Comment Spam – does Akismet work?
by Davinian on April 7, 2008
A week ago I was receiving on average 10 spam comments a day. I had Akismet running and was more than happy that it was catching all the nasties for me. But while updating a few plugins I appear to have inadvertently turned Akismet off. I didn’t realised this until today when I received an email saying I had 1 comment awaiting moderation.
I logged in to check it out, but soon realised it was only spam — strange I thought, why hadn’t Akismet caught it. Then I realised the Akismet Spam Tab was missing and then I realised I must have accidentally turned it off — but wait a minute I thought — why have I only received 1 spam comment in the last week when Akismet is turned off?
My brain is still trying to work this out, but I appear to have received more spam while Akismet was turned on. That can’t be right? Can it? I am going to turn it back on and see what happens — but I must confess I don’t have it running some of my other sites, and interestingly they hardly ever get any spam.
A question I’d like to ask is — has anybody else noticed anything weird with Akismet? Do you use it? Or perhaps some other spam catching method?
125Cards Leap-Year Special
by Davinian on February 24, 2008
I’ve decided to run a little competition/give-away type thing over on 125Cards.com.
Prizes include:
- A custom 125×125 design and 1 month free advertising on 125Cards.com
- 1000 Entrecard points to spend however you like
- Another 1 month advert spot on 125Cards.com
To qualify, all you have to do is subscribe to 125Cards (via Email or RSS), then leave a comment on the post Win a Custom 125×125 Design, 1000 Entrecard Points and more… it’s that simple.
Lunar Eclipse 2008
by Davinian on February 21, 2008
I managed to drag myself out of my warm bed at 2.40am this morning to catch a glimpse of the Lunar Eclipse.
It was a clear night when I went to bed some 3 hours earlier, but it had started to cloud over by the time of the eclipse, but I did manage to take a few blurry pictures as I stood outside for half an hour watching one of natures most beautiful spectacles.
I was also fortunate enough to be working in Dorchester, Dorset when the 1999 total eclipse of the Sun passed along the south coast of England. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera, but it was an eerie experience when all the birds stopped singing and every car in the street stopped to take a look.
125Cards.com has landed
by Davinian on February 6, 2008
125Cards.com is about design, style and how we can improve those lovely little 125 x 125 Adverts and Cards that we so love to place (drop) on other peoples websites.
They are meant to advertise what we are selling, be it a product, service or even just ourselves. Yet, they really don’t do us justice, they are difficult to read, look gimmicky and hardy every relate to what we are trying to sell.
Remember, they should be driving traffic to your site – so come on, get serious… visit 12Cards.com, grab a free template and start designing a better Advert.
My Powerbook G4 came home!
by Davinian on February 3, 2008
This has to be one of the weirdest things that has ever happened to me.
Last year I spent two months travelling around Europe in my VW Camper, I had actually planned to be away for four months, but while visiting Pisa in Italy my camper van was broken into and everything was stolen – cloths, food, books, dirty washing and my trusty PowerBook G4, all gone to some thieving ….
Anger eventual turned to frustration as all the things stolen where mealy materialistic and could be replaced, but one thing that frustrated me the most was that my laptop had all my holiday photos on, and although I could revisit the places and take more pictures, the mood and atmosphere would never be recaptured.
So I set about asking for it back, not necessarily my laptop, but the pictures that were on it. I tried a kind of laws of attraction thing, but without all the fuss of the secret (I personally don’t like that film/book). I imagined myself looking at the pictures and even showing them to my family and friends. Then…
I’m a Bloggin-Ads winner!
by Davinian on February 2, 2008
Madness is all I can say. I can’t remember the last time I won anything.
Not 100% sure exactly what I have won, but I’ll let you know in full as soon as I have the details. If you wondering what this is all about and why you didn’t enter – head over to the rather excellent Bloggin-Ads to fine out.
What do you do to stay focused?
by Davinian on January 21, 2008
I have come to the conclusion that I am much better at brain-storming an idea than actually turning it into reality!
For instance, I am currently trying to complete a website for a idea I had two weeks ago, I’m getting there, but find I’m getting distracted with newer ideas – I lack concentration and find it hard focusing when a new idea pops into my head – I need to be strict with myself and stop, write the idea down, then continue with the work in hand… but it’s bloody difficult!
I’ve read plenty of books and websites on time-management, better productivity, staying focused etc., everything makes sense and I know what I should be doing, but after a few days I seem to slip back into my old ways and lose interest… I need to focus and require your help…
What do you do to stay focused and ultimately be productive?
100 Deadliest Karate Moves
by Davinian on January 17, 2008
While running some key-word/niche searches I accidentally ran a search for .pdf – no name, just [dot] PDF as in an Adobe PDF document.
The list that came back was interesting as it appears to show an all to sorry story of what the internet is most commonly used for…
Out of the list of 100 or so results I looked at – that’s the search results I looked at, not the actual PDFs 
the following subjects and titles appeared the most:
- Sex as in Playboy Magazines, Massage Secrets, How to get beautiful women and the Karma Sutra.
- Conspiracy this, that and the other, 50 things you’re not supposed to know, Secret Societies, Free energy and who killed Elvis, Kennedy etc…
- Health and Fitness, Body building Secrets, Lose weight fast, be Big and Strong, 101 workouts and my favourite, 100 Deadliest Karate Moves
(looks like a great book!!!)
Some of the more sensible topics were: Learning a language, to cook or play a musical interment – i.e. speak Japanese, play the Piano and Cooking with Jamie Oliver for some weird reason?
Then followed the usual Windows this, that and the other for Dummies, How to crack this, that and the other application, network or firewall, and even more dummy guides for dummies!
There were some interesting results, but apart from the cooking and learning a new skill, most of them were for topics that generally give the internet a bad name. Why?
Still each to their own I guess – we do live in a free world after all… don’t we?
Jumping on the Entrecard Bandwagon
by Davinian on January 12, 2008
I’ve decided to give the latest self-promoting buzz a go – Entrecard is a weird little business card/advert sharing network that’s designed to allow like minded individuals to contact each other by leaving their 125 x 125 sized business cards on each others website.
You can also rent space (currently one day at a time) on sites displaying the Entrecard widget. You do this by using credits that you accumulate from either displaying cards on your own site, by clicks on your cards, or by dropping (leaving) your card at other sites. It sounds complicated, but it isn’t – trust me!
Credits can also be exchanged for real world goodies, but I haven’t earned enough credits yet, and the current list of goodies is very short.
Why all the fuss? Entrecard seems to be the next big thing in traffic generating ideas, and plays on the relatively new and fast becoming popular 125 x 125 sized adverts you see on such sites as ProBlogger.
The only problem I can see is that the card is actually 127 x 148 when Entrecard tags on the little “Drop yours” button and border. So it wouldn’t fit very well if you had a couple of rows of 125 x 125 adverts.
Anyway, some stats. I only signed up late last night, but my card seems to have brought in just over 50 new unique users in less than 24 hours. Whether they will return again or not remains to be seen, but the cards do seem to be working, and I guess it will boost my visits, readership and hopefully profits for a while.
Update: I’ve stopped using Entrecard and have no idea if it is really of any use these days. It kind of spiralled off into its own world and I found the content of most of the cards a little bit spammy!
Ugly Squeeze Pages and Design
by Davinian on January 5, 2008
The Landing Page or Squeeze Page as it is more commonly know, is seen by some as the most important part of any opt-in email or affiliate driven website.
A typically Squeeze Page tries to entice its “target” audience with marketing and copywriting techniques such as headlines, bullet points, teaser copy, deadlines and testimonials. All of which are generally so well researched that they can take the author days and several attempts to perfect.
But something that I just can’t fathom out, is why such a well written bit of marketing tends to have to look so aesthetically unpleasing to the eye. I have found myself on several occasion just giving up trying to read such a page as the design is so appalling.
The classic example generally has a blue or grey background with either a white of light yellow text area. The text for some god-awful reason seem to usually be Courier – can anybody tell me Why? And with alleged meaningful words and phrases picked out in a collection of insipid Red, Yellow or Blue bold text makes the whole thing unbearable.