page. Just a precaution really in case the old site fucks up (which it shouldn't).
Note though that the blog is all on one page, so it might take a while to load (though it means you can search the entirety of that blog now), and it has no functional links on it that I know of - there's not need for the archive with everything on one page. If I'm ever that free I'll remove the banner, but to be honest it's just looks better with the banner there...
Now discover that there's actually a way to import posts from blogger - but which will entail me RTFM. Again. Well part of it anyway. We'll see.
Posted by subtitles at 2:52 AM
Remember
I must remember to change the Nav bar to reflect the name of this blog "Subtitles". Also add a section on Links to CSS sites.
Posted by subtitles at 1:47 AM
More Content, Looks Prettier
I've updated the site with most of the main pages, which are all accessable from the navigation bar. Most of the pages have some sort of content, though most of it is incomplete and some is outdated/wrong.
Regardless my use of CSS is in full swing, and the template I'm using is pretty nice. You will however, notice that it's a rip off of the template for this blog. When I figure out how to reformat (successfully) the style sheet for the blog, I'll apply the changes to the main site as well - but that's probably a ways into the future.
As and when I figure out how templates and styles work for the forum I'll see what can be done, but I doubt I'll bother unless it's really that easy. It'd be nice to have the decor all consistent, but I'd rather the site be reasonably complete an accurate before doing much of a revamp.
In the mean time, feel free to gawk and wonder at the massive skillz of Louis.
Posted by subtitles at 1:39 AM
June 17, 2003
Styles at last
Have finally managed to get styles to work and they have been applied to the main page. Utilitarian my ass - my ass - Peishan you hear?
Posted by subtitles at 5:40 PM
June 16, 2003
Reminder to Self
Must remember to open new subdomains for my resume and for operafanboy :D. Unfortunately my host seems to have fucked up already and I can't seem to access my Control Panel. The bastards. Let's see if their tech support is as good as they claim.
Posted by subtitles at 7:12 AM
Categories and Announcements
I've set up this blog, which is new, the old blog is still there, I'll decide what happens to it later.
There's now a forum, please do go there and sign the guest book or just hang out.
Things are pretty much still in flux, but the main things are up, the main page has links to the various sections (it will soon no longer have Site Updates, that will be taken over by this category) which are really the blog and the forum.
Posted by subtitles at 5:03 AM