Non-life threatening family emergency to be dealt with.
Category: Meta
The Recent Comments Widget Seems Not to Be Updating
There are a couple of comments that are not showing up.
I’ll see what I can do.
(on edit)
I have placed a widget below the recent comments widget tag cloud in the left hand column, it works off the recent comments feed, which works fine, though it is pretty crappy looking.
I will see if things sort themselves out over the next few days.
OK, Google™ Adsense™ Has Me Confused
So, I see an ad for Charles Loller.
He’s running for Congress in Maryland, as a Republican, in the 5th Congressional district.
Normally, this is the place where I would say, “What the f%$# is Google™ Adsense™ doing putting an ad for a Republican on my page?”
I know my reader(s) and they are NOT Republicans.
Only …………… The 5th Congressional district is Steny Hoyer’s district, and I have been consistently critical of him, so the Republican party running an ad for their sacrificial lamb,* in this district might actually meet the eyeballs of someone who is disgusted, as I am, with the distinguished gentleman from the 5th.
So, by the generally low standards of Google™ Adsense™, this actually appears to be a well done job, by virtue of being marginally competent.
Still, if I were running his campaign, I think that I might be a bit miffed that I was paying (fractions of a cent) for this.
Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.
Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.
*No, I am not going to pivot off of the sacrificial lamb statement to make a “black sheep” joke, and I will note that if this race were at all competitive, this guy would not have gotten the Republican Party nomination, because the Republican Party does not want black candidates elected, the party sees them as nothing more than useful window dressing.
Some More Meta on Comments
I have a comment in the spam box right now, and blogger is giving me an error when I try to flag it as “not spam.”
Unfortunately, the morons on blogger have made spam filtering of the comments mandatory, and it has a huge false positive rate, so if you don’t see the comment after posting, blame them, not me.
They Who Must Not Be Named
I understand that Sarah Palin needs to be covered, as she is a Republican Party kingmaker, and a potential candidate for the presidency in 2012.
That being said, the current kerfuffle as to whether Sarah Palin was booed when she went on stage for an interview on the show Dancing With the Stars, that is clearly a “They Who Must Not Be Named” moment.
So DWTS, which I don’t watch anyway, is now on my list of TWMNBN.
That is all.
If there is justice in the world, Ms. Palin will be on the list shortly as well.
Fasting for Yom Kippur
No food or drink for the next 26 hours, and I will be off line, though I have stuff queued up.
A bit of Meta
With the reorg of Digg, I now have a 40 Years In The Desert Digg page set up.
If you use digg, you might want to access the blog that way, or Digg some of my posts to bring it to the attention of a wider audience.
There is a Reason that I Declared them “They Who Must Not Be Named”
But that hasn’t stopped the Voice of American from recruiting them to try and pacify angry people in the Middle East:
In what is evidently an attempt to mitigate the damage caused by Koran-burning pastors, the US government will attempt to dissuade outraged citizens of the Middle East from joining al-Qaeda by beaming Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears across the Voice of America’s airwaves.
According to Press Gazette, Splash News and Pictures will provide a half-hour weekly show packed with meaty celebutardiness, aimed at winning the hearts and minds of those still undecided whether Holy War or Hollywood is the way to go.
First, I will note that if VoA is doing this, the Arab world is going to try and beat us to death with their bare hands.
Second, I have not yet put Kim Kardashian on my list of They Who Must Not Be Named, but ………
Wait for it ………
Wait for it ………
Wait for it ………
She is now.
Great googly moogley.
This is a Google Adsense On Drugs, Any Questions?
One Step Forward, One Step Back
Well, Google™ Adsense™ gets one right, for a change.
I live in Maryland, and I am a Democrat, and in any case Robert “Bad Hair” Ehrlich is a complete prat.
I would also note that in 2004, I exchanged about 20 words with Martin O’Malley, and was convinced that he would be president one day.
He is an impressive candidate, and I think that it is likely that he will throw his hat into the ring in 2012 2016.
This ad takes you to Martin O’Malley/Anthony Brown campaign’s home page.
But after they get one right, they put up an ad for the Freedom Works teabagger AstroTurf 9/12 rally. (sorry, no link to those evil f%$#s, not even with the “nofollow” tag.)
I wonder why about 95% of the political ads that show up on my page are all about conservative causes though.
As for the rest, they seem to be HAMP scams.
**sigh**
Offline for 3 Days
It’s Rosh Hashanah starting this evening, so between this and the Shabbos* following I am offline until Saturday evening, though I have queued stuff various non time-sensitive stuff up, so scroll down.
Note that this notice will stay at the top of the blog until Saturday evening.
*The Jewish Sabbath, which runs from Friday evening through Saturday Sundown.
Deep Thought
Why yes, it does apply to me.
How to Link to People When You Do Not Want to Raise their Google™ Page Rank
Frequently people who I consider to be bad actors say things that I want to note.
In a blog, of course, you are supposed to link to them, that is what the World Wide Web is supposed to be about.
On the other hand, I do not want to drive traffic to their site.
One way of handling it, as I do with Associated Press stories, is to find alternate links. (here Google News is your friend)
Well, our good friends at Tech Crunch have provided an alternate, and somewhat less severe way to handle this, the nofollow tag, which tells Google not to follow the tag, so you won’t boost their google page ranking.
Here is an example from the Wiki:
<a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>discount drugs</a>
The tag was created by Google, but Yahoo, Ask.com, and Bing also follow this convention.
I’m not sure under which circumstances I would employ this tag, as opposed to finding an alternate link, except, perhaps, when there is no alternate link.
Some Meta on Comments
I’ve been having intermittent problems with comments not showing up on my “recent comments” widget, and I thought that it was some sort of problem with the hand off between JS-Kit comment system and blogger.
It turns out that it wasn’t.
Blogger introduced an anti-spam system for their comments, basically diverts some comments to the spam folder.
Unfortunately, the filters catch about ½ of the comments, they seem to favor shorter comments.
In any case, I’ve added a tab to my Firefox start with the spam box, so any comment you make should show up in 24 hours, 48 on weekends.
I’m sure that I’ll appreciate the spam filtering once I get enough readers to attract spammers, but right now it’s a pain.
The Recent Comments Widget Still Appears to Be Fracked
It is still only updating intermittently,
Sorry.
A Bit of Meta
There seems to be a problem with the “recent comments” widget, and recent comments are not showing up, unless someone from JS-Kit is posting, or so it seems.
If it keeps not working, I’ll rip out JS-Kit by the roots and go back to blogger’s rather brain dead comment managent, until I find something else.
As it stands right now, there are about 3 of my posts (1 apology and 1 test), and 1 post from a reader (Hi, John) on this post have not yet shown up.
I’m Back
Back from the Shabbaton, dealing with 4 days without caffeine (trying to detox), and trying to catch up on the news.
Light Posting for 2-3 Days
The family is off to a shabbos* religious retreat (Shabbaton), and so I will be away from my computer until sometime Sunday.
I do have a few things queued up, so scroll down to see them.
*Jewish Sabbath.
Clovis’s Lobotomy Scar! What the F%$#?
Remember when I posted about Barry Ritholtz’s masterful take-down of the ongoing scam that is the Glen Beck Goldline scam?
What? You don’t?
Look at my last post, including the informative graphic.
That’s it, just scroll down a bit……Do you see it not?……Good!
Now, look to your left, where the tall banner ad is.
What do you see? Why it’s an ad from the scamming pig-felching rat bastards at Goldline!
If you don’t see it, here is the add, with the phone number obscured.
You see, Google™ Adsense™ is at it again.
I’m beginning to think that they don’t use computers, but instead they use trained monkeys to determine which ads to serve!
If they aren’t serving scammers, or right wingers like Fred Thompson pitching extension of the Bush Tax cuts, then they are pitching spammers like Constant Contact.
Unfortunately, I am way too small a fish to attract anyone else…………I dream of the day when I qualify for Blogads.
<Banghead>………</Banghead>
Again, as always, please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.
Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.
A Bit of Meta
I’ll be trimming my blogroll over the next week or so.
All of the entries, but there is the time to read them, so I need to do a bit of a cost/benefit analysis.
Additionally, for a number of the more heavily trafficked blogs, I tend to find stuff that most interests me through links from other sites.
Google™ Adsense™ Screws the Pooch Again
Yep, Fred Thompson, whose presidential campaign I called the Fred Thompson Clown Show, is now pimping a website dedicated to preserving George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the very rich.
And through the magic of Google™ Adsense™, they are buying ads on my blog to sell this scam.
Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.
Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.