Posts filed under 'Main'
How many of you write notes to yourself about things you constantly forget?
I’ve found one of the best methods of remembering stuff is to just blog about it. That way, I can just search my blog for the answer. It’s like having a 100% portable notebook. It’s also a good way to help other people who may have the same questions you do.
Like today for example, I needed to run a PHP script as a cron job, but I couldn’t remember the crontab syntax.
Here’s the command I enter to run my php script:
php -q /home/sitename/public_html/cronscript.php
Next time I forget that I need to use the -q option, I’ll know where to look!
February 9th, 2007
If you’ve ever run websites you’re familiar with the concept of a virtual server. Some of you may even be familiar with cpanel. Those of you who have, have no doubt encountered the following message in your inbox:
cpsrvd failed @ Fri Feb 09 13:36:38 2007. A restart was attempted automagicly.
If it’s your first time seeing this message, it can be pretty confusing. What the hell is cpsrvd? Failed – that can’t be good! Restart? Did it work? Did I lose any data? Is something broken? Is automagicly even a word?
The good news is, don’t worry. It’s really no big deal. cpsrvd is part of your cPanel services (More specifically, it stands for “cPanel Service Daemon.” ), and it’s really common for it to crash. In fact, it crashes so often that cPanel included that little script to restart it when it goes down. (that’s the same script sending you the emails)
If it didn’t restart, you wouldn’t have access to your cPanel. If that should happen and you have shell access, you can restart it with the following command:
/etc/init.d/cpanel restart
It seems that you can fix this by upgrading to the latest version of cPanel. If you’re really courageous and have root access, you can try this: (Disclaimer: these commands have not been tested.)
rm -f /usr/local/cpanel/cpanel
/scripts/installgd
/scripts/cleanmd5
/scripts/upcp
So why am I writing a post like this? Because I couldn’t find any information about it on one website, I had to visit about 8 different sites to compile this post. It’s an example of a great SEO technique – posting a thorough answer to a commonly asked question. In this case, I couldn’t easily find what I was looking for on the web, so I made a page to fill that space.
Go ahead, try it out on your own sites – see if you get any increased traffic.
February 9th, 2007
Anybody that knows me can attest that I’m not a liberal, I’m just anti conservative. Many of my views on life revolve around a simple philosophy: “if it’s not infringing upon the rights of anybody else, I don’t have a problem with it.” This explains my stance on seatbelt laws, motorcycle helmet laws, etc.
Anyway.. is the world growing more conservative, or are people just going overboard trying to complain about things?
After the Snickers commercial was taken down, I’m glad to see that some companies are starting to stand up to the conservatives.
GM has refused to take down it’s robot suicide commercial after pressure from suicide help groups, and I agree with GM here. It’s a robot. Robot’s don’t commit suicide. It’s not a human, so it’s funny. Get over it.
In a like move, Amazon has ignored requests of the Human Society to take down a cockfighting magazine. While cockfighting is illegal, publications about it aren’t. (see high-times magazine for proof of this.)
What’s worse, I’m not even sure why they’re going after Amazon. The magazine is being sold by a 3rd party that is just using Amazon’s storefront. Clearly, they should be going after the publisher not Amazon right?
I just want to say kudos to GM and Amazon for standing up for themselves when other companies are quick to give in to conservative demands.
February 9th, 2007
So you’ve just had your next great marketing idea. You know, the one that will make your company millions. You can’t believe such a simple idea came to you so easily. You start thinking about the corner office, all the hott chics, the endless bar tabs etc, but you’re interrupted by your developer saying he’s done.
Great! Now all that’s left to do is send this baby out and rake in the cash.
Stop! Read it first!! Have your employees read it, send it to your mom. Do something before you just put it live, or you may end up with something like one of these:
What was that interest rate? When does it expire? What’s that big empty space?
or at least make sure spell check it:
In case you can’t see it… they used the wrong version of your/you’re
February 9th, 2007
I feel like I’ve said this over 1000 times, but you can’t legislate common sense. You also can’t make laws that prevent people from being stupid – but that’s exactly what Senator Carl Kruger is trying to do.
After a 23 year old man was killed last month crossing the street with his iPod, Senator Kruger is proposing a ban on crossing the street while using a cell phone or iPod.
Hopefully, the rest of New York will see how utterly stupid this bill is and tell Senator Kruger that he’s an idiot. (note to Senator Kruger: you’re an idiot)
Some people are going to be dumb and do things like cross a street when the sign says don’t walk. It’s not Apple’s fault, it’s not Cingular’s fault, and it probably had nothing to do with the fact they were listening to an iPod. You don’t need to be able to hear to see a blinking orange sign in front of you.
You just can’t stop people from being dumb, no matter what laws you make. What’s next? Banning deaf people from crossing streets as well?
February 7th, 2007
I’ve been watching the news about Wal-Mart offering movie downloads rather intently, mostly hoping that they’d learn from their previous mistakes but it looks like they haven’t.
It looks to me like there’s not only a few flaws with the movie download site’s business model, but there seems to be problems with the site itself.
For starters, the site doesn’t work in FireFox! That’s to be expected though because their audio download store doesn’t work in firefox either, and it’s almost a year old! (note to IE users: you’ll see a perfectly working store at that URL.)
Why would Wal-Mart alienate over 30% of the web’s users? That’s just not good business sense.
Secondly, let’s look at the business model. It’s bad enough that it won’t work on my iPod (but that’s Apple’s fault, not Wal-Mart’s) but they add DRM that further restricts it.
The pricing model hurts this even further. Why would I pay $13-$20 for a movie (compared to $10-$25 for a DVD) that only works on limited computers, can’t be burned to a DVD, and can’t be watched on a normal television (without an expensive adapter for my device). It’s just not worth it to me.
I’m certainly not going to upgrade from my iPod to something else just to download movies (Apple also offers movies.. it’s not clear if both will offer the same titles), and there’s no way I’m paying the same price for something that’s even more restrictive than a DVD.
I don’t think this service will be around long.
February 6th, 2007
Have you ever wondered what makes certain people SEO experts? More than any other field, it seems like there is a ton of conflicting information out there about SEO. Is there a Google sandbox? It depends on where you’re reading about it.
The sad truth is, almost everybody who has ever tried to do SEO thinks that they are an expert at it. Unfortunately, the author of this article falls into that category.
Some of the things he mentions just don’t seem to make sense. (I won’t point out his grammar errors, as I’ve likely made a few here as well – but there’s a lot of them!) Let’s look at a few examples:
- Obukhiv The 30 spot filter – Google preaches robustness and scalability. Automatically decreasing a ranking by 30 or so just doesn’t scale well. If looked at from a programmer’s point of view, each site would have a “number” calculated based on various factors of how it relates to a query. Results would then be ordered by that number, not assigned an actual ranking like “7 or 30” for each query. It’d be really inefficient to do things this way. Lowering a site 30 ranking spots just wouldn’t make sense. If anything, there may be some sort of factor in this algorithm that produces what seems like 30 spots, but it’s not just saying “move #5 down to #35.”
- http://thisisthewilderness.com/wp-admin.php?daksldlkdsadas=1 Banned for Google Bombing. I’m sorry, but this just doesn’t happen. If it did, it would be really easy for me to get my competitors sites banned from Google. Instead, what’s most likely happening is that the site which was Google bombed merely isn’t showing up anymore for that term. Google recently released a change in which it will only show Google Bombed sites for queries if that site “wants to rank for the query” (that is to say, it actually contains the text being searched for) Removing a site based on who links to it doesn’t make any sense. I can’t see Google removing a site based on factors outside of the webmaster’s control. In fact, it goes against what they say.
- links.htm – This is ridiculous. I can’t picture a hard coded check for “links.htm” in any type of Google code. Not to mention, it really doesn’t scale well with different languages. The name of your links file should have no effect. This myth most likely revolves around common automatic linking software. This software creates links.htm pages that are nothing but link farms. Google is penalizing for the link farm auto generated pages, not the filename. It’s a case of confusing causation with correlation. Will your rank go up if you change the file name to something else? Probably – but only temporarily until Google spots the spammy behavior of the new file.
- Google says that there is nothing a competitor can do to drop YOUR rankings. (fourth question.) The author highlights this point, then goes on to say several things that go against it. Are we assuming that Google lies in their webmaster guidelines? I’d hate to think so. One example he gives is that if you have a link on a link farm, you could be penalized. That isn’t likely to happen.
If you have a link on a link farm, it probably won’t help you but I can’t see it hurting you either. If it did, millions of link farms would spring up where everybody just linked to their competitors. It doesn’t make sense for Google to penalize you for factors outside of your control. This misconception probably stems from people being told not to link to link farms. That’s good advice, as there probably is a penalty associated with linking to bad neighborhoods.
The point of this is simple: Use common sense when thinking about SEO. If it’s helpful to your visitors, it’s probably a good idea from an SEO standpoint. A good question to ask yourself is “would I do this if there were no search engines?” If so, you can’t go wrong.
A same common sense rule applies for penalties. If it would be possible for a competitor to sabotage your site, then Google probably doesn’t penalize. (but they probably don’t reward either.)
My question is this: Do many SEO’s lack common sense? Are they confusing lack of reward with a penalty? Are they really paranoid of everything they do? Are they focusing on search engines instead of the customer? Or are they just trying to get articles published to further establish themselves as experts?
Disclosure: I used to work in SEO, and have published several articles on the topic. Currently however, I only do SEO for my own private sites (and they all rank pretty damn well.) I’m not claiming to be an SEO expert though, just a computer scientist who approaches the topic with common sense.
February 5th, 2007
Just want to say that Dallas was a blast. Robert Earl Keen puts on a great show (if you like country music) and Billy Bobs in Fort Worth is a great place to hang out.
I met some cool people and had some fun times, but right now I just want to vent about something. I know the people involved will never read this, so I can use it as a lesson to everybody else who reads my blog.
On Saturday I ended up leaving a $6 tip on a $10 bill at Chilis, and it wasn’t because the service was good.
Brad and I met up with 2 girls he knows, and we all had lunch at Chilis. When the bill came, the waitress (as most do) put it all on one check. Since I’ve never been bad at math, I determined that the one girl and I owed $10 (we had the same thing), brad owed $10, and the other girl owed $8. The bill being just under $38, that would have covered it sans tip.
Anyway, the girl who owed $8 started throwing a fit. She insisted that she couldn’t afford to pay for it this way, that she needed her own check so she could get her change back.
Double checking the math, I informed her that her change would only be $0.12 but she still threw a fit.
Needless to say, neither one of the girls left a tip either.
I just can’t believe somebody would be so cheap that they not only don’t tip, but that they can’t spare the extra 12 cents.
I just want to say sorry to that Chilis waitress.
February 5th, 2007
Just a quick note. I have a funeral to attend tomorrow, and then I’ll be catching a plane that night to Dallas for the weekend. I’ll be catching a Robert Earl Keen concert while I’m there, so that should be fun.
If you’re trying to contact me about something for FreeText.biz, or Feedbutton.com, or NoSlang.com etc, it’s going to take a few days for me to get back to you. It also makes me wish Outlook had an auto responder function.
I always dread going on mini vacations because it just means I’ll have about 2500 emails waiting for me on Monday. Owell.
January 31st, 2007
Looking for a romantic candlelit dinner this valentines day? Look no further than your local White Castle. On February 14th (That’s valentines day guys, you’re running out of time) select White Castles will be offering hostess seating, candlelit dining, and your own server from 5-8pm.
This isn’t just a normal even though, you’ll need to make a reservation – so call your local White Castle now.
If you don’t want to splurge this year, there’s always the take home option of a “Cupid’s Crave Kit” that includes 8 burgers, fries, drinks, coupons, and special keepsake items.
“Go ahead honey…. get anything you want off of the value menu. It’s your special day.”
January 31st, 2007
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