mcgees.org

• RT @TheJudestr “Huh?”: Best. Contextless. Tweet. Ever. #

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• Testing from within Gwibber #
• I’m done with facebook now, I think. #

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• http://bit.ly/nHex #
• This test is being made through twit.el as a test. #
• Testing linking: twit.el -> Twitter -> Facebook, then Twitter->mcgees.org? Thanks for patience.  Next: a tweet loop. #
• Second test: direct from Twitter -> FB? #

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• RT @duhism: “The secret to balancing work and home life? Two words: Unemployed. Single.” Funny.  http://www.duhism.com/ #
• Did @duhism find me by the word “meditation” three tweets ago? I’ve been puzzling over that. Some of his jokes are recycled; most are funny. #
• Facebook prompts me: “SHOW 52 NEW POSTS”. These are moments that I want to cancel all my social networking accounts and hide under a blanket #
• RT @PRIMexico challenges calls to ‘Buy American’ http://cli.gs/gydLL.  Replace “baring” with “barring” in the article. #
• RT @DiscoveryChPR @thinkgeek “MythBusters’ Kari is the proud mom of a baby girl!”  (Reaction: lucky guy….) #
• RT @twitanthropy Now you can use Twitpay @twitpay to make small donations for water and sanitation projects. #
• RT re Dan Choi: Anyone vetted this? Is he a real person and is this accurate? http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/SupportDan #

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• I’m at Glendale - http://bkite.com/086Ge #
• I’m at N San Gabriel Blvd - http://bkite.com/0878i #
• Having a bad reaction to some medication.  I need the medication, though, so I’ll have to experiment with dosage, time, food/no food, etc. #
• I’m at 6464 Glade Ave - http://bkite.com/089kZ #
• Crazy huge anxiety attack.  See you tomorrow.  If my heart doesn’t give out first. #
• I’m at N San Gabriel Blvd - http://bkite.com/08dL6 #
• Slept well.  No problems after all.  Good. #
• I’m at Garden Grove - http://bkite.com/08eLc #
• I’m at Starbucks Coffee Co - http://bkite.com/08eWG #
• I’m at Encinita Ave - http://bkite.com/08fcE #
• I’m at N San Gabriel Blvd - http://bkite.com/08jTm #
• is wishing for a three order-of-magnitude increase in flops, drive space, RAM size, and bandwidth on my PC #
• is wishing he knew a filter in GIMP that would simulate that profile picture of me having been taken with a flashbulb #
• I’m at Starbucks Coffee - http://bkite.com/08n2C #
• French press yemeni coffee. Comfortable chair. Two hours. Three-bucks-fifty. - http://bkite.com/08n3f #
• I’m at N San Gabriel Blvd - http://bkite.com/08ndD #
• I’m at US Post Office - http://bkite.com/08njr #
• I’m at N San Gabriel Blvd - http://bkite.com/08np3 #
• I’m at N San Gabriel Blvd - http://bkite.com/08pwM #
• I’m at N San Gabriel Blvd - http://bkite.com/08pz3 #
• Keep falling asleep and dropping phone.  Nap, maybe #
• Weird weird weird sleep. #
• I’m at Encinita Ave - http://bkite.com/08rTx #
• Seen in store window: In wine there is truth.  In beer, strength.  In water, bacteria. #
• I’m at Mail Box and Postal - http://bkite.com/08xjc #
• Anyone catch himself trying to type more quickly to outrun the 140 character limit? #
• Yes, you caught me egosurfing, but what does “#mcgee” have to do with “Eating Panda”?  http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23mcgee #
• I’m at N San Gabriel Blvd - http://bkite.com/08yet #
• If @mrmannycan is a parody, it’s overstretched and over-the-top.  If it’s legit: WTF?! #
• 19h30: “I’m going to try to be in bed by 21h00.”  21h30: “OK, make that 23h00.”  01h30: “Shit.” #
• RT @evanorenstein friend quits job, 2 days later everyone is fired. friend now has to sit out his 2 weeks by himself sans severance #
• Show support for democracy in Iran add green overlay to your Twitter avatar with 1-click - http://helpiranelection.com/ #
• If it were not for subtitles on “Dexter” I might never learn useful words like “enfoiré” #Dexter #
• Oh, and, oops: the subtitler heard wrong and translated “sacred pact” as “une pacte secret” instead of “sacré”.  HUGE difference. #Dexter #
• I reluctantly joined Facebook. Two-thirds of the posts are quiz results. I don’t effing care what inkjet printer or venereal disease you are #
• I think if someone were to ask me whether I could be BFF with incapacitating, insomnia-inducing back pain, I would have to say “no”. #
• RT @mommytoaaj @auctionwally beautiful dragonware sake set [I have no financial interest, but, wow, lovely] #
• When my cat is having nightmares, I can’t sleep. #
• Quick test: Twitter and over-āçčềńt́éd̀ čh̃àr̀åčťèřś?  http://bit.ly/vRSPJ #
• Renders correctly in Firefox for Linux.  If I just crashed your iPhone, sorry.  Enjoy, little script kiddies who might find this. #h4×0rs #
• Off to sleep, perchance to NOT HAVE DREAMS ABOUT PEOPLE DYING.  Sheesh. #
• Tavis Smiley’s show makes me as angry as does Rush’s. Previously: http://bit.ly/Y64y7
  #tavissmiley #
• Beware household chemicals? RT @VisualApple “Billy Mays has died” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mays #billymays #
• Would there be any non-paradoxical meaning in labeling myself a “militant pacifist”? #
• How hard would it be for Twitter to embed threading info in @ replies? Trivial, right? 6 alphanums or sth would do it. @ me: “I agree!” WTF? #
• I entirely fail to understand why anyone would play music — ESPECIALLY classical music — quietly. #
• Do I have to admit I just finished another Spider Robinson book?  Am I compelled to admit I enjoyed it?

  Gonna go delouse now. #

• Anyone else suffer severe cognitive dissonance when the phrases “Anna Paquin” and “Michelle Trachtenberg” are preceded by “The sexy star”? #

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I have an “Old Glory Problem” (just coined that phrase.)  I have n icons (stars in the case of the flag, Favicons in the case of this site) and I need to arrange them in a visually-appealing way.

It regards the “Presence” feature I developed (look to your right on The Real Site.)  I keep thinking of sites I can add.  My first crop was fifteen, and I used a 5×3 grid.  When it got to sixteen, a pleasant 4×4 grid.  Then it was seventeen.

The cutest I could come up with is:

This would be roughly bounded by an astroid whatever a convex astroid would be — actually, among simple shapes, a parallelogram might be the optimal bounding box.

It seems the ideal arrangement for the eye to find it pretty is — what? — symmetry?  Preferably along two axes?  I suspect that this rule of thumb could be programmed and a set of “pretty” solutions would be spat out (1/2/3/5/3/2/1 in this case.)

Anyone want to take a stab at either telling me what the real name of this problem is, or writing a bit of code?  Maybe at some time other than 02h30 I can do it myself.

I did some housekeeping on the Actual Site.  I cleaned up the sidebar: Presence is updated, for instance, and content is more logically organized.  A metric assload of advertising is gone: Adwords (from site, feed, and search); the Amazon sidebar; and the kind-of-slimy “Endorsed Sites”, with all but one of which I had an affiliate relationship.

ForexYard is gone as a site sponsor, as I have no idea how to vet them appropriately, cannot honestly endorse them, and want to be rid of any animated graphics on the site (unlike the other site sponsors, I was paid by them [theoretically] according to the number of accounts I referred rather than for simple placement, so I don’t have to refund anyone.)

And if you haven’t been by in a while, the little ego photo has changed.

Brutal — and brutally honest — feedback is courted.  Is the remaining “Drag this Amazon link” thing (which is almost never used) still too much?  Is there a tip jar system that is vaguely classy and has the likelihood of generating nonzero income?  If I could generate enough money to break even on the hosting, I’d be thrilled.

A programmer in China has reached out to me for ideas about modeling a Wordpress plugin after this, which I did manually:

mostly because I am too lazy to do it myself.

I’ll keep you posted.

Is something like this good enough for a page banner?  I’m considering it instead of a rotating picture.

I am no longer having Twitter Tools syndicate my tweets through my blog.  If you really care about my moment-to-moment movements or my 140-character insights (and I cannot think why you possibly could), follow.

• I’m at Pho Hanh Vietnamese Restaurant - http://bkite.com/082Ip #
• I’m at AMC Santa Anita 16 - http://bkite.com/083iQ #
• I’m at Dave & Buster’s: Westfield Shoppingtown-Santa Anita - http://bkite.com/083tR #
• I’m at AMC Santa Anita 16 - http://bkite.com/083xe #
• First terminator then star trek.  Terminator: weak.  Sorry. - http://bkite.com/083xs #

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• I’m at Encinita Ave - http://bkite.com/080k1 #
• I’m at Lucky Baldwins Delirium & Cafe - http://bkite.com/080np #
• I’m at N San Gabriel Blvd - http://bkite.com/081aQ #

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• Barcelona ahead 1-nil #

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Overnight — literally, as far as I can tell — the PageRank of this site plummeted from ‘4′ to ‘2′.  The latter is likely to be more accurate, but I had gotten used to the approbation of Google.

If Mika were still around, I would suspect her of going online while I slept, hacking into websites and deleting links to mcgees.org (she did, after all, send my secret guacamole ingredients to Alton Brown.)  But, alas, she is not, and I am left puzzled.

After my discovery that notebook PCs cannot swim, followed by difficulties with the power regulation in the outlet I was using at home, followed by buying a new PC, followed by that PC being stolen from my truck, followed by getting a new PC donated from a good friend, followed with tons of compatibility problems with Ubuntu, followed by the running of the bulls in Pamploma, followed by assorted escapades involving peanut brittle, Daniel Boone, and a titmouse named “Slinky”, I am back online, albeit with a really lousy video card, and shuffling through all my accumulated emails.

Your patience is appreciated or, failing that, please resend urgent messages if I didn’t respond the first time.

Just a bit of tidying and name-dropping:

mcgees.org has started accepting entire-site sponsors.  There are three so far, and this is just a shout-out — I’m not trying to get new advertisers here, and you’re welcome to move right along.

Superior Titanium has some really cool products for sale.  I don’t like the business card cases (at all) but the money clips and guitar picks are awesome — the latter give an immensely satisfying “thunk” sound on my Les Paul.

ForexYard is a Cyprus-based foreign currency exchange site.  They are completely unvetted by me.  They show up all over the Internet with good reviews, but considering how actively they courted me, this may mostly be astroturfing.  They are offering me obscene amounts of money for referring people who open accounts, however — and I’ve actually violated my longstanding barrier between editorial and advertising content to change the link in a post about forex to post to them, rather than to a competitor.  Please advise if they are scoundrels.

Shoplet is the final new site sponsor, and they seem an entirely above-board office supplier: I’ve placed an order, half of which has arrived safely, and half of which will ship soon.  I’ll follow this up with more info.

And finally, Mozy, an online backup solution (which apparently gives you free online backups for $4.95 per month [?]) is advertising on a blog post about my not backing up data.

OK, so, fine, I joined Facebook, after I said I wouldn’t.  It took 25 minutes, the bulk of it taken up by importing contacts.

It appears to be a critical mass thing: it becomes more and more useful as the number of people using it goes up.  Which is fine, but I still feel rather ridiculous at the site — a feeling that should be quickly dispelled should I reconnect with long-lost friends.

Most of the site is designed, in my opinion, fairly well.  But I am completely baffled by something.  When I search in their search field, I get a list of all people matching my search.  How do I see their profiles?  I am really good at this stuff, and I am completely stymied.  I can send friend requests, compose messages, or see their friends.  I can find their profiles through Google.  But surely there is a way to do it natively.  If I haven’t seen the person in 20 years, I might not recognize him or her from a photo.

OK, so, the quotes in the upper-right (of the real site).  I have some fun with them.  Some are trolls, some are funny; some are very obscure, a few are impenetrably in-jokey; some other inclusion criteria to make a total of three clauses.  So, a few things:

1.  I have previously beseeched thee, dear readers, for advice on how to make it clear that one can hover a mouse cursor over the quote and find the source, as I loathe my current solution — graphically, technologically, and philosophically.  I haven’t offered the standard mcgees.org prize of a banana through the U.S. mail yet, though, so, consider it offered.

2.  I have thought about italicizing a line, putting it in small type, and adding it just to the posts in the RSS feed, so that the feed-enabled (and -inclined) will be blessed with the great wisdom and wit that is the quote.

3.  I have ceremonially deleted “One nation, under surveillance” from the quote rotator in honor of Obama’s election.  Like de-targeting ICBMs from Russian cities, this is symbolic, and would take mere seconds to undo, so consider that a warning, administration!

4.  That was a joke.

5.  Also, I’ve seen “One nation, under surveillance” numerous places, including bumper stickers, so, even though I came up with it independently, it’s just not cool any more.

6.  I thought about replacing it with a quote from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles — namely, “I’m not supposed to kill you, but you can’t stay here” — but thought that was probably a bad idea for a number of reasons.

7.  There is only one page on the site that is hand-coded to hide the quote — namely, the big hamster one — because of the sheer number of nine to 11-year-old girls who find the page.  No one has approached me yet about advertising on the page, which is surprising, as it gets more traffic than [joke deleted].

OK, so I goofed up significantly in my upgrade of WordPress — and my backup was corrupted, to boot.  So, sigh.  I lost some posts.  My own foolishness, and your benefit.

If you can read this, everything is likely working.  If you don’t, please let me know.  Yes, I’ve used that joke before.

I’m timestamping the point at which three new blog posts are written.  Thing is, they’re in my head.  This would generally not be a problem, as almost everything I write here is fully formed and formatted intracranially before I let my fingers type it out.  However, these three posts succumb to complications.

The first will require a fair amount of Google citation that I don’t want to bother with right now. 

The second is technical and polemic as currently composed (believe it or not, I actually do try to moderate both in posts I write), and requires some research for exact technical numbers and verbatim legal quotes — as well as bracing myself for the insane people who are sure to jump on the thread.

And the third, from which the first was chopped for reasons of pacing, is one of those difficult, sprawling, soul-searching ones (self-identity, ruminations on distant deaths, regret, genius, and addiction) that I inevitably end up re-writing on the page multiple times (in search of increased honesty, richer tone, and a more linearized presentation) before hitting publish.

So, apologies for my fatigue, and I hope it’s worth the wait.  If not, be forewarned, and I’ll be sure to label them ordinally — First, Second, Third — so that you can avoid — well, whatever you feel like avoiding.

Amazon pays out affiliates every time their account tops $10.  This is about the normal range for such programs.

Google Adsense, on the other hand, doesn’t pay out until the user has accumulated $100.  This means that there are potentially millions of dollars in the accounts of content generators with $99.99 or below in their accounts that Google will not, and may never, pay.  This is hardly fair.  $100 in ad revenue for a small site is a lot.  Anyone think there’s a class action coming?

Also, for readers of the feed, you may note that I’ve put advertising in the feed now.  Hope this doesn’t drive you away.  If it doesn’t, would you please make it a practice (not just for me, but for all blogs) to click on the ad in the post after you’re done reading, as a “Thank you”?  You needn’t do any more than this.  It would help fund the hosting of this site, and would do the same for other bloggers.

The static pages on this site don’t have comments fields.  So it has happened that commentators have gone to whatever the first post on the home page is and posted there.  This is the magnet for such posts.  You have almost completely free rein.  Talk about anything: talk about politics, about how much you hate my politics; about the site, or how much you hate the site; about me, or how much you hate me; about yourself, or how much you hate yourself; whatever.  It’s here.  I’ll make it as obvious as I can.

For regular readers:

1. Do you read using a feed reader or read at the site?
2a. If you use a feed reader, which?
2b. If you read at the site, do you receive email notifications of new posts or check manually?
2bI. If you receive email notifications, would you like the ability to receive email notifications of new comments on the site?
2bIi. Would you want a way to specifically avoid dead hamster comments?

Thanks!

There are apparently an infinite number of law firms that pay for placement, through Google, on pages that contain a particularly unpleasant d-word, even once.  I’ve gone through and rot13ed every mention, so if you see “qvibepr” everywhere, that’s why.

If none of this made sense to you, just imagine that it’s really deep and beyond comprehension.  Or imagine that it’s utterly trivial and not worth your time.  Whichever makes me not have to go through explaining it.

OK, I’ll stop with the posts soon.

On the Actual Site^tm, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to convey to casual readers that the text in the upper-right is a rotating quote.  People seem oddly unable to figure this out.  The yellow-on-black question mark with the alert() popup has been my best effort so far.

But I don’t like it.

Presumably, every one of you has a better aesthetic sense than I.  So, please, help me fix it to be something awesome.  In the meantime, I’m going to be adding Adsense tracking to static pages and rewriting my hand-tooled dynamic pages (the source of those very quotations).  Maybe.  Maybe I’ll just keep checking my tracking numbers.

I’d like to take a moment to endorse a great company (and, full disclosure, important site advertiser), Superior Titanium.  They sell a range of goods made from titanium, many of which make great holiday gifts, especially their fantastic money clips, which I swear by (Literally.  I’ve inscribed Bible verses on mine and everything.)

I really like the new picture in the upper-right.  I liked that the former image contained Niall, but that picture was way outdated.  I think I may install an image rotator to go with the quote rotator.

Hey all,

I might be a bit hard to get in touch with these days, as both internet and cell phone service are down at home.  Selfishly, it’s really nice, but I know a lot of you care about me and want to stay connected.

I got an account at this super-rad place down the street called Planet Cyber (link later) and I’ll be waddling over a few times a day, on average.  It’s windows, and I might start bringing my own keyboard (yuuuuuck), but it’s great.  They have a “Quiet Room”.  And it’s really really cheap.

How to get in touch with me?  Email.  Or letter.  Seriously.  Address is on my “About me” page.

I’ll probably respond within 48 hours or so.  But I’m safe, and happy, and in fine fettle, and I’ll be with you all again soon.

- Josh

I’m back to whoring out mcgees.org.  If you go to the Real Actual Site^TM (I know tons of you read with a feed reader) you will see them on the right.

Their contextual placement has gotten much, much better since I last used AdSense, and I’ve chilled a bit about the New-Agers and religionists advertising on my atheism posts.

So, a game (the kind of mcgees.org game that no one ever plays): What’s the most wrong match, in an amusing fashion?  For instance, on my Tunguska post there are two ads selling bread boxes.  Winner gets a year’s ad time if five or more people play.

What is profoundly and deeply not a game is to see who can click on the most ad links.  Really.  That would be cheating, and would serve no other purpose than to give me money to feed myself and repay loans.  Don’t go clicking on advertisements willy-nilly.  Got it?

mcgees.org has recently been accepted into the Atheist Blogroll, an international list of blogs on atheist topics written by atheists (no, this is not special, and took almost no effort on my part to accomplish.)  A random selection of twenty-five from the list are visible in my sidebar at right (if you’re viewing on the actual site and not on a feed reader.)

If you are interested to join, visit Deep Thoughts here.

Visit the following links to view posts on mcgees.org on the topics of atheism and religion.