It’s midday in Sydney and this blog has already received 16 spam comments today. Fortunately I don’t have to deal with them as I use a WordPress plugin called Akismet to weed them out for me. They end up in a special folder where I can check them if I have the patience.

In the last 6 months there have been 29,783 spam comments on this blog.

Can you believe it? 29,783!!! I can’t.

This blog is not especially popular. I don’t post as often as I’d like, and some of what I post is not relevant to many people. And yet in the last year there has been 36,359 comments classified as spam.

As you can see, the number of comments rose to a peak in September. I’m not sure what the story was or what causes the rise and fall in spam. Has anyone else seen similar figures?

Here is a sample of the sort of comments we mean by spam:

As you see, they all want to sell me something, or sell you something. Or worse.

Maybe I need to add one of those things where you have to enter the funny characters you see on the screen. I know Akismet is sealing them off for me, but just allowing them to add the comment in the first place offends me.

What do you think?

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Blog posts are a snapshot in time. Just as a photograph can tell you a lot about someone, so can a blog post, even when they talk about seemingly trivial things. Even memes, those things that seem to go around like a craze in primary school, can be meaningful.

I have been sorting through old drafts that were never published, and I found this one from October 2008:

Ten years ago I was:

1. Working on the implementation of a new computer system to prepare for Y2K
2. Sharing our new house with my sister’s family until theirs was ready to move into
3. Wondering how long my mother’s new marriage would last (not long)
4. Planting Australian natives in the garden
5. Spending too much money

Five things on today’s to-do list:

1. Give the cat his antibiotics (done)
2. Call my Dad to see how my step-mother is doing (trying)
3. Go and see my step-mother in hospital
4. Meet an old friend for lunch (will do)
5. Do some neglected housework (not done)

Five snacks I enjoy:

1. My sister’s brownies
2. Yoghurt
3. A banana, or some grapes
4. dry-roasted cashews
5. Did I mention my sister’s brownies?

Five places I have lived (in no particular order):

1. Beautiful leafy Hornsby in Sydney’s northern suburbs (for the last 20-odd years)
2. Dubbo in Central Western New South Wales (where I grew up)
3. A flat in Rockdale in Sydney’s south (while I was at uni)
4. A semi-detached house in inner-city Stanmore (when I was finishing uni and starting work)
5. Suva, Fiji (for about 6 months when I was 12)

Five jobs I have had:

1. Salesgirl at Woolworths Variety when I was 14 or 15
2. Sales assistant at Angus and Robertson book store in Dubbo between school and uni
3. Bar attendant at a couple of southern Sydney pubs while I was at uni
4. Clerk for the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs for a couple of years when I finished uni
5. Computer programmer at the gas company

Five places I would like to visit:

1. Ireland – Northern Ireland and the Republic
2. The National Archives of Fiji
3. Namibia (again)

None of this will have any significance for anyone outside of my family, I suspect. For my close family, however, it may mean a great deal. Not only does it say to anyone who is interested some details of my past and present life, but it has some bearing on other events that had great significance.

I suspect that I didn’t finish the post because of what was going on at the time. I did talk to my Dad about how my step-mother was doing, and I went to see her in hospital every day and sat with her while my sister, her daughter, raced home to get things done. We moved her home when the hospital could no longer do anything for her, and after a few days she passed away, in her own bed with her family around her. Only 11 days after I wrote this.

It still hurts that she was taken so soon. 60 is young, these days. Her father lived much, much longer.

I also remember meeting the old friend for lunch. He told me a trick to do with parking near the hospital before the afternoon peak hour.

It was a shock to read through this post after all this time. I thought I would share it with my family, and anyone else who is interested.

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I have been trying to find a theme for my blog. I want one that displays the writing in a clear and clean manner, and …

Nearly everywhere I have read recommends the Thesis theme, but my understanding is that is is well built at the back end but you need coding skills to design the front end. I may end up going that way, because the alternatives all have problems.

I found Elegant Themes, which look very nice. It’s US$19.95 per year to use all of them, and you keep them if you don’t renew. I’ve been experimenting with one now – StudioBlue – it’s on the right. Ih shows featured posts and lists of posts by category and is very configurable. It allows ads in the top right corner, but I’ve realised that I have to insert code to put them in there, instead of just in a widget editor, so that’s out.

I also tried one called eNews which showed pictures, but it required a thumbnail to be generated for each post, as well as the code-insertion drama mentioned.

It’s not that I am unable to learn to code, I was a programmer for many years. I just don’t want to spend my time doing that. If writing a post is an extra hassle I’ll do it less often. I would be prepared to spend more to get something more user-friendly but I want to try it out before I buy it, and not find out that I have to mess with code when I’ve already paid for it.

Of course, the real reason for all this mucking around is not for this blog but for my business blog and website.

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As much as I dislike advertising when it interrupts my day-to-day life I recognise that it is an inevitable part of life. When I’m watching TV I don’t mind when ads appear between shows (and in fact I resent it when they don’t as it doesn’t give me time to go and do something I need to do) but I fiercely resent it when it is inserted within the show, especially movies. I particular resent ads that are placed at points in the program other than when the change of scene makes it obvious that the ad should have been placed there.

So, anyway, I dislike ads but I live with them. This policy has now spilled over into my blogs, including this one. In the past I have half-heartedly inserted an ad in the left column of this blog and another one, and have not, until yesterday, done anything to find out how successful (or not) the ad has been. 

My lack of follow-up has been for a number of reasons:

1. My general dislike of advertising
2. My inablility to keep track of the changes in affiliate websites and who is responsible for which advertising company
3. My inability to remember ids and passwords once I do find the website responsible
4. My feeling of  despair when I do get into the website responsible

Advertising for Ancestry, GenesReunited and the Origins Network are all controlled by a thing called Commission Junction. Whenever I manage to find and log into this website it has seemed overwhelmingly impossible, as the first thing it shows me as a default is the first page of a long list of advertisers (mostly in the States) that have no relevance to me whatsoever. Finding advertisers I am interested in has been equally difficult. I take one look and then I run away and do something else instead.

World Vital Records has changed from whoever it used to be to the Google Affiliate Network. I’ d never gotten around to doing what I had to do to move to this new mob. Then there is Google Adsense – all those ads you see down the side of the page, and elsewhere. And Google Adwords. And Amazon Associates….

Yesterday I spent a large chunk of the day sorting it all out. It seems I used to have Google Adsense ads but stopped a few months ago. I bit the bullet and signed up for Google Adwords for my business website. I found an ad I liked for the Origins Network and put that in a couple of places. I found a plugin for WordPress, the software that brings you this blog, that will insert an ad in old posts. An example of that ad appears below (in theory, Google ads don’t appear immediately).

It seems the secret to Commission Junction is to select the By Relationship tab, and so I just see the three companies I have relationships with, namely Ancestry, GenesReunited and the Origins Network, instead of the thousands I don’t want a relationship with. Why didn’t I see that before???! Here are some ads from each of these:

Aren’t they pretty? And one for World Vital Records:

Hmm, not what I was expecting. Unfortunately they don’t show you the ad, there’s just a description, although perhaps that depends on which browser I’m using. How about this one?

It’s a different way to go, sure. I’ve also had a look at the affiliate program for FindMyPast, the UK company, but it seems too much hassle for little benefit. They use a different company called Affiliate Window and want me to pay £5 just to join, and they only make payments when my account reaches £100. I don’t expect that I will ever get to this level so the whole thing seems pointless.

Amazon Associates controls the commission you get if clicking on a picture of a book in your library in LibraryThing takes the reader to Amazon and they buy the book. I have never earned any money this way, but the system is there.

So, dear reader, you will see more ads than you used to. In the current economic climate (don’t you get sick of reading that phrase, and others like it) I need to consider alternate streams of income, although “stream” is an unrealistically optimistic word. Trickle, perhaps. I hope they are not intrusive, and I hope you will let me know if you think they are.

Here is an example from Google Adsense. I will be interested to see what the ad is.

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I have been nominated for the Kreative Blogger Award by a lovely blogger in San Diego called Gini. I am honoured, and very surprised, to be receiving recognition from someone so far away!

You can see Gini’s nominations here.

I am now supposed to nominate 7 other bloggers for the same award, and I will make the time to do that very soon, I promise!

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This morning I am faced with the Big Question – do I spend time reading other people’s blogs or do I stop reading and spend the time writing my own?

My blogging has been on hold this last week, or really since before I went to New Zealand last month, and with all the catching up I’ve been doing since then I haven’t managed to get back to it.

Too many things to do – too little time. Something has got to go, and the reading of blogs is one of those things. I read blogs on family history, small business, wildlife rescue, mind mapping; all sorts of things. Some are more useful than others; some are entertainment.

I have reduced my subscriptions to blogs from 24 to 15, and counting.

SPECIAL UPDATE

I’ve also removed some applications from Facebook. Not all of them, I’m sorry to say, but enough to reduce a lot of the time-wasting aspect of the thing. I only accept invitations from people I’m related to, now, and I delete the application after a few weeks, as I have today.

It may not make much of a difference but it makes me feel like my life is a little less cluttered and that has to be good!

• Spam, spam, everywhere spam
  It's midday in Sydney and this blog has already received 16 spam comments today. Fortunately I don't have to deal with them as I use a Wordpress plugin called Akismet to weed them out for me. They end...
• A good reason to write a blog
  Blog posts are a snapshot in time. Just as a photograph can tell you a lot about someone, so can a blog post, even when they talk about seemingly trivial things. Even memes, those things that seem to ...
• Wordpress Themes – sometimes not as easy as they look
  I have been trying to find a theme for my blog. I want one that displays the writing in a clear and clean manner, and ... Nearly everywhere I have read recommends the Thesis theme, but my understan...
• The inevitable has struck – advertising on blogs
  As much as I dislike advertising when it interrupts my day-to-day life I recognise that it is an inevitable part of life. When I'm watching TV I don't mind when ads appear between shows (and in fact I...
• Kreative Blogger Awards
  I have been nominated for the Kreative Blogger Award by a lovely blogger in San Diego called Gini. I am honoured, and very surprised, to be receiving recognition from someone so far away!   ...

I have added my blog to Technorati.

Technorati Profile

• An occasional blog
  I've decided to turn this rather quiet website into a blog. Like a diary, I guess, or a journal. So here goes... Today I'm struggling to get my Heritage Genealogy website looking the same on Intern...
• Spam, spam, everywhere spam
  It's midday in Sydney and this blog has already received 16 spam comments today. Fortunately I don't have to deal with them as I use a Wordpress plugin called Akismet to weed them out for me. They end...
• A good reason to write a blog
  Blog posts are a snapshot in time. Just as a photograph can tell you a lot about someone, so can a blog post, even when they talk about seemingly trivial things. Even memes, those things that seem to ...
• Wordpress Themes – sometimes not as easy as they look
  I have been trying to find a theme for my blog. I want one that displays the writing in a clear and clean manner, and ... Nearly everywhere I have read recommends the Thesis theme, but my understan...
• Free access to World Vital Records for 3 days starting today!
  An announcement from World Vital Records: World Vital Records is announcing the addition of the largest number of records to be released in a single day since the site launched in 2006. To commemo...

I’ve been struggling with this question for a long time now. I’ve started sneaking small ads for Ancestry and GenesReunited on my website and blogs which, incidently, don’t work in Firefox V3. If you want to avoid advertising perhaps that is the browser to use!

Why would I do that, if I think that they’re bad? Well, I’ve decided that they are not necessarily so bad. I use the internet a lot and most ads don’t bother me. The ones I don’t like are the ones on FaceBook that have a bigger button than the function of the page I am on so that I click on the wrong button, and some of the more annoying flashing moving banners along the top of eBay pages.

So I figure that if I avoid these types of ads I won’t annoy readers of my sites. And I might even make some money from them. We’ll see.

• The inevitable has struck – advertising on blogs
  As much as I dislike advertising when it interrupts my day-to-day life I recognise that it is an inevitable part of life. When I'm watching TV I don't mind when ads appear between shows (and in fact I...
• Spam, spam, everywhere spam
  It's midday in Sydney and this blog has already received 16 spam comments today. Fortunately I don't have to deal with them as I use a Wordpress plugin called Akismet to weed them out for me. They end...
• A good reason to write a blog
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• Adventures with customer service
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• Wordpress Themes – sometimes not as easy as they look
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I’ve decided to turn this rather quiet website into a blog. Like a diary, I guess, or a journal. So here goes…

Today I’m struggling to get my Heritage Genealogy website looking the same on Internet Explorer as it does on Firefox. Different rules apply, obviously. There is always more work to be done on a website and unless there is somewhere else to test changes the risk is that I will break something on the real website and not be able to fix it.

Even this simple website has a great blue bar across the middle of it in IE7 and not in Firefox. The simple answer for me is to ban Internet Explorer but unfortunately I can’t, so I either have to fix it or change it. I don’t know how to fix it so I guess I’ll have to change the template to something that WORKS. What a pain, I like the paintbrush theme.

When I’ve finished playing with the website I will have a look at the documents a client has sent me on her convict.

• Technorati
  I have added my blog to Technorati. Technorati Profile...
• Spam, spam, everywhere spam
  It's midday in Sydney and this blog has already received 16 spam comments today. Fortunately I don't have to deal with them as I use a Wordpress plugin called Akismet to weed them out for me. They end...
• A good reason to write a blog
  Blog posts are a snapshot in time. Just as a photograph can tell you a lot about someone, so can a blog post, even when they talk about seemingly trivial things. Even memes, those things that seem to ...
• Wordpress Themes – sometimes not as easy as they look
  I have been trying to find a theme for my blog. I want one that displays the writing in a clear and clean manner, and ... Nearly everywhere I have read recommends the Thesis theme, but my understan...
• Free access to World Vital Records for 3 days starting today!
  An announcement from World Vital Records: World Vital Records is announcing the addition of the largest number of records to be released in a single day since the site launched in 2006. To commemo...