I have had a few big traffic spikes to zieak.com. It looks like the Nintendo Mouse is going through Stumble Upon again. I get a bit of daily traffic from the site but not usually 4,000 hits in one day.  And usually the heavy traffic comes and goes – there is an aftershock from the first spike.

Check out my traffic history by month for the last 15 months or so…

The big spike last fall was from after Sarah Palin was named as the VP candidate for John McCain.

Things like this are the right motivation… just when i was starting to consider quitting blogging…

It was time for a design fix. I changed the site template to Disconnected but made a few tweaks to the style including my rotating banner images.

I also added a plugin that kicks any comments made on my images posted to Flickr right to my blog. It is called Flickr Comment Importer. At first I couldn’t get it to work – i kept getting an error message that my RSS feed was not correct. After some hair-pulling i realized that the form taking the comment feed url was too short and was cutting off the end of my pasted url. I’m working on trying to figure out a few other modifications to the plug in and as soon as i have them done i’ll post the php file for others to use.

I’m playing around with a Facebook plug in that allows people to post using their Facebook login. My intent was to have comments pulled from my duplicate posts there extracted and posted to this blog but the author of that plug in has not updated it and fixing it it is beyond my abilities. So i have one installed that you can permit zieak.com to pull information from your Facebook profile. If you’re logged into Facebook then you’re logged into your commenter account on zieak.com too. it will even pull your avatar from Facebook to post with your comment.

I disabled the localized avatars. I suggest registering your emails for a Gravatar. It will be recognized on many websites including most that use Wordpress.

The previous three posts total over 2,000 words (and grows as i think of things to add).  They are also mighty image heavy.   I’ve taken over 400 photos in three days but try to be concise in my image selection.  So i decided to split the posts so you have to go to the post page to read the full entry.  This will make the main psge load faster and not be so long in case you skip a few days and want to read my experience chronologically.  By looking at my stats, this will also let me know if anyone is even reading them!

I got tired of having to size my images so small on my site and having the content use about one third of the width of my screens.  I checked with google analytics and only 2.6, % of my visitors are running an 800×600 resolution.  And of that small segment of visitors, 98% are new visits.  So if i’m primarily worried about the browsing experience of my few regulars it makes sense to improve the appearance for a larger screen.  So i switched to a new theme and started tweaking css and colors to make it a little more to my liking.  It needs a bit more work though.  Just what i need to keep me busy for the week before i leave!

I think i’ll make the modified theme available for others to use when i’m done with it.

I made a notable change on a previous post – i made it private.  A look at my logs showed that a former friend was lurking and reading (i wrote about him before and he was a bit mean-spirited).  I also realized that any efforts i make toward reconciliation will continue to be rebuffed so i no longer wanted my “heart on my sleeve” and instead would like to return to displaying a “stiff upper lip.”  But for my future benefit i wanted to hold onto the message and the comments.

But removing the post from the public eye isn’t enough.  Google kindly caches many web pages – and a hit to the site using Google’s cache also showed up.  This was from a local IP address that i also was able to isolate and determine the source.  My privacy isn’t mine when i go public with feelings like that – i know.  But i changed my mind and no longer wanted those words available to dangle in front of anyone.  But Google saved a copy for anyone savvy enough to find (and she is smart)!

Fortunately, Google also allows you to specify that you no longer want them to archive your pages.  Follow these directions to make your content a little less permanent.

It’s too late for me now – but next time i need to eat my words or decide to redact a post it should work out.

Blogging swag

Originally uploaded by zieak

I participated in the annal October ‘blog action day’ for the two years It has taken place. Today I received the hardcover book "Causewired" and a tub of ideablob. Yeah – I don’t know about the ideablob. But the book is about modern technology supporting causes. I’ve admittedly not done much "pleasure" reading in the last – oh – decade. But something like this might actually get cracked open. Right after I finish "What Would MacGyver Do?"

Hot dang. I did take a peek at the new Wordpress admin area recently but seeing it first hand is pretty nifty. I like it a lot. I’m so glad i shifted from Blogger so long ago. Any of my blogging friends that want to make the move let me know and I’ll do all the work for you. It’s that good.

Technorati keeps a running list of the “top 100 blogs” according to incoming links.  A number of these sites have posted some of my content (some have given credit and others have not).  Here’s the list of sites in the top 100 with stuff from me.  If the number is in green they gave me credit or a link (or both) and if red they didn’t.

#1 – HuffingtonPost.com used my cropped Palin photo – I have asked for attribution.

#3 – Gizmodo.com wrote about my shopping cart bike.

#4 – Engadget.com wrote about the Nintendo Mouse.

#5 – Lifehacker.com wrote about my greasemonkey script…

#5 – Lifehacker.com also covered the wallet made from an old keyboard.

#17 – Treehugger.com wrote about the shopping cart bike.

#25 – Problogger.net included my post about improving blogging.

#25 – Problogger.net posted my entry in a group writing challenge.

#31 – Consumerist.com has used a number of my photos to illustrate articles. (I linked to the search results instead of the half-dozen actual posts for this one.)

#40 – Joystiq.com covered my Nintendo mouse and…

#40 – Joystiq.com also covered my Nintendo controller card reader.

Well it looks like the world is looking for images of Sarah Palin today.  And i have a few.  Look at this…

I better make sure my images are watermarked…

I found that the things that i write about change along with my interests.  Since i seem to have been writing more about beards and want to document my finds from thrift stores and garage sales i added categories for those posts.  I also went back and added old posts to those categories.