AdSense Update
I still haven't heard anything back from Google wrt the AdSense account. The initial turnaround to the application was hours; now, it's 2 days since I replied and nothing as of yet. Wonder what's going on.
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August 7, 2003
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek
Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush - U.S. President and Naval Aviator - 12" Action Figure at KBtoys.com
Next in the Conservative Wingnut Fantasy Action Figure Series: Hillary Clinton, complete with penis and brownshirt.
August 6, 2003
Stupid policies, part 2
From Declan McCullagh's politech list: Ticketmaster will not allow you to opt-out of third party information sharing (translation: selling your name to spammers) if you buy tickets from them online:
By purchasing a ticket, or completing a registration form so that you are able to access a purchase page for a ticket, to a concert, game or other event on the Site, you consent (i.e., you opt-in) to us sharing your personal information with the venues, promoters, artists, teams, leagues and other third parties associated with that concert, game or other event ("Event Partners"). We cannot offer you a separate opportunity to opt-out, or not to consent, to our sharing of your personal information with them. Event Partners may use your personal information in accordance with their own privacy policies, and may consequently use your personal information to contact you and may share your personal information with others. You will need to contact those Event Partners who contact you to instruct them directly regarding your preferences for the use of your personal information by them.
This is just bad whichever way you look at it. It also pretty much guarantees that I will never buy tickets from them, online or offline. I'm sure that's not the result they wanted. But it's pretty much the only vote you've got when it comes to lousy service.
0some changes, additions
You may have noticed that I have made a couple small additions. One is the "recently moblogged" bit in the right hand column. I've been posting pics from a Nokia 3650 to a moblog at TextAmerica.. Nothing very frequent.
Another thing is that I have added an Amazon ad below the moblog section. Not that I think much is going to come of it, but I thought, what the hell, why not. Feel free to tell me why not.
I'm also thinking of writing something about the recent changes in the blogging world in general, but lately I've been much more interested in relaxing with my family than spending all my time immersed in tech. I get enough of it at work.
0AdSense confusion
The other day I applied, like so many bloggers, to serve Google's AdSense banners on this site. The first thing I noticed while filling out the application was they ask for the base URL of the site, i.e. I entered www.panix.com instead of www.panix.com/~jbm/snappy, thinking that I'd get to qualify this later on in the application process.
As it turned out, this was not the case, thus meaning that I was applying as though I were the owner of panix.com. ((I actually have registered snappytheclam.com, but have not yet got round to finding hosting for it. Suggestions welcome, I've heard good things about cornerhost.)
Not the case. Later that day I got an answer back from Google:
Hello John,
Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. We've noticed that you have submitted an application for www.panix.com on more than one occasion, with different contact information. As you have previously been approved, it is not necessary to submit an additional application.
Our records show that you were approved to participate in Google AdSense with this URL on July 31, 2003. An email was sent to (address snipped, but not mine) with details on how you can get started. If you did not receive this email, please reply to this email and I will be happy to re-send the information to you.
If you have any further questions about the program or about your account, please reply to this email and I will be happy to assist you.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
D'oh! Just missed it. Seriously, what had happened was that another person with webspace at Panix, my ISP, had applied before I did and was given an account. I had been wondering whhether I'd be accepted to begin with - I vaguely remembered having seen some traffic round the net saying that they were rejecting "personal" sites, whatever that meant, though this would seem to cover weblogs in general. Whether this shuts everyone else at Panix out of serving AdSense remains to be seen - I replied to the email explaining the situation but haven't heard back from them yet.
0Diabetic energizer
Power from blood could lead to 'human batteries' - smh.com.au
Researchers in Japan are developing a method of drawing power from blood glucose, mimicking the way the body generates energy from food.
Theoretically, it could allow a person to pump out 100 watts - enough to illuminate a light bulb.
But that would entail converting all the food eaten by the individual into electricity. In practice, less power would be generated since food is needed by the body.
Perhaps this could also be used to better control glucose levels in diabetics. God knows at times I could probably put out a few hours of television watching. Interesting idea...
August 4, 2003
The program ate my livelihood
Megnut: Monday, in which a important project document gets eaten by a trial copy of an unnamed software package:
In which this week gets off to the most craptacular start because the used-to-think-it-was-OK-but-now-think-it's-HORRID project management software I've been using deleted my entire project plan. Yes. The whole thing. All 117 items scheduled between now and the end of the month, wonderfully assigned, beautifully estimated, and all in some stage of % complete.
I'm truly sympathetic to this, but I kind of find it hard to believe that you'd trust a document this important to a software trial version, and even if you did, you'd want to make damn sure you'd exported it to some non locked-in easily readable text format like CSV or XML, just in case something exactly like this happened. Despite my talking the talk, I've been bitten by similar situations myself, and all I can say is export early and often and make a lot of backups. Visual Age for Java used to keep everything in one big project repository file, and I learned to often export projects to source code. Both for backup purposes, and so I could make sure projects would compile using just ant and javac.