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One of the funny things about having a blog is that you never know what is going to strike a chord with the people that read your blog, or for that matter Google. By some quirk of an algorithm you find that you're at the top of the charts on one topic or another and you find yourself being put in the role of "guru" on that subject (wether you are, or not).
This happened to my good buddy Mike Rohde with an article that he did on Yoplait yogurt. He wrote a quick article about an idea he had regarding their packaging and next thing you know, he's in the top 4 on Google if you do a search for yogurt packaging.
As for me, my hotspots have been Grandpa's Pine Tar Soap (currently slipped to page 2) and National Brand 43-571 (page 1) because of an entry I wrote concerning my love affair with paper. However, in looking at my Google Analytics this week, I found that the bulk of the traffic to my blog comes from an entry entitled "Having A Hard Head Can Sometimes Pay Off". Doing a search for "Axiom and Garageband" turned up the reason why -- I'm the #1 result.
The article dealt with my trials and tribulations in getting my Axiom 25
Regardless of my lack of interest in the subject, clearly there were plenty of people still looking for a solution, finding me and as luck would have it, being met with frustration. Over the past year, I've hacked this site every which way and never really completed the process. It goes a little something like this.
1. A client of mine wants to change something with their install of MoveableType.
2. I apply it to this site first to see if it'll work.
3. It does/doesn't and then I usually, but not always, revert the site back to the way it was and you can see where this is going.
All these changes affected my Axiom / GarageBand article when they broke the download to the PDF that provided the solution. Doh! So this afternoon, I updated the PDF, checked all the links, fixed the download tool I use to keep track of such things and generally cleaned this up a bit in the process.
So for those of you that found that article only to be met with frustration, I apologize. Hopefully the revised article will be more helpful. As for me, I'm going to be a bit more cognoscent of the long tail of my articles so that they don't spank me in the butt. :-P
I've been a big fan of the ReCAPTCHA service since it launched and was eager to implment it on my blog when MT4 was released last year. It was a complete kludge to get it working, but I eventually did figure out the voodoo necessary. You would think I'd leave well enough alone, but alas, I did not. I attempted to upgrade to the latest version, failed and then took the long road back to version .01.
How It All Began
For starters, I decided to upgrade to version 4.1 from version 4.01 of MovableType. I exported my entries and comments, deleted the entire site from the server and then did a clean install and import. Once I was sure everything was running properly, I began adding my plugins back and saw that there was an update for the MT ReCAPTCHA plugin. That's when I played with fire and decided to upgrade to the new version only to find out it didn't work.
What Went Wrong
The plugin itself installed just fine and the one big change that I saw what that the public and private key information was stored properly now in the plugin. Previously you had to enter this into the plugin itself, so this was a nice change. There could be other enhancements, but that was the one that I noticed.
So far so good, but as I walked through the rest of the instructions, I ran into a huge snag.
8. Edit Javascipt index template, to remove these lines of code which calls delayShowCaptcha... [snip] ...If your install does not have these lines in JavaScript index template, these lines should be in GlobalJavaScript, which is a global system template.
Guess what, there was nothing in the Javascript index template that matched the calls I was looking for. Moreover, there isn't a GlobalJavaScript template in the default build of 4.1.
Hitting a dead end, I tried rebuilding the site in the hopes that everything would work anyway, but of course it didn't. No errors, but no display of the ReCAPTCHA code either.
Time For A Rewind
Luckily, I had copies of my templates and the old plugin, so I figured I'd simply revert back to what I had previously. Things didn't work out that way because in an effort to get the new version working, I'd made changes in the "Blog Settings" as well.
"No problem", I thought, because I could just pull up Josh Carter's original reference of how to implement version .01 of the plugin. Unfortunately, it appears that he's moving his site to TextDrive and that page is no longer available. CRAP!
Doing a Google Search and then pulling up the cached version though did save the day and I was able to get my blog configured properly again. *WHEW*
Plugin Redux
With everything back up and running properly, I decided to indulge in one more whim. I kept the templates and blog settings like they were for .01 and just dropped in the .02 version of the plugin. My hope was that the problem existed with the templates and not the plugin itself, but that didn't work either.
So as it stands, only the hacked .01 method has successfully worked for me. The new version simply doesn't work in any way shape or form. Looking in the forums, I see that other people are having trouble with it too, so at least I'm not alone.
Given the fact that Josh's site is down and that I can't seem to find the earlier version of the plugin, I'm thinking I might need to create a post specifically on how to get this working as a resource for others. Maybe even go so far as to provide the original plugin. I don't know. What do you think?
I just upgraded the blog to version 4.1 Personal so that I can kick the tires and become more familiar with all of the new changes. Just on my initial inspection, I can already see that this is what 4.0 should have been. Well, they don't call it "cutting edge" for nothing I guess.
I was cleaning out my Inbox today and I came across a screenshot that I had forgotten all about. A few months back I was looking at the blog and noticed that Google Ads had served up a very interesting ad. Well, see for yourself at this link. Yep, Google AdSense thought that my site was gay.
No biggie. I'm not offended or anything, in fact I found it quite funny, but bear in mind that this wasn't just some random event. According to Google...
AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content—ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful.
So here's the thing. According to Google, at that point in time, I was gay, my content was gay and you know what... my readers must be gay too. :-)
It still makes me laugh.
A high pitched girly one at that.
I upgraded to a fresh install of MovableType 4. I'm working out the kinks, which are all over the place, but I just wanted to give you a heads up as to what was going on.
It's been over three months since my last posting, but I'm going to attempt to get back to my writing. As I indicated in the last post, things have been just crazy busy. For the last 6 months of 2006, there was at least one week a month where I was out of the office. That had a cascade effect that culminated in being behind in just about every aspect of my life.
Since the first of the year, my focus, or new years resolution if you will, has been to get caught up and after two solid months I'm finally starting to see the light of day. I'm finally starting to see the fruits of my two-month slave labor camp and I'm finally able to begin thinking about writing again.
So does this mean that I'm all caught up and life is back to "normal" again? Far from it. I'm still running to beat the band, but at least I'm past the drum line and running next to the trombones. Still will be another month until I see the flute section, but I'm still running!
Just a quick note to say that I've upgraded I just upgraded Movabletype, the software which I use to manage the content on this weblog. It's not a major upgrade, but there are a few additional features and tweaks that SixApart has done, which I like a lot.
The interface has been cleanup a bit and simplifed. They've added tags and a few built-in plugins that should make managing the weblog a lot easier. As much as I like the new stuff, you never know if something has gone wonky after an upgrade, so if you run across anything that doesn't work, or is just a little off, please contact me and let me know about it.
Thanks in advance!
I know postings here have been a little sparse. This hasn't been by choice, of course, it's just a culmination of several things that have made writing somewhat difficult. Like most things in life, it's not just one reason that causes things to break down, but a number of things that cascade together to cause the problem. I've thought long and hard as to why my posts have been few and far between and I think I have a plan to get things back on track.
Issue #1: Too Many Blogs
For starters, I have two other blogs that I write on, so often times I just don't have the bandwidth to write on this one. One is at TV.com and the other is at NPUG. The blog at TV.com really deals with my activity with TV.com and isn't really all that interesting, unless you're a member. I've thought about combining it with this blog, but do you really want to read about how many points I have as an Editor for "The IT Crowd?" Yeah, I didn't think so either. :P
The "Director's Log" at NPUG is going to be going away though. The idea was to have a place to talk about running a PUG, much like the TV.com blog is about being an Editor at TV.com. Unfortunately, there's so much work that goes into producing the monthly meetings and maintaining the site, that everything I want to say has already been said. There's simply too many other areas in which I can and do have a voice that the Director's Log is a bit redundant - so it's going away.
I just upgraded the software which I use to manage the content on this weblog. I use MovableType and they recently released version 3.2 in beta, so I installed it. There's a ton of changes with this version and so far I really like it.
However, you never know if something has gone wonky after an upgrade, so if you run across anything that doesn't work, or is just a little off, please contact me and let me know about it.
Thanks in advance!
