Update History
This page should list all the major additions and changes to Astroblahhh.Com. And some not-so-major changes here and there.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
I finally got tired of the nuisances resulting from having the MagnaMural stuff over on its own subdomain. It was really annoying having to have duplicate sets of SSI files for that and the main Astroblahhh site, but the last straw was when I saw that the site logo and PayPal images weren't showing up for some reason.
So, this finally spurred me to create the Second Life section, a long-overdue addition to this site, uploaded at 4:01 PM. It currently only has the MagnaMural stuff (which I uploaded between 3:33 PM and 3:47 PM) and some links, mostly from my former links blog on del.icio.us. Anyone visiting the old MagnaMural URLs should be redirected seamlessly to the new location of the files they were trying to reach.
That's the only significant update. So, the following is nothing important, it's just me rambling on pointlessly in a blog-like fashion.
Now that I have some advertisers, and have actually made 6 cents so far, I'm feeling increasingly restless and as though I really need to update this site more.
It's making me feel torn between two projects - to try to quickly write some blog software and change the layout of my site, or finish my web links/file organizer, which has now become an ideas/goals/things to do organizer as well, and is actually turning out to be really nice and useful for me even in its partially complete form, but which may take a while yet to complete and release.
I've looked around for some free blog software other than WordPress, and even seriously considered just putting up a temporary WordPress blog until I make or find something better, but, I probably won't. I don't really want to, because having to eventually make a transition from one blog software to another would be annoying.
Oh, well. I guess I'll just try to hurry up and finish my web links/file/idea organizer. Or maybe I'll work on both that and some blog software at once. Or maybe I'll just struggle against procrastination. I don't know, but, I'm definitely in the mood to get some things done, so, that hopefully bodes well for this site having some more updates hopefully soon, maybe.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Yet another insignificant update. I changed the 768 x 60 ad banner at the top to a row of 5 ad squares, 125 x 125 apiece. I just thought I'd give any repeat visitors to this site something new and different to look at, even if they're only ads.
Besides which, Project Wonderful's statistics page isn't picking up on that many visitors, which is rather disappointing, since what this probably means is that most of the visits to my site are just search engine robots.
So, I figured until I build up a significant amount of real traffic, I might as well give away some cheap (or free) ad space. I also decided I'd rather do this for a larger number of advertisers than just 1 at a time.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Another insignificant update. This evening, sometime between 9:42 PM and 9:58 PM, I added an ad box for a third-party ad system I'm trying called Project Wonderful. As of 9:58 PM, the ad box is activated and bids on the ad space can be placed.
I don't yet know how much money it will make me, but, I quite like Project Wonderful's ways of doing things. There are many things about Google AdSense I object to (lack of transparency, the fact that the ads are pay-per-click, etc.), but Project Wonderful has none of those problems.
I changed the advertising page a bit to reflect these changes. It's still possible to buy ads directly from me (even though no one ever has), but for the time being, that costs more than buying ads through Project Wonderful.
If all goes well, this will most likely encourage me to update this site more frequently, I hope - since increased traffic should translate directly into increased advertising revenue. It might also inspire me to finally finish my simple blog software.
Not much else to say. I'm hoping to be done with my file organizer software soon. I will hopefully release it within the next month or two, along with the web links organizer (they're part of the same software package).
Monday, June 16, 2008
This isn't much of an update at all, so I'm not even going to announce it on the front page. All I did was, at 12:26 PM, I toned down some of the swearing over at the credit card boycott page. :-) Of course, I still despise the credit card companies just as much - I just thought, what the heck, I'll make the page a little more appealing/safe for advertisers, maybe. I might have changed other minor things elsewhere on the site, can't remember what, though.
I'm mainly making this update because I just felt for some reason like rambling on a bit about my life, just in case anyone is wondering. Not too much is going on - I've just been feeling a bit guilty about not updating this site more often.
I've partially finished a web links organizer thing which is similar to del.icio.us, with tags, a tag search thing, and additional informational fields which I will probably also make searchable. Similar to the AMODB, it's a PHP/MySQL thing which is intended to run on your own computer rather than being uploaded to the web.
It's already much nicer than del.icio.us, at least for me - it's private, I can customize it any way I want, and it doesn't have a horrible white background with a sidebar, among other cosmetic horrors which repel me from del.icio.us.
So, I've been happily adding all the formerly horrifyingly disorganized links I had collected over years using a horrible system of just dumping them in plain text files with the date/time I collected them and sometimes a short accompanying note, and occasionally adding the most frequently-used links to HTML files.
I look forward to finishing this thing up and releasing its full source code into the public domain.
I also am beginning to work on a file organizer thing which will, for me at least, take the place of Google Desktop, and actually be an improvement on it, because I really don't need something that is constantly running in the background gathering more and more data for its dreadfully (and hopefully needlessly) colossal database.
Years ago, I sort of liked Google Desktop, but the fact that it's not open source makes me a bit squeamish, wondering what kind of private data Google might secretly collect with it. So, after my old computer broke down, I never installed Google Desktop again, but I've sort of missed it, except for the privacy concerns and the fact that I prefer to do without anything that writes to my hard drive constantly for no good reason.
I think my file organizer program will be much better for me - I'll be able to trust it, and I won't have it constantly monitoring everything I do and writing to the hard drive. I also think being able to tag my files and describe them in my own words, a bit like my web link organizer, will come in handy. It will be great being able to customize everything about it, and to not have to look at ghastly web pages with white backgrounds (I hate those!), and never have to download upgrades (or be forced to automatically download them), or wonder what the program is doing that I don't know about, and what information it is sending to Google.
Wow, just found this article - seems like the privacy concerns with Google Desktop are even worse than before. I'd never install that now. :-) I wouldn't really trust Yahoo or Microsoft's desktop search tools either, though, and I also just have too many of my own ideas on the best way to do things (and too little patience to try to understand someone else's source code) to really be happy using anyone else's software, so, I guess that means my only option really is just to write my own. :-)
It will be most refreshing to finally be able to easily find things amongst all the disorganized chaos I've amassed over the years.
I still haven't finished my blog software, though I haven't been working on it. Which is probably good, for now, because I used to pointlessly waste a lot of energy on writing blog posts complaining about my life. My life still sucks so much that if I had a blog, I might end up doing the same thing again.
Eventually, though, it might be good for me to have some kind of blog - it will help draw traffic here, will hopefully educate and amuse, and encourage donations, as well as make it a lot easier for me to update this site more frequently than in the past.
Unlike most blogs, it will provide the option of reading posts in chronological order like a proper book. I'm thinking it's probably also going to feature multiple differently-themed pages with hopefully all different posts and no redundancy, as well as a central page which contains all (or almost all) posts so people won't have to keep looking all over the site to see every blog post I've made.
OK, that's all for now.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Well, at 4:26 PM, I added a new Self-Help section to this site, mainly just to house a not altogether serious but also not very humorous article I wrote. It's called How to Be a Woman, and it never would have been written if Steve Pavlina hadn't asked on his blog for people to write an article by that title, since it's not a topic I ever would have thought of on my own.
Anyhow, I have no idea if it will be selected as one of the best articles, but, I figured it was worth a try, since getting more traffic over to this website and a permanent link from such a well-known and excellent website as StevePavlina.com would hopefully be a good thing.
Also in the Self-Help section are some external links to self-help/personal development websites and articles I like. If you happen to follow my Links Blog, you might already have seen most of those links. (Note, 7/7/2008: As of 12:33 AM, 7/7/2008, I deleted my links blog).
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Finally, another update. At 7:07 AM, I added a new Ideas section to this site, so I'll have a place to share any ideas which I might or might not ever implement myself.
There is currently one article in that section, Ideas for Internet Login Security. Any website where it is at all important for user accounts to be secure, like PayPal, or bank and credit card websites, should probably implement some of these measures.
Well, guess that's all for now.