HAPPY NEW YEAR for 2006

It's a new year. Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous new year in 2006. The Sydney fireworks at 12:00 last night were amazing. I believe it was the largest display yet. I'm not sure about that heart thing on the harbour bridge, but the fireworks were just amazing. Unfortunately, I only saw them on TV. I'm going to get down there next year for sure.

New years resolutions:~
I'm not usually big on new years resolutions, but I do have a few this year. I'm going to be more healthy, drink more water, sleep more, smoke less and get more exercise. I'm going to stop spending all my spare time in front of the screen, and I'm going to have more fun. I'm also going to take up playing guitar again. I never really stopped, but I'm going to get serious again. Also no more than 3 cups of coffee a day. Some of these things I started doing a week or two ago, but I still call them new years resolutions.
The first day of 2006 here in Sydney is a real scorcher. It's 1:00 and 42 degrees centigrade, so I'm enjoying the air conditioning.

2005 Coming To A Close

Well, it's almost the end of another year. It's been a year of turmoil around the world, but whether more so than any other year, I can't really say. For me it has also been a hectic year, and I'm sure about that. This has been my first **Serious** year of web development, and the results are reasonably pleasing. I haven't really had much of a festive season this year, as I've been trying to get some major changes finished on my main site before the end of the year. With 2 days to go, I look to be on track.
Next year I plan to focus much more on marketing and less on the infrastructure and coding of the site. It has been a years work just to get a dynamic site that is indexable and does all we need it to. There are some great shopping cart packages available out of the box, but none do the job completely in my opinion. The only way is to start with something like VP-ASP or OS-Commerce which is open source (meaning you can modify the code yourself) and chop and change it into something that fits the mould.
Of course, this is more easily said than done. A shopping cart application is complex by nature, and when you have to rip the whole thing apart, rewriting whole sections of code, it can be a challenge to end up with a good solution. The other part of the challenge is to keep the application fast, and make the changes fit into the existing application as smoothly as possible.
The other issue, is that once you have your custom, one of a kind, modified application, the next version will come out, and you can't upgrade to it because of all the changes you've made.
I face this now with VP-ASP, as I am running version 5.5, and 6.0 has come out now. I am not going to upgrade, as it is way too heavily customised now. It's interesting that some of the features I've added, are offered in the new release. I've learned ASP now, so I'll just keep building the application myself.
I'm in the process of setting up another site, using ZEN-Cart, which uses PHP, and I'm setting up some smaller, more specialized stores with it. The beauty of this, is that it runs well on Apache which is a much cheaper web hosting solution. (VP-ASP does have a version for Apache and MySQL also, but it has to be purchased separately). ZEN-Cart is totally free, and I've found it to be a good package. The only drawback is that it performs a lot of database lookups, so on a limited server with 10000+ products it may be a bit sluggish. Then again, with such a site, one would be a bit silly running it on a limited server.
On top of that, in the new year I plan to improve my health and fitness, spend less time in front of this screen (or any other screen for that matter), and generally start enjoying off-computer activities like I used to. Setting something up from nothing is always a hard slog, but hopefully things are rolling now.
One of the hardest things I find, is retaining creativity when there is so much to get done. Web design is a creative thing, and as a web designer, one is always looking for new and better ways to get information out to the user, in a way that will make them favour your site. That is hard to do when you have orders to fill, 1000+ products to put on, and all the other associated tasks.

IIS 301 redirects using the 404 error page

We have always used IIS for the infrastructure of our main site. There is no way I'm going to be changing it either, as it's a huge site.
IIS can be a nightmare when it comes to redirects and URL rewrites, as there is no easy way to do it. Apache has the .htaccess file, which is incredibly powerful.
There is a way with IIS. When a non-existant page is requested from an IIS server, it can be configured to silently redirect to a custom error page, and this error page can be an ASP file. When I say "silently" I mean no codes are returned (no 200, 404, nothing). If you do this, make sure you set the 404 error code in the asp error page. This is done with the following line:
Response.Status="404 Not Found"
Make sure you do this. I didn't, and when Google crawled, it thought my 404 pages were actually loading ok (thousands of them, and all with the same content - Not good)

Now, onto the redirect/rewrite thing. The URL that returned the 404 error is actually passed to your custom 404 page in a querystring (not displayed in the browser). You can use the Request.ServerVariables(QUERY_STRING) to return this url.

From there, it's as easy as using a simple if statement to determine if the page that you want to redirect from has been called. If it has, you can set a 301 or 302 status and redirect accordingly. This is the beauty of the server not setting the 404 code for you. You can basically do what you want from this file. Server.Transfer can also be used for URL rewriting, as this can send the user to another page without changing the url in the browser, and can return a 200 code for the page they originally requested.

It's definately worth testing this before implementation, as you can get some nasty endless loops when things get complicated.

It saved me by allowing me to redirect a certain .htm page with a 301 perminant code. Here is the code that sits in my custom 404 file:

dim eurl
eurl=Request.ServerVariables("QUERY_STRING")
if eurl="404;http://www.mysite.au:80/default.htm" or eurl="404;http://mysite.com.au:80/default.htm" then
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location", ("http://www.mysite.com.au/")
Response.end
end if

Suffered a Hard Disc Crash

Every computer guy's worst nightmare happened to me the other day. I switched my computer on, only to find that my second hard drive would not spool up. I use the second drive to store data, and the first one for the operating system.
I lost a bit of data, but there was nothing on there that I need for work, just sentimental stuff from the last five years of working on computers. I had some great video clips of cars and things, photos of when I lived in Melbourne for 2 years, and some cool and funny stuff that I saved from emails over the years. It's a shame, but it's not devastating. To be honest, I have only myself to blame.
I have read that the life expectancy of a hard drive is 3 years. The 40gig IDE unit I was using was slightly older than that. It was a stand alone drive, and was not backed up.
I have now done what I should have done in the first place. My mainboard has a built in SATA dual channel RAID card, so I went out and brought 2 160gig SATA hard drives, which I will make into a RAID volume and partition to 60gig/100gig. The 60gig drive will be for the OS, and the rest for Data. The existing system drive will be reformated and installed with Linux.
I will be interested to see the improvement in performance between a single 6800RPM IDE drive and the dual 7200RPM SATA drives. It is for the extra performance that I will be using the new drives for the System drive also. It will be great to have Linux back too.

Google update "Jagger" is all over

It appears that the huge update just past has stabilized, and although results are still moving, they appear to be doing so more slowly and in smaller groups.
I'm not a Google Watcher as such, I don't have lists of data centers stuck up on the wall, and I don't spend hours testing search terms to see what comes up where. It is interesting, though to see how the results move around as they churn through their terabytes of data. It gives a little insight into how they might do things.
I believe Google is a better product due to the update, a lot of rubbish sites are gone, and they seem to be cleaning up a lot of the long-since deleted files that were hanging around as supplimental results.
Personally, the update came at a bad time, as I was in the middle of a series of major structure and design changes to my main site. It is still not completely indexed in it's new form, but is getting there. Because of the structure change, and page deletions, it may be some time before the search engines have a full map of the entire site. The said website has over 20,000 pages of good content.

Inept State Government and Inadequate Policing Lead to Violence in Sydney

As a longtime resident of Sydney, I have a little to say on this.
The recent happenings in Cronulla and Sydney are NOT racially related. They were NOT caused by racist people being racist. (Although those with a racist axe to grind certainly took advantage of the occasion.)
They have been caused by a lack of proper policing and an inept state govenment, which over the last ten years has lead to the rise of gang culture and increasing incidents where "regular" people are subjected to abuse and intimidation in public places.
So, all world leaders take note: Have a look at Sydney, Australia. This is what happens when you stuff up law and order.
The citizens take to the streets, in an attempt to do the job of the police. Even more innocent people end up getting hurt, and you end up with what we have here now: One huge mess.
I won't be going to the beach this summer.

Pubcon Coming to Sydney

I was excited the other day to find out that PubCon is coming to Sydney. Pubcon is a convention for webmasters with speakers from both the search and e-commerce industries. As e-commerce in Australia is quite a long way behind where it is in America, most of the cutting-edge events tend to be over there. Pubcon is organised by Brett Tabke, who is the CEO of WebMasterWorld.com, a site where I spend quite a bit of time. There is a heap of knowledge to be gained about the business on that site. A bit of questionable advice and Google bashing too, but hey, that's what forums are all about.

FireFox Web Browser

After hearing about it more and more recently, I decided to try out FireFox for the first time.

Firefox is a web browser, like Internet Explorer and Netscape. The difference is that it is open source, meaning a community ofvolunteer programmers and developers create the software, and it is available for free. It is also legal to modify or improve open source software.

So far this browser puts Internet Explorer to shame, and I am converted. I find it faster to use, and with many more useful features. It also offers more flexibility in page viewing, such as the ability to enable or disable various JavaScript functions individually. There are many plugins (called extensions), which offer added functionality.

The look and feel of Firefox is also completely customisable, icons and toolbars can be manupulated to suit the user, and various skins can be downloaded and installed. This is useful for things like putting a print icon in a prominent place on the browser I use to access my e-commerce application.

As a web developer, I still have to have IE installed (and Netscape) mainly for the purposes of testing sites to make sure they work with everything.

The only issue I have run into so far is a slight difference in how FireFox executes some JavaScript applications, specifically the HTMLArea progam (A web based WYSIWYG HTML editor). I use this program to edit text descriptions for products on one of my shopping carts. Version 1 and 2 of HTMLArea don't work at all with FireFox, and version 3 does work with it, but does some wierd things like adding blank lines and carriage returns at the end of a block of text. So unfortunately I still have to use IE to edit my products, just for the purpose of convenience. When I get the time I will find an editor that works perfectly with both browsers, as I'm sure there is one.

FireFox can be downloaded from www.getfirefox.com for free. I highly recommend it. All the extensions and documentation can be found at www.mozilla.org.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hurricane Rita hit one of our websites

For some of my less busy web sites I was using a small host based in Florida, USA. These small hosts provide a great way to have a website (or multiple websites) up on a budget. The whole lot went down on the 25th of October, no email response from the hosts, and their own website was also down.

We had them go down a bit more often that we would have liked since we started using them, but never for more than half an hour, and after all, you get what you pay for, so I wasn't all that surprised. In these past instances, however, their site was still up. Since these web sites aren't critical, I decided to wait a couple of days. Changing hosts is a pain, and other than that I we quite happy with them.

About three days later, I finally realised what had happened and looked on CNN to find that power was still not back on in the area of Florida where my host was located. I feel a bit bad taking business away from them, but hey, I need my sites back up. I didn't know when or if they were going to come back on line at all. Their phones were down and they weren't responding to emails.

Today I found another host for my sites. They are www.skilledhost.com, and seem to offer a better package for less money than we were paying before. Unfortunately one of the sites was not backed up, but it was a bit dodgy anyway and I will revamp it and turn it into something that hopefully someone might want to see. The other website I had stored in the trash bin of my workstation. By coincidence I had just finished some work on that site which involved modifying all the files. Obviously I don't rely on these sites for income, so I didn't bother backing them up as such. That will change from now on.

Blogger Toolbar is back from the hidden div.

You may have noticed that the Blogger toolbar has re-appeared at the top of this blog. (I'm actually sure you haven't noticed, as the only person who views this blog more than once in a lifetime is me, I'm pretty sure:)
Anyway, when I first created this site, I found a way of removing the toolbar at the top. In the template code, simply define the vertical position of the element to -500px, and it's not there anymore. This is all well and good, and I thought it was a cool way to be a bit original, even if it was a bit naughty. I did actually have a scan of Blogger's terms of service and I couldn't find removing the blogger toolbar anywhere, as I try to do the right thing by people. (Yeah, even big corporations. What goes around comes around, I always say.)
I was just thinking about putting the nav bar back, as a user suggested that it is annoying when browsing blogs through Blogger, as you have no "next" button to click on. This didn't occur to me, so in the interests of a better user experience, I have put it back.
The interesting thing I noticed as I was modifying the code, was the method of hiding the element. It is essentially a hidden div. That is, a <div> tag moved off the page to hide it's contents.
This technique is widely used by unscrupulous webmasters as a way to stuff a page with a lot of hidden keywords for the purpose of manipulating their search engine rankings. The user never sees the hidden text, but the search engines (before they got smarter) used to be unable to differentiate between hidden and visible text when it was done in certian ways.
Some methods do still seem to work, (ovbiously not hidden divs) but they are doomed to failure as the search engines become ever more efficient at detecting the various methods of hiding content.
If you do a search for this site in Google, you will find that it has a URL only listing for the home page, and no listings for any other pages on the site. As you can see from the counter, it does pull a *bit* of traffic, but mainly from Yahoo, MSN, and Blogger it's self. Actually I think the entire stats thingy is public so you can check out the referrers yourself if you want. It just occured to me that the hidden toolbar could have been a possible reason for this, so we will see if the listings improve in the next few months. It's interesting that we still seem to have Pagerank.
This site has not had hours of development put into it like a proper commercial project, and I'm not vigorously seeking links or adding content, so it's easy for these kind of oversights to creep in. Unfortunately, there would be a lot of "innocent" sites with unique and useful content (not necessarily like this one, I mean hobby sites etc.) that would not be getting many visitors becuase of little coding errors. I know the average "do it yourself" webmaster who does a Frontpage site of his stamp collection would know what a hidden div is, let alone how to find one. Even colouring some text the same colour as the background in Dreamweaver accidently will have this effect. I guess this is one of many challenges for the search engines, and one of the reasons that I have a job as a professional web developer.

Saw the Aviator last night - Great movie

My housemate brought a movie home last night, The Aviator starring Leonardo DeCaprio. Although I'm not a massive fan of the actor, I have to say it would be hard to imagine anyone else playing such a convincing part. The Aviator is a movie set in the 30s based on the life of Howard Hughes, the famous millionaire, movie maker, and aircraft builder. It covers his undertaking to make the most expensive movie of all time, and the various projects and events that took place during his life, such as his various record breaking achievements, and the design and construction of some of the most revolutionary aircraft. Namely the Hercules flying boat which was the largest aircraft of the time, and led the way for the massive aircraft that are in widespread use now.
This is a fascinating movie, especially for myself, as Howard Hughes was someone I used to read about as a kid as one of the greatest innovators of the aircraft industry. I've always loved planes. If I had more coin I'd be playing with planes instead of cars.

Carl Scully will not apologise for the Cross City Tunnel

The minister responsible for signing the rediculous contract to the Cross City Tunnel, which allows it's foreign operators to close Sydney roads to funnel traffic through this stupid road. Carl Scully should be remembered for selling out Sydney's motorists, and allowing us all to be conned.

I don't care how many roads they close, and I don't care how hard they try to make it for me. They will not rip me off this way. I will NEVER pay a cent to use any toll road in Sydney, and hopefully the company running the cross city "funnel" will eventually go bankrupt. In the words of the Cross City CEO, "People will say bugger it". No, I won't say "bugger it". I will not use your tunnel, no matter how difficult you make it for me to get around the city with your callous road closures.

Carl Scully should be forced to resign in shame, as the man responsible for Sydney's roads for the last few years, he should be utterly ashamed to the shambles he has presided over. It has just turned out that the Lane Cove tunnel is the same deal. Road closures if the consortium cannot make it pay.

What a mess.

To cloak or not to cloak

Cloaking is a technique that has generated much discussion in the webmaster community. The possible benefits are unquestionable, the risks are out there, and the impact on the quality of the internet as an information resource is debatable.

Clokaing is basically a technique of displaying different page content based on the user that is viewing the page. There are many ways of determining the user, and displaying the different content. Some use javascript redirect where the redirect routine is in an external file, while others user server side scripting to serve up different code based on the IP address of the client. There are, of course hundreds of different variations, with varying levels of ethics in their intent.

The benefits of cloaking are mainly search engine related, although some webmasters use it for such things as redirecting users to certain sections of a site based on their DNS suffix, as a way of redirecting users based on country. Strictly speaking, if the address in the address bar changes, it is not true cloaking, but rather a redirect. In some of the javascript techniques I have come across, there is an html page with rich keyword content, and a javascript routine that will redirect only IE and Netscape browsers to another page. This leaves any search engine crawler or text-only viewer (or anyone with javascript disabled) looking at the content rich page, whilst everyone else is redirected to a graphics rich page with frames which is good for selling, but which would never rank in the search engines.

The problem I have with this is that just about every non IT professional computer user that I know complains about seeing results in the SERPs with a certain title and description, under a certain search. They click on it, and are then directed to a page which contains none of the text from the search engine listing. This is annoying, especially on a slow connection. This is the kind of thing that makes people not want to use the internet and visit new websites, which is bad for all of us who run websites.

I'm sure there are people who say "how else can one get a website that uses frames in the serps?" and my answer to that is "I wouldn't have a clue." Frames were back in the early 90's and although it is a good concept and it was a shame that the resource addressing structure of the internet didn't support it well in the long term. Unless the cloaked page represents the exact text that is on the framed page, how can it not be misleading? If the search engines are going to allow cloaked pages for sites that use frames, what is there to stop this from being abused? There is already a constant game of cat and mouse being played where "black hat" webmasters use doorway and cloaked pages to spam the indexes.

As search engine technology improves, their ability to detect cloaking will also improve. For this reason, I do not engage in any cloaking practices, even as a competitive measure, as I believe the sites that currently use it (many large established sites, some in sectors in which I compete) will get pinged in a big way at some stage. Crawlers that can read JavaScript properly can't be far off.

Google Earth

I have just found a new product offered by Google, called Google Earth. Google Earth is basically a software package which allows you to look at the world as a 3D globe, and zoom into any part. The globe is covered by sattelite images, and can be zoomed in to the point where individual people and cars can be seen. The section of the map being looked at is downloaded from Google in real time, so there is a slight lag, but it's well worth it, especially when you consider how much you get to see. I wouldn't want to use it on a dial-up connection though.

The hills and valleys are also mapped and rendered in 3D, and many features of America are mapped extensively, including gas stations, hotels etc. This is just a brilliant way to spend a few hours. You can go to the Pyramids, or check out the Grand Canyon. I checked out my parent's house and saw my red car parked out the front. It's just the coolest thing I've seen in a long time.

The entire globe is covered by sattelite images, which are updated on a 3 year rolling basis, so unfortunately you can't check on things in real time, although this is probably a good thing otherwise everyone would be conducting surveillence on each other.

Here is a screen shot of what Google Earth looks like:

As you can see, Sydney harbour, the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.

Forgot to take my shoes to work yesterday!

I actually forgot to take my shoes to work with me yesterday. It's the first time I have done that, and it will be the last. I normally take my shoes with me and put them on just before I get out of the car. I prefer driving with bare feet. In fact, if I had my way, I would not wear shoes at all unless absolutely necessary.
On this particular day, I was late and still half-asleep (not uncommon) and I pulled up, reached to the back seat, only to realise that there were no shoes in the car. Fortunately it's not too much of a problem, as I spend most of my work day in a room by myself on the computer or packing orders. It was still embarrasing to tell my colleague, as it's something that "Only John would do", but it was all quite funny.
So I padded around in bare feet all day, which felt quite strange at work, although to be honest, if it were "professionally acceptable" I would do it more often, as I just find it comfortable. The way I see it, feet were designed to be used without shoes. Not a good idea for walking around town though.

Sydney Petrol Prices

As we all know, fuel prices in Sydney, and for that matter the rest of Australia and the world have been rising steadily, and are now hovering at around $1.40 a litre. I remember the days when it was 40c a litre. Australians traditionally drive large cars, with vehicles such as the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore, and now the Mitsubishi Magna being some of our most popular cars. The distances are large, and big engines drive air conditioning easilly, so needless to say, many Australians are feeling the pinch.

It is probably a case of what we are used to as much as anything else, and personally, I am prepared to fork out a bit more, rather than drive less or get a smaller car. I am considering an LPG conversion at some stage though. Especially if the price gets above $2.00 a litre.

The government is coming under a lot of fire about this issue, and quite rightly so. Even though they claim the price fluctuations are out of their control, they still take a massive percentage of tax (actually two separate taxes). Whichever way they put it, their take increases every time the price of fuel goes up. They will keep the tax on as long as they possibly can, although it seems to be wearing thin now. I believe they will offer some kind of relief when the price of fuel starts to affect other industries.

Many accuse the oil companies of profiteering, and colluding to keep the price up. The pump price in Sydney goes up every Thursday, which happens to be payday for most people, and then down again just before the weekend. At the end of the day, they are maximising their profit as any other company will do. It's just that everyone uses their product, and they have a lot of power and wealth and sway over government. It's not good but it's just the way it is at the moment.

Australian release date finder for PC, X-Box and Playstation games

A friend of mine has just opened a website that lists all up and coming release dates in Australia for games. The purpose of this is to provide an easy and centralized place to go to find out what's coming out soon and when. The site is still under development, but usable, and will eventually utilize an SQL backend and feature games and merchandise for sale.

The URL of this site is www.releasedatefinder.com.

Google has fixed the 302 spam problem

A previously mentioned problem that Google was having with scraper sites hijacking URLs with dodgy 302 redirects appears to have been solved, or at least the guys at Google have it in hand. I think people expect Google to fix problems on the fly as we can with our small websites, but in reality, any change to their system must require a lot of forethought and testing, considering how vast their network is. They are working with affected webmasters to try to solve the problem, and there are now fewer scraper sites in the index, which makes searchers, webmasters, and Google all happy.

The correct way to do a 301 redirect using ASP

Today, we're going to cover the correct way using asp script to perform a 301 perminant redirect. This type of redirection is used when the resource has moved perminantly. The most common example is when redirecting domain.com to www.domain.com, in order to avoid duplicate listings in search engines.
A 301 is very different to a 302 redirect, which should NEVER be used in this case. A 302 indicates the resource has been moved temporarily. If domain.com is redirected to www.domain.com, it will cause duplicate content issues.
When using Windows remote hosting, it can be difficult to get such redirects set up or removed, as it is necessary to go through the ISP's support team. There is a way of initiating a 301 redirect from within an ASP file. This is not the response.redirect command. response.redirect will always issue a 302 redirect. The correct sequence of commands is shown below:

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location", "http://www.site.com/default.htm"
response.end
%>

When these redirects are performed, it happens at the server level, rather than at the HTML level. The browser never sees the ASP code, it is just read by the server, and the server knows to return the redirect code and location in the header.

You can check the header code that your server is returning for any of your pages using an online tool such as the Server Header Checker. It is always a good idea to check any new redirects with such a tool, and ensure that it is returning a 301 code, as accidently using the wrong one can have disasterous consequences.

Canonical domain urls, www and non www

I have recently experienced a traffic (and sales) drop on one of my main sites. This was to be expected as the recent changover from the Access backend to the SQL meant some downtime. Unfortunately, this downtime occured at the worst possible time, as the world's largest search engine (Google) who also happen to be that site's main source of traffic were crawling it at the time. Basically I messed up the migration, because I didn't reaslize that the whole site was going to be physically moved to another machine for the upgrade. I saw the new option the ISP had given me to create the new SQL database, so I preceeded to set everything up and migrate. Of course, the whole thing fell over once the hosting company swapped machines, as the machine name and probably several other things changed. I also had a few dramas with getting the product data imported into the SQL database, as I had made some modifications to the Access database, and had to change the SQL one accordingly.
The whole thing meant 24 hours of down time, or semi down time, as all the static pages were still working, so the site was still functioning as a product catalogue.

Now, on to the whole point of this post. Webmasters may be aware of the fact that the domain name www.site.com is different from site.com. Although ownership of a domain secures ownership of both, they are technically two different names. Normally they will just point to the same place, such as the IP address of a web server. As they are both pointing to the same web server, the same content will be returned whether the user enters www.site.com or site.com. Also of note here, is that the URL entered into the address bar will not change when the page is loaded. Therefore this is not a redirect, but an alias.
Google and probably other search engines can see this as two domains with duplicate content. This is countered by setting the non-www domain to perform a 301 Perminant redirect to the www domain, changing the address int the browser, and pointing search engine bots to the correct address. Because my hosting company cannot redirect the non www name separately, I used and ASP solution. I got them to set default.asp over default.htm the default page priority, and I made default.asp redirect everything to http://www.mysite.com/default.htm.
This has worked well, and it quickly got rid of my duplicate home pages on Google. (This was about a year ago.) But during this changeover, it turns out the ASP was down for a few hours (the default page priority was not set on the new server), and during this time, GBot crawled the root of my site and indexed the duplicate pages. It would have to be the worst timing ever. So I have cleaned the site up, redone all the sitemaps, and sent a note to Google, asking them to get rid of the duplicate entry that has appeared. it comes up mysite.com/ in the index. Now I just have to hope that all will sort it's self out.

Motorists are not using Sydney's cross city tunnel

It seems that many other motorists are also deciding to vote with their feet on the new cross city tunnel. Patronage has been less than one third of what was expected over the last two weeks since it has opened.

As previously stated, I will never use it, because if people start using these tollways, more will be built. Then before we know it, every major road in Sydney will be privately owned, inadaquate and cost money just for the privaledge of travelling on it. The citizens of Sydney need to make this toll road not work, and make these greedy enterprises who have a stranglehold over Government realize that they will not get away with ripping off every day workers, especially when it means closing existing roads to try to force people to pay to use the private road. That was the final straw for me. We are supposed to live in a country of choice, and yet, a large corporation can lobby the RTA to close roads so theirs becomes more profitable and the only available route for motorists.

Here is a rather good article that sums it up.

Upgraded main site from Access to SQL

I make a living running a large retail website, which has just hit a product count of 4000. I use the VP-ASP package, which is an open source ASP application that can be used with an MS Access, SQL or MySQL database. It's a great package, being open source, I can change, add, or modify any part of the application to suit my needs. This is crucial for an online store.

I had been using the Access back-end for about a year, and with some updates over the weekend it started to slow down considerably. Right from the start, search and any other function which called a lot of data from the database was reasonably slow (but still acceptable). After the weekend it was obvious that we had outgrown Access. I had heard bad things about running a web application from an Access database and we were starting to experience them. It makes one realize how much work the back-end database of a large, busy web application actually does.

I made the decision to upgrade to an SQL database, which involved changing our hosting plan. I also changed us to a dedicated IP address. We are using a shared web server, connected to a separate SQL server.

The changeover could have been smoother, we had issues with incompatible datasets between the Access and SQL database, and the hosting company's ODBC fell over halfway through the migration due to them shifting our domain to another server at the wrong time. We had to wait overnight for that to come back up again. We now have everything running on the new server, and are just waiting for the DNS records to catch up and start pointing to the new IP address. It still feels wired having the site down for so long. It will have to be done better than this next time, as 24 hours downtime is unacceptable.

SQL is much better for this purpose than Access was. I get whole pages of records displayed instantaneously, and search is actually usable. SQL is running this application better than I can locally on a test server and MS Access. I have read in several places that Access is not well suited to web applications, and it's true. While such a database would be acceptable for 1000-2000 records and up to 10 tables, I would not want to push it much further than that.

Dob in a hoon campaign

In Perth, WA, there is a campaign to encourage motorists to "dob in a hoon". Basically, if they see anyone driving irresponsibly they can lodge a report with the police and have it followed up, sometimes leading to car confiscations.

I don't have a problem with crackdowns on dangerous driving, and residents have every right to expect police to enforce the road rules in their residential areas to allow them to live in peace.

A problem does arise, however, when drivers can face consquences based soley on heresay evidence from another motorist. We're not talking a small fine here either, were talking confiscation of your car for up to three months, which could have dire consequences on someone's life and career. I have already heard of a case where a guy was reported doing 250 on a highway (which his car wasn't even capable of). After having the police at the door, it turned out that an angry female reported him, to get back at him over another matter.

If/when they introduce this stuid idea in NSW, I will be reporting every second car I see, and I will be urging other motorists to do the same. If they get an influx of complaints which are obviously bogus or trivial, they will soon see that the system is unworkable (Pretty obvious I would have thought).

We need to do this, otherwise it's likely that Australia will become a place where the police are knocking on your door to take your car away after the slightest altercation with someone.

GTech Pro accelerometer

I just purchased a GTech performance meter from E-Bay for $50. I always heard that these things are $250, so I wasn't sure if this one was going to be any good. I know the name GTech though and remember wanting one years ago, so I brought it.

I'm surprised at how useful it has proven to be so far. It is a small device about the size of a pager, and it sticks to the inside of the windscreen with a suction cap attachment, which is adjustable to make it level. The power lead plugs into the cigarette lighter. The main factor is having it perfectly horizontal at all times during use. When it is switched on, it displays a real time g-force reading, and it can be adjusted on it's mounting bracket until it reads zero. The only problem is if you have a car which squats or wheel-stands when it launches, as the pitch change causes gravity to offset the readings. Apparently there is a new GTech unit which measures g-force on multiple axes, and can compensate for this. This is probably why mine was available so cheaply.

Here is the GTech Pro website for anyone that's interested.

It only arrived today, so I've only had a chance to do the 0-100kph test (actually 0-60mph as it's made in the USA). It's hard to find a dead flat, quarter mile long stretch of road to stop in the middle of before blasting down it at full throttle around here:) It got 9.2 seconds with a heap of wheel spin, and then 8.3 seconds with a more sedated launch. The factory specs are 8 seconds for the V6, so I'm pretty pleased with that. I'm sure I can get them faster. I'm not used to doing launches any more having had the Subaru for so long, so it's going to take a bit of practise to get up to scratch again. The idea to to have it on the edge of traction, but not breaking it, right from the start of motion. Easier said than done in a car with a heap of power (8-10 times more than mine).

The other tests it does are 60mph-0 stopping distance in feet, instant G-force readings, quarter mile terminal speed, and rear wheel horsepower. I will post the results when I get a chance to do those tests.

GTechs are cool and I recommend them so far. I wouldn't pay $250 for it, but for $50 it's a great guide to the performance of a car. I always used to think my car was slower some days, or worry it was not making all it's power for some reason. Some modifications make the car louder or sound different can make a car "feel" faster when it actually isn't. A loud, low car with rock hard suspension will feel faster than a new 7 BMW with the same acceleration.

I'll post up here if I have any hassles with it.

Dynamic (SEO) titles on Blogger blogs

I just got around to making all the individual post pages on this blog have the page titles reflect the title of the post, rather than the main title of the blog. I found this simple way:

In the Template section of the Blogger dashboard, replace this code:
<title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
with this:
<mainpage> <blogger><title><$BlogPageTitle$></title></blogger> </mainpage><itempage> <blogger><title><$BlogItemTitle$></title></blogger> </itempage>
and each page of your blog will have different title text, that reflects the contents of that page. There is more about this here in the Blogger help section.

Faulty earth connection from TPS and coolant temp sensor.

I have fixed a common fault with the wiring on the VP/VN Commodores. There is a cable run under the engine bay which goes from the TPS, Oxygen sensor, and IAC solenoid. This run joins to the main loom just behind the alternator. Inside this cable run (under the convoluted tubing and tape) there is a black wire with a yellow trace that joins to two other wires. I understand this is a shared earth between the IAC and coolant temp sensor. The crimps on these connections are not soldered, and over the years the connections corrode and deteriorate. This then causes an incorrect signal from these sensors to be read by the ECU, which makes the idle rough.
I unwrapped the entire run (horrible job), and soldered all the crimps (there are some others along the run too). The idle is now much smoother, because the ECU knows what's happening. I would do this on any of these cars still running a standard wiring loom.

Castrol Formula R 10W60 - Brilliant oil

I had a feeling that the oil I had put in the Commodore was a bit too thin. It had developed a noisy lifter or two and wasn't running all that smoothly. I changed it for a fully synthetic oil yesterday, and although it cost a lot more for the oil, I recon it's well worth the money. I used Nulon Engine Flush to get the old mineral stuff out and it now idles smoother, which I didn't expect. I think it's possible that one of the hydraulic tappets was blocked and not extending fully, causing the valve lift on one cylinder to decrease slightly. I have never seen this much improvement from a simple change/upgrade of oil. The engine even seems to be making more power. The thing that struck me was how loud the injectors were, then I realised that it was because the rest of the engine was so much quieter than before.
I'm now planning to send the spare heads away to be crack and pressure tested and reconditioned, and maybe some larger valves. Although the engine idles better, it's still not perfect, and I think the valves on the head that I did not remove may not be sealing properly. Of course, I will be purchasing a compression tester this week so I can test them myself, as it could also be a number of other things, and I won't bother doing the heads yet if the compression is okay. I want to get the manual conversion done before any engine work happens.
One possibility is a faulty connection where the earth wires to the throttle position sensor and engine temperature sensor join to go to a common earth point. I have heard that these wires are crimped together and not soldered, they corrode over the years and cause the engine to idle roughly. I need to remove a lot of tape to get to these connections and am not looking forward to it. It will probably happen tomorrow, if I have time after bodywork. (Removing badges, sanding and finishing bonnet paint repairs, cleaning interior, and finishing rust repair of boot.)
I got a front grille, and a new glovebox (mine was broken) from EBay last week. I haven't recieved them yet, but so far the process has been easy enough. We'll see how it goes. If I get the goods this week, I will be buying a lot more off EBay in the future, as it is quite fun and easy, especially when you don't have much time for regular shopping. I find it hard to get my regular groceries, let alone exotic car parts.

Harold Scruby shows his true colours, abusing motorists via email

This newspaper article, taken from The Courier Mail, illustrates the true character of self proclaimed "road safety" activist, Harold Scruby. He is more of a road safety extremist, with his fanatical views that he wants to impose on the motoring public of Australia.

Safety campaigner traffics in insults
Amanda Watt
09oct04

THE acrimonious relationship between the Pedestrian Council of Australia and motoring enthusiasts has been exposed in an exchange of abusive e-mails involving the council's high-profile chairman Harold Scruby.

Mr Scruby, 57 ? who regularly comments on road safety issues and is behind the annual Walk to Work day ? called one writer a "little cretin" and told him to "go clean your grease nipples".

In another e-mail he referred to car enthusiasts as "petrol-head Neanderthals" and told another writer to "go away and play with your muffler and leave road safety to people who at least attended high school".

"Were you bullied at school?

"Did your parents hate you? Perhaps you missed the breast-feeding bit? Low IQ perhaps! Something must explain your behaviour," Mr Scruby wrote.

The exchanges were sparked by e-mail inquiries to Mr Scruby from motorists incensed by the pedestrian council's success in getting a Mitsubishi Magna television advertisement withdrawn. The advertisement depicted cars racing.

Other e-mails to Mr Scruby questioned the motivation behind the council's campaigns.

Mr Scruby, who has attracted support from all levels of government for his annual walking campaign, initially said he didn't recall writing the e-mails when contacted by The Courier-Mail this week.

He later said he had only resorted to childish taunts after being inundated with more than 100 abusive e-mails ? including some that made threats. One e-mail writer told Mr Scruby: "Stab yourself in the face with a pencil, we will all pay $20 to see that."

Mr Scruby said that he had simply "tried to humour" the e-mail writers.

"No expletives were used and I made no threats against them," he said. "If we got reasonable letters we responded reasonably, but when we got hillbilly stuff then I responded (in kind).

"It's not acceptable to be spammed like this by a group that is clearly well-organised, their attempt now is to undermine my position. My nature is if people write to me foul, disgusting e-mails they can expect something in return."

But one of the e-mailers, James Stevenson, said the head of the Pedestrian Council of Australia should not be ridiculing road users wishing to debate him on safety.

The e-mail exchanges, many of which have been reproduced on Internet forums, have prompted Mr Stevenson to form a lobby group on behalf of car enthusiasts.

Mr Stevenson said the Australian Drivers Group, was still in the initial stages of development, but had already attracted 150 pledges from those wishing to join. He has written to several politicians about Mr Scruby's e-mails asking if there was any way of disbanding the council on the basis of his comments.


"Please have a read of Mr Scruby's responses and confirm that this is the kind of representation you would find acceptable from a safety council," Mr Stevenson wrote. "In my opinion he is running dangerously close to being charged with slander or defamation."

Removed and cleaned throttle body, IAC, and deleted bellmouth.

It's been a productive sunny Sunday. I have taken off the throttle body assembly, cleaned the idle air controller (IAC) and reassembled it, without the bellmouth.

The IAC is a common cause of rough idle on the 3.8 Buick engines, as it can clog up with carbon and dust deposits. Mine was filthy. I cleaned it all out, including the butterfly valve with spray-degreaser and a rag. The IAC needed to be removed for cleaning, and the O-ring was still servicable. The idle air controller is a computer controlled valve that lets the correct amount of air into the plenum for idle. The computer automatically adjusts it to maintain the correct idle speed when load is put onto the engine, for example, putting an automatic into drive, or turning on the air conditioning or headlights.

The bellmouth is a piece of plastic which sits inside the plenum, helping distribute the air evenly between the cylinders. When it is installed, it causes the inlet tract to taper, reducing it's diameter by about 10-15% after the throttle butterfly. This bellmouth was not fitted to series 1 VN Commodores, but it was fitted to all models after, up to the VR. It was designed to smooth idle slightly, as without it the rear two cylinders experience increased air-flow and tend to run leaner, and it was apparently also designed to correct a "problem" of excessive wheel-spin off the line. This bellmouth has been removed from my car. I have heard that a memcal is available that maps the idle mixture to be slightly richer to prevent the leaning out of the rear two cylinders, and I will be doing this as soon as I make my Delco unit programmable via Kalmaker or something similar. Unfortunately, it is not possible to adjust the output of the injectors individually with this system, as they are connected sequentially.

I got a bit of paranoia about using the correct gasket sealant, as I normally use Loctite No.3 Aircraft non-hardening gasket sealant, but I have heard that the incorrect use of silicone based sealants on engines with oxygen sensors can cause the sensor to fail. I have no idea if this Loctite stuff uses silicone, but I had a look at the guide on the Loctite website and it says it is okay, so I reused the old gaskets which were still okay, and put a layer of gasket cement on each surface. Apparently the gaskent sealant can be used without paper gaskets, but I'm just not game to do that somehow.

I also adjusted the trasmission kick-down cable, as it was not shifting down easily enough on throttle application. I tightened it, only too much, and this caused the transmission to hold the throttle open when coasting, which can be quite un-nerving. Only tighten it one notch at a time.

Got the O2 sensor in, plus new cat and exhaust system

The oxygen sensor is now installed, and has improved the running of the engine markedly. Shortly after installing the sensor, it occured to me that the cat converter may be worn out. I have heard that a rich mixture can cause a catalytic converter to become blocked, and since I had a faulty fuel pressure regulator, and oxygen sensor I figured it was likely that the cat converter was on it's way out. There was also a rattling noise coming from beneath the car when the engine reached operating temperature, which is also symptematic of a faulty cat converter.

When I took it to the exhaust place, (MIDAS West Ryde) they took it all apart, and it turned out that no.2 rear muffler had all it's internals loose, and the cat converter, although not blocked, only had another couple of months left in it. I had the first muffler replaced a month ago, and the weld had cracked and was leaking. I won't be going back to that place again. The guys at Midas pulled it all off and replaced it with a hi-flow cat and 2.5 inch pipes thru a single muffler. The exhaust is much more audible now on full-song. I will hold off on extractors until I have the manual transmission in it and am preparing a new worked motor.

This weekend I will be doing a bit of body work, there is a rust hole in the boot when the spare wheel sits which I will grind out and repair. The boot badges and key hole are to be removed, filled and painted. The tow bar is to be removed, and I'm shopping for a stereo.

I also have had a problem since I got the car, where is hasn't been holding coolant. The header tank would always empty after a couple of days. Just after starting it up, it would also make a noise from inside the cabin similar to water running down a wall. This seemed to come from the heating unit inside the car. The problem turned out to be an incorrect radiator cap which was leaking under pressure out the side of the cap, rather than forcing is down the return line into the header tank. A new radiator cap from Holden, and she's as good as new. The genuine cap has another rubber gromet that the dodgy one didn't have and works properly. I haven't had to refill the header tank for over a week now. It's the cheapest thing I've fixed on the car for $9.95.

New exhaust gas oxygen sensor on the way

I've almost got this car running nicely. It now starts first time every time. The fuel pressure regulator fixed that. It turned out that the car was running high fuel pressure due to the faulty fuel pressure regulator and flooding the engine on start-up. It was also causing it to run rich.

Now that I've fixed all that, it still runs rough when the engine reaches operating temperature. When I say it runs rough, I mean it idles rough, because when there is even a bit of throttle it runs well and smoothly with full power. Interestingly enough the car runs fine when just started and cold.

When I hooked up the laptop, I noticed that the transition from even to rough running during engine warmup occurs just as the ECU switches from open loop mode (running without using input from the oxygen sensor) to closed loop mode (using input from exhaust oxygen sensor to control mixtures). The voltage from the oxygen sensor seems to be within range, and therefore is not triggering any error codes, but the engine is definitely getting too much fuel, I can smell it from the exhaust, and the engine misses when idleing probably every 8-10 revolutions or so.

Exhaust gas oxygen sensors work by generating an electric current that corresponds with the amount of oxygen in the exhaust stream, which provides a means to determine the fuel/air mixture at combustion. This current decreses with the oxygen content, and rises as the mixture gets more rich. When they fail, they get sluggish to increase in voltage under the rich condition, and the ECU increases the injector pulse width even more, as it is getting an incorrect reading. The result is an engine that runs rich when warm. As VP Commodores idle under closed loop when hot, a faulty exhaust gas oxygen sensor (or Lambda sensor) has dramatic effects on the engine idle.

I have a new sensor on the way that I will pick up from Hunter Holden tomorrow.

The new Sydney Cross-city tunnel. I won't be going under.

Sydney motorists are sick of tolls. We pay massive taxes on fuel, which go up every time the fuel price rises, and GST on top of that. We pay road taxes and registration that are supposed to go into the maintenance of the roads. Greed (speed) cameras on the side of vast long stretches of road and at the bottom of hills reap millions every month. Council rangers use shady and under-handed tactics to squeeze every last dollar out of people trying to park up for a days work. Yet every new road that is built in Sydney (to cope with the massive influx of population) has to be a tollway. These tollways are private projects, funded and managed by private companies, who then sit back, and reap millions off these tolls, as motorists are forced to pay to use sub-standard tollways. Look at the M5, it is a carpark most peak times. I can't comprehend the idea of actually paying to use it.
The new cross city tunnel is another such toll road. It has just been revealed that the NSW government is going to close the other route to the city, forcing motorists to pay their toll. (not actually their toll, the toll goes to their corporate mates, but they imposed it on us.)
I will NEVER use these toll roads. I pay enough in road tax, I believe I should be able to get around on the roads I already pay for. If I have to go through the city, I will not use the tunnel on principal, and will roar through whatever endless backstreets I need to in order to reach my destination, as I do already to avoid other toll roads. I do pity the residents that live on those backstreets, but we are all in the same boat. If enough motorists complain about toll roads and refuse to use them, and enough residents complain about increased traffic on back streets due to people avoiding toll roads, maybe we will see some action and an end of this trend of governments tricking us into paying private enterprise for services that we already pay the government for. Then, to add insult to injury, making us put up with the sub-standard services provided by these private operators as they sit on their governement sanctioned cash-cow and reap in the millions from thousands of motorists sitting in gridlock on their cheaply made tollways that are of inadiquate capacity. Then all roads other than the tollway are closed to help feed the cash cow.

A word of advice - Don't use IPrimus

I'm just on hold with the IPrimus customer support line. Just wanting to check on the progress of a broadband connection. I have now been on hold for over an hour. This is now a common occurance with this company. There seems to be no way of speaking to anyone from the company in a timeframe of less than one hour. I have cancelled all my home services with them, as I physically did not have the time to wait an hour to check on a bill or whatever. Unfortunately this company still uses them, so any time I need to contact them, I have to set an hour and a half of the day aside to sit on hold.
I will be making sure this comany ceases to use IPrimus and their useless service. I would recommend that unless you like sitting on hold for over an hour (no exageration) that you find another ISP.

Aznew injectors

I've just been down to Repco to purchase some Aznew fuel injectors for the Commodore. Aznew are a company that recondition fuel injectors to new specifications. The deal is you go to one of their agents (stockists) in my case, Repco, and purchase the injectors for $240, plus around $400 holding deposit. When you take your old injectors back to them, they will refund your $400 deposit. By the way, the injectors in my car are still not running pintle caps, and I'm pretty sure one of them is leaking, flooding the engine on start-up. I plan to replace the injectors, and if the starting issues are still not resolved, I will be looking at fuel pressure in the fuel rail, and the fuel pressure regulator. Here is a link for Aznew fuel injectors.

"It's a doozy!"

Ever heard that expression?
Meaning - a wonderful, or excellent thing.
Know where the saying originates?
It's a reference to one of the most remarkable automobiles ever produced. The Duesenberg SJ.

Fred Duesenberg, who, together with his brother August, was creator, designer and builder of the car, was eight years old in 1885 when his family emigrated from Germany to the United States, settling in Rockford, Iowa.

Fred left school at the age of 17.

As engineer, designer and manufacturer he was entirely self-taught.

He possessed some kind of genius.

He could tell by looking at a mechanical part if it would work or not. He could tell by listening to the sound of an engine running on a test stand whether it was OK or needed rebuilding.

Fred Duesenberg began his mechanical career by working on farm machinery - reapers, binders, steam-tractors.
It wasn't long before his innate creativity led him to start working on projects of his own.
He began by making bicycles.
Bicycles led logically to motorbikes.

By 1904 Fred was able, with his brother August, to open his own garage in Iowa.
Here they built their first racing car, and were, by their mid-twenties, already highly successful.

In 1913 they set up a company in their own name: The Duesenberg Motor Company, in St Paul, Minnesota.

During World War 1 they produced military engines of all kinds. Having fulfilled their patriotic duty, they turned their energies once more to their true goal: to produce motorcars. Not just any motorcar - they wanted to produce the best motorcar in the world.

There was one problem - money.

Like many genuinely creative people, Fred did not have a good head for business. He gave an engine design to his friend Harry Stutz. He didn't take out a patent on his hydraulic four-wheel brake system, which should have made him a millionaire many times over.

To raise funds to build their perfect car, the Duesenbergs sold their factory and moved to Indianapolis.

Their success with racing cars continued, and in due course they introduced their first passenger car, the Model A, which was to remain in production until 1926. The model A, a kind of preparation for what was to follow, was extremely expensive for its day, and, by 1926, the company was in financial difficulties.

The company was saved by one of the virtuosi of American business - Erret Lobban Cord.

Cord's was not the greatest mechanical mind, but he was in sympathy with the Duesenbergs' desire to produce THE best automobile.

He said the magic words: "Never mind what it costs - BUILD it!"

The result was, indeed, the finest motorcar of its day, lovingly assembled by a team of craftsmen working for a company which never saw a cent of profit during its entire corporate existence.

Most Duesenbergs, as was the custom in those days, were delivered as a bare chassis, and the great coachbuilders of the world were commissioned to build custom bodies onto them.

The Model SJ, which appeared in 1932, had a maximum speed of 130 mph, and could reach 100 mph within 17 seconds of a standing start.

The bare chassis, in 1932, cost $8500.

Who bought them? People who could afford anything they wanted, money no object.

Owning a Duesenberg was essential for any movie star who wanted to prove he had reached the top.
Two specials were produced with a shorter chassis than normal, one for Clark Gable, the other for Gary Cooper.

The Duesenberg SJ is a testament to the genius and vision of three men - Fred and August Duesenberg and E.L. Cord.

And, yes, what a doozy!

Diecast-vintage-cars.com is a source for detailed die-cast replicas of classic motor cars.

The Spirit Of The Car

I drive a 1995 Ford Crown Victoria. It's prior owner was the Utah Highway Patrol. This car can move. It has some serious get-up-and-go.

But it also has a certain spirit about it. It still has the suped-up engine and even the extra hand light mounted outside the driver's side window. But there is something more.

My wife likes it because when you step on the gas, before you can even think about how fast you are going, you are half-way down the block.

But we both feel something - some sort of connection to the car's past.

Often when I am driving on the freeway or even down my street, I feel like I am on patrol. I drive slower and keep a watchful eye out for things I don't even know what to look for.

I feel more wary, intense, and observant just driving down my street. It's almost as if I am patrolling my own neighborhood. And the car, with it's shiny silver hand light, usually gets some extra attention.

I am more likely to smile and wave at my neighbors as if I was the friendly neighborhood patrol man. And I like to give the kids a firm scowl as if scolding them for playing in the street and then a brief smile to let them know I am just watching out for them.

It's almost like putting on a different set of clothing or a uniform and putting yourself into the role.

It's not all serious though. Driving it on the freeway can be very entertaining. Many people mistake it for an undercover patrol car. But as they approach closer, the two car seats and children's books in the rear window give it away.

The most fun comes when driving in the middle or right lane of the freeway. No one wants to pass me. I have slowed traffic down to 10 miles below the speed limit and still no one will pass or even pull ahead.

Until some brave person notices that I am not really an officer and this is not really a patrol car. They speed off in a huff and my cover is blown when I don't chase them down.

Then the magic ends and every one I was able to back up continues on their way. Some give me a nasty glare as if I tricked them, others just smile with amusement. But either way, my passengers and I have a good chuckle over the situation.

When someone realizes I am not a patrol car and dashes off in a huff or if I see someone dangerously change lanes or tailgate, I really do have the urge to chase them down, flash my brights and pull up right behind or to the side of them. My car is still patrolling the highway.

And I'll admit that every once in a while when getting on the freeway, I drop the hammer and let that car fly. We can get past freeway speed before we even leave the on ramp. That car sure likes to run.

And I'll also admit that once or twice I have tried playing the part. One incident in paticular that was very amusing happened a few days ago.

I was driving on the freeway and my exit was coming up in a couple of miles. I was in the left lane and watching my mirror so that I could move into the right lane to get off the freeway.

While watching my rear view mirror I saw a sports car rapidly approaching. The car was weaving in and out of all three lanes in a desperate attempt to navigate through a maze of traffic.

I decided I would have a little fun.

I pulled into the center lane in front of a large semi-truck where I was sure the speeding sports car would not see me. I slowed down a bit to match the trucks speed and waited. My trap was set.

The sports car came speeding up on my right. I was doing the speed limit at 65 and this sports car must have been doing close to 90 it was approaching so fast.

The right lane was clear behind and in front of the sports car for about ¼ mile. We were also approaching a freeway exit, the one before mine.

As the sports car sped past me, I quickly swerved into the lane right behind the sports car and rapidly sped up to come close to it's speed.

About a second later as I was approaching it doing about 75, the driver swerved onto the off ramp a split second before it was too late, probably hoping I would not be able to follow.

I grinned a mischievous grin and continued on my way to the next off ramp where I got off the freeway. I really don't know if that actually was that sports car's exit or if I just chased a dangerous driver off the freeway, but I like to think the latter, and grin.

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© Simple Joe, Inc.
David Berky is president of Simple Joe, Inc. a marketing company that sells simple software under the brand name of Simple Joe. One of Simple Joe's best selling products is Simple Joe's Money Tools - a collection of 14 personal finance and investment calculators. This article may be freely distributed so long as the copyright, author's information and an active link (where possible) are included.

4 tips to save on your next car purchase

Many of us have been at the car dealership and have been drained by a salesperson during price negotiations for the purchase of a new car. Most people give in too easily or do not negotiate at all to avoid the dreadful act. This only means more money in the car dealers? pocket, while you are out of several thousand dollars! Yes, they make that much in profit per car.
This article unveils the dealer?s selling tactics and how you can get around them. But before we dive into the new car buying tips, we need to understand what makes up the dealer?s profits. In addition to the MSRP (manufacturer suggested retail price), which is the dealer?s cost for the car plus an additional 20-25% profit, a dealer also gets financial incentives from the manufacturer when a new car is sold. This is called Holdback.
Depending on the car, dealers can make hundreds on each car through holdbacks. Dealers also get additional incentives and bonuses on selling a car before the end of the month and/or quarter. A shrewd dealer can make several thousand on a new car even by selling it at invoice price. This is how new car buying can become tricky for the consumer.
Ready to learn how not to put a dent in your wallet on your next car purchase? Here are four tips to get you started. Each one is a dealer tactic to watch out for.

1. The Guilt Trip
As you may have noticed, every desk in a dealership has photos of the salesperson?s family, instead of photos of cars. Midway in the negotiation, the sales person will bring them up and make it look like his little commission check can hardly pay for his daughters college and little Bradley?s braces.
A seasoned salesperson will soon have you feeling guilty for driving the price down and hurting his commission. Watch out not to fall for this tactic, since you already know about holdbacks and incentive programs from manufacturers.

2. Wearing You Down
Come prepared to spend half a day at the dealership or pay whatever the dealer asks for. Car Dealers are trained to delay and tire you out to the point where you give in and accept their price just to get out of there.
After you make your offer, sales people typically claim they would have to run it by their manager. You may then have to re-start negotiating with the manager, who is also a seasoned salesperson. This dance goes on for a while until you give in. Remember, there are multiple dealerships in a city, so they need you more than you need them. Demand to speak to the manager after a certain time period or threaten to leave. Because you are devoting a lot of time to bargain with the dealer, they know you are a serious buyer, so they will not let you leave. The earlier you can speak with the manager, the faster you can leave.

3. The Test Drive
We all enjoy a good test drive and look forward to it. Although it is essential to test drive a car before you buy it, remember to not show your absolute love for the car to the salesperson. Their goal is to get you emotionally attached to the car, so it becomes a must have for you. I have learned it the hard way.
To hide your emotional tears from the salesperson, mention the features of a competing car in the same class, like the new shape, light, leg room, resale value etc. This will make the salesperson a little vulnerable.

4. Monthly Payments
This one is to confuse you. Dealers will start talking about monthly payments rather than the total price of the car. They will start by asking how much you are willing to pay per month and how much of a down payment you are willing to pay. Since people don?t want to look like they cannot afford a certain car, they will usually give a higher number. Big Mistake!
You have left little room for negotiation when this happens. Always steer the conversation to the total price of the car and do NOT mention any trade-ins at this point. Only after the total price of the vehicle is completely negotiated then talk about interest, monthly payment and trade-ins.
General Rule; As a general rule, remember to only focus and negotiate on the Total Price of the vehicle. Everything else is pretty much the car dealer?s trough.

If the above new car buying tips seem like a lot of hassle, yet you still want to get the best price in town, there are some websites that do this for you. http://www.AutoAuctionBids.com for example is a great website for this because you can collect price quotes from multiple local dealers for a particular car as well as its competing car models (like Honda Accord, Toyota Camry and Ford Taurus) and compare them. The website then allows you to send back the lowest quotes received for each car make to all participating dealers in your area through the website itself.

Dealers view this price and continue to submit new lower prices over a 3 day period. By putting local dealers in such a price competition allows you to avoid the dreadful face to face negotiation and yet gets you the lowest price in town for up to 3 competing car makes.
The best part about AutoAuctionBids.com is that it is absolutely free for you and there is no obligation to buy after the new car auction is over.

Prashant Desai, author of various buying tips articles and industry expert for AutoAuctionBids.com. Email him at p_desai@autoauctionbids.com to sign up for e-Newsletter and visit http://www.autoauctionbids.com for more information.

Cracked exhaust valve

The job has been done, it started at 10:00am Sunday morning, and finished at 4:00am Monday morning, basically non-stop. I stopped for a few cups of coffee a few times, but other than that it was one of the biggest marathon efforts I have done on a car. After I tightened the final bolt, I had a shower and set off for work in my newly smooth-running Commodore.

The most tricky part I found was getting the exhaust manifolds clear of the heads to get them off, as the vehicle should ideally be jacked up to access the exhaust flange bolts on the underside. Not having chassis stands available, I unbolted it at the cat and slid both manifolds back as one piece. This has to be done as the manifolds restrict access to the head bolts.

I found the engine much simpler than the 4 cylinder over-head cam units I am used to working on, but the work is more heavy. I am very sore in the muscles still. The best thing about push-rod engines is the fact that the cam timing does not need to be reset when the head is replaced.

Upon removing the head, I was presented with the problem straight away. It was a cracked exhaust valve on #3 cylinder, with 2 cracks and the face warped so it wasn't sealing properly, although just enough to get ignition at wide open throttle.

The car fired up first time, and now idles much more smoothly, on all cylinders. I am going to build another of these engines over the next year with as many bolt-on goodies as I can get my hands on, but hopefully this one will last a year or so now. All other parts appeared to be in good condition. I'm not sure what caused the cracked valve, but it may have been due to the fact that when I got the car, the thermo fan was not activating so it may have been because of excessive heat.

It still idles a little rough, and takes a few seconds to start, and I feel it is fuel system related, so I will be performing a preassure test, and getting the injectors cleaned as I have heard that leaky injectors or a faulty fuel preassure regulator can cause this problem.

Commodore car clubs

I'm just looking at different car clubs and forums around Australia. Forums are a great way to share info and tips with like minded people who have come across the same hassles, no matter what kind of car you're into. I used to be heavily into rotaties, owning a series 2 RX-7 with a 13B, and I got a lots of help from the ozrotary forums, which don't appear to be around any more. I still have a passion for the rotary engine, although it's on hold for a year or so at the moment. I plan to get something with a 13B turbo in it.
But, since I'm looking got a decent Commodore club/forum, I'm going to post up all the ones I find here. The first one I came across was justcommodores, which is a good site with a well established forum and quite a few people who know what they are on about. They also have an online store from which you can order spares and various other bits and pieces. It seems to cover the whole country with users and events in all states, although I read somewhere that the club is based in SA, but I don't know how true it is. justcommodores.com.au was, by the way, my source of the ALDL schematics and all the info I needed to get the ALDL link up and happening. I am known as Jonno on Justcommodores if anyone wants to talk to me.

Another one I have just come across, the Commodore Club of NSW, seems like a friendly place, not much agro and immaturity, as much fun as it can be on car forums sometimes. Doesn't look like there is as much technical information across all models as there is on justcommodores.com.au, but then again, I'm not a member, so I'm not sure if that stuff is locked up until I join the forum.

That's about all I can find that's NSW based, there are a few that look like they have closed down. The majority are based in VIC and SA. SA seems to have a rich modified car culture, as does Melbourne, which I can vouch for having lived in Richmond for two years.

Here's some other clubs from around Australia:

Commodores-R-Us
Commodore Owners Car Club - South Australia
Commodore Car Club - New Zealand
Holden Commodore Club of SA
The Commodore Club of Tasmania
Commodore Crusie Club
Commodore Car Club of WA
Commodore Performance Club
Holden/HSV forum
General info - Holden Commodores
CJ's Holden Spares
Indonesian Holden Page
Lion's Pride Holden Car Club
Holden Enthusiast's Club of Otago, NZ