Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Buy an E-Tag? - NEVER

These public private partnership fools are pumping the ads up trying to make us by E-Tags, so they can charge us automatically to drive on our roads. I will never get one of these things for two reasons.

1 - Privacy: I don't want a dispicable organisation such as the RTA knowing anything about my habits, where I go, or anything else. Who knows what they will do with that information. The same goes for the private consortiums who have their hands in our pockets.

2 - It's the thin end of the wedge. Once they get us used to paying to travel on some roads, they will gradually start making us pay for all roads. Once this E-Tag thing is universal, they will be able to put machines on every road to charge people for using them. They are already talking about doing this in the city.

NO THANKS. You can shove your E-Tag, E-Pass or what ever you want to call it. As far as I'm concerned, you may as well have a microchip implant under your skin. I will never use any roads I have to pay extra for, especially when they are poorly planned, full of traffic and don't offer value for money anyway. If they make it too hard for me to go into the city without paying tolls, fine. I simply will not go into the city to spend my money anymore.

Million Dollar Homepage - Selling pixels

I came across this site while browsing the Alexa movers and shakers the other week: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com
This is a website by a British student trying to earn some extra cash, who has come up with a novel idea. He has set a one million pixel space in the page, and divided them into squares of 100. He then selling these blocks of 100 pixels for US$100 each. I looked at the site ages ago, and there were a few sales, but the site seems to have gone ballistic, with a high page rank and over $700000 worth of pixels sold. The pixels can be linked to the buyer's site, so it is actually quite a worthwile advertising prospect, especially considering the site is guaranteed to stay up for many years.

Of course, there are now a plethora of similar sites playing on the idea that have sprung up, but this is one internet marketing idea which will probably not work too well on a massive scale.

However, if anyone wants to buy pixels on this site, I will sell them for 50c each just send me an email. You can even buy my pixels separately if you wish.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Critical Mass Bicycle Idiots Hold Up Sydney

As if Sydney doesn't have enough traffic problems, and arrogant cyclists holding up traffic.

A group who call themselves "Critical Mass" take to the streets of Sydney every month on their bikes during rush hour, travelling across the harbour bridge, causing traffic chaos. It is amazing that they are allowed to do this. It's also amazing that people could be so inconsiderate and arrogant.

People wonder why cyclists often bear the brunt of road rage. This bunch of fools are responsible for that. The cops should take them away in paddy wagons, and confiscate their bikes for three months.

What is the difference between me stopping in the middle of the harbour bridge and ripping a massive burnout for 5 minutes (Which I would get charged with negligent driving, have my car confiscated, and quite rightly too.) and what these misguided idiots are doing.

Friday, November 18, 2005

2007 VE Holden Commodore - Spy Pics

There is already talk about what the new Commodore will look like. Here are some actual spy pics, although well covered, you can still see the basic shape. It looks like they have used some of the techniques present on the recent Torana prototype.

It looks quite nice, I like how they have retained the four doors, but the boot does not protrude as much. I always thought Commodore boots didn't have to be so big.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Harold Scruby - A threat to the Australian way of life.

In Australia we traditionally like our cars and we cover great distances in this great country. Mr Scruby is an anti car, anti fun extremist. He wants people to ride busses, walk, and he wants to ban 4 wheel drives. He takes photos of private citizen's cars and posts them up on the web, for such trivial things as window tinting and parking infringements.

What would be wrong with a car manufacturer presenting their product in an exciting way, demonstrating the fun that can be had in the vehicle? Here is the article - with rebuttals.

ROAD safety campaigners have slammed high-octane car TV ads on our screens,
saying they promote ?irresponsible? driving.

A day after The Daily Telegraph launched its bid to cut road deaths among young drivers, watchdogs (Watch dogs? Mr Scruby and his fax machine) have blasted motor manufacturers for encouraging fast driving in their ads.
Campaigner group the Pedestrian Council said the companies were ignoring guidelines which stated what kind of images could be shown on TV.

Among the ads Pedestrian Council chairman Harold Scruby finds most offensive is one for the Holden Commodore where a man drives down the road with his son strapped in on the back seat, smiling as he revs the engine. (What's wrong with revving the engine? engines are designed to rev. Some cars even have what is called a tacho, so you can see what speed the engine is revving at. Engines generate power by revving. One of the best things about a V8 Commodore is the way the engine sounds, so why not illustrate that feature?)

Mr Scruby said: "They're using subliminal affects to get around the code, which clearly prohibits cars speeding. (Why wouldn't anyone do what ever they can to get past your stupid fanatical power trip, Mr Scruby. Geez, I drive faster only because of people like you. And I'm also going to get my windows heavily tinted and am encouraging friends to do so, just because of you and your website.)

"Yet this whole advert, especially the audio of the engine revving, is designed to show the car speeding. (I can drive a car at 50kph in first gear with my engine redlining - you stupid fool)

"The worst part is the child smiling in the back of the car while his dad revs the engine. What a shocking image." (Ok, so it' s shocking for kids to enjoy cars. I would say a young kid who enjoys the sound of a nicely tuned V8 engine is well on their way to becoming a fine upstanding Aussie. Imagine being one of Scruby's kids.)

Others Mr Scruby believes are irresponsible include those for the BMW Mini, the Toyota Camry Sportivo and the Mitsubishi Magna.
He also dislikes a Mercedes ad which shows two Buddhist monks driving in a pair of Mercs who can't resist showing off their unexpected skills behind the wheel.
Mr Scruby said: "Firstly, they overtake a motorbike without indicating then they start doing very sharp turns. (Oooooooh "Very sharp turns" Look out. Maybe to illustrate the handling capabilities of a car. Some people who aren't small minded and enjoy a bit of fun, unlike you Mr Scruby, enjoy a vehicle which handles well.)

?Mercedes are supposed to be one of the safest cars on the road so why don't they focus on things like air bags and other safety features? Here, Mercedes ignore safety and promote cavalier driving.? (Some people don't buy cars for safety, and some people aren't interested in safety features. I for one would definately buy a car for power output and handling over safety features. If I had a family, maybe a different story but I want a car that goes like hell, stops well, and handles like it's on rails. The car manufacturer who can best illustrate those features will probably get my business, if not my first enquiry.)

I, and other Australians don't need you to tell us what to drive or how to drive Mr Scruby. Stick to the walk to work day, and pedestrians issues about which you may actually have some limited knowledge.

Most busy people in Australia use cars to get around. You obviously have no real life as such, and can't be all that busy, so please leave the working people of Australia alone to enjoy their cars and keep your nose out of other people's lives. The fact that you want to replace transit lanes with bus lanes illustrates how out of touch you are. Haven't you ever seen the traffic snarls generated by busses? They are useless, but hey, they government like them because they're cheap.

By the way, I'm getting a V8 as soon as I can, Mr Scruby. Just for you. My windows are going to be BLACK, and I'm going to be revving the engine. All the time.

I'm all for people like yourself expressing your opinions, as we are entitled to do in this wonderful democracy. But the line must be drawn when you seek to impose your simplistic and fanatical beliefs on us, affecting our way of life.

It is when people of extremist views such as Harold Scruby are given a louder voice by a sensationalist media (A Current Affair, 60 Minutes and other such "ratings grabbers") than they deserve, that our homeland security is truely threatened.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Datsun 1600

Datsun 1600. These cars are cool, I started to build one a couple of years back, but it was too far gone and although they are cool, I didn't really like the car enough to spend the next 5 years building it up. Also known as the P510, they were available in the USA in both 2 door and 4 door versions. They came with a 1.6 litre over head cam engine, which is still bullet proof, although many people install modern Japanese engines such as the SR20DET or the FJ20. The FJ20 is a stronger engine, but is getting harder to find now as they we not in any vehicle that was sold here in Australia.

They were revolutionary for their time, with independant rear suspension, and a great weight distribution, giving them a reputation for handling like no other car in their class. They are also popular as a rally car.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Google Update Jagger

Those of us who are in the business to trying to get people to websites will know that Google has, over the past month done a major update to it's system of ranking websites. This is probably one of the biggest updates I have experienced since I have been in the business.

Google updates are given names on the Webmasterworld forums, just as hurricanes and typhoons are. The current one is known as "Update Jagger". The analogy of a Google update and a hurricaine rings true for many webmasters, as the results can be quite devastating if a site is not treated favourably. Much fingernail biting takes place among webmasters during one of these updates.

Personally, I find it interesting to know that a change is taking place, and it is helpful to know specific technical anomolies that Google doesn't like, but these updates don't change my actions one bit. I make what I consider quality sites, and am always finding ways to make them faster, more concise, well categorized and with well written code. Above all, I try to make sites that a person would want to go to, and find interesting. If I'm doing a shop site, I have extensive, original descriptions for products, as it is better for the person who uses the site. It just so happens that Google likes these things too, so I guess that means the guys at Google are on the right track, and also probably explains why this search engine is so popular. They rank pages that are useful to people.

The new update is reaching it's final stages now apparently, and the results look great. There were an increasing number of what we call "scraper sites" which are machine generated sites with millions of pages of rubbish and stolen content, laced with adsense ads. Most of these cursed things have thankfully now been removed from the index.

By the way, I still use Google myself. It's still the best. I know a lot of people have been saying otherwise, but many of them are probably angry webmasters who have had their sites lose rank. Or perhaps scraper site owners who no longer have $2000 a week pumping through their adsense accounts and have to find real jobs, like making QUALITY websites.

Seriously though, during the last month, I have found myself going to other engines for certain obscure searches, but that is to be expected during any update of a large system. It must be a real challenge to do a month-long update on a system the size of Google's and keep it live at the same time, let alone maintain quality of results. It amazes me how many webmasters were complaining in the early stages, saying how bad the results were for certain keywords etc. I don't even consider the serps as final even now. I don't know how Google works internally, and I'm not a software architect but surely there must be a massive amount of processing that occurs after any algorithmic update given the amount of data. I don't see how things couldn't be all over the place half way through that. Google have been moving towards a constant update cycle for some time, and eventually these chaotic updates and will probably be a thing of the past.

SSL Payment Gateways

I am in the process of setting up a shopping cart system for a new site. It is using an SSL certificate to protect the checkout section, and for credit card transactions, it feeds the payment details to a 3rd party payment gateway (www.directone.com.au). The gateway processes the payment and sends a result code back to my web site. This result code signifies the result of the transaction. The web site then decides what to do with the user, depending on this code (Thankyou page, or error page).

Getting the web server to communicate with the gateway can be a challenge. Directone requires the IP address of the machine that sends the payment details to it. It does not process payments from IP addresses that are not given to it beforehand.

When I set up the SSL, I has the site migrated to a static IP address, and when I set up the access in the control panel for the gateway, this was the IP address that seemed the most obvious to use.

As I later realized, our hosting company has things set up in such a way that although our web site has it's own IP address that handles all brower requests, outgoing requests made through PHP scripts go out on another IP. In our case the IP address of the physical server that our site sits on (we use shared hosting). Of course this probably wouldn't occur with a single site web server.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

SkilledHost.com - Brilliant so far

I just feel I should put in a plug here for our new hosts. We had to transfer to them after our Florida based one went down in the hurricane. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. These guys are brilliant. They aren't just skilled, they're fast, cheap and their support is great.

I run ten domains with them and am currently in the process of setting up SSL and payment gateways. If you have a bad host, you generally are made aware of the fact when you have to set up these kind of things. These guys concisely answer all my questions and get it all happening straight away.

Their homepage is http://www.skilledhost.com

Biodiesel - Home made diesel

I heard about this a while ago and recently had a look at it. It turns out that is is relatively easy to make a form of diesel from vegitable oil that will run conventional diesel engines. Apparently the biodiesel is better for the engine than the mineral diesel.

They recon it works out at 30c per litre when made at home, and of course, diesel generally goes twice as far as petrol does.

When I get some spare time and some money, I am going to invest in a diesel Holden Gemini, and try and make some of this stuff, gradually working up from there. I will post the results up here, or possible make another site about it. It seems a goer and quite a few people seem to be doing it. Years ago I heard of a farmer who used home made diesel to run his whole fleet of vehicles and machinery.

There is actually a Biodiesel Assosciation of Australia site which contains lots of info about it and how to make it.

Dynamic URLs still aren't as good as static ones

After a lot of delibertaion and messing around, I have come to the conclusion that what are commonly referred to as dynamic urls are not regarded as highly as static ones.

Firstly, let's be clear on what we are calling a dynamic url (as opposed to a dynamic page).

Strictly speaking, a dynamic web page is any web page that is generated as it is requested by the web server. The data for the page can be drawn from a database, other files on the server or the server it's self. Many servers are set up to use dynamic pages with .php or .asp file extensions and querystrings, but then have the server configured to convert these urls to simple ones ending in .htm. In this case the urls themselves are static, but the pages are dynamic.

What I refer to as a dynamic url is basically any url which uses query strings. That means the address has & and ? symbols followed by values for example:
http://www.example.com/showproduct.asp?id=3423 or
http://www.example.com/showproduct.asp?id=343&ref=4333
and soforth.

When it comes to search engine indexing, it appears they are not so concerned with the file extension, .asp, .php or .htm as they are with the presence of these querystrings. With the querystrings they are not crawled as quickly and their links are not followed as extensively as simple static files with .htm extensions. When they are finally crawled and indexed, they will take longer to climb the serps, and will be outranked by pages that are otherwise totally equal. This is especially worth considering if you are working in a competitive sector of the web.

There are many common sense reasons why this would be the case. Many "out of the box" e-commerce and content management packages have very poor error control. One ASP package I use was returning code 200 ok with all page not found errors, and was storing querystrings in session variables rather than in the url, which meant that bots were being presented with hundreds of identical error pages, all returning a 200 ok when trying to follow these links. Lickily the package was open source, so I changed it.

On the other hand, it's not like these pages don't get indexed. Search engines are also getting better and better with them. If you are in a really competitiive area, I would say to go with generated static .htm pages, or use a mod rewrite. Mod rewrite is easy if you are using Apache/Linux hosting but not if you are using Windows and IIS. These things can be a pain to set up though.

This issue will probably be one of many that fade away over the coming few years. The internet is now at the point where dynamic sites are simpy a requirement for most webmasters, and search engines will find more reliable ways of reading and indexing them.