Monthly Archives: June 2013

Piss off affiliate marketers (how come you all live in Thailand?)

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uncle-scam

Man I hate these people – yet they like following my blog (really need to figure out why I attract these dicks).

So I see two new blog followers in one day:

How nice someone cares about the rubbish I write, excited I go and check out their web sites. And guess what, both are plugging an affiliate program called Project A.W.O.L. It’s your typical cut and paste with a bit of re-writing to make it seem different.

Joe says:

So I have been getting a lot of questions from people about how I can afford to do so much travelling, or how I have so much time to actually do the things I enjoy in life.

Julian says:

So lately Iv’e been getting a ton of questions from people asking me how I can afford to live a lifestyle by design, travel the world, and have the freedom to do the things I love, with the people I love, by only using my laptop and an internet connection.

Joe says:

The reason why I can travel or do all these things without living on a shoestring budget is because I’m earning my income online from blogging and affiliate marketing.

Julian says:

The reason why I can afford to do all of the things I love without living paycheck to paycheck is because I’m earning my full-time income from affiliate marketing and blogging on the internet.

Previously of course they only shared the secret of their success with close friends, but now they’ve decided they want everyone to be rich.

It’s all lies, and so easily unravelled, even just casually looking at clearly faked income statements.

Joe:

joe

Julian:

julian

Gee, what a coincidence, they both earned EXACTLY THE SAME INCOME for a particular day, we just decided to change the month.

A bit of a Google finds this piece of rubbish with a video:

Screen Shot 2013-06-05 at 2.58.16 PM

His name is ‘Tom’ and he’s ‘coming to you from his house in Thailand’. Which is interesting because Julian just had a fabulous holiday at a rental house in Thailand.

What we had lined up because of the connections and magnitude of the vision that Kam and Glenn have…is that we rented out a $50k/month hillside mansion in Phuket Thailand complete with personal chefs, chauffeurs, yachts, excursions and here’s the best part

…wait for it!

$140,000/month Hollywood film crew filming every single bit of it!

Another coincidence!

Ooh look, Dakota McLean just retired and moved to Thailand thanks to Project A.W.O.L.

Screen Shot 2013-06-05 at 3.14.15 PM

Honestly couldn’t be bothered chasing down any more of this crap.

Sigh.

I need to write more blog posts about SQL server and missing toolbars in Excel

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Dilbert.com

I have absolutely no plan or strategy for my blog, it’s purely an entertainment and I write about whatever happens to be on my mind at the time – usually something I’ve seen or heard during the day, or encountered in my normal working life. I also tend to be something of a help desk for all sorts of contacts, plus I provide 24/7 tech support to my own household and extended family, an unpaid gig I need to point out (that’ll change come the revolution).

As a consequence I pay virtually no attention to any of my blog statistics, visitors, who reads what etc – because to be honest it’s not relevant.

Last October I moved my blog from Typepad to WordPress, and WordPress has a much, much better statistics system in-built, so I noticed I could easily check a list of the most read stories, here are the top 10:

Looping through records in SQL Server Stored Procedure 1,671
Missing Formula Bar in Excel (for Mac) 964
ASP Timeout expired error: Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error ’80040e31′ 888
Solving ‘Login timeout expired’ Problem on Windows Server 2008 419
Drag and Drop stops working on Mac Lion 163
How to host IIS7 web site on Mac OSX folder via Parallels 128
Cricket Scoring Signals and Symbols 103
No honey, actually it’s NOT my speeding fine. Google Location History – bit creepy, pretty useful 82
SQL Server mqSQL “Commands out of sync; you can’t run this command now” 66
How to refresh Facebook’s cache of your blog post when you update 55

The problem is, if I followed traditional blogger convention I should be analysing all this and zeroing in on what my audience wants. Apparently, people REALLY want to know how to loop through a set of records in a SQL Server stored procedure (you know you want to as well….). And a way to recover a missing toolbar in a now old version of Excel.

I hate to disappoint you, but the reason I write most of these more ‘geeky’ posts is actually to act as a reminder for me, so the next time I encounter the issue I can look back and check how I solved the problem last time – kind of my own knowledge base you might say.

How to syncronise bookmarks across different browsers on your computer

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bookmark

This is a perennial problem for me, I often have multiple browers open – Firefox, Safari, and Chrome on my Mac, Internet Explorer in Windows (via Parallels), often because I need to be logged into the same website as different logins; or because I’m testing browser compatibility.

Chrome is my default browser – a major change I made a while back after Firefox just became too slow, although I still use it for debugging because of the indispensable Firebug.

I have several bookmark folders with lists of web site addresses I access constantly. But of course that’s in Chrome, so when I open up another browser I have to go back to Chrome, grab the URL, and paste it into the new window. All a bit tedious. Once or twice I’ve exported my bookmarks out of Chrome and imported them into the other browsers, but that’s not much chop as a plan.

The other day I came across Xmarks, software designed to keep your bookmarks in sync across all your browsers and devices (eg your computer, tablet, phone and so forth). I’ve installed the software in all my browsers, and it quietly syncs my bookmarks. If I add a bookmark in one browser, after a while it turns up in the other browsers – or if I’m impatient I can manually trigger a synchronisation.

I love tools like this, it might not be a problem for everyone, but for those of us who do need this functionality, Xmarks is the perfect solution.

Image: Enokson

Video: Wangaratta beer fridge animation

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I received a lovely email overnight from the guys at TomoNews US – they’re part of Next Media Animation, the company that makes the fun Taiwanese animations.

They noticed my blog post about the beer fridge in Wangaratta interferring with the mobile phone network, they’ve made a cute video about the story!

Enjoy!

How a beer fridge caused widespread mobile phone blackouts

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beer-fridge

 

UPDATE:  The guys at TomoNews US have made a cute video about the story!

I’m an avid follower of what I term ‘fragile technology’ stories – and so the idea a beer fridge could cause mobile phone network interference across parts of Wangaratta is fabulous.

Apparently residents in Wangaratta have been experiencing mobile phone network problems for some time. Telstra’s technicians using software tools and then hand-held antennas finally tracked the interference to a beer fridge in a man’s garage.

The fridge is believed to have been interrupting mobile signals in “several neighbourhoods” of the town of 17,000, which lies about 230km from Melbourne.

There’s some discrepancy in the reports as to exactly what part of the fridge caused the interference – one says it was the light globe, another the fridge motor. Apparently nobody is blaming the beer – obviously a major relief for anyone who enjoys a cold beer whilst chatting on their phone.

What is more alarming is the confession by Telstra that the list of devices that can possible intefere with the cellular network is long:

Telstra engineers say any electric spark of a large enough magnitude can generate radio frequency noise that is wide enough to create blackouts on the 850mHz spectrum that carries our mobile voice calls and internet data.

Lamps, TVs, and electronic signs are a problem:

Mr Jennings says an “enormous range” of rogue appliances can cause disruptions. There’s things called mercury vapour lamps which are often used in retail premises, domestic TV installations is a big one, even large electronic advertising signs can cause interference,” he said.

It also seems there’s a big issue with illegal mobile repeaters – to the point I’m wondering how come I don’t have one in my backyard to help out Fiona (who still staggers along with the terrible Vodafone coverage for her iPhone).

“There’s probably a vast number out there that just don’t show up in our network stats but still have some impact on the network.”

Seems there’s a bunch of dodgy web sites out there selling these boosters, including ones specifically targeting us poor Australian saps. Although the idea of going to jail for a zillion years for using a repeater may just dissuade me.

Image:  Simon Lieschke