Four Months Messing Around
by Davinian on December 27, 2007
Four months ago I decided I was going to seriously try my hand at making money online. Everything started off well and I did make a few hundred dollars, but then I lost enthusiasm and started to get distracted, and before I knew it, I wasn’t making anything.
Making money needs a special kind of dedication and commitment which keeps you going, even when things look bad. There is also a fine line between knowing when to keep going or when to quit a bad idea. I think I failed all of the above and as a result I have wasted a lot of my time running around after foolhardy ideas, and not dedicating myself to the things that were working.
I am now going to wipe the slate clean and give it another go. The knowledge I have learned over the last four months will be used to hopefully help me get things right. I have learned the hard way as they say, and I think it has taught me to respect the knowledge of others and that you do not necessarily need to come up with a new winning formula. In fact, the last four months have blatantly made it clear to me that there is plenty of room out there to actually copy somebody else’s really good idea and make it work for yourself. All you need to do is put your own spin on it.
So that is what I am planning to do. It’s not lazy, not stealing (especially if you pay for somebody else’s knowledge) and it is definitely not cheating. It is however, hard work and requires that special commitment — qualities I think I now have and understand!
Festive Fun Everyone…
by Davinian on December 25, 2007
OK, so I’m not a big fan of all the fuss that seems to be made about Christmas these days. The prolonged shopping extravaganza washed all the fun out it for me years ago!
When summer is over, we seem to barely have time for All Hallows Eve and Guido Fawkes Night these days before the big bloke in the red suite is thrust down our throats 24/7.
I guess it can still be a little bit fun, meeting friends and family that we haven’t seen for a while, even some we haven’t seem since last Christmas (must make an effort to see them more!).
But it does depress me when I think just how much effort goes into it all for just one day – especially when everything has SALE slapped over it the day after!
Anyway, what every you thoughts, views or ideas – I wish you all some Festive Fun… hic!
OS 10.5 Leopard thoughts Part 1
by Davinian on December 23, 2007
I updated my iMac to Leopard a few weeks back. I still have mixed views on whether it is really that much better than Tiger. It is better, ascetically pleasing to eye better being the most obvious, but is it better for work? Better for design, better for working on the web?
I’m still trying to work it out, ultimately I guess yes, but I’m finding some of the bugs a little bit annoying. Or rather I am annoyed that Apple have once again decided to beta test their products on their customers!
For instance – my Lacie hard drive no longer spins down when it is not in use – why? No idea, but it means the drive gets unnecessary hot and have to manually eject it when not in use.
Another example – iDisk seems to screw-up every time I turn on its Syncing. Not just a weird screw-up, but a “I’m going to use up all your free space” screw-up. Again I can’t seem to find a reason why?
I’m sure things will be fixed and everything will work eventually. I just hate the unnecessary fiddling we seem to have to do these days to get things working, when all we really want to do is just use it to do some work…
…what, dare I ask, happened to the notion that Computers would make our lives easier?
Problems and Moving House
by Davinian on December 3, 2007
Ok, so this is the quick version of what happened.
In the middle of moving house, I received an email from my hosting company saying my account was in violation of their Terms and Conditions.
It took ten days to get connected to the net at my new house, and by then my host had suspended my account and nothing was working.
Fortunately a good friend of mine allowed me to lug my iMac up to his house and use his internet for a day so I could sort out the mess – in short… I was using old versions of WordPress that had vulnerabilities. A very bad idea as these vulnerabilities were being abused by someone or something which caused my T&C violation.
I had plained to return davinian to its previous state ASAP, but what with all the DIY and sorting out my new house I just haven’t had the time.
Anyway, I’m back and I think everything is sorted. I have sucessfuly moved house, and I’m now living in Dorset, not far from the coast and to be honest, enjoying having my own place again.
Addicted to the Internet
by Davinian on October 25, 2007
Sometimes you spot something that just reminds you of yourself…
… and several of my friends as well. Scary!
Dealing with Numpty Hot-Linkers
by Davinian on October 3, 2007
Man, what is it with silly pictures of monkeys and numpties who like to hot-link images?
I have just spent the last 2 hours sorting through my inbound links to this site trying to cross-reference genuine incoming inks against stupid hot-links.
Bizarrely, the image that every numskull seems to want to hot-link to is this – a montage of some funny monkey portraits (link to my original post).
Good old .htaccess to the rescue is all I can say. Basically I have used RewriteEngine/RewriteCond as describe here: How do I stop hotlinking and bandwidth theft? Which seems to work perfectly.
If you think you are being hot-linked, check your top inbound links first and check for your images on the site linking to you. If the site is a blog or forum, you may need to check previous pages/posts. If you suspect somebody is using your images on their site, then customising your .htaccess is probably the best solution for blocking them.
Note: I don’t use an alternative image, but the temptation to redirect to a rude alternative is very tempting at times – but that would then lower me to the thieving hot-linkers standards, and to be honest, I am above all that!
Twitter Tools really puts the Pressure on!
by Davinian on August 30, 2007
Having Alex Kings Twitter Tools installed is great for letting your Twitter followers know when you have posted something new on your site – and in reverse, it is also really useful for making a blog post of your previous days twitterings, but …
… if you do have the “Create a daily digest blog post” turned on like I do, then the pressure to post something everyday really gets turned up to the MAX! As I think there is nothing more unsightly than having two days of Twitter Updates side-by-side! Yep I know I could turn it off or even delete the update posts – but that would be cheating… wouldn’t it?
Anyway, as you can tell – I have struggled to write something today and as a result I have had to write about something that is a bit trivial – mind you – Twitter Tools is cool and worth installing if you don’t have it.
Twitter Updates for 2007-08-29
by Davinian on August 29, 2007
- New Post: Apple Special Event Confirmed for the 5th September – http://tinyurl.com/37ybj5 – looks like new iPods are on their way! #
- Currently Browsing: http://www.purpleplates.com/ Interesting – is it magic? #
- Virtual police patrol China web http://tinyurl.com/299k6x #
- updating my sites robot.txt files #
- had to reset Safari 3.0.3 Beta after a very weird crash… #
- this is cool and makes me feel better – Piccadilly Circus ads stop working – http://tinyurl.com/2gv6f8 #
- cooking a roast dinner… #
- time to call it a night – goodnight #
Twitter Updates for 2007-08-28
by Davinian on August 28, 2007
- An interesting view of Twitter – is it just spam? http://www.twitterspam.com/ Have I just spammed by saying this on Twitter? #
- time to stop mindlessly surfing and start doing something productive… #
A Something and Nothing Day!
by Davinian on August 28, 2007
It has been one of those days for me today, I tried to write this morning, but kept finding myself being distracted by other things. When it happens it is damn hard to break out of it. If I catch myself free-falling early enough I can usually do something about it, but today wasn’t one of those times, so I decided to take a break and headed out of the house for the day.
On reflection it was probably the best thing I could have done, as I got thinking about Tumbled (my free WordPress theme), and I think I should try and make it more Tumbleblog-like with separate styling for each category – links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video being the obvious ones – what do you think? Should I make it more, dare I say it… Web 2.0 ish?