October, 2007 · TangleBones

This is getting disturbing

This site has been floating along for a little over 6 years. It started as a collection of hand-edited HTML files with some PHP to allow comments, changed into something more like a single-user forum before turning into a blog four years ago. In those four years I’ve tried 4 different blogging packages and two different hosts. I’ve gotten in fights, said a lot of things I regret, and written somewhere around 500 entries. It’s been a lot of fun.

Two years ago I realized that I had a healthy amount of search engine traffic, so I added some Google ads to some of the pages. Not because I wanted to get rich off of the site, but because I figured that if I was going to have my bandwidth eaten up by visitors from Google, I might as well make some money off them. (Not that I ever really made any money: in two years I’ve earned $148.80.) And since I’ve noticed that very few of the searches that lead people to my site seem to match the content they find here, I figured that maybe Google’s ads would be a win-win: they might link to the what visitors were really searching for.

Then last year I realized that I had a pretty great Google page rank of 6. I was getting emails every few weeks asking me if I would place a link on my site in exchange for a few hundred dollars. The money seemed good, but the way I was approached was a little seedy. About 6 months ago I signed on with Text Link Ads to sell links in my sidebar. It seemed pretty harmless: I get about $45 a month, and some other sites get a link. (So far I’ve made $272.93, better than Google AdSense, but no reason to think about quitting my day job.)

I started posting again on this site in earnest back in August. I managed to double the amount of traffic I was getting, and I restored a couple hundred articles that had been lost when I tried upgrading my old blog software last year. I was feeling pretty good about the site, so I downloaded a bunch of plugins that were supposed to optimize WordPress for search engines. I started checking my site statistics every day to see what I could do to draw more traffic. I even briefly flirted with adding two other sets of ads (since removed).

While I was hoping to make a little cash from my blog, what I really wanted was to increase my readership. It’s not that I don’t like writing for the six of you who comment (I love you all!), but I write about a lot of things that I find interesting that nobody I know seems to care about. It’d be nice to connect with some more people who share those interests.

Of course, I’m not so proud that I can’t admit that the main reason for blogging is vanity. Not “hey look at me, I’m hot shit” vanity, but “this is neat, and so am I by extension.” As a male of reproductive age, showing off is wired into my personality. I get that. And since I don’t play sports or drive a fancy car, blogging about something cool I saw on YouTube is one of my only outlets.

But all of the above is just a prelude to what’s actually wearing on my mind: I’ve lost half my page rank. About a week ago, Google updated their indices, and a lot of sites that were a PR 6 like this one dropped to a 5. That sucked. But now it appears that I’m on a downward slide. I hit 4 on Monday, and as of yesterday, TangleBones is a 3. In addition, Google seems to have lost or removed any inbound links to this site. So a link:tanglebones.com search turns up nothing. Yahoo! still has over 1800 pages that link to me, but Google has deleted those references.

There’s some talk that Google is punishing sites that sell text links, and if so I don’t know what to do. I hate the idea of losing my page rank because it means that my site will drop further down the listings of Google’s search results. It makes the site harder for people to find, and will seriously reduce the number of visitors. I like the money from the ads which I’ve been using to subsidize my comic book habit, but I love seeing the graph of my traffic going up. But since nobody really knows what’s going on with Google, there’s no telling if that’s the real reason I’m slipping in the rankings, or if changing things will do anything to improve the situation. (Another reason for my love-hate relationship with Google.)

So now I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what I wanted to do. And of course, because Google is trying to stop people form gaming the system, they can’t tell anyone how their rankings work. Worst of all, I agree with their secrecy, while at the same time I want to know what to do.

So that’s how my Halloween is going. How about you?

Speed up the process

Who has time to sync their photos with their computer and upload them to Flickr? Not me. So I’m asking Santa for an Eye-Fi Wireless 2GB SD Memory Card for X-mas this year.

It’s an SD card that you plug into your camera, and then every time you’re in range of your wireless network, it automatically transfers all the pictures you’ve taken to your computer. And, if you’ve set it up, it can upload all of them to Flickr or whatever other site you use.

And when you’re out of range of the network, it’s got 2 Gigs of storage space. Pretty handy, eh?

Re: Jackass of the Week: NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker

John Gruber named Jeff Zucker Jackass of the Week for saying:

Apple “destroyed the music business in terms of pricing” and will invariably do the same to the online video business.

John points out that before iTunes, people were used to downloading music for free. And now that NBC has pulled their shows from iTunes, that’s what people will be doing with TV shows.

It’s important to note that because of their current strategy of releasing shows for free on their websites (and on Hulu in the future), the networks are reinforcing the idea that their shows should be free. If anyone is devaluing their product, it’s the networks.

I mean, hardcore web nerds were already aware of torrent sites, etc., but NBC is advertising the fact that you shouldn’t pay for TV shows. They’re paying to encourage users to devalue their product.

How strange is that?

The only upside is that their behavior will inevitably hasten their demise - something we can all be happy about.

A little too accepting

Lately I’ve been talking here on the blog about my problems being an atheist dealing with our religious society. And I’ve been hearing  something surprising (to me) from other atheist parents: they don’t mind their children being religious.

In fact, columnists from both Salon and Slate recently answered the same letter about this topic. A father  whose daughter is being brought up in an evangelical church by her mother wondered how to deal with his daughter’s fear that he’s going to hell. Coincidentally, they both gave him the same advice: go to church with her.

This strikes me as crazy. I can’t imagine Baptists telling their child that they’d be happy to go with them to a meeting of atheists. Heck, I really can’t imagine any Muslim being cool with their child’s interest in Vishnu, Ganesh or Kali. Why are people that are convinced that all religions are wrong so much more open-minded than people that think that one religion is right?

Personally, I’m against my children going to church for the same reason that I worry about autistic kids being given useless treatments:  even if they aren’t harmed, they’re wasting time that could be better put to use doing something worthwhile. Every minute that a kid spends learning about the fanciful goings-on of the book of Genesis is a minute they aren’t spending learning about something that actually happened. Every minute they’re singing about how Jesus loves them, they could be playing a game, learning a musical instrument, or reading a book. And every penny they put in the offering plate could be going to a charity that isn’t spreading religion.

I’m not saying that church will hurt them - or even them make them Christian (see exhibit a: me) - just that if I firmly believe that it’s a waste of time, why wouldn’t I discourage them?

Kids have all the fun

The Giga Ball is awesome: a 4-foot inflatable ball that has windows and entrances so kids can get inside and roll around. It even comes with a foot-pump to save dad’s lungs.

But where’s the adult version?

Show Me Yours

So who’s curious how I did on this Asperger’s quiz? Well, take it yourself and let me know how you did in the comments and I’ll post my results. [Via Scalzi]

And for those of you who score particularly high, enjoy this list of Seven topics to avoid if you don’t want to risk being a bore. [Via Kottke]

UFC 77: Wrap-up

Well, I only managed to correctly pick 5 out of the 9 fights, but it turns out I did about as good a job as the bookies, so I don’t feel too bad.

As mentioned, I got to take my first trip to Hooters. I had a sandwich that was labeled “Probably Iowa beef” which I should have taken as a warning, and it was disgusting. Maybe the menu should read, “probably meat.” They were showing fight on plenty of TVs and you could kind of hear the play-by-play over the crowd, but as usual it’s the people that let you down. Our waitress seemed like a nice kid, but she was really dumb. Like criminally dumb. Like I expected her to set down our drinks upside down dumb.

There was an idiot sitting in our line of sight (sporting some very prominent man-boobs) that seemed really upset that people would root for Anderson Silva against Rich Franklin. When Rich came out he yelled, “Amurica! Whooooo!” and when Silva came out (to much applause from the local crowd) he booed. When the crowd quieted I said loudly, “Don’t boo until after he gets done kicking Rich’s ass.” Sadly, I don’t think he heard me.

Speaking of which, Silva completely destroyed Franklin. At the end when he had him up against the cage, Silva was mixing kicks, knees and punches in one of the most devastating displays of punishment I’ve ever seen. It looked like he was dismantling a toy or something. Hopefully Franklin will go back to teaching or something, because he’s just not in the same league as Silva. For fun, here’s a clip of Silva knocking out Tony Fryklund with a standing elbow. Ouch.

It was also a bad night for Franklin’s Jiu-Jistu coach, Jorge Gurgel, who spent two rounds on the ground eating leather. I’m gonna suggest that Rich get back any money he paid this guy until Gurgel can prove he knows what a closed guard is.

Brandon “The Truth” Vera let me down with his 3 round dirty dancing session with Tim Sylvia. Vera’s kicks looked great, but he didn’t seem like he had a game-plan for handling Sylvia’s reach advantage other than to hug him for 15 minutes. Evidently the truth is dull.

Stephan Bonnar proved that steroid abusers can have cardio too, surviving a rear naked choke attempt to make it into the second round where he bea the crap out of Eric Shafer on the ground.

Speaking of steroid abusers, former professional “wrestler” Brock Lesnar was on the PPV to announce that he’d signed with the UFC. For those of you who don’t watch grown men play dress up to act out childish melodramas, take a look at this awesome picture of Brock. That’s one unfortunate penis-looking tattoo between his boobs. And it’s also good evidence of why steroid use should come with a lifetime ban from all sporting events. Even if that gorilla stops filling his veins with human growth hormone today, do you think that extra hundred pounds of muscle might give him an unfair advantage in the future?

Anyway, it was a pretty good night of fights - what did everyone else think?

UFC 77 Preview: Picks and Predictions

My favorite Habs fan and I are heading out for my first trip to a Hooters to check out the fight in an hour or so, so I guess I should make my picks for the fight official. Without further ado, my quick, lousy, uninformed picks, this time in a sentence or less:

Rich Franklin vs. Anderson Silva

Dana White has taken the unusual step of requiring Rich Franklin to have an ordained catholic priest in his corner in order to perform last rights in the second round: Anderson Silva by heart stoppage.

Tim Sylvia vs. Brandon Vera

Brandon Vera’s only chance of getting hurt in this fight is if he twists his ankle doing his sumo-inspired surfer victory dance after finishing Tim Sylvia in the third.

Kalib Starnes vs. Alan Belcher

Kalib Starnes (a Canuck, I think) was so annoying on The Ultimate Fighter that I’m sure he’ll have Alan Belcher tapping out before the referee introductions are finished.

Eric Schafer vs. Stephan Bonnar

Stephan Bonnar is probably off the steroids this fight, but I’m sure he didn’t lose the muscle: Eric Shafer sees stars in the second.

Yushin Okami vs. Jason MacDonald

In a boring fight for what may be the number one contender slot in the Middleweight division that will mercifully remain unshown, Yushin Okami outlasts Jason (Canuck!) MacDonald for the decision.

Josh Burkman vs. Forrest Petz

Burkman wins beats Petz because somebody cared enough to give him a Wikipedia entry.

Jason Black vs. Matt Grice

Ditto for  Black beating Grice.

Demian Maia vs. Ryan Jensen

This time the more talented but as-of-yet un-Wikipedia’d Brazillian Maia beats Ryan Jensen.

Alvin Robinson vs. Jorge Gurgel

And we stick with the Brazillian to round out the fight: Gurgel beats Robinson by submission.

Google Maps Feature Request

I was browsing through the new Google Maps Street View coverage in Chicago trying to find the places I remembered from my childhood, and I realized that Google Maps needs some kind of “What the hell is that right there?” button.

For instance, I could swear that there was a gyro joint near the corner of Kedzie and Foster, but it appears to have been knocked down to build either a parking lot or some little drive through place that’s there now. But I can’t tell what the drive through thing is. Why can’t Google go through and label everything it has results for on the current map window?

Must resist beautiful camera

I’ve been pretty happy with my cameras, a Nikon D50 and a Sony DSC-T7, but the new Sony DSC-T200 combines the best qualities of both a “thing of beauty” and a “joy forever.” 8.1 megapixels, 5x optical zoom as well as lens-based image-stabilization. And it’s so pretty!

Thank goodness I’m broke or I’d really be in trouble!