Ads Ads Ads
If you hate those stupid banners in MSN Messenger as much as I do, you’ll be overjoyed to use this little tool I found:
You can remove the ad banner from the main window, the msn search, and the text ads from your chat windows.
Fucking cool!
(And for those nitpickers who want to point out the advertising pays for the service to be provided free… STFU!)
30.Oct.08 
Fun, Web / Programming 
Comments (0)
(Not Very) Targeted Ads
I was just reading an article on Fridae, and was amused to see the ads that Google Adsense was churning out..
I don’t think it’s coincidence that if you put the words “Christian” and “Insanity” together, you get “Christianity”….
Tags: Churchies, Do-Gooders
05.Jan.08 Random, Web / Programming Comment (1)
iLike…
Well it finally arrived. My iPhone. Amazing how clogged the postal service must get around Christmas, as it took a week longer than parcels normally take from the US. (I’d ordered it even before Dr Paul’s suggestion.. haha)
After it arrived, it took a bit of work to unlock, but I managed to hack it without too much trouble – so now it’s working with my Optus sim. Suck on that, Apple!
And of course I customised the look, something else you can’t do normally unless you crack it!
15.Dec.07 Fun, Web / Programming Comments (3)
Backup for Backups
Last year after my holiday, my hard drive decided not to boot up after having a 3 week rest. Luckily after some not so subtle slapping around, it started to spin again, and I haven’t turned the PC off since.
After that experience, I decided that it was worth investing some money into a backup solution. I chose a proprietary Maxtor OneTouch III 1TB Drive, which I put into a Raid 1 configuration. This way, there’s two copies of whatever I copy onto it – in case one of those drives dies.
Bought for $899, now they’re only $499. Fuckers.
Everything works well in theory, but as they say – the proof is in the pudding.
Yesterday, I was browsing through some of my photos (photos I took myself, not porn) and I started to notice there were directories.. empty ones. That should have had lots of pictures in them.
I shut the computer down, and connected the Maxtor to my other computer. It didn’t even detect it! I moved it back to the first PC. Missing too!
I wondered if I could just pull out the drives and see which one was still working.. No. Damn – a Warranty Sticker over the screw.
Back to the 2nd pc again, and after a dozen or so reboots and power cycles, cable wiggles, and a few mild thumps, it detected. Whew! A nice message popped up from the Maxtor software to inform me that the drive mirroring was now disabled as one of the drives had suffered hardware failure, and that I should send the drive back to Maxtor for replacement. No mention of how to save my stuff.
So I moved my data as quickly as possible to various hard drives just incase it decided to stop working permanently. It’s now spread across 5 different drives, but it’s.. safe(ish).
I quick formatted the remaining (working) partition on the Maxtor, then tried to format it normally – it didn’t want to do that bit. Boxed it up, got an RA number, and back it goes for replacement today.
This whole process has enlightened me with a couple of shortcomings in my choice of backup hardware.
IF the circuit board had fried itself, but the drives themselves were still good, how would I get my data? Easy choice if it was out of warranty – rip the bitch apart, but as it’s still within warranty I obviously want it fixed. Free.
I’m now thinking of getting a RAID 1 NAS box that I can put my own drives into, which will overcome these issues. Rebuild on the fly, and all that shit.
Tags: dead, Maxtor, nerdy shit
26.Nov.07 Bitching, Web / Programming Comments (2)
Google Analytics and Secure Pages
Here’s something for anyone who uses Google Analytics to track stats on their website:
Ever wondered why your webpage whinges you’ve got insecure content on it when you view it via https ?
I dunno if it’s buried deep in one of their FAQs, but here’s how to fix that:
Instead of using
<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "Your-Account-Code";
urchinTracker();
</script>
use
<script src="https://ssl.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "Your-Account-Code";
urchinTracker();
</script>
Even on insecure pages! Doesn’t matter. It works.
Tags: Analytics, Google, Programming, Web
14.Oct.07 Web / Programming Comments (0)
Is Google Homophobic? Part 2..
I did a bit of google searching, (though perhaps I should be boycotting Google altogether and use MSN Live? (Coz surprisingly enough, it’s quite a good engine) and then I sent Rajiv a reply email..
Hi Rajiv,
On the subject of “Family Safe”, as you mentioned, I just thought i’d try something.
I ran a search on: “googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js” boobs,
and retrieved 96 links that matched my search. (Just to find something that had google ads on it)One of the first matches, for instance:
www.arseburgers.co.uk/blog/archives/cat_boobs.html has google ads.Also, the following explicit straight porn pic sites are running google ads, and seem to have been doing so for quite a while.
http://sweetchinagirl.blogspot.com/
http://asiaspagirls.blogspot.com/
http://ashton-moore77.blogspot.com/
http://american-beauti.blogspot.com/
http://chinacutegirl.blogspot.com/I would like to know how these are more “Family Safe” than my sites.
I assume they’d be earning quite a bit off these ads, whereas my sites, which do not serve up porn, seem to be earning little or nothing for clicks, even when it’s not displaying PSA’s.
Thank you.
Expecting another bullshit excuse, I waited in anticipation.
Hello,
I understand that you’ve noticed other sites that are displaying Google ads. Because we respect the confidentiality of all publishers, we cannot disclose any additional details of our relationships with other sites.
[Ahem, other PORN sites Becky, not just other SITES.]
We appreciate your understanding.
For additional questions, I’d encourage you to visit the AdSense Help Center (http://www.google.com/adsense_help), our complete resource center for all AdSense topics. Alternatively, feel free to post your question on the forum just for AdSense publishers: the AdSense Help Group (http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help).
Sincerely,
Becky
The Google AdSense Team
To me, this looks like they actually condone google ads on these porn sites, d’ya think?
Just to make sure, i’ve sent this one off:
Hi Becky,
I’m not asking you to disclose anything about other site, i’m just pointing out that Rajiv said:
…We currently do not run paid Google ads on web pages that are determined to contain potentially mature or adult content by our automatic contextual advertising system — only Google ads categorized as ‘Family Safe’ by the AdWords team are available through the AdSense program at this time. Because our system automatically classifies web pages based on the type of content…
So if you’re saying it’s ok for google to serve ads on the same pages/sites that actually show heterosexual naked porn pictures, don’t you think it’s a bit of double standards?
And how can those pages be ‘family safe’…
Thank you.
Ooh shit, damage control. Heh.
02.Apr.07 Controversy, Web / Programming Comments (4)
PLSQL?
What is PLSQL? Evidently it’s a programming language.
I thought PL/SQL was just the program we used to connect to our Oracle server.
So if you want this modification done by Tuesday, do it yourself. I obviously don’t have a fucking clue HOW TO PROGRAM IN IT.
For fuck’s sake.
16.Mar.07 Random, Web / Programming, Work Comments (2)
Training Time
After 6 1/2 years, it’s finally happened.
Work sent me on some training.
Every year, they’ve always promised, but it never happened, until now. They finally delivered – 5 days of training. And it is kinda fun. I hate .NET a little bit less now. Got 4 days of training left.
10 Days to go..
19.Feb.07 Web / Programming, Work Comments (0)
Warning: DO NOT INSTALL IE7
In typical Microsoft fashion, IE7 is out. And it’s fucked.
And, now my computer is fucked too.
Thanks Bill, you fucking arsehole.
After I installed it, I realised I shouldn’t have. I didn’t like the new ‘intuitive’ (Bah!) navigation, and the constant pausing/hanging and slow loading speed was just stupid. Didn’t anyone even test this shit before it was released?
I tried to put back the File menu, but you can only put it UNDERNEATH that ugly new navigation bar. What the fuck’s up with that?
If they’re trying to drive people into using Firefox, they’ve certainly accomplished the task.
I uninstalled IE7 within 5 minutes of installing it, and now my trusty old IE6 is fucked as well. Oh yay.
17.Nov.06 Bitching, Web / Programming Comments (3)
Uni’s: They aint what they used to be..
Alternatively titled, “I want my weekend back”.
Going to Uni costs a shitload of green, and it’s all for what, I ask?
Local students pay a lot. Overseas students pay a lot more.
Lecturers seem to teach both groups ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. (I wish I could get paid as much as they do just to hand out a few photocopies lecture notes and tell people to ‘read chapter 7‘).
They’ll probably argue back with some bullshit about ‘laying down the basics, then promoting disciplined self learning’, but is that really what they should be getting paid for?
For that amount of money i’d expect to be taught the subject, properly. I want class discussions, examples on the board, and most importantly – any problems that individuals are having to be ‘worked through’ with the rest of the class.
But sadly, no.
Louis and I spent the whole weekend – and I don’t just mean just the normal waking hours – trying to finish off his database assignment. Granted, he did have two weeks to do this, but he didn’t think it was this ‘big’ (nor did I at a glance) and he was busy getting his other assignments done, concurrently.
The project was along the lines of creating a bunch of database tables (and linking them) to create a nomination / voting application for some theoretical academy awards, with real data.
So quite a few hours were spent on working out the tables needed, then the fields, then what links to what. Then more time getting enough information to fill all these tables. Just for fun, the database for usage was an Oracle database. That means it’s not a free thing to download, just to make it more painful. (How do you test what you’ve created?)
Luckily we (well not really me, personally) use Oracle at work, so we went and fetched my laptop from work. Thank god for VPN, I was able to hook up from home to one of the development databases.
Then came more fun, trying to get the data out for the queries we had to run for the assignment questions, and lastly, making some ‘creation’ files that the lecturer runs to make sure you did everything right.
Oh, and almost forgot – copious amounts of fucking step-by-step documentation, just to make sure you know what you’re doing. (Ha! As if, I had NFI!)
We only finished about half of it. I had no idea how to make triggers or stored procedures, and we had to deal with some weird Oracle idiosyncracies in the process too.
If Louis gets a bad mark, that lecturer is gonna taste rubber. (Off my car tyre.)
16.Oct.06 Bitching, Home, Web / Programming Comments (0)
