Blogging | inner.geek

Loose Ends

So, before I head off to Sydney two nights from now, I figured I’d post about a few loose ends I haven’t posted much detail about.

I’m working part time at 3months.com now, and tomorrow is my last day at the DRC. I love working at 3months: the attitude of the workplace is relaxed but focused; everyone is enjoying their work. I start full time this Monday (3rd Oct). They’ve already got me working on a fun but rushed PHP project. I was working three days a week at DRC, and Wednesday and Thursday at 3months.

I’m so glad I’m not working two part time daytime jobs any more — three Mondays a week is lethal to your mind. I personally believe in sticking your focus to one a project a week at work, using the natural downtime on the fringes of the weekend: use Friday to ‘swap to disk’ for the weekend, and Monday to load the week’s project back into memory. The brain isn’t too good at swapping.

3months also issued me a laptop as my main work computer. This is awesome because I’ll be able to blog from the conference, and maybe even tap into the subconciousness of the lecture attendees, AKA the conference IRC room. Oh, and maybe do some work… 🙂

My mum is off to Brisbane to live with her new squeeze. She’s flying out of Palmerston North on the 15th, so I’ll be up there to see her off. She is saving up for my brother Stuart and I to visit her for Christmas. Sydney will my first overseas experience, so I’m looking forward to following it up quickly with a visit to Brisbane.

Speaking of holidays, I’m off to see the Guru, the wonderful Guru of Bob, erm, GuruBob down in Mosgiel (near Dunedin) for New Years: Bob has offered for me to crash at his place for a few days. I’ve never been more south than Christchurch, so seeing some of Otago with a born-and-bred Dunedinite’s point of view sounds like fun 🙂 Maybe even see Bob fly his new RC Plane…

So yeah, my next post will probably be in Sydney! I’m taking my camera, and will be trying to find buildings from The Matrix on Saturday… w00ta! (is that Australian for “w00t”…? 😉 )

September 26, 2005

I got a Golden Ticket!

No, not one of those banal “go see how chocolate is made” tickets, rather one that grants me access to the new beta WordPress.com! WordPress.com is to WordPress what TypePad.com is to MovableType — a hosted blogging service. But wordpress.com is invite-only, and I guess, free.

So I got my invite, signed up and ended up with glutnix.wordpress.com — yay! The app is totally based on WordPress, but it looks slightly different, and has some improvements, like a not-so-rich-text editor (over editing HTML), collapsible sections in the edit page, including an AJAX categories selector which lets you add new categories to your blog without leaving the page, even suggesting existing categories that other bloggers on wordpress.com are using, forming a type of folksonomy.

No plugins though.

Will I use it? Nah. But it’s good to see what progress is being made on the newest version of WordPress 🙂

And incidently, I have a golden ticket to give away to someone who wants it real bad. First person to ask me for it will receive it…

September 26, 2005

Blogging Internet Web Design 4 comments Brett

Comment Spammers from Australia

~~Dear comment-spamming morons at foundagency.com.au, and their customers who probably didn’t know better at allrealestate.co.nz~~

Hi. I don’t appreciate it what you’re doing with the blogs that I manage, subverting its intended purposes so that you can make money, by creating comments on my stories for the sole purpose of having a link to a site you are “SEO-ing”.

~~My blogs are:~~

~~http://www.webfroot.co.nz~~

You might notice that both of these blogs use the rel="nofollow" attribute on links entered using the comments form. Google openly IGNORES any links with this attribute applied to it by not giving any of that page-rank goodness to the target site that you’re trying to achieve. More information here at the Official Google Blog and Google’s site itself.

~~While I appreciate your SEO company has hungry employee mouths to feed, I’d appreciate it that you’d take your scum-of-the-earth “optimisation techniques” and retire them.~~

~~What I am demanding you do:~~

Continue to use Ethical SEO techniques, but stop using the unethical techniques, like the link spamming you’re doing right now. See Wikipedia’s entry on Search engine optimisation for more info on ethical and unethical SEO techniques.
~~Stop mis-using other people’s blogs to pimp your wares.~~
~~If you MUST spam peoples blogs, at the very least, don’t waste your time with blogs that use rel="nofollow".~~
~~Remove my blogs from your un-ethical blog-abusing SEO machine.~~
~~Stop selling lies to companies that you can improve their ranking on Google.~~

~~I’ve posted this communication on my blog for all to see at this URL. And you’ll note that the links to your websites have rel="nofollow" applied to them.~~

~~Screw you guys,~~

~~Brett Taylor~~

UPDATE: Zak from The Found Agency just contacted me on my cellphone from Sydney, and after a short friendly chat I have provided him with the comment records from my databases. He was really friendly and deadly serious about looking into it within their organisation, which is a real credit to FoundAgency. I really appreciated the call, Zak 🙂

As the email address on the comments entered was the main reason for tying the comment to The Found Agency, it’s true that they could have been framed. I checked their site, and saw they did SEO stuff, and one of their clients was a real-estate website. It could have been entered into the form by anyone — but it got past my spam filter, so it’s unlikely that it was automated.

He also saw that I was coming over to Sydney next week for WE05, and invited me to The Found Agency offices to see what they do and how they are not blog spammers, which I intend to do. If it turns out that I was wrong, I guess I’ll be buying Zak a beer 😉

HAPPY ENDING: Turns out Zak is buying the beer 😉 It turns out that a new employee got over-eager to impress at his new job, and that employee has now been put to the task of collating a list of the sites he posted to, and I’ve been told that The Found Agency will be apologising personally to the owners of those sites.

Good has been done here. A problem solved. I’m going to be dropping by The Found Agency while I’m in Sydney, and I’ll report back. I hope that I’ll be able to come away from this meeting and recommend The Found Agency in the future! They certainly took this seriously and are taking excellent steps to rectify this occurance, which is highly commendable.

September 20, 2005

Blogging Internet Rant 2 comments Brett

Read the Bible vs Get fit and listen to Podcasts

So I’m busy working part time at Dev-Zone (my old job) and the other part of the part-time at 3months (new job). I’m doing some work for Chris while he’s in Australia, which is taking up a large portion of my spare time; but that’s fine. It’s the old job that’s stressing me out.

But hey, I’ve got some cool stuff to tell you about, so bear with me.

— — —

First of all, I bought me a small portable metal bible about two weeks ago. The cheesily entitled Battlezone Bible, Yeah, it’s cheesy, but it’s an ESV. I love it — best translation ever. Not to mention it fits in my trenchcoat inner chest pocket nicely. I would catch the bus just so I could read it. It reads so beautifully. And just carrying the bible with you everywhere is a constant reminder of the presence of God. I can read on my breaks, or any spare moment I get.

— — —

Secondly, the IRD love me right now, but it wasn’t so shiny-happy-people until Thursday. I hadn’t filed my taxes for about 3 years, and the IRD got pissed and basically made a default assessment of about NZD$10,000 and sent me bills. But they bounced (because I hadn’t changed my address with them), and so the IRD talked to my employer and forced them to take NZD~$250 a fortnight out of my paychecks. The payclerk told me what was going on and I was all “WTF!!?!”. So I got an accountant and told them to sort this damn crap out. And they did, for a nominal fee of course. So on Thursday night, I come home from Thursday Night Curry to find an envelope by my door. I open it up: “Hi we’re the IRD, here’s a cheque for ~$3400!” And I was all like SW00t! So I paid my accountant (about $1400 :P, but hey, better than $10,000), and paid my bills…

…and bought a BRAND NEW IPOD! W000000T!

A 60GB Color iPod. I tell you, I seriously missed having one. When you’ve got music and podcasts to listen to on the way, I’ve found that I actually WANT to walk places. Roll on summer! Dang, I need to get fit…

I’ve also missed Craig Patchett and Adam Curry in the morning. I’m re-subscribed my podcast catcher (iTunes now, was FeedDemon) to the Daily Source Code, the Radio Adventures of Dr Floyd, and several others, including many Godcast Network channels. I also started listening to Rachel’s Choice which is done by potentially the youngest podcaster in the world, Rachel Patchett of age 8, who chooses a track of christian music and a bible verse to share each week. (a side note: Wellington christian band The Lads were featured on Rachel’s Choice back in June. For those not in the know, The Lads are probably the most popular christian group in New Zealand)

— — —

So now I’m in this quandry: I can catch the bus and read my bible and listen to music, or I can listen to podcasts and walk to work. *shakes fist angrily at quandry!* Never mind, I will be going full time at 3months, which is only a five minute walk away from my house… at least I can still read on my breaks. Oh well.

— — —

Oh yeah, and now that I’m rich, I’ve bought flight tickets and am fully paid up for WE05! YAY! A very HUGE THANKS to all of you who gave your support, I really appreciate all the help you’ve gave!

August 30, 2005

Audio Blogging Christianity Hardware Life Reading Work 2 comments Brett