The Chatterbox

September 11, 2009

Tools and the Google API

Just a quick note for those how may be using some of the tools available here. Namely those using the All In Title or Common Link tools and trying to query Google via the old SOAP API.

Yes I am aware those tools are not currently working as expected. Jill notified me yesterday that a custom built AIT tool I'd made for her internal use some time ago had stopped working and was producing an error message. I've tested it here with my versions too, and they're also not working as expected.

It appears, at first glance anyway, that Google may have disabled their SOAP servers that were delivering information via the old SOAP API. I'm not 100% positive this is what's happening yet and have a query out to try to confirm that they've intentionally disabled SOAP requests, but that's what it looks like is happening.

In all honesty I figured this day would come eventually. It only makes sense considering they stopped issuing SOAP keys many years ago now. In fact, they even stopped answering questions on the SOAP Google Group well over a year ago, so the writing was definitely on the wall. It is however going to have a detrimental effect on literally thousands of scripts out there, not just the couple where I've integrated the SOAP API calls to gather data.

I've seen no official or even semi-official announcements on the subject yet, so am unable to confirm if this is a temporary problem or the final nail in the coffin. But I'm trying to get the information. Update: It's confirmed, the SOAP API servers are gone and gone for good. More updates from yours truly at the end. Unfortunately if it's gone it's simply going to be gone and I'm either going to have to remove those tools that use a Google API or in the case of the Common Link finder simply remove the Google search results from the options.

Though I could certainly script a little scraper to get the information, I'm not going to. Not only is that against Google's TOS, but it's simply bad form IMHO. And to knowledge the other API Google started offering when they stopped sending out SOAP API's just won't work for these tools. Or at least won't work for free tools because there would be a cost involved to start using that method.

Sorry for the bad news, but it is what it is. If you have any problems with it, tell Google to turn their SOAP servers back on.

Additional Update: I will not be converting any of my tools over to Google's Ajax APIs. Not because I don't want to have support for Google, but because their Ajax/REST method has returned buggy information since day one, and even years after the fact they've chosen to allow the bugs to live on. Bad data is worse than useless as far as I'm concerned. It's dangerous! Why? Because it could cause some people who trust the data to be correct to make some very bad business decisions.

I simply will not be a party to spreading such misinformation when I know it's there. Only Google can fix it, and I think it's safe to say after 2 years of bug reports on most of the issues they're not going to magically get fixed now.

Looks like that's the end of Google's API. Well, cept for the one they pay lip service to but have mangled so badly it's useless to real developers who want to do anything even a millimeter outside the box Google has painted everybody into.

Posted by Randy at 09:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 25, 2009

Creating Water Drops in Photoshop

This is a short Photoshop tutorial of one method to create water drops on a glass containing cooler liquid, mimicking a glass sweating. There are several ways to attain this effect.

A friend saw an image I'd done the other day and asked how I accomplished making the bottle look like it was sweating and had water droplets of condensation on the glass. There are several ways to do this in Photoshop, depending upon exactly what you need.

Some are easier to use, some are harder. In this case it was easier because I didn't really need any distortion effect beneath the waterdrops since there weren't any letters on the glass. So I used a method that allows me to add water drops to any image in literally any image in a couple of minutes.

The key to droplets is that when they occur in nature, no matter whether it's condensation or rain, there is a certain randomness involved. Meaning not all of the water drops are the same size. Nor are they positioned in any kind of set pattern. You need both of these elements no matter what method you use.

So with all of this said here's a quick and dirty tutorial, with all the steps and screen shots, of the easiest way I've found to make groups of water drops in Photoshop.
First, we need an image to start with. I've chosen a photo of a glass of iced tea sitting on a deck rail with some green growth in the background. You can right click and save this image if you want to play along.

1. Launch your Photoshop and open the image file you plan to work with. Press the D key to set the Default colors to black foreground and white background.

Next, if your Layers Palette isn't already open press the F7 key to open it.

2. Then select the Create New Layer button. This is a button along the bottom of the Layer Palette, in the position noted in the image to the right.

3. With the new layer created and selected (it selects automatically) press the Ctrl along with the Delete key (Ctrl + Del) to fill the new layer with a white color. Your image should now look similar to the one below.

(Brief Aside: I'm on a Windows PC so the keyboard shortcuts are for Windows users. If you're on a Mac substitute the Command key for the Ctrl key and the Option key when I say to use the Alt key.)

Next we're going to use some filters that are built into Photoshop to create our water drops in a nice random pattern. This is going to look funny for a bit, but stick with the entire three step process and you'll have some great water droplets to work with.

4. First filter - Choose Filter > Render > Fibers. The settings I used are shown to the left and are a pretty good starting point, though you can always tweak the settings on any of these filter instructions to change the look, size and placement of the water drops if necessary.

This should leave your image looking like the one below.

5. Our second filter is Filter > Texture > Stained Glass. The settings I used are shown to the right.

Which leaves our image looking like the one below.

6. Our last filter is Filter > Sketch > Plaster using the settings shown to the left.

Which leave us looking like the image below:

7. Now we need to start maniupulating our water drops. So select the Magic Wand from your Tools menu bar as noted in the image to the right. Then click in one of the Black spots of the image to select everything that's black.

The above should leave you with an image looking like the one below, with all of the Black bits being selected.

We're going to delete this Black part. So press your Delete key. Once the Black is deleted choose Select > Deselect (or Command + D if you like keyboard shortcuts) to deselect our area. This should leave your image looking like the one below.

8. Things are a bit harsh yet, aren't they. So let's make it more realistic. Go to your Layer Palette and tweak the Layer Mode and Opacity a bit. I used a Layer Mode of Overlay and an Opacity of 90% as shown in the image to the left.

Your image should now look something like the one below.

We're getting closer now aren't we? We simply have a little clean up work to do. The clean up Which like it would be a lot harder than it actually is, considering we've got water drops all over the place.

9. With your water droplets layer still selected in the Layer Palette, and it should be already if you haven't clicked around any, choose the Add Layer Mask icon in your Layer Palette, as noted to the right.

To make sure we have our colors set right, press your D key to set the Mask default color options, then press the X key to inverse them. This should leave you with Black as the foreground color and White as the background color.

10. Now select the Lasso from your Tools menu as noted in the image on the left. Using the Lasso tool draw a loose selection around the tea in the glass. Basically what you want to do here is draw a lasso around everything that you want to have water drops, because we'll be using it to mass delete all of the extra water droplets. Don't stress over your Lasso too much though. This is simply a shortcut to save us a little time. Your Lasso doesn't have to be perfect, as you can see from the image of my Lasso drawing below.

Note however that when I drew my Lasso I went just around the tea inside the glass, leaving parts of the glass outside of the Lasso selection. That'll help speed things up a bit in the next step. Not necessary, just nice.

11. With your Lasso drawn we need to invert the selection, so that we're selecting everything outside of our tea. So select Select > Inverse (or Command + I) and then press and hold your Alt key and press the Delete button.

Next deselect everything with Select > Deselect, which should leave you with an image like the one below.

12. Our water drops are all there and somewhat random, however they're just a bit too well-formed to look natural. It's time for final clean up. Select the Brush icon from your menu bar and set it up to be a rather large, soft brush similar to the settings shown in the image to the right. Using this brush "paint" around the edges of your tea and you'll see that this removes unwanted water drops. As shown in the image below.

13. Now set your brush to still be soft, but a bit smaller, similar to the settings shown in the image to the left. Using this brush paint around over the remaining water droplets individually in a somewhat random manner. This will provide the non-uniformity seen in nature. Leave some water drops more well formed, and paint others more so they are less pronounced. At this point I typically reduce the Opacity just a bit too, to around 80%, so that too much doesn't get removed too quickly. This is noted in the image below.

If you overdo it on any of the droplets you can use Ctrl + Z to step back one action. Or Alt + Ctrl + Z if you need to step back multiple steps. Both of those are available in your Edit menu as well.

When you're pretty sure you're done walk away from your computer for 5 minutes or so, or minimize your Photoshop and do something else for a moment. Then look at it again (glancing or scanning really) to see if it looks realistic. When you're done you should have an image with water drops that looks something like the one below.

You can then save it as a .jpg file for use on the web, and you might also want to save it as a .psd Photoshop file, just in case you decide you need to come back and edit it more later. Saving it as a .psd preserves your layers. I tend to save them as both.

I hope the above helps someone out there trying to figure out a quick and easy way to add water drops to an image. The same technique can be used on all types of images to produce both condensation and rain effects. About the only time you'd need to take on one of the more difficult methods, where you create the individual water drops one-at-a-time, is if you have a close-up view that has text or something underneath the water drops that needs to be refracted and distorted.

Posted by Randy at 07:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 24, 2009

Google Chrome Extensions - Highlight Nofollow Links

For those who hadn't yet noticed, the Chrome team over at Google recently started to allow the use of Extensions for their browser. I caught wind of it while reading recent blog entry over at Matt Cutts' blog. Or if you want the developer info there's a new page up in the Chromium Developers at Google.

As a bit of a warning, this is brand new and is pretty limited at the moment. The main limit being that at this point in time one can only have one extension installed for Chrome. According to what I've read Extensions are available only in the latest versions of the Developer version of Chrome, and possibly the Beta 2 version of the non-developer version. And as of this time they haven't yet made easy use of CSS available via extensions.

FTR, I've been using the Developer version of Chrome for some time now and have never run into any major problems. So even though it's more of a bleeding edge choice, it's not a bad one. If you want or need to upgrade to the Dev version you can do that here.

The One Extension limitation is a serious one for me. I've got a couple of extensions I've gotten used to over the years. The big two for me being an Ad Blocker and having the ability to easily see Nofollow links. Ad Blocking I accomplish via my hosts files, as opposed to doing it with a browser extension. So it's no biggie. I have however missed having the ability to see nofollow's without viewing the source code.

Thankfully, that's now easy. In fact, I didn't even have to write any new code to pull it off. I found I could simply save the javascript for a Greasemonkey highlighter, then let Chrome know where it is via a manifest file. It's easy to do too. Following are the files you need and some quick and dirty instructions, in case you use Chrome and want the ability to see nofollow's.

First, save these two files to your hard drive.
manifest.json
highlight-nofollow.js

Or alternatively you can grab both files in this zip file.

You can put these anywhere on your hard drive. I have chosen to make a new directory at C:\chromeextensions to keep everything orderly. So my instructions will assume you've created a folder of the same name and placed the files in it.

Once you have the two files saved in this new directory it's simply a matter of letting Chrome know the extension is there. You do this by editing the startup instructions for Chrome.

So right click on the Chrome icon on your desktop and go to the Shortcut tab. There you should see something like the following in the Target line.

"C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"

You'll want to add a couple of things to the end of this line to enable extensions and tell Chrome where you've saved them. After editing the above line should look like:

"C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --enable-extensions --load-extension="c:\chromeextensions"

Basically you're adding --enable-extensions to tell Chrome to enable Extensions, the telling Chrome where your extensions are located on your computer with --load-extension="c:\chromeextensions"

That's it, that's all. Click OK to save your changes. Then shut down and restart Chrome and you should have your nofollow highlighter installed and working. It'll automatically put a pink background color behind any links that are nofollow'd on any page you visit in Chrome.

Note: If you changed the c:\chromeextensions path I'm using you'll need to make a quick edit to the Shortcut edit. No other changes should be necessary since I use a referential reference to the javascript file in the manifest.json file.

Enjoy it! And look for more to be coming soon. Since it's so darned easy to port over these extensions I expect they'll be hitting the 'Net pretty quickly, as soon as the Chrome team beefs up the Extensions capabilities of Chrome a bit more.

Posted by Randy at 06:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 29, 2009

Bailout or Stimulus?

So here in the US there's this huge debate about what the Fed's are talking about doing to infuse a ton of money in hopes of spurring an economic recovery. That's all well and good as far as I'm concerned, since frankly it was the Fed's fault things got as bad as they have. (I could go on and on on that subject, but it's too late to change the past so why bother.)

Now there's this debate about whether the current proposal is a bailout, or a stimulus. Proponents are calling it a Stimulus plan. Opponents are couching it in terms of a Bailout.

I consider the current plan a Bailout, though for reasons that are entirely different than others.

Here's the deal as far as I'm concerned.

1. You can't call it a Stimulus when all you're doing is handing money to other government bodies and some quasi-governmental entities.
2. It's not going to create the jobs President Obama wants to see. For several reasons. One of the main ones being the time frame restrictions being put on the funding. (For those unaware, the plan as it's currently being discussed says the Fed's have to distribute all of the money within 60 days, and the recipients have to have their project "in the dirt" as it were within 120 days.

   Anybody who has ever paid attention to how government works knows it usually takes more than 120 days for the planning stage of most larger, more significant projects. Heck, it can take 60-90 days just to get a city council to agree to go ahead with a project. At which point they still need to go out to bid to find an architect, who then needs another 3 months to create the plans.

   What does this mean? Governments will be using the money to pay for projects they already had planned and on the books. Not much new will happen. It'll just be that someone else is paying the bill for already planned projects.



3. The planning part is going to quickly become a weak link. There are only so many architects, and it's not like those firms can magically ramp up their staffing 500% to service all of these new client projects they're going to have. Architects have to go to school and be licensed, remember?

   So as I pointed out above, if the drawings haven't already been completed, or at least started, there's no chance to meet the 120 day requirement. Does this mean the Fed's are going to change the requirement? Or what happens to money that is devoted to a project that isn't "in the dirt" in 120 days.



4. We all know the initial 750 billion bailout of the banks was basically wasted cash. They got the money with no strings attached, and in large part didn't do anything with it to help the economy or the failing credit market. Sad but true. Instead they used it shored up their own companies.


5. What makes anyone think state and local governments are any more trustworthy than the banks? They're not. They're going to look out for themselves and their friends first and foremost. And are used to making large sums of money disappear in a puff of smoke.

   Hell, here in Missouri the other day our new Governor proposes to use $809 million dollars he expects to get in this bailout (no clue where he gets that figure!) to balance the state budget! No new roads, no new bridges even though we have several hundred that are falling down, no new programs unless you count reinstating some programs that were cut back a few years ago as being "new". Tell me how that $809 million is going to create new jobs? Oh and he's talking about cutting 10% or so of the state's employee's at the same time too. The budget after all has to be balanced (it's a state constitutional requirement here) and he made a lot of campaign promises. (Hey, I voted for the guy, so I've got a right to complain! LOL)



6. The only new jobs this money is going to create as it is currently structured is in the construction industry. But these aren't going to be sustainable jobs, because as soon as the jobs are done the construction companies are going to be forced to lay people off again. Apparently nobody is looking to see what's going to happen a year or two down the road.

Okay, okay, so I should stop complaining since it's the only plan out there, right?

Well, I typically don't bitch about stuff unless I have a solution. Or at least an idea for one. ;)

I do in fact have a stimulus plan. It's basic, but it would work. And further it would not only create the 2+ million New Jobs the President has set as a target, but would stand a lot better chance of succeeding over a much longer time frame.

In a nutshell, instead of giving that trillion or whatever amount they end up doling out to government or local industry, invest it in People and their dreams. People are simply more trustworthy than either government or large corporations.

Here's Randy's Stimulus Plan

Take applications from People who want to start their own small business. Don't limit the type of business, as long as it's legal, but do make it a requirement that it be a New Business. So no corps get a penny. Nor do current small businesses. (Though I wouldn't freak out if these were allowed to apply as long as you put an upper valuation limit on the applicant. Say maybe 2 million cap.)

Don't invest in the company. Invest in the person wanting to start a business. Give each approved applicant $1 million dollars to get started. This gives us somewhere between 835,000 and 1,000,000 brand new businesses, depending upon the final funding figure. Then set a few, logical and quite attainable restrictions.

1. The applicant must be able to start their new business, at least ready to open the doors, within 60 days of funding.
2. The business must rent or buy some type of office or warehouse space. This also has to be accomplished in the first 60 days. Home businesses are nice, but we're looking to stimulate the economy here. And influx of 835,000 to 1 million new offices would have a drastic effect on the current malaise in the commercial real estate market.
3. Each new business must employ at least two people. Full time. With a wage of at least $50,000 per year, but not more than $100,000 for the first two years. Again, this must be done in the first 60 days. One of these wages can be paid to the applicant. The other has to be someone who is not an immediate family member. No nepotism. Both (required) employees must work at the registered office to make sure nobody pulls anything too funny. If there are additional employees they can telecommute, but at least two need work out of the office space.
4. All 1 million of startup capital must be spent within 5 years. There are no restrictions on how it can be spent, as long as it's a legitimate business expense.
5. Throw a little money at the US Small Business Association in the 2009 budget to help these new, first-time business owners plan a budget, work out a marketing plan, etc, etc. Encourage the successful applicants to make use of public and private Business Incubators that may be available in their area. And of course to get involved with their local Chamber of Commerce.

And that's about it. Pretty simple, hunh?

American's throughout time have always had this dream of owning their own business. Some attain it. Most do not, even though they could. Usually because they do not have the kind of capital available to them to get started. A million is a nice little nest egg that the vast majority of small businesses never had the luxury of starting out with.

The big initial advantage is that you'll get an immediate infusion into local economies. Not only in the commercial real estate with those 1 million new office leases. But also in all of the office desks, computers, filing cabinets, phones, etc that will need to be purchased. Several industries, all of which already exist and are hurting, will get a piece of the pie.

You also immediately get your 2 million new jobs. Simple math. One million new businesses with a requirement that each have at least 2 employees. That's 2 million jobs if everyone only does the minimum. And it happens within 60 days of funding. And each employee is guaranteed at least a living wage. Not extravagant by any stretch of the imagination, but lots of folks are working 60+ hours per week and bringing home less than $50K per year.

Better yet, these are not Temp jobs, like would be the case with the way the current plan is structured. As long as the businesses survive there will always be at least 2 employees. For the applicants that are more successful, there will be a lot more than 2 employees a year or two down the road.

The local, state and federal governments get an influx tax revenue, starting with the 2009 tax year. From the business taxes, personal taxes and sales taxes as the new business makes sales or the employees buy stuff at their local store. Schools get more tax money to spend too.

In effect you tap into the ideal of the American Dream, giving it wings and an excellent chance to succeed. You Empower people to become their own boss and own their own business, then you get the heck out of their way and let the do it!

Sounds simple doesn't it?

Okay, let's let the naysayers have some input.

They'd say:

We're never going to get that money back since it's basically a grant to a few (1 million is a few?) individuals.

True. But are we going to get back any of the money in the current plan? I've not seen where anybody is going to be repaying anything to the Feds.

You can't trust people to do the right thing with that much!

Well, true up to a point. On the other hand it's a certainty that you can't trust Big Business or Government entities to do the things that would actually help the economy. Just like normal people they're going to help themselves first.

That's the beauty here. We want the people who get the money are totally selfish. Because the more selfish they are, the more they're in it to get themselves set for Life, the better everything will turn out. They'll work harder to make their business a success.

Are you nuts? People will take the million and disappear!

Some might try. That's fraud though, isn't it? So when you catch 'em you put 'em in jail. As a side note, we've already seen the financial system bailout money used that way. But I haven't seen anybody being charged or going to jail.

Do you know how many new businesses fail?

Yes I do. Though the old figures of 50% failing in the first year and 95% within the first five years isn't exactly true.

The SBA statistics show that 66% of new employer establishments survive at least two years. 44% survive at least four years.

Still that's not great. Slightly less than half will be here four years from now by the stats.

But...and it's a big BUT, riddle me this. What is the #1 reason for small businesses to fail so early?

Yep, you guessed it. Being severely under-capitalized from the get go. They don't have a million dollars to work with to get things rolling. So the owner spends the first several years bootstrapping, living paycheck to paycheck, both on a business and personal level.

With proper assistance from the SBA, Chambers of Commerce and hopefully also from business incubators across the country, I'd be willing to bet that the failure rate for these special companies would be closer to 20% or less during the first five years. And five years down the road the economy, heck the world itself, is likely to be quite different from today. Hopefully better, but there are no guarantees in life.

And for every one that fails it's a reasonable expectation that two others would have been successful enough to expand and make up the difference.

So tell me Mr. President and our leaders in Washington DC. Why are you making this bailout/stimulus so convoluted and difficult? Especially when the answer to all of the things on your wish list is right here, and is something everyone could get behind.

Empower your people, and encourage the Dream!

Posted by Randy at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 29, 2008

He's baaaaaaack (aka Where the heck has Randy been?)

Yeah, yeah... I know I've been neglecting my personal blog for a couple of months. Again. Sorry, but I was incredibly busy with several projects. Busy with my own e-comm sites, of course --you know ... the ones that pay the bills -- as well as getting a couple of new things ready to launch after the first of the year and helping out a few friends with their web sites.

For those wondering, no I don't normally announce new parts of The Kingdom here, but I will tell you one of the new sites will be all about Bidness on the Web. Specifically it's going to be a series of guides teaching how to set up and run tests to improve conversions. Along with software recommendations to make the job considerably easier.

Think of it as a guide (actually several guides since one would get too big) that doesn't require any previous conversion testing knowledge or experience.

I've also been donating some time to help out a few friends during what I think everyone can agree is a stretch of tough economic times. Folks who were on the cusp of being hugely successful or just breaking even have taken a pretty good hit based upon what I hear from those I talk to. It's just not a good time to be in business if you didn't already have a cushion built up, let alone if you're not very imaginative.

Everybody seems worried that it's something they're doing. I'm here to tell ya it's probably not anything you're doing or not doing. Well not directly anyway, though there are always things you can do that'll improve your situation. The reality is most e-comm sites have seen a decrease in revenue in the last 8-12 months. How much of a decrease seems to depend largely upon if the product/service being sold was a Necessity, or was simply something nice to have. Though there are always things you can do to help stave off and manage such decreases in times like these.

One positive thing I will say about these tough economic times is that they've apparently kick started more people into paying a lot more attention to how well their site currently converts visitors into buyers. This shift of focus makes a good bit of sense when you think about it. Traffic isn't cheap, so when money is tight it becomes more important to spend your advertising dollars wisely and convert more visitors into customers.

I noticed this new anomaly because I've had a lot more people asking me to help them with their site conversions over the past 6 months or so. Lots of people who are completely willing to pay for consulting services if it'll help, even though most of them know before asking that I don't consult for hire anymore. This is a promising development IMHO, even if it's one that had to be forced on business owners by some fairly shaky times.

Folks just don't have much extra cash laying around these days. And even those that do are being pretty stingy with it. I fall into the same general category. Though I've not stopped my spending dead in its tracks like some have, I am a lot more selective about how and where I spend my money.

This is the new reality tegardless of whether it's a personal spend or a business spend. Though I do freely admit to having spent a fair chunk of change in the last month getting a couple of things for the business that I needed. And I admit to making the purchasing decisions before the first of the year, mainly so that I can claim those purchases on my taxes when I compile and file them next month. (I like to get all of the tax stuff out of the way in January so I can get back to business!) I'm making these purchases now as opposed to buying in January or February and not getting the tax deduction for many, many months.

I figure if I'm going to spend it in the next couple of months anyway, I might as well spend it in 2008. I'm sure my purchases have made a few somebody's quite happy, since each purchase was in the thousands of dollars range.

What was the point of this posting anyway? Oh yeah, those friends I've been helping out. There are actually two things to cover, but I think I'll get those in another quick post or two, considering my rambling has gone on too long in this one already!

Posted by Randy at 08:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 31, 2008

x64 and Acrobat

Just a quick little addition I've been meaning to get posted for the better part of a month now. This harks back to the Getting Windows XP x64 to work post of a few months ago.

One particularly maddening thing with my switch to XP x64 was that while Acrobat (version 7 in my case) installed and worked for the most part, it did so as a WoW enabled 32 bit application. This means it doesn't work as a browser plug in for the 64 bit version of IE7, which isn't a huge deal. It just opens PDF's in an Acrobat window instead, which is fine by me. Better in most cases actually.

The thing that was maddening is that the ability to pen something in Word or any other application then save it as a PDF failed to work on an x64 system. The issue is the print drivers (and a PDF Port) being unable to be installed by Acrobat on an x64 system. This situation still continues today, though there is a rumor that Adobe might finally be fixing the problem by making Acrobat 9 x64 capable. I have no clue on that one since I'm not about to pay that much to upgrade just for something this silly. I'd sooner dump Acrobat and use CutePDF, PDF Creator or a host of other options out there that are either completely free or very low cost. Which is why it makes no sense to me that Adobe allowed this to go on so long.

There is something of a workaround I've set up for now on my system, though I personally think it's silly to have to make it a two-step process. This works okay for me since I really don't need to convert that many documents myself. In case you're in the same boat I am, here's how I did it and got it to work.

First, you'll need to install a Postscript printer driver. Note that this doesn't have to actually be a printer you have attached to your computer since it's going to be a virtual printer for our purposes. To do this go into your Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel if you're using the Classic Windows start menu like me, or Start > Control Panel if you're using the newer start menu) and select the Printers and Faxes icon.

There select the Add Printer icon.

In the Add Printer Wizard select Local printer attached to this computer and make sure the Automatically detect option is NOT selected.

In the next window choose FILE: (Print to File) form the Use the following port dropdown list. We're doing this here so that we don't have to remember to choose Print To File each time we go to save a document.

In the Printer Software window select HP from the Manufacturer box and HP Color LaserJet 8500 PS from the Printers box. The PS is important, since we want it to use Postscript.

It would be wise for you to select No to the Default Printer question. This is just a virtual printer after all.

That's it, you're done with the driver set up. Well I did go back into the Printers and Faxes window, right clicked on the new 8500 PS printer listed there and renamed it to be Adobe PDF so that I'd know what it was.

Now when you're in Word or whatever and want to convert the document to PDF format instead of clicking on the Acrobat stuff up to, select File > Print and select your Adobe PDF printer. If you didn't set the Port to FILE: you'll need to make sure to select Print to file before clicking OK. If you set it up as above you shouldn't have to remember to do this each time.

This will open a Print To File window. Change the .prn to All Files if it's automatically selected and name your file with whatever file name you want along with a .ps extension.

Lastly back in Acrobat choose Create PDF, then From File and select your .ps file. Now it should be converted to pdf format, ready to be saved.

Like I said above, the two-step process would be a pain if you had to do this often. If that is the case you should probably check out some of the x64 enabled options for PDF creation I mentioned earlier. But for those like me who do this rarely, it works at least.

Posted by Randy at 01:34 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 12, 2008

Getting Windows XP x64 (64 bit) to work

As some of you know, recently I've been playing with switching my main system over from Windows XP Pro, the 32 bit version, to Windows XP Pro x64, the 64 bit version. The reason behind my testing this is that every version of Windows 32 bit software limits you to a maximum of 3 Gigs of usable RAM memory. You can stick as much RAM in your system as you want, assuming your motherboard supports it, and Windows doesn't care.

Technically speaking, Windows XP Pro will tell you that it supports up to 4 gigs of RAM. However even if you stick in only 4 gigs if RAM, which is not all that out of line in these days of high end graphic applications, Windows will keep you from using that last gig. They set that aside for PCI, without ever looking to see if your PCI cards have their own onboard memory.

It's silly. But I think I understand way. My guess is that with the networking capabilities of XP Pro they're afraid people will buy it and use it to run servers instead of running a true Server version of Microsoft software. Whatever the reason, I think it's silly. Bordering on stupid.

So I decided to take on trying to install XP Pro x64, which has a maximum supported RAM figure of a whopping 128 gigs. (I'm not even going to try to explain that one. Makes no sense at all!)

I did have a choice of trying to move to Vista x64, which might be wise since XP is bound to be coming up on its EOL or End of Life cycle. But I've heard enough bad things about Vista that I don't want to make that leap. At least not with my main computer.

So... To make sure I was reasonably ready I had a new motherboard installed in my computer (the old one would only handle up to 4 gigs and I wanted more) and purchased another couple of 2 gig ram sticks that matched up with my other ram sticks.

The issue with changing things to x64 is the general lack of driver support for hardware. It's not that widely used yet so finding the right drivers can be troublesome according to everything I'd read and heard.

I got lucky in this because I was putting in a new Intel (model DG965SS) motherboard, and Intel does have x64 driver support. Other than this one rather major item, the only other things I had to sort out were drivers for my ATI x1300 Dual Monitor graphics card and my Linksys Wireless-G ethernet card.

The ATI card was a piece of cake. They also had an x64 driver set available. The only issue I ran into when installing it was that the default .NET version on my XP Pro x64 disk wasn't up to snuff with what ATI wanted. Quick fix on that one, assuming one could get internet connectivity.

The Linksys Wireless-G ethernet driver was a bit more challenging. I couldn't find where Linksys has 64 bit drivers at all. But lo and behold I figured out that Linksys uses either Broadcom or Ralink drivers for my version of the wireless ethernet card, depending upon when it was manufactured. Mine was a Ralink chipset, but it wouldn't have mattered since both Ralink and Broadcom provide 64 bit drivers for these cards.

I had done most of my research before I started, so didn't have too many unexpected problems. In all it took me about 24 hours between other work to get the x64 sorted and running. The way I did it was to install XP Pro x64, then installed all of the Intel updates that I'd previously downloaded (with crappy graphics since I didn't have the ATI stuff installed yet), the moved on to the ATI card drivers I'd already downloaded and lastly the NIC card drivers from Ralink.

After all of that was done I let the computer do its upgrades from Microsoft, rebooting and re-updating after each one until there were no more critical or necessary updates waiting for me. Seriously, in my case it was all pretty painless, though others have told horror stories. I would imagine preparation was 99% of the reason I had an easier time of it.

The other thing that probably made it easier for me was in how I was doing the upgrade, or really testing things. You see I have SATA hard drives in the computer now, which was one of the side advantages of replacing my motherboard. Unlike IDE hard drives where you have to set the switches to tell the computer which is the master and which is the slave, with SATA you simply hook 'em up and go. Then you can go into your BIOS and set the boot order.

So while I may call it a dual boot system, it's not in the traditional sense. Instead I have two totally different systems, with XP Pro (32 bit) installed on one 250 gig Western Digital drive and XP Pro x64 installed on a separate 250 gig Western Digital drive. I can toggle back and forth between which boots by making a quick change in my BIOS boot order.

If you can do it this way I'd definitely suggest doing it this way. Not only does this approach save you some heartache when you need to go back to x32 to grab another driver like I had to, since they're completely separate you don't have to worry nearly as much about messing something up.

At the end of the day the only things I couldn't get working properly were an older version of Acronis' True Image backup software (I had version 8 from a year or so back) that simply doesn't support x64 at all. However for a $30 upgrade I moved up a couple of versions and it's now supported. According to their docs Acronis started supporting 64 bit apps during their version 9. I just upgraded to 10 to be sure.

The only thing I never got working at all was Computer Associates Anti-Virus suite. They tell me they don't have a solution currently, period end of discussion. I saw some posts in various places about disabling Floppy scanning in CA/AV, but that didn't work for me. I still couldn't get realtime scanning to work. Support told me they had no solution to the problem.

No biggie. I've got multiple computers and a multi-computer license with CA, so the license can always be used somewhere. And Avast! has a 64 bit version of their anti-virus software that works just fine for me.

All of my other software worked just fine in x64. This includes Office, Powerpoint, Excel, PhotoImpact, PhotoShop, Acrobat Pro, Putty my SSH software to talk to the servers, WSFTP, etc, etc. They all work flawlessly, I suspect because of x64's WOW module that runs 32 bit apps.

I did have to also make a couple of small registry tweaks to get x64 working as well as I thought it should with 6 gigs of RAM, however I'm not sure if those were because of my specific system configuration or if it's a general thing everyone should do. The only time I noticed a problem was after XP came back from being in screensaver mode, so my performance improvement may have come from me simply changing some configs so that nothing goes into standby or hibernation when the screen saver is activated.

In any event if you try this and need the registry tweaks you can find the same documents I used by searching Google for something like "speed up xp x64"

Next up, I'm going to be playing with installing a Desktop Linux OS on a third drive. Hey, I have 4 SATA ports on the motherboard and want to test one against the other in my everyday working environment. And hard drives are cheap these days. So I'm going to keep them all separate.

I think I'm going to try Ubuntu Linux, but my first (quick) attempts have run into problems. Ubuntu doesn't even want to fully install on my system, so something is throwing it for a loop. I'm not sure if that's my graphics card (the ATI is supposedly a problem child with Ubuntu), my Wireless ethernet card or something else. I mention the wireless card because Ubuntu looks for network stuff during it's initial setup. But because my wireless network is WEP password protected it'll never be able to connect to the network until I can give it a keyphrase, which it never does during the install. I'm not even positive that it's detecting the wireles card though. It may be looking for a network via the wired cat5 port on my motherboard.

Anyway, that'll be next up. I haven't had much time to dig into it yet. Just tried a couple of quick installs and they failed.

If I get it working though it'll be a good thing. I'll be able to compare the performance of one OS against another easily since they'll each be fully enclosed on their own hard drive, and I'll be able to swtich back and forth pretty easily via BIOS. Though I must admit I can't recall of anybody ever having a Tri-boot system before. LOL

Until next time...

Posted by Randy at 09:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 24, 2007

Comments, Trackbacks, etc

Just a bit of housekeeping with this post.

I have (at least temporarily) reactivated Comments and Trackbacks in the blog. You can thank or blame Craig for this, depending upon your view on the matter. ;-)

As I explain previously these were disabled because of the amount of spam the blog seemed to attract, coupled with the fact that I don't have 2 or 3 hours per day to moderate this domain. Which is what it was requiring.

I'm not going to lay out everything I'm doing in this little test, but here are a couple of things real people posting comments will want to do or not do as the case may be.

1. You'll see a new field on the comments form that asks you what my first name is. Think of this as a dumb CAPTCHA, since I really don't want to have to enabled a full CAPTCHA because I know there are are some sight-impaired users out there who read my blog. Simply input my first name (randy or Randy, it's case insensitive) and you'll go on through.

2. Since most spammers are trying to get their URLs into other people's blogs, I've set up the system I'm testing to automatically block any comment or trackback that mentions more than 2 URLs. As a link or non-linked text. I may up this later, but for testing purposes I want to start out strict. So when you're posting make sure you do not include more than 2 url addresses anywhere in the post. This goes for both the URL and Comments fields combined. Got it? No more than 2 urls anywhere.

Also know that during testing I'll still be manually moderating comments and trackbacks. This has to be done to make sure the spammers can't get through the various filters I have set up. So don't expect your comments to show up immediately. Though I certain appreciate comments and feedback, I'll get to 'em when I get to 'em. This site simply isn't my main focus. My sites that make me a living are.

Also, don't expect to see any error message if your comment gets caught up in the filters. To give a detailed error message would give the spammers a leg up in reverse engineering the several layers of checks I'm performing. So it's going to look like everything went through, even though it may have gotten headed off by the spam checking system.

If I can get it working so that it catches a majority of the spam (by majority I want 99% with as few false positives as possible) I'll open it up more so that comments are immediately visible. In fact, I may tell you exactly what Movable Type plug-ins and other methods I'm using to help keep me sane so that you can use them on your own MT blog.

Posted by Randy at 09:57 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 30, 2007

Taking Shortcuts

Just a little rant from yours truly this morning. And yes I realize it comes down to human nature.

But why, why, why is everybody seemingly always looking for some magical shortcut? Even when they should know that shortcuts almost never lead to success?

This question pops into my mind almost every day. Especially with I'm dealing with or answering questions other webmasters and even experienced SEOs pose. Everybody seems to always be looking for a trick to get higher search engine rankings or more sales. And it just doesn't work that way!

The exact same fundamentals and foundation that worked to get a site to rank highly in the search engines in the prehistoric times of Search a decade ago are the same ones that still work today. Good, basic SEO, dotting all of your i's and crossing all of your t's, building credibility by creating a unique, useful web site and attracting links from other high quality sites is still the best way to make money on the web.

Sure that takes time and a lot of hard work, but there's really no way to shortcut the process in a way that practically guarantees success that will continue month-after-month, year-after-year. If you try to shortcut the process by cheating you may get a little more money up front, but eventually it always comes back to bite you in the butt.

That's just the way the world works.

The same is certainly true if your site is already getting traffic and you're trying to improve conversions. Are there tools and methods you can (and should) use to make the process easier and more understandable? Sure there are!

But this doesn't mean that you can just make up stuff and consider it a valid conversion test. You still need to take the time to construct and run your tests to see what works best for your site and your visitors. This hasn't changed in forever, going back before there even was a World Wide Web if you want to talk Basic Marketing.

Contrary to popular opinion I do understand the urge to do something that brings in more money in the short term. So I understand why people want to shortcut both the rankings optimization and conversion optimization processes. But I'm here to tell you --again, since I've been saying this for years-- that there are no shortcuts to building a quality site that converts well and will make you money over the long term.

What frustrates me most is when a person asks these silly questions, seemingly gets it when told shortcuts don't work, then comes back 6 months later to ask the same basic question because they've read some other "guru's" latest ebook about how to make a killing in two months.

It just doesn't work that way folks!!! So if you really want to build a long-term business that brings you long-term income, forget about all of those Make $50,000 In The Next 60 Days tutorials out there, accept that it takes time and effort to build a business and get back to work!

Posted by Randy at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2006

Spam Filters Update

The filters are really coming along well. I've been quite pleased so far.

I'll need to write some tutorials or something before releasing them because there is going to be a certain amount of personalization that everyone would have to do. But it's not too bad. Nothing that should take more than an hour tops at the beginning anyway.

More as I can find some time. Which isn't going to be this weekend for sure!

Posted by Randy at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2006

Eudora Spam Filters

Over the past couple of weeks I've started developing a new way of building spam filters for my Eudora email client. Dunno why I never realized it before, but until I ran across Cecil's spam filter articles I'd never looked closely enough to see that Eudora filters support REGEX statements.

Note: For the uninitiated REGEX stands for Regular Expresesions and is what are often used when creating RewriteRules for page redirects, creating friendly urls and other server-side stuff. It's not really that difficult to grasp, but is a bit different until you wrap your head around what the different syntax and characters do.

So anyway, back to the story. Cecils stuff is good, but is a bit dated. When I looked into the filters downloads he makes available it appears some of them have not been updated for years. So some of the filters are not necessarily all that good anymore, but the approach is a sound one.

The fun part is really that instead of having 200+ rules for individual spam mail's, I've so far been able to condense it down into around 20 REGEX rules that actually catch more spam ! I can and probably will condense it further since I've been creating some new rules on the fly rather than adding statements to similar existing rules.

At the end of the day this means my Eudora runs much, much more smoothly and is able to zip right through incoming email to decide what to do with it. Additionally, I've so far managed to keep false positives to almost nothing. Which is something of a feat since I get a lot of email from a lot of different places and people. It would be practically impossible for me to whitelist everybody since I don't know who to whitelist until they actually send me email.

As of my last test (last Thursday through earlier today) my new filters had processed a total of 2,773 emails. Of those, the filters correctly caught and Junk-ified all spam mail with only 4 sneaking through. There was one false positive that was also caught, but I know why it was caught. I have a filter that looks for an IMG SRC tag and no text. A gentleman looking for help had sent me an email with a screen capture as an IMG SRC and only a single line of text.

Which sort of brings me to the point of this already-too-long post.

I can see that Eudora saves all of the addresses you send mail to in a file called History.lst. It would be really, really effective if I could somehow set it up so that the data in this file would automatically be added to my Whitelist. After all, I'm not going to be sending mail out to spammers, so if I send mail to someone they should be allowed to automatically bypass my filters.

Does anybody out there know of a way to get this History.lst info into an address book in Eudora so that it's automatically backed up? I would hate to have to create some sort of application to do just this since it seems like such a simple task. One that I'm frankly surprised Eudora doesn't already allow.

If I can overcome this last hurdle it's my intention to release my filters along with instructions on what each does, how to edit them, how to add or subtract from the base rules, etc, etc. What I have right now would work really well for the average person who doesn't run a web site and/or get legitimate mail from a lot of strangers. But this final tweak would make it pretty much bullet proof for everybody.

Let me know if you've got any hints or tips on using History.lst or any other ideas. In the meantime I've posted over on the Eudora forums to see if any of the experts there know of a way to incorporate History.lst into a whitelist.

Posted by Randy at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2006

AOL is *Weird*

Okay, so all of we old-timers who have been online forever know that AOL is weird, but today they've hit a new high on my weird-ness scale. A little history just for fun.

I was originally a member of AOL before AOL even was AOL. Do what? How is that even possible? I hear you say.

Well, see I was a geek back in the 80's too and was actually one of the first members of Q-Link back in November, 1985 because I wanted to get online with my state-of-the-art Commidore C-64 "computer" that had no hard drive and two huge floppy drives. Dialing in long distance at a whopping 2400 kbps, which was screamingly fast in those day. Hey, it was twice as fast as 1200 kbps and much faster than I started out with on my state-of-the-art machine!

Q-Link was one of the original online services (tongue in cheek calling it an online service, but it was one if the biggest and best back in the day... It was actually just a BBS for those who remember what they were) out there in the US. I think I paid something like 10 bucks per month, plus 6 cents per minute I was connected. Not including the long distance dial in number I had to connect to of course.

Eventually Q-Link was one of the services that were snapped up, merged or what have you into a service called America Online, which had this grandiose vision of making the online experience everyone in the US could take part in. Sounds funny today, but back then it wasn't. Somewhere around here I still have some old AOL installation disks to prove that I was there in the beginning. I seem to recall that I have one of the pre-version 1 DOS floppies and the very first Windows version they ever released. I'm really dating myself now aren't I? LOL

I remember the days when my AOL bill to be online used to run in the $1,000 range each month. No, that's not a typo, that's what it used to cost if you were online much. Eventually I became Remote Staff for AOL just to get the free connection perk that all staff got. I got talked into it by a friend of mine. First I was a host in the brand new MTV area of AOL. Eventually I became a Guide also. And a Guide Trainer. For the US first, then also for the UK when their service came online and Canada. It was kind of fun, but I eventually retired from all of it and closed down my AOL account.

There's a quick look at the history.

So anyway, back to the present day.

Several years ago (we're talking 2000 or there abouts) I signed up for an AOL account again because I was going out of town and needed to make sure I had Internet Access. Can you believe that even 5-6 years ago you couldn't get an Internet connection at most hotels? You couldn't unless you had your own ISP, and even then you had to pay whatever phone fees the hotel charged. There was no such thing as WiFi from your room or anywhere else in the hotel.

So I signed up for this AOL account and used it I think 3 or 4 times over the course of a couple of years when I was travelling. No biggie, I just left the account open for their $20 or whatever per month so that I didn't have to sign up, cancel and sign up again each time I was going out of town. I literally didn't use the account at all. Maybe a total of 30 hours over the course of all those years.

So a week or so ago I decide that it's finally time to cancel this account that I never use anymore. I was hoping to be able to do it online, so I installed AOL's software on my computer so that I could log in and cancel it. Yes, you read that right. I didn't even have AOL's software installed on my computer, which should point out how much I used it even though I was paying for it.

Of course you can't cancel online. You have to call in.

So I call the toll free number to cancel the service. Not surprisingly, the address they had on file for me (being several years old) was wrong. It was the place I lived at back around 2000. So I have the guy I spoke with named Sean update the address information because he tells me they'll send out a confirmation letter.

Of course he only tells me this after 20 minutes of trying to keep me with AOL because they have this fantastic Security that no other ISP can offer [cough, cough] and then trying to give me a free month with the stipulation that I need to call back in to cancel or they'll start billing me again in February.

That's weird maybe, considering I obviously hadn't used the service in well over a year since it wasn't even installed on my computer. But that's not the weird part.

(I'm sure after all of this you're waiting for the punchline, right?)

Well, the weird part was that even after correcting the mailing address to my current one --giving it to him twice because he didn't get it the first time and having him read it back to me-- and spending a good 30 minutes on the phone making sure that the account was actually going to be cancelled, they decided to send the cancellation confirmation to ... (wait for it)

My mom's address!

Now I have no earthly clue how they could have gotten that confused. I've never lived at that address and have absolutely no connection with it other than the fact that my mom lives there. In fact, she wasn't even at this address until a couple of years ago, having purchased the house and moved in during 2003.

I'd have never known it except for the fact that we took mom out for dinner tonight and she brought the mail along thinking it might be important. How in the world AOL happened to get the address of my mom, or got lucky enough to hit upon the address of someone related to me, is a mystery.

So I'm just going to chalk it up to AOL being weird...

Posted by Randy at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

November 30, 2005

Randy's been a bad, bad boy...

Yes I know it's been forever since I last posted. About 7 weeks ago to be exact ! I bet you thought some nasty computer virus had killed me didn't you? LOL

I apologize, but I've been incredibly busy for the last couple of months. Between projects I already had running, a couple of new ones I have in process and the beginning of the Holiday shopping season there just are not enough hours in the day. In fact, I was only here tonight to clean out all of those spammy comments that seem to pile up in the blog. You know... The ones you never see because I restrict them to require approval.

Anyway, it'll be another few weeks yet before things in my Life slow down enough to get back to regular posting and development of more tools. Actually, I already have one sort of neat tool that uses the Yahoo! Maps API that I cobbled together in a couple of hours a few weeks ago. Believe it or not, I coded it on the laptop without any glaring errors while I wasn't even home! ;-)

It's called Qwerty Map Ver. 1

It came into being because Torka from Jill's forums wanted to find a way to use Yahoo Maps as a sort of Company Locator type of thing. But wanted to be able to customize the details that show up in the little balloon.

The current version allows just a single location and will spit out all of the code you need to make the map appear on your web site. The next version will have the ability to change more things without having to touch the code (the initial Zoom level of the map for one) and also the ability to create pointer balloons for multiple locations.

I think I have a pretty good idea for monetizing something like this. But it's going to take some development time, which is something I just don't have right now! Maybe next year... ROFL

Toodles for now! Gotta get back to the email that's come in this evening and then head off to bed so that I can get a few hours of sleep before it all starts again before the sun rises tomorrow.

Posted by Randy at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2005

TV? Rockstars?

It just occurred to me that I've never written anything here about my TV viewing habits. There's a good reason for that really. Even though there's a (small) TV on in my office pretty much constantly, I don't really watch all that my normal TV. 9 times out of 10 if I'm actually watching TV it's on Comedy Central, PBS or some type of sports programming.

That said, I'm wondering if anybody else got wrapped up in the whole Rock Star : INXS series?

I came into it a bit late --week 5 or 6 I think-- and even then rarely caught the original broadcast on CBS. My weekday evenings just get far too busy! I did usually catch it on VH1 during the replays each week though.

All I can say about Rock Star was that it was a really engaging series for those of us who are into music, especially rock music. There were some really amazing performances.

The premise of the show was that it was a competition to choose the new lead singer of INXS, which had the misfortune of losing their original lead singer Michael Hutchence. The winner would record the lead vocals for the next INXS album (the songs are already written) and then front them in a world tour that begins next year.

My opinion is that INXS probably chose the right person for their band in J.D. He fits their look quite well. Better than the other finalists.

That said, I have a feeling that Marty Casey is going to end up being the most successful of the group when we look back in hindsight a couple of years from now. Marty has the look, definitely has the voice and really pours himself into each song. By far the best performer at this stage of the game and he seems to take well to instruction.

What convinced me of this?

Well, two things really. First was his performance of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here which you can see/hear from this page on MSN. (Note: You can see all of the performances there from every week in case you missed any or all.)

Those who know me well know that I'm a huge Floyd fan. I've seen them several times live back when they were really Floyd (read: Before Roger Waters left) and also seen many bands try to cover them since then. Marty's rendition was simply hauntingly good! It ranks right up there with PF back in the old days.

Though I may be biased because of my love of Pink, the two times Marty performed this particular song were the two best of the entire competition. FWIW, I didn't care for J.D.'s rendition of PF's Money in Week 10. He seemed to just be singing the song, but there was no Soul. It's a pet peeve of mine, having a musical background myself. No matter what you're playing/singing, you can do everything technically correct and still suck eggs.

Also FWIW, in my opinion the second best performance of the series was Suzie singing Bohemian Rhapsody in week 8. Not so much because of the vocals --there were a couple of places I cringed-- but because it was a very ambitious song for her to choose and the performance itself was quite good. Suzie was well into it, and it was easy to tell.

Which I guess goes to prove the point I sort of made above. You can also mess up little things (not much though) and pull off a fantastic live performance if you pour all of your emotion, heart and soul into it.

But back to Marty before I wander too far off the subject.

The second thing that convinced me that Marty is going to make it BIG were comments made after he'd lost.

First, INXS said they wanted to enter into negotiations with Marty to be the opening act for them when they start touring in January 2006. I sort of hope he does and sort of hope he doesn't. I think it might help him in some ways, but might stunt his growth in another. If Marty does open for INXS, I really don't expect it to last long. He's ready to headline.

The second, and more important thing that convinced me was a comment made by Dave Navarro of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction fame. To paraphrase, Dave told Marty exactly what I was thinking, that he was going to be friggin' huge and that he (Dave) wanted to play guitar on Marty's first album.

I have a feeling the assistance will go much farther than simply playing guitar.

Marty, (in case he ever reads this) you've got an enormous advantage in Dave's wisdom and support. More than any experienced performer could ever hope for, let alone someone new to the biz. Coupled with your massive talent and obvious passion, it's a Can't Miss formula.

Please do not waste the opportunity to take advantage of Dave's graciousness my friend.

Posted by Randy at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2005

Katrina (the Political Hurricane)

Pardon me for ranting, but I just cannot help myself. I'm quite sure that some may be offended by some of what I'm about to say.

Let me start with the fact that my heart goes out to those who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Have I been through something similar to what we're seeing there on the news? Similar, but certainly not to the same degree as some of the worst reports we're seeing.

(Ancient history here, but I was one of those who pretty much lost everything except for our lives in the Great Flood of '93 that put several hundred thousand acres of ground under water in Missouri, so that much I do understand. Though I freely admit that my experience, while certainly quite bad, is nowhere near what many affected Gulf Coast residents have been experiencing. Additionally I have friends of many years who lived in the area whom I have been trying to touch base with for days. But have been unsuccessful in finding out anything.)

We won't go into the financial giving side of things since that is very personal in my book. Let's just say that I give in these situations and leave it at that. No matter where in the world it happens.

Now my extreme rant...

Something that I noticed a few days ago, and was frankly worried about, was that the situation stood a chance to turning into a political and racial situation. And it is neither, except for the fact that some want to make it one.

Why racial? Because many of those who didn't have the financial ability to evacuate were poor. Like it or not (I don't personally) many of the poor in the affected area of the world, and in fact in many areas of the world, have a darker skin tone than others. We're seeing an awful lot of this on TV, though I'm not sure it's completely representative. There are also many who could pass for my brother or sister in skin tone who were as drastically affected by Katrina.

Those who have a political agenda against President Bush apparently look for any opportunity to turn up the heat. Whether it is well-founded or not, this has been the case since 2000 in the United States. IMO it's sad and only serves to denegrate themselves. Please note that I say this as what could at best be categorized as being an Independent Voter. Meaning that I vote for whichever political party that puts forth the best candidate on a very individual level. In my personal opinion. I don't belong to a party, nor do I want to.

This morning on C-Span --no link yet since they don't have anything up yet-- I caught a program where several "Democrat" and "Black" organizations held a press conference. I will not name them here because I am quite sure that the speakers do not speak for all supporters considering the fact that many of the involved are organizations that I have supported both financially and in spirit!

All I can say about the press conference is that I am ashamed.

The comments put forth, as well as the tone of much of the press conference, was quite frankly shameful. To consider that a admitted horrible hurricane somehow became a Political Process or some sort of Racial Issue is ludicrous, and quite disturbing to me as an American. The comments of some speakers made me sick to my stomach. In case you're wondering, no I will no longer be making any financial or time contributions to those organizations who were most flagrant.

Why?

I simply cannot support anybody or anything that attempts to use a natural disaster to further some political cause. Especially not when it is clear to even a 5 year old that everyone should be pulling together.

Were mistakes made by government representatives?

Yes, undoubtedly. On all levels.

City, County, State and Federal. Of those, the President has the least responsibility for any failures in my view. And it's certainly not a Republican or Democrat issue. Or a White and Black skin tone issue.

Given what has been happening in New Orleans --especially with the thuggery of the last several days-- hindsight says that it would have been nice to have a larger Federal (read: Military) response available immediately. But had 20,000 troops been inserted into New Orleans immediately after the winds started to die down, and that's assuming anyone had anybody been 100% sure it was going to hit there and that levee's would break, these same people making political hay today would have been screaming about the Federal Gov't having set up no option other than Martial Law. Completely overriding State, County and City rights, which is not right and is not the American Way.

I'm quite sure that no matter what answer had been chosen prior to Katrina hitting, some would have tried very hard to make it a political issue. Just as they're trying to now. That's a sad commentary, though it is true.

The bottom line is this...

People are in trouble. I've been in a similar circumstance. These people need HELP, not some silly political argument. Contrary to what some of the National Press Club speakers apparently believe, the people who are most affected are not "our" kind or "their" kind.

They are Us!

It is our obligation as citizens of the United States of America, in fact as citizens of the world and the Human race to see that the affected have their immediate pain and uncertainty relieved as quickly and fully as humanly possible.

It is a Human issue, not a political or racial one.

If anyone has any doubt about the above statement, repeat the following to yourself.

There but for the grace of God, go I.

Posted by Randy at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2005

MSNbot Gone Wild !

Has anybody else noticed MSNbot going a bit wild in spidering their sites? If so, does your site include an RSS feed?

I noticed it a couple of weeks ago on a few of my sites, so just had to investigate. The common element with those that were getting hit really hard was that they all had some RSS component to the sites. Those sites that had no RSS component showed completely normal spidering patterns for MSNbot.

According to this short MSN Blog post they've evidently testing something to get the freshest content possible into their index. Which means blogs, generally speaking. Which usually have an RSS feed.

They've promised to slow it down and apparently have, since I've seen a fairly major drop off of MSNbot activity the last several days. But when it was going, it was kind of funny! On some of my smaller sites, like this one, MSNbot still accounts for nearly one-quarter of all traffic for this month. After only a week or so of crazy spidering activity.

Jeremy Zawodny's post on his blog is hilarious IMHO. "Dear MSNbot, Take a chill pill." LOL Too funny!

There you have it. Now you know what was up if you saw MSNbot practically living on your site.

Posted by Randy at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2005

MSN Screensaver

Has anybody else tried the new MSN Screensaver?

It was announced on the MSN Search Blog the other day, I guess because it allows you to integrate both search and RSS feeds into your screensaver. Pretty cool actually, and I've been using it for a few days now. I have mine pulling images from a folder on my computer that rotate through the screen saver, but also have it popping up three or four RSS feeds of different places I watch.

An aside: In order to use the MSN Screensaver you have to have a recent version of MSN's Toolbar/Desktop Search installed, since that's how they integrate search into the screensaver. I had the toolbar installed before, but not the desktop search. It's all bundled together with the latest release, but you can choose which --if any-- shows up on your computer.

My only question after seeing the RSS feed capability was why no one had done this before? RSS feeds have been around a while now. And though I'd never thought of it myself, you would think that someone would have!

Anyway, just an interesting tidbit. I'm rather liking it. Much better than flying boxes or vector graphics.

FYI, if you try it you're probably going to see the same thing I did. Unlike a normal screensaver you won't get out of this one when you simply move your mouse. Which makes sense considering you would have to move your mouse in order to click on a feed entry or even the search box.

The easiest way to get out of the screensaver is to simply hit the Escape (Esc) button on your keyboard.

Posted by Randy at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

June 04, 2005

Godspeed Corey

Dateline: Thursday June 2, 2005
Corey Rudl, famed Internet Marketer dies in raceway crash at 34

For those who knew him, or even knew of him through his Internet Marketing Center or Marketing Tips site (among others) the news of Corey passing this past Thursday came as a shock. For someone to leave this earth at such a young age is always a tradegy, but for such a shining star, one who helped so many, to leave us is especially painful.

I dare say that there is not a single person invovled in marketing on the Internet who has not at least heard of Corey Rudl. He was a trailblazer in the early years of Internet Marketing. And rather than horde his knowledge, keeping it solely to himself, Corey built an empire that had a single goal: To assist others who would follow in his footsteps. Many purchased, and benefitted from, Corey's volumous "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business On The Internet" course. Even though I don't refer to it much anymore, my copy still holds a place of respect on the bookshelf by my desk.

Perhaps I should pull it out, dust it off and give set aside some time to give it another thorough read in honor of Corey. I'm quite sure even though my copy is years old at this point, I'll still be able to pick up another helpful tidbit or ten.

Godspeed Corey, my friend. Your quick wit, limitless knowledge, infectious enthusiasm and unbounded energy will certainly be missed by many. Myself certainly included. That said I am quite sure your very powerful Lifeforce will brighten heaven for Eternity.

I'll be saying prayers for the comfort of Corey's young wife Tracy and all of the folks at IMC. I know it's no consolation, however I encourage each of you to remember that Corey loved you all and always lived life to the fullest. So please do not forget to celebrate his life while we all mourn his death.

Posted by Randy at 04:17 PM | Comments (2)

May 11, 2005

Image Fun Script

Don't ask me why it took me this long to remember that I still hadn't uploaded and provided a link to the new, improved Image Fun script. It's been done for months and months now. LOL

I honestly thought I had until someone asked for something similar and I came here trying to find it. It was nowhere in sight, even though it was uploaded. Go figure...

Anyway, here's a link to the zipped version of my little Image Fun Photo Gallery script. It'll also dynamically create the thumbnail images for you if you want it to. Or not. The choice is yours.

Instructions are included in a readme file. Released under GPL license of course, so tweak and improve to your heart's content.

Requirements are:
1.) PHP enabled on your server.
2.) Image Magick installed on your server, but only if you want to let the script create your thumbnail images.
3.) You have to have Safe Mode turned off in the PHP configuration for your domain if you want the script to create the thumbs. The issue is that Image Magick uses the exec() command, which is something that is disabled if Safe Mode is turned on.

If you want to see what it looks like and how it works, Mr. Will uses it on Planet Sound Community Arts' for all of their photo gallery pages. He also uses it on his personal site where you can view and soon be able to purhcase reprint rights to his excellent photographs.

[ADDED May 15th !!! Please Read!!!]

I made a boo-boo when I pointed to the already uploaded the Zip file the other day. The version that was uploaded was one that has issues if your PHP installation is a default configuration. Namely if Global Variables is turned Off in your PHP configuration, which is the norm for most hosts.

The version at the link above has been replaced with a Globals Safe version, so if you had grabbed it before May 15th and were having issues please grab it again. The currently available download should sort out those Global variable problems and will work whether Globals are toggled on or off.

Thanks!

Posted by Randy at 02:02 PM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2005

The Battle for Your Attention

The latest battleground for the search engines is definitely being waged right on your computer. They're all trying to gain and/or hold their market share by using software applications such as Toolbars that integrate into your browser. And they're all moving into an area that is generically known as Desktop search.

Does it make sense for them to approach it this way? Yes, for several reasons.

Is it necessarily the best thing for user? I'm not so sure.

The various toolbars being offered by the search engines (Google's, Yahoo's and MSN's) have been around a little while now. Interestingly, there are a lot of other types of toolbars out there too. Adobe has partnered with Yahoo! to offer a toolbar version, Alexa has had one forever (though last time I looked at it theirs was still loaded with Spyware) and even places as diverse as Netcraft, which does server/host ranking, The Yellow Pages and All Headline News offer a browser toolbar.

Toolbars certainly make sense for the search engines, and in fact many other industries. It not only helps them retain their users and create customer loyalty --being as easy to use as they are-- but they can also provide the engines with some very valuable feedback as they move closer and closer to the Personalization of Search.

Much the same will probably hold true when Desktop Search --with which you'll be able to search both the Web and documents aleady on your computer-- begins to make its foray into the public consciousness. IMHO browser toolbars will always be easier to use than desktop search though. Maybe I'm strange in that belief, but I always seem to have anywhere between 10 and 40 windows open, which are of course covering my desktop. It would be more of a hassle to get back to my desktop than it would be to simply type in a URL address.

Anyway, I started going off on a tangent there. What it all boils down to is that I'm far from convinced that the producers of the current crop of toolbar creators are doing a good job at all for their users. Mainly because their software cannot be tailored with plugins for each individual's needs. You're basically locked into whatever the search engine wants you to see and do.

Which I guess is the point to the engines putting out their toolbars in the first place. They want to lock you into using their search and their portals. I get the sense that they're really not building them for user benefit so much as they are building them for their own benefit.

What would I like to see?

An open source toolbar development, where you get the base toolbar and can then add on the plugins you want. Don't get me wrong, there are some toolbars out there which don't lock you into using this or that search engine to find stuff on the web. But they're still lacking because there's no chance for plugin creation.

In other words, they may be free, but they're not as good as they could be yet. Open source would be the best model, but even that is not a necessity. A development community that is truly listening to users and implementing what they need via plugins is.

Heck, I wouldn't even mind someone, or several someone's most likely, developing a toolbar that was monetized! Meaning, the developers cut a deal with some of the resources they send people to so that they get paid a penny or whatever for every user who ends up going to that site via their toolbar. That would be fair I think. As long as they don't automatically ixnay adding a resource simply because they choose not to pay for traffic.

In other words, listen to the users and do what's right by them. Monetize what you can, but don't let that be the governing factor as to whether a plugin is made available or not.

I can even see a co-branding opportunity with normal site owners. The idea being that the web site owners could install a little cgi or php spider on their site to index all of their pages, then the toolbar could connect with that for a new type of Site Search. Offer that as a free option to both Webmasters and their users so that people would start installing the toolbar. Because you know that eventually people will want the application to do more.

Are there any developers out there who want to take on such a project? I would certainly be interested in being involved in the marketing if someone has the skill, know-how, time and drive to create the back end.

Posted by Randy at 07:01 AM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2005

I must be weird or something...

It's true! I guess I'll finally have to admit that I'm just weird.

You see, I've been sick the last couple of days (finally caught the flu bug that everybody around me has already had) but instead of being less productive I've actually been more productive ! LOL

Seriously. I took some medicine that normally knocks me out and tried to go to be very early last night because everybody agreed that I looked like death warmed over. I went to bed at 7pm and watched Star Trek Enterprise from there, figuring I would fall asleep before it was over.

Turns out I stayed awake through that and a few other shows. I think I finally nodded off around 10pm. Then I woke up around 2:45am hacking and coughing because my medicine had long since worn off. I got up long enough to get some more meds from the bathroom, grab me a small glass of tea to wash it down with and headed back to bed.

Try as I might, I couldn't go back to sleep. In fact I wasn't even tired! I should have been though, having not slept much Thursday night either.

So anyway, I finally decided to get up about 3:10am. I had to play online because there's nothing on the tube that time of the night other than infomercials. So I log on and wade through the mail that had come in since the previous evening. That took about 10 minutes.

As is my normal "morning" routine, I fired up my SSH client to log into each of the servers to make sure everything was running okay. Turns out that a new server that has been having issues getting mail delivered correctly a few ISPs (started out being Verizon, Comcast and a few smaller ones) was again having trouble with Comcast addresses.

It's always a pain when something like that happens, because you can't see what's happening from the other end and the error messages can be vastly misleading. Plus, when the error message points to some sort of DNS problem, but there is no DNS issue according to every other ISP on the planet and all of the testing sites pass it with flying colors it's more than frustrating.

Literally, these kinds of things can be anything from the configuration of the mailserver on my end, to a firewall issue on my end, to a wonky mailserver setting on the other end that I can't see, to a firewall on the other end, to having the new server's IP number blacklisted by that ISP with no way to check to BIND not answering correctly, to the resolv.conf file being wrong, to the hosts file being wrong, to a timing between the two mail servers, to the mailserver mis-identifying itself somehow, to, to, to... You get the idea. There are about 100 things that can produce the same type of error.

So what the hey... I'm awake, it's quiet, I don't have to worry about the phone ringing for hours, so I decided now as good a time as any to really dig into it.

So there I am at 3:30am using Linux's good old MAIL command to type in one line of the mail sending routine at a time to see if I can pinpoint where it's failing in an effort to narrow down the field of possibilities.

Me:telnet gateway-s.comcast.net 25
Answer:Trying 204.127.202.26...
Connected to gateway-s.comcast.net (204.127.202.26).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 sccrmxc23.comcast.net - Maillennium ESMTP/MULTIBOX sccrmxc23 #548

Me:helo mydomain.com
Answer:250 sccrmxc23.comcast.net

Me:MAIL FROM:postmaster@mydomain.com
Answer:250 ok

Me:RCPT TO:postmaster@comcast.net
Answer:250 ok

Me:DATA
Answer:354 ok

Me:Subject: Test Message
Sending a test message.
.
Answer:250 ok ; id=20050227015422s2300516ige

Me:QUIT
Answer:221 sccrmxc23.comcast.net
Connection closed by foreign host.

Now that's what it should when everything is working properly. The problem was that I could get all the way to sending the Subject and Body text, but could never get a 250 ok answer. It would tell me then that their was a TEMPFAIL because the sending domain was not legitimate and it couldn't send the email because they require real domains. And right so!

But if there was a problem with the domain why in the hell did it keep giving me a 250 ok both when I sent the helo and also when I sent the From: email address?

Anyway, I typed all of that by hand probably 30 times this morning between 3:30 and 6am, tweaking little things on the server between each until Comcast's mail server finally started saying Yes, we think you're okay dude, so we'll deliver that mail for you!

As usual, it ended up being one little configuration thing that they apparently have tweaked their server to look for. It's silly, but when mail from a Live server with e-commerce sites on it won't go through reliably to one of the major ISPs, it's something you have to deal with.

Anyway, it's fixed. Again. Hopefully for good this time. But since Verizon required something completely different to get mail going through to them, God only knows if another ISP will chime in wanting me to tweak something else. I'll be watching it of course.

Once I got going today I apparently couldn't stop.

I managed put together about another 35 pages for our web site re-design/merging project. I also did some troubleshooting work for an hour or so when someone was having an issue uploading their Personal Watermark graphic on one of the sites. And answered a ton of mail throughout the day. (Aside: Can you imagine what those folks emailed me last night are going to think if they look at the timestamp on my reply and realize that I was up and working at 3am? LOL)

I also chimed in on several topics on a couple of message boards I frequent. And analyzed a half-dozen or so sites that were having issues or one sort or another to give advice to their webmasters on how to best proceed. And put a new graphics card in my main computer so that I could get some software to install, before removing the card again because I like my old graphics card better. And tinkered on my new Linux system that I built for off-site server backups to keep here in my office. And started the laundry. And washed a load of dishes. And took two showers to wash the germs off of me and help clear out my sinuses. And got a couple of things out in the mail before noon since I (finally!) realized that the 1st is early next week. And read 90% of my Wired magazine that came in the mail yesterday afternoon. And played a few games on the little poker software I bought a few weeks back for my computer.

And wrote this War & Peace novel about absolutely nothing. LOL

Man, I should be wore out! But I'm not.

So yep, we're back to the beginning of the circle. I have to admit that I must be weird...

Posted by Randy at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2005

Control Blog Link Spam

This is kind of related to SEO stuff, but I'm not going to put it in that section since it is more far reaching.

All of the major search engines, Six Apart (makers of MovableType) and other blog software manufacturer's have taken the first step to help blog owners combat the weight given by the search engines to Blog Comment Spam.

Basically, they've introduced an attribute you can place in links at the A HREF level which will signal to the search engines not to give any weight to non-approved links. The new attribute is rel="nofollow" which is to be placed in the A HREF tag.

Some of the press releases are:

MSN Search's Blog
Google's Blog
Yahoo's Blog
Six Apart's Announcement

It's a good first step in trying to give control over links posted to others back to the blog owners. Hopefully Forum/Guestbook manufacturer's will also adopt the policy for non-staff supplied links.

If you want to see what the code looks like after you install the MovableType plugin, view the source of this thread with my "Test" comment showing. ;-)

Posted by Randy at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2005

Microsoft and Sercurity

From recent events and releases it appears that Microsoft is finally beginning to get serious about providing their users at least a modicum of security. This change is a far cry from what has been the norm up until now, as before MS was slow to even offer patches when they were notified of security holes in their software.

It all started in my mind with the release last fall of the SP2 upgrades for the widely used Windows XP operating system. Incorporated into the SP2 updates were modules such as a Anti Virus module and Windows Firewall, both of which are enabled as a default. Anybody in their right mind already had both of those types of programs on their computer from other software manufacturer's.

Truth be told I can't tell you how good either is because I still run my third party applications. Partly because I'm used to the solutions I already had and partly because I know they work. (knock on wood)

More recently, Microsoft has release a Beta product for Spyware protection called Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware which has garnered rave reviews thus far.

This software is akin to Ad-Aware by Lavasoft and Spybot Search and Destroy, both of which are also available for free personal use.

The main advantage that I saw right off the bat with the MS solution is that it can be configured (again, it's the default setting) to run in the background to provide you Real Time protection. Much like anti virus software does, it will detect if your system becomes infected by spyware and proactively attempt to remove it.

There is also a default setting to have the AntiSpyware software run daily during the middle of the night to perform full system scans to catch anything that might have slipped through. And it updates its spyware signature file automatically as a default.

Additionally they have a concept they call SpyNet AntiSpyware Community that allows them to quickly identify new spyware as soon as it hits the wild. Sort of a Neighborhood Watch program for spyware. Users can even file reports of suspected spyware so that it can be evaluated.

There are lots of other neat little things included with the new AntiSpyware software including ways to see if your Hosts file has been corrupted by someone, an easier way to look at running applications, control what applications run immediately on boot up, Track Eraser to keep certain programs from tracking what you do, etc.

All in all it's a pretty neat little application to add to your protection arsenal. I'll give it a thumbs up! In fact, I hope they include it in a Windows Update as soon as it's out of Beta testing, like they did with SP2. The combination certainly goes a long way toward keeping the average computer user's machine cleaner than ever before.

hmm... Maybe Bill really was serious about that pledge to get rid of spam and virii in two years. Since most spam and virus email is sent by Windows boxes that have become infected, these sorts of tools will go a long way towards correcting the problem!

Posted by Randy at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2004

;-)

I need a vacation!

Of course if I got one I would probably just spend it finally getting all of the scripts and stuff I want to make available here added. LOL

That is all. We now resume your normal programming.

Posted by Randy at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2004

CSS Rollover Button Creator

Okay, so I know it's been forever and a day since I've written anything here. I've been busy!!!

Anyway, I've got a good one for you today. I just finished up a couple of projects. The first of those, announced here, is my new CSS Rollover Creator.

Eh, wot's that? (I can hear ya...) LOL

Basically, instead of using the old style javascript to make link buttons/text flash, change and do other neat things, you can do the same sort of thing with less code and much easier using Cascading Style Sheets. It's also much more search engine friendly, generally speaking.

Try it out and see for yourself! I've pre-built several different menu styles into the CSS Rollover Creator, though what I have built into it is not all you can do by any stretch of the imagination. It'll give you a good start though.

And the best part of all? You don't need to know a lick of CSS to start creating really neat buttons! Go ahead and try it. You know you want to.

ps Let me know if you get any errors or something doesn't work in the code it spits out. There are a lot of variables being passed, and being the typo king that I am I'm sure I've misspelled one somewhere or the other. No matter how much I tried to test the various choices.

Next up: An updated version of my ImageFun Photo Gallery Generator. I'm all but done with it. The only things left are to make it Register Globals Off safe, write some easy install instructions, add the GPL License to the files and make it look nicer that it now does. Expect that one to be released in a few days.

Posted by Randy at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2004

Help Find David Gonzales

Ran across a good cause on a forum today. If you've got a site and can spare a link this is one you might consider helping out.

Missing Boy, David Gonzales

I checked it out and it's real. David disappeared from a camping site at Big Bear Lake on July 31st and hasn't been seen since. The folks involved with the above web site are trying to help spread the word. But they need some links to get into the likes of Google.

Help out if you can!

Posted by Randy at 04:31 PM | Comments (1)

July 24, 2004

Fighting Spam

A lot of people these days ask me how to report spam. So I'll write about how I do it.

A few things to remember...

First, 999 times out of 1,000 the address the spam is coming from is going to be a fake one. So it does no good whatsoever to send a reply to these addresses. In fact, it only exacerbates the problem because more useless mail is being sent.

Second, the key is to find the real origin of the email.

Third, most spam today is being sent from a zombie computer that has been infected by one of the many email virii floating around out there. So even by disconnecting that computer you're not getting to the real spammer. Instead you're helping someone else get their computer problems sorted (hopefully) so that it doesn't sit there sending 10's of thousand of spam mails every day.

Okay, here's how to do it.

First, you need to familiarize yourself with how to read email headers. You don't need to understand what each header line means or does. In fact, you'll just confuse yourself more since most spam sending programs these days will forge headers.

The key here is that even if there are forged headers, the real information is also there too. The trick is finding it.

Have a look at a few of your legitimate emails. In your email software you will want to View Full Headers. Each email application has a different way of showing the full headers, and the default is typically not to show these. You may need to search the Help function of your software to sort out how to view the headers.

In your header lines you should see something that looks similar to this:

Received: from smtpout.ev1.net (207.44.129.132)
by sub.server.com with SMTP; 21 Jul 2004 22:48:38 -0000

The key point I want you to look for here is the part that immediately follows the word by In your legitimate emails you should see something that is pretty much the same. This stamp is produced by your own mail server, whether that's your ISP or the mail server name/address of your domain.

Make a mental note of how your mail server identifies itself. This will help you to quickly wade through forged headers in the future, and make sure you're reporting the spammer to the correct place.

Where do you report them? It's in that same line. Do you see the IP number inside the parentheses? In the example above what I'm talking about is 207.44.129.132.

This you can also trust to be correct. As long as you use the IP number that is inside the parens you'll be reporting the spam to the folks who have authority for the IP number.

This is the IP number that actually connected to your mail server to send the mail to you. That's all the farther you have to go with it. They will have log files to track things back any further if need be.

Next, head over to my little WhoIs Tool and plug this IP number into the search box. Searching on the IP will bring up the ownership data, or who is ultimately responsible for the IP.

Most providers these days will provide a specific email address to send Spam/Abuse complaints to. In fact, most of these will have "abuse" in the email address, so the quick way is to do a search of the WhoIs data for the word abuse.

(Note: My little WhoIs Tool will help you to trace back almost any IP number, worldwide. The only exceptions being: Japanese (.co.jp) WhoIs providers don't provide much information and you usually have to go directly to the .co.jp interface to get a reporting email address, but the address to go to is provided by my tool; and some Korean pennisula IP's don't resolve correctly for some reason, but the additional URL to use with those is also provided.)

So now you've got the abuse@ email address to report the spam to.

What I do at this point is to simply Forward the spam email, with full headers showing to the address provided. I add a bit of text to the top that I've saved to help them sort everything out. I even include the name of my mail server as it appears in the headers for their reference.

The main things you want to remember when sending in a spam report are:

1. Do not include any attached files. Abuse departments will typically delete any emails that contain an attachment.

2. When you forward the email make sure you are sending it as Plain Text. Most email clients come with a default setting to send "Styled" or "HTML" text. Some abuse departments will delete those without reading them. Better safe than sorry.

See, it's really not as hard as everybody makes it out to be. A little bit of due diligence on your part makes it happen. Once you get used to it, you can report the spammers very quickly and easily. Especially if you set up a little canned Spam Report response.

I've gotten to the point that I can report a spam mail in under a minute. The process looks like this...

Open the spam mail.
Click the Show Headers button in my Eudora.
Locate and highlight the offending IP number.
Do a Ctrl+C to copy it.
Click over to my browser that already has my WhoIs Tool open.
Ctrl+V to paste the IP into the search box.
Click the "Check Domain" button.
Locate the "abuse@" email address in the WhoIs record.
Highlight the address with my mouse.
Ctrl+C to copy it to my clipboard.
Go back to Eudora and click the Forward Mail button.
Ctrl+V to paste the address into the To: field.
Click over to my canned Spam Report text.
Highlight it and Ctrl+C to copy it to my clipboard.
Click back to the email I'm sending and Ctrl+V to paste the text into my email.
Click the "Send" button.

It sounds a lot harder than it is. I've reported enough over the years that I can get through the entire process above in about 15-20 seconds. And it does work! I get several (dozen) email accounts killed per day because they've spammed me. My total time investment? Maybe 30 minutes per day, on the days I actually decide to report the 100+ spams I get.

A couple of other quick tips:




• It'll normally take more than one report against each spamming computer to get it removed from the network. Unless it's an AOL IP number. Those folks are ruthless about fighting spam thankfully.
  
• If no abuse@ address is listed in the WhoIs record, I will typically put the email address(es) listed there in the To: field and CC: it to abuse@ anyway, just to be safe.
  
• When you go to the Japanese (.co.jp) WhoIs tool, paste in the IP number, hit your space bar and put a /e at the end. (Example: 123.45.67.89 /e ) This will convert the WhoIs information to English for you.
  
• The Brazilian folks do it right, but you'll need to scroll a bit to get the info you need. If you see .BR indicated at the top of a record scroll way down to the bottom of the page. If there is an abuse@ address for the ISP it'll be down there somewhere. While you're there though, note that at the very end of the record, typically right below the ISP info, you'll see a blurb about also sending abuse complaints to mail-abuse@nic.br so make sure to put that in the CC: field. nic.br is the Brazilian domain name authority, or the equivalent of ICANN for .com domains. nic.br will help to assure that the ISP does their job in removing the spamming computer from the network.

  Good luck! Drop me a comment if you have any questions or something above doesn't make sense. I'll be more than happy to take a look at your individual situation.

  Posted by Randy at 07:51 AM | Comments (2)

  July 22, 2004

  le Tour

  Lance Armstrong is a force of nature. It's really as simple as that.

  Combine this fact with his work ethic, his unusually thorough preparation routine and all of the effort that has put into assembling what may well be the best Team in the history of the Tour de France...

  Well, let's just say that what many suspected would happen (myself included) when he went after an unprecedented Tour win has now become a foregone conclusion. Seriously, unless Lance falls off his bike and breaks several bones the 2004 edition of le Tour is is over and done.

  Lance knows this too, though he won't come right out and say it. That's just his demeanor. However the reported (by Lance) discussion he had with his US Postal teammate Floyd Landis earlier today shows how confident Lance really is.

  To set the stage, you first have to understand that Lance takes a "No Gifts" policy to stage wins. He used to allow teammates and others to win the odd stage if they were not one of his main competitors. It seems like a nice thing to do since it wouldn't affect the final outcome of who won. He doesn't do this anymore because some groused about it in years past.

  Earlier today his teammate Floyd Landis set such an awesome tempo up Col de la Croix Fry, the final really tough climb of the 2004 Tour, that he completely destroyed those in the group. Two points here...

  First, everyone expected Ivan Basso of CSC and T-Mobile teammates Andreas Kloden and Jan Ullrich (currently in 2nd, 3rd and 4th place of the GC standings respectively) to take a run a Lance in an effort to cut into Armstrong's lead. It was the only real shot any of them had at winning the Tour. They had to crack Lance and the Posties and gain at least a few minutes to stand any chance.

  Much to their chagrin, Landis' tempo was so fierce that not only could they not mount a charge, but appeared to be barely hanging on to the pace he set up the mountainside.

  Second, at the base of the final climb the leaders group contained over about 30 of the world's best riders. By the top there were only 5 left. With two of those being Landis and Armstrong of US Postal.

  This is a very, very rare occurance in any bike race. In the Tour, with the caliber of riders involved, it is unheard of. And it was all Floyd Landis. No one came to the front to help him set tempo. Not Lance, not Kloden, not Ullrich, not Basso. It was Floyd and Floyd alone who made it his duty to destroy the contenders for Lance.

  With what can only be described as a superhuman effort he succeeded.

  What does Lance "The Boss" Armstrong do after this witnessing this marvel? Here's the discussion between Lance and Floyd at the top of Col de la Croix Fry before the brief 10 kilometer descent to the finish, remembering that Landis has never won a stage at the prestigeous Tour de France since his job is to take care of Lance and he takes it very, very seriously...

  Lance: How bad do you want to win a stage on the Tour de France?
  Floyd: Real bad.
  Lance: How fast can you go downhill?
  Floyd: I can ride downhill really fast.
  
  Floyd: Can I do it?
  Lance: Sure you can! Run like you stole something Floyd!

  Remember... No Gifts. This was simply a way for Lance to show his appreciation to a teammate who had foiled any plans the competition may have had.

  Landis, who had to be all but whipped after the effort he put into the uphill climb, shot off like a rocket. In the process losing three more of the final five (Armstrong, Basso and Kloden). Only Ullrich chased after him.

  It was unfortunate for Landis, but predictable. Ullrich also doesn't believe in "Gifts", and even if he did he wanted the 20 second time bonus for winning the stage.

  With Ullrich going, Lance had to chase them both down. Before the end of the stage, all 5 of these premiere riders were back together. Eventually Kloden launched a counter attack, but being a good worker bee for Lance, Landis pulled back to within 50 meters of him.

  The last bit was left to Lance. He bolted out of the small pack, leaving everyone in his dust, and nipped Kloden at the line for the stage win.

  Lance won the stage.

  Lance will win his sixth straight Tour de France.

  But Floyd Landis won the day.

  Posted by Randy at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)

  June 20, 2004

  Trademarks Rant

  One of my pet peeves...

  Why can't the folks at the US Patent and Trademarks Office ( http://www.uspto.gov ) use a little common sense before processing Trademark and Patent requests?

  Here's a good example of what I mean.

  A couple of weeks ago I saw an commercial on TV where Pentax is using the tag line "Official Digital Camera of the Internet"

  First I laughed, because since no one person or entity owns the Internet, how can anything be declared the Official anything of the Internet? It's impossible!

  Being a curious sort of person, I decided to pay a visit to USPTO.gov and search trademarks for those including the words: official, of, the and internet.

  To my surprise (not really) I found that there are fifteen different applications for Official this or Offical that of the Internet. Some are dead, mostly because the applicant didn't cross all of their t's and dot all of their i's and several are still working their way through the process.

  To my astonishment, "Official Beer of the Internet" is actually a fully registered Trademark! Another company tried to register this trademark too, but they stand no chance since it's already been registered.

  How did this happen? Who declared that any company should have received anything close to an Official recognition from the Internet that nobody owns in the first place? Is this some sort of sinister plot by Al Gore to monetize his retirement years? (Just kidding Al, we all know you didn't really invent it.)

  In my most humble opinion the USPTO should simply reject requests like this and keep the filing fee for having to put up with idiots who try to claim something they have no right to claim in the first place. This stuff is getting waaaaaaaaaaay out of hand!

  Posted by Randy at 08:25 AM | Comments (0)

  June 17, 2004

  Another Question...

  ...while I'm thinking about it and am here.

  Why no comments? I know several people have told me they're reading these random thoughts.

  Do I have to get out my cattle prod? I have one you know...

  Posted by Randy at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)

  hehheh

  Just because you mentioned that I hadn't posted in awhile...

  Oh Lynn.... Are you reading?

  Did you get anything useful out of that last rant?

  I'd be willing to bet you didn't, other than a good laugh about someone interrupting my work and having the police haul them off.

  Posted by Randy at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)

  Golden Nugget For The Day

  Don't come by my house trying to sell me something that I don't want and then claim that I'm racially prejudiced simply because your black and I'm not. It has nothing to do with our varied race, but with the fact that I don't need what you have and I'm too freakin' busy to deal with your 20 minute sales pitch!

  Never before have I reported someone for trying to sell door-to-door even though I get more than my fair share of them, living a block off of a fairly major state highway. I just let them go about their merry way because everybody needs to work and earn a living.

  But imply that I'm a racist because simply because I don't want your "magical cleaning solution" when the fact is that I'm am to damned busy with REAL WORK to deal with you and you can bet your last dollar that I'll call the city police to come and enforce their laws.

  Hopefully they only carted his sorry ass out of the city limits instead of arresting him for not having a Peddler's License. Goodness knows I don't care much one way or the other at this moment.

  Period, end of discussion. I feel much better now. I'm sure he doesn't though...

  Posted by Randy at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)

  May 30, 2004

  :::mutter:::

  Mother Nature is really starting to tick me off!

  I'd really love to get just two or three days in a row that it doesn't rain. Not to mention that I'd like to have a few days in a row where we're not running for cover because yet another funnel cloud or tornado has been spotted nearby.

  All of the rain is really beginning to throw a serious crimp into my spring clean up and house repair schedule. Heck, yesterday I *had* to mow the yard, even though parts of it are still a swamp!

  My neighbors think I'm nuts now.

  They're right. ;-)

  Posted by Randy at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)

  May 28, 2004

  Noah Begone !

  Woooohoooo! If I trust what the weatherman says this morning, I can stop building that Ark I have started in my yard. The only problem with this theory is, can you ever really believe the weatherman? LOL

  Here's the deal...

  Every day since last weekend we have been getting hammered with thunderstorm at least once or twice per day. Some days it would rain really hard for 4 or 5 hours, others it would drizzle all day long. Normally I wouldn't care all that much, but I have a ton of little projects to get done outside, and I would have liked to have gotten them all done BEFORE the holiday weekend. So I could actually take a couple days off.

  I started painting the exterior of my house last week, and it's like 3/4 done. Hopefully the trim will dry out enough today to allow me to finish that up.

  I managed to mow my yard last weekend, even though parts were a bit swampy. But it needs it again already. With the way my yard drains it'll probably take two days to dry out enough to mow again.

  I've had to pump over a foot of water out of the pool the last few days. That'll give you an idea of how much rain we've gotten lately. The pool needs to be vacuumed badly too, what with all of the tree crap blowing around.

  I also need to finish putting together a new covered swing by the pool area and do a lot of general cleaning out on the patio that I've been putting off until after the painting in that area is done. And I have an old swingset and aluminum storage shed I want to take down. And a new burning pit to build with the 100 or so cinder blocks I have sitting in my driveway.

  Looks like it's going to be a working holiday weekend for moi, but I don't mind nearly as much as I should. Hey, at least I can see some blue in the sky this morning! Hopefully my garden will survive all of the water. It's still a swamp this morning, but a warm and sunny weather should help it to dry out fairly quickly.

  Posted by Randy at 06:52 AM | Comments (0)

  May 23, 2004

  I Survived !

  Well, I survived another week and am already preparing for my normal (read: Hectic!) Monday. Last week was incredibly busy in all respects and on all sides. That's good for the business side of things, but I wish I'd gotten a lot more accomplished around the house.

  I would have felt better about it all if it hadn't rained last night as well as off and on today. My house painting project was about 2/3's done as of Saturday evening. I really wanted to spend a few hours today getting that finished up. Then I need to set up a new covered swing thingee for the pool area, take apart an old aluminum shed and an old swingset so I can dispose of both of those things.

  I also have a stack of about 100 cement blocks sitting in my driveway so that I can build a new burning pit as soon as the old shed and swingset are out of the way. And I need to pull all of the siding off of my real storage shed and re-side it. And re-roof it too. And replace two doors, one leading down into the basement and my back door, which gets used a lot more than my front door.

  We won't even mention the fact that I still don't have the water hooked up to the bathroom out by the pool even though the pool has been open for 3 weeks now. LOL At this rate I figure there will be snow falling before I get all of my "Spring" projects done!

  Oh well... No time to worry about that now. Tomorrow is Monday, and they're always hellishly busy. Bedtime for Bonzo! I'll need all of the energy I can get tomorrow.

  Posted by Randy at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)