So it appears that “psychics” are already “talking” to MJ. Ummm… yeah… whatever. But I guess if you want to be a “real” psychic– and of course those don’t exist anyway, then you won’t try to contact Michael Jackson for at least six months, according to one idiot self proclaimed psychic. Straight out of CNN we hear this: » More: “Psychics” Talking to MJ
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
“Psychics” Talking to MJ
July 10th, 2009WP Super Cache Date Display Issue
July 10th, 2009The WP Super Cache plugin is finally playing well enough in my environment that I’ve been able to update from the ancient, abandoned WP-Cache plugin. I did notice however an issue with displaying dates in WordPress 2.8 and 2.8.1. The “Last” and “Next” Garbage Collection times are incorrect. Yet when I go to the WordPress Setting –> General page, the URC time and the Local Time are correct. It seems like the WP Super Cache plugin might be applying the UTC offset to the local time. » More: WP Super Cache Date Display Issue
Puzzles and Theories
July 9th, 2009Everything in our natural world is a puzzle. From the gravity binding our feet to earth to the outer reaches of the universe, observations are the pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle. As we start to fit more of the pieces together we can start to see the big picture, and better understand the world around us. » More: Puzzles and Theories
iWork ‘08 Numbers
August 8th, 2007Of the Apple announcements yesterday, the one I was most excited about was the addition of Numbers, a spreadsheet program, to the iWork suite. Finally, an Apple spreadsheet app. (Unless of course you remember back to AppleWorks.)
So I gladly downloaded the 30 day trial to see if Numbers can replace Excel. I had high hopes, but I also recognize I’m a bit of an Excel power-user. The verdict? I don’t think I’ll be able to make the switch. After I installed Numbers, I asked it to import an Excel spreadsheet I use daily. After a few minutes of thinking, a seemingly stalled progress bar, and the infamous spinning beach-ball, I was presented with the following message:
Import Warning – Sorting criteria were removed.
Import Warning – Charts with error bars or trendlines were converted to charts without error bars or trendlines.
Import Warning – Chart references to external data aren’t supported and the last values were imported.
Import Warning – Major and minor axis range units were recalculated and your charts might look different.
Import Warning – Minimum and maximum axis values were recalculated and your charts might look different.
Import Warning – Chart axes were moved to cross at chart corners. Chart ‘eCPM’ will look different.
Import Warning – Unsupported conditional formatting on 43 cells was removed from Table 1 on ‘Salary.’
Import Warning – Unsupported formulas in 2 cells were removed from Table 1 on ‘Daily Forecast.’ The last calculated value was used.
Import Warning – Unsupported conditional formatting on 2 cells was removed from Table 1 on ‘Daily Forecast.’
Import Warning – Unsupported conditional formatting on 1112 cells was removed from Table 1 on ‘Daily Total.’
Yikes. Thinking things might not be as bad as that sounds, I decided to take a poke around. Where did all of my panes go? How do I know the title of my column if it is longer than my window size? Where did my trendlines on my charts go? How come I have entire charts that are now blank, with no data in them? I can’t extend a row and keep the formulas? I can’t change the marker icon? Even after saving the document in the Numbers native format the document takes more than 60 seconds to open?
Hopefully I’ll find ways to get around those issues, or I’ll find where those features are hidden, but it doesn’t sound like I’ll be able to ditch Excel.
Blogs vs. Websites
April 14th, 2006A question I’m frequently asked these days is “What is the difference between a blog and a website?” I’m having an increasingly difficult time answering that question. Not because I don’t have some semblance of an answer, but rather I’m making a personal push to get away from using the word blog.
I don’t like the word blog. It sounds too much like blob. Blog is actually short for weblog; I like the word weblog much better. It is more descriptive of what is actually going on … a website written in a log fashion.
Fighting Comment Spam
February 27th, 2006Despite using a captcha to fight comment spam I’ve seen an increasing amount of the junk in the past few weeks. At first I thought maybe the spammers were getting past the captcha, but carefully analyzing the log files shows that isn’t what happens.
In the most recent comment spam I received the spammer simply used the following Google search:
"Leave a comment" inurl:subject
Secure Document Delivery
January 30th, 2006
There has got to be a better way to deliver secure documents to people. Today I received a 1099-MISC form in the mail. The window on the envelope which is supposed to display your name and address also displayed my tax ID number. But even that slip didn’t really matter because the envelope wasn’t sealed.
I’m not suggesting I don’t trust US Postal employees. There are a number of ways this process could be improved. For example one of my banks sends me an email telling me my tax forms are ready. I log into their secure website and download them. That is a good, secure process.
» More: Secure Document Delivery
WordPress 2.0 Upgrade
January 13th, 2006Okay, no less than two weeks after I listed reasons I wasn’t going to upgrade to WordPress 2.0, I’ve done so. But…. Just on this site. I have not upgraded any of my other WP installs and I don’t plan to soon.
My opinion of the release remains the same. It will be great for many people but none of the new features excite me. And that is okay. I like the simple nature of WordPress and I nearly giggle whenever I need to download the tiny source.
Since I use xmlrpc to post entries, I never even see all of the nice new ajaxy eye candy in the admin section. So just so that I would see something new I installed a new template here. It was about time I moved on from that highly hacked kubrick theme. I really like the new template… I like looking at it so much I might actually post around here more often. We’ll see. 
Things are Crazy
January 5th, 2006Things are crazy. Things are very crazy. I’ve written close to 100 blog posts this week and I’m still behind on one of them (flightnest). This whole craziness has been the result of a few different factors.
- Google let one of my websites out of the sandbox. Or since Google barely acknowledges such a thing exists I’ll say that overnight traffic from Google increased over 30 times normal levels. Yes, I wrote that correctly, overnight traffic increased 30 times.
- Perhaps it wasn’t entirely the sandbox, as I made a couple of other important SEO changes to my site and perhaps all of that hit at once. Who knows. I’m happy though.
- I’ve started to really figure out contextual advertising. It takes time. Contextual advertising isn’t simply adding ad code and changing colors and placement. As Jeremy Wright has said, contextual advertising is now about “delivering the correct ad to the correct visitor at the correct time”. I’m closer to understanding this now.
- The start of a new year is just a crazy time in general. We’ve all taken some time off over the holidays, got behind in work, and then all of these trade shows like CES and MacWorld happen that I need to cover news from.
All of this boils down to being a crazy time. I’m behind on a few of my other, non blogging projects (sorry John!) and I also have realized that I need to take some time, sit back, and evaluate where my business has gone in the past fourteen months. I sense a new direction is in order, one that will allow me to set aside the projects I was never enthusiastic about doing, but did so because they were lucrative. Instead I’ll be focusing on projects I enjoy, that I avoided before since they were not lucrative…. but now I’ve figured out how to make them lucrative.
Overall, I need to figure out how to start saying no. I’ve turned down a few projects in the past, but not many. I need to start looking at projects in a different way, and evaluating them based on time constraints and long term gain. And this is just the start of some business brainstorming I need to do. I wish business coaches were less expensive.
GPS Review makes CNET Top 100 List
October 6th, 2005GPS Review has made CNET News.com’s Blog 100 List! Wow!
GPS Review has been selected as part of the News.com Blog 100, a feature in which News.com editors and reporters are helping find the best news and views on the Web for the convenience of our readers.
They cited the reason as “Good aggregation of product news and more technical articles on this burgeoning technology.”
