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Simplicity is golden

Old crow alert: I hate just about everything new. That said, one new thing I like is this new theme I’ve put on. Can’t get much simpler than this!

…I just wish it would’ve been easier to remove shit from the sidebar, I had to do some hacking there… Oh well, wasn’t too big a deal and now it’s pretty close to what I want. A few more things to remove, and I’ll be a happy camper again. For a while anyway.

Another thing which I had to hack was those little divider bars between the posts. See that thing there, right below this text, with gray background and the posting date and things like that? Yep, that thing. I put simple “| ” characters (bar, or whatever) in there to divide the different bits, because initially it had weird symbols like ¶ and § and † as dividers – the last one striking me as particularly odd choice. Isn’t that like a cross you see in the cemetary? A bit morbid if you ask me (which you don’t).

The thing was, they were all over the place, in several different locations. I changed the one in the main page, but then when I clicked on a category to see postings from that category, the stupid separators were right back. The separator bar is otherwise the same, so that’s a bit of bad programming if you ask me (which you don’t).

Anyhoo, I’m getting there. Gonna fiddle with the fonts just a bit more, but soon this should be ok.

| Posted 02 July 2009 | Antti | Random stuff | Comments (1) |

Worth quoting

I just recently came across this gem online:

“XML is like violence. If it’s not solving your problem, you’re just not using enough of it”

Made me laugh. Feel free to steal it for your own use just like I did – unfortunately I don’t know who originally came up with it. Cheers!

| Posted 01 July 2009 | Antti | Random stuff | Comments (0) |

Adwords, analytics and other web visitor stats

I think it’s all bullshit.

I’ve had Google analytics running on my own site (www.bluerose.fi) for a few years now. It was interesting to follow at first but after a while I rarely visited it.

Then I started using Google Adwords. I paid, got a few more visits, kept tuning the site and keywords over and over again, using whatever methods and tricks were hot and in at the moment. Never got too much of a boost anyway, but hey, it’s what everyone does so I have to do it too.

Then I was distracted by real life for about half a year, and of course my adwords account ran dry and was stopped. I noticed this a few months ago, paid more and got the ads running again. Just this week it ran dry again, and I checked the stats.

Well well, whaddyaknow. When the adwords campaign was first stopped, there was no drop in visits, actually quite the opposite, although by small enough margin to be inconsequential. And quess what: when I re-started the campaign, there was no spike up. It seemed like the adwords didn’t change anything in the stats.

But I paid. And Google reported a whole lot of clicks. What’s that all about? Wondering about that, I went to check my web server logs – see, the web server can log all page requests, too, so there is other possibility to track visitors besides Google analytics (I know this comes as a shock to you, but it’s true). And quess what I found out: the two logs, which theoretically measure the same thing (page hits and visitors), didn’t seem to correlate at all.

Hmm… Something’s not right. Ok, I know that there are “finer details” in reading the reports, but still. There’s a low curve in my web servers logs in the summer, which sort of makes sense because who cares about surfing the web at summer – but in Google Analytics there’s no noticeable turn downwards.

I don’t get this. But I have a theory: it’s all bullshit. The analytics are random, and the whole adwords business does not actually bring anyone any business at all, except of course Google. It’s a brilliant scheme, but I’m not buying it anymore. So, until I really figure out what’s what, I’m not buying any more adwords.

I’ve installed another tracking system on my server, and am writing my own small program to monitor it – that way I know exactly what is being measured and counted. That should get me data that corresponds with Google’s Analytics. And if it doesn’t, then, well, something.

It’s all crap anyway.

| Posted 06 June 2009 | Antti | Cynical conspiracy theories | Random stuff | Comments (0) |

Methinks someone’s lying…

Seems that almos every company touts itself as “Industry leader” on their marketing material. Well, unless it’s a super close tie so that every company has exactly the same “score”, that’s not possible is it? So some of them are lying. Actually, most are, since only one can really be leader and the rest are, well, not.

And what does “Industry leader” mean anyway? It’s not even saying that they’re any good, just that they’re leading, somehow, something. In general, anything that is way cheaper than competition could be tought to “lead” because they’re likely to have sold more than their more expensive counterparts, but does that in any way imply that it’s better? Nope.

My advice? Stop reading marketing material, it’s all just lies. Instead, always check what other people are saying about a company and / or their products, and then just use your own common sense from there.

| Posted 03 June 2009 | Antti | Random stuff | Comments (0) |

Bored to tears

Tired. Don’t want to go to work. Work dumb.

| Posted 11 May 2009 | Antti | Random stuff | Comments (0) |