So recently YouTube invited me to start putting ads in my videos. I figured I don't have much to lose since I can select which videos get ads, and switch it off whenever I like, so I'm giving it a try.
Since YouTube, AdSense and Blogspot are all under the same Google umbrella, I figured I'd enable it on my blog here too. Not that I get any hits here from anyone who doesn't use some form of adblock, but what the hell.
I initially tried enabling the suggested layout of sticking ads in the sidebar as well as between posts, but the between posts ones were a bit too much so I scaled it back to just the sidebar. I figure that's fairly unobtrusive.
I'd love to share with you all how this experiment turns out, but I think there's some crap in the agreement that says I'm not allowed to disclose revenue amounts. Even if it's 30 cents per year, it's still free money so whatever.
While I'm at it, I should note: don't spam-click the ads or I'll probably get my account suspended.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
To California again...
Flying down on Tuesday and back on Thursday. Interviewing with Overland Storage (digital storage, not the other kind).
I'm also trying out the new google blogger app for iOS. So far it's very orange.
I'm also trying out the new google blogger app for iOS. So far it's very orange.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Oh bother...
So I've been drinking my tea for a few years out of a 20oz acrylic beer mug, which I've quite enjoyed. The downside, of course, is that acrylic doesn't tolerate heat well, and it's been slowly cracking ever since I started using it. This hasn't generally been a problem as the cracks started on the inside and have only slowly been working their way deeper through the plastic as the years have gone by.
Today, though, one of the cracks made it all the way through. It's not leaking, but I can feel the crack with my nail on the outside of the mug, so it's clearly time to look for a replacement.
I had been eyeing up this set of glass beer mugs on Amazon as a suitable replacement; I'd planned to get them once I moved south, but things being as they are I decided to try to order them up today instead.
They don't ship them to Canada. Arg. Seeing as it's not really worth going down to Pembina to pick them up, I'll need to find some other solution.
Today, though, one of the cracks made it all the way through. It's not leaking, but I can feel the crack with my nail on the outside of the mug, so it's clearly time to look for a replacement.
I had been eyeing up this set of glass beer mugs on Amazon as a suitable replacement; I'd planned to get them once I moved south, but things being as they are I decided to try to order them up today instead.
They don't ship them to Canada. Arg. Seeing as it's not really worth going down to Pembina to pick them up, I'll need to find some other solution.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Delicious Tea
On a more upbeat note, compared to the previous entry, I've recently been experimenting with tea. You see, I've always been somewhat fond of tea, but finding the perfect method of preparing and serving it has eluded me in the past. I find drinking it straight to be nice, but somewhat unsatisfying; it always ends up tasting a bit plain and dry. I've tried loading it up with sugar, but that really doesn't improve things much, and isn't the healthiest thing in the world either, especially as I've made this recent move in an attempt to move away from drinking juice and all its unneeded calories. I've tried adding a bit of milk, but besides changing the colour it never seemed to add much to the experience, and certainly fell far short of delivering on the promise of adding richness and creaminess to my freshly brewed drinking experience.
Of course, I contrast this with tea experiences that have been wholly satisfying, namely those times I've had a chai latte at a coffee shop. It wasn't until a few days ago that I finally put the pieces together and came to a revelation: I was using far, far too little milk.
While watching a barista prepare a chai latte this summer, I noticed that the ratio of tea to milk was close to 2:1, rather than the usual middling teaspoons added to a standard cup of tea. I didn't think much of it at the time, as I assumed they were using a much stronger mix of tea than I might hope to brew at home, but on a lark I decided to try it.
After a bit of tinkering, this is the winning algorithm I came up with: In a 600ml mug, brew approximately 400ml of tea with a single tea bag per the package directions. Spiced teas work especially well, and herbals might also be nice though I haven't tried yet. Once the tea is brewed, chuck the teabag and immediately top up the mug with 200ml of whole milk, fresh from the fridge.
This results in a deliciously creamy tea beverage that's at a drinkable temperature immediately upon preparation, which is another bonus.
Even with the whole milk, a mug full only adds up to about 120 calories or so, which is about half of what I'd get from a glass of juice. There's also a lot more of it in a mug, so I can easily get by with just one or two per day, rather than 3 or 4 glasses of juice, to sate my thirst. That said, it's quite a bit more than the roughly zero calories I'd get from plain tea, but I think it's definitely worth it.
With all this calorie talk I should mention that I'm not freaking out about weight or anything. It's just, on the balance, I'd rather spend my daily calorie intake budget on delicious things I enjoy eating, rather than waste it on things that bring me no joy.
Of course, I contrast this with tea experiences that have been wholly satisfying, namely those times I've had a chai latte at a coffee shop. It wasn't until a few days ago that I finally put the pieces together and came to a revelation: I was using far, far too little milk.
While watching a barista prepare a chai latte this summer, I noticed that the ratio of tea to milk was close to 2:1, rather than the usual middling teaspoons added to a standard cup of tea. I didn't think much of it at the time, as I assumed they were using a much stronger mix of tea than I might hope to brew at home, but on a lark I decided to try it.
After a bit of tinkering, this is the winning algorithm I came up with: In a 600ml mug, brew approximately 400ml of tea with a single tea bag per the package directions. Spiced teas work especially well, and herbals might also be nice though I haven't tried yet. Once the tea is brewed, chuck the teabag and immediately top up the mug with 200ml of whole milk, fresh from the fridge.
This results in a deliciously creamy tea beverage that's at a drinkable temperature immediately upon preparation, which is another bonus.
Even with the whole milk, a mug full only adds up to about 120 calories or so, which is about half of what I'd get from a glass of juice. There's also a lot more of it in a mug, so I can easily get by with just one or two per day, rather than 3 or 4 glasses of juice, to sate my thirst. That said, it's quite a bit more than the roughly zero calories I'd get from plain tea, but I think it's definitely worth it.
With all this calorie talk I should mention that I'm not freaking out about weight or anything. It's just, on the balance, I'd rather spend my daily calorie intake budget on delicious things I enjoy eating, rather than waste it on things that bring me no joy.
Please DIAF, Flash Plugin
So last night as I was settling down getting ready for bed, I decided to watch a few youtube videos to close out the day, as I often do. Additionally, as is common for these late night viewings, I hit the "full screen" button on youtube's controls.
Now, for most people, clicking a button marked "full screen" would imply some sort of desire to watch a video in full screen perhaps. Not according to Adobe, though. For them, hitting "full screen" means "crash the computer and force an instant reboot". Thanks, Adobe.
As a result of this, my root drive became unrecoverably corrupted (I'll put some of the blame on Apple's FS team for that part, journaled filesystems should never die like that). Thankfully my Time Machine backups came to the rescue and I didn't lose any data, but all the same it was a pain in the ass and kept me up well past my intended bed time.
On the bright side, when I logged in to post this I noticed that Blogger has added mobile device templates, which I took the opportunity to enable. As such, my blog should now be much easier to navigate from handheld devices. Now if only they could do something about improving the mobile posting experience...
Now, for most people, clicking a button marked "full screen" would imply some sort of desire to watch a video in full screen perhaps. Not according to Adobe, though. For them, hitting "full screen" means "crash the computer and force an instant reboot". Thanks, Adobe.
As a result of this, my root drive became unrecoverably corrupted (I'll put some of the blame on Apple's FS team for that part, journaled filesystems should never die like that). Thankfully my Time Machine backups came to the rescue and I didn't lose any data, but all the same it was a pain in the ass and kept me up well past my intended bed time.
On the bright side, when I logged in to post this I noticed that Blogger has added mobile device templates, which I took the opportunity to enable. As such, my blog should now be much easier to navigate from handheld devices. Now if only they could do something about improving the mobile posting experience...
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Mystery Solved
As I completely forgot to mention in a previous blog post, I retasked Bob's old desktop PC into my server, as my old server was getting a bit flaky due to a damaged DIMM slot.
The new hardware worked quite well, except that, very rarely, I'd come to find that the system had mysteriously rebooted. There was never any crash log or any instability leading up to the reboot, it'd just suddenly, every few weeks, reboot itself.
Then, this afternoon during a particularly strong gust of wind, the power flickered and my server rebooted again, and finally the lightbulb went on. I trudged my way downstairs to inspect the matter first-hand, and was at first a bit stymied as the UPS, which had been my first guess as to the culprit, was not showing any signs of distress from either overload nor from worn batteries.
None the less, when I pulled the plug and the UPS cut over to battery power, my server instantly powered down and started spasming as it attempted to power back up again. During this time, the overload warning on the UPS remained silent, indicating that it was still well within its design load.
With this new information, I was able to narrow it down to the power supply inside the server itself. When I upgraded the system, I had only moved the old drives over along with one of the ethernet cards; I hadn't bothered to swap out the power supply as it seemed to be a perfectly serviceable 500w unit, and the one in the old server was only 550w, though it was a high quality aftermarket unit.
Since I still had the power supply from the old server, I swapped it in. I powered up the system (worked first time!) and pulled the plug on the UPS and... nothing! It just kept chugging right along as if nothing had happened.
I am looking forward to not having any more random reboot troubles from my server.
The new hardware worked quite well, except that, very rarely, I'd come to find that the system had mysteriously rebooted. There was never any crash log or any instability leading up to the reboot, it'd just suddenly, every few weeks, reboot itself.
Then, this afternoon during a particularly strong gust of wind, the power flickered and my server rebooted again, and finally the lightbulb went on. I trudged my way downstairs to inspect the matter first-hand, and was at first a bit stymied as the UPS, which had been my first guess as to the culprit, was not showing any signs of distress from either overload nor from worn batteries.
None the less, when I pulled the plug and the UPS cut over to battery power, my server instantly powered down and started spasming as it attempted to power back up again. During this time, the overload warning on the UPS remained silent, indicating that it was still well within its design load.
With this new information, I was able to narrow it down to the power supply inside the server itself. When I upgraded the system, I had only moved the old drives over along with one of the ethernet cards; I hadn't bothered to swap out the power supply as it seemed to be a perfectly serviceable 500w unit, and the one in the old server was only 550w, though it was a high quality aftermarket unit.
Since I still had the power supply from the old server, I swapped it in. I powered up the system (worked first time!) and pulled the plug on the UPS and... nothing! It just kept chugging right along as if nothing had happened.
I am looking forward to not having any more random reboot troubles from my server.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
The final final grade
Finally got around to checking and I officially scored an A- on Art and History. Huzzah.
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