You Can't Coach That

Monday, April 30, 2007

While reading Hamarana, another great Aussie blog, I found a link to Comodo’s free products. One particular program that looks interesting and that I will be trying out over the next few days is iVault. Here’s what they have to say about it:

iVault saves time by providing instantaneous logins to any username/password secured web pages such as online banking and email account sites. It also doubles up as a 256 bit secure storage for private and confidential information such as credit card details and social security numbers and protects against the very latest key-logging Trojan Horse viruses.

This looks very much to me like Roboform which would have to be the most useful piece of software I have ever bought (actually my Dad paid for it - thanks Dad). I currently have 142 user name and password combinations saved by roboform and they all allow me to log into 142 different web pages with only one click. I would be absolutely lost without it.

Up until now I haven’t always recommended Roboform to others because of the cost but now there may be an alternative. I will post again when I have tested it.

“You can’t coach that”

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Like many people I use a feed reader to keep up to date with my favourite blogs and other pages of interest. I have in fact been doing so for at least five a couple of years but have only recently started using a web based reader. This is where my dilemma begins. I have been using Google reader for a while and have also dabbled a bit with Newsgator and I am still trying to decide which one I like best and therefore which I will continue to use. I thought up until about five minutes ago that Google Reader had won the contest. I have however just realised the one thing that has been bugging me about it. Whenever I visit a site outside of the reader to leave a comment or read a story in more depth and then return to the reader, I am returned to the home page of my Google Reader setup. I would much rather be returned to the feed that I left from. I have not been able to find a way of remedying this situation so if you know of one please let me know. Newsgator returns me straight back to the feed that I was reading before I left.

I know that I could set up firefox to open links in new tabs and I was using this option for a while. I find that this leaves me with just too many tabs open so I only selectively open links in new tabs (with a middle mouse button click).

I would love to hear opinions on the best way to use Google Reader if you use it or if you use another option.

“You can’t coach that”

Since I stopped using the ad block plus extension for firefox I have of course been seeing a lot of google ads in my blog travels. One particular ad seems to be following me around. It says “Are you EMO? Hang with us.” I am starting to get a little nervous here. Has google invented some sort of new technology that somehow gets inside your head and looks for certain thought patterns or brain activity? If they have then I think it needs a tweak or two. No EMOs here.

If you are wondering why I am no longer using ad block plus, the answer lies in perhaps a naive sense of fair play. I am in the process of working out the best way to monetise this and another blog and I feel that if I hope to make a little money this way (hopefully to cover costs) then I should do my bit for others. I would love an extension that allows you to block ads selectively. I suppose I could turn it back on and then disable it for specific blogs I visit often but I haven’t got around to it yet.

Here is a definition of EMO.

I get the feeling that the wind might be going out of the sails of the many technorati favourite exchange programs but what would I know? What I do know however is that they are very time consuming to stay up to date with. Engtech has written a neat little program that will automatically connect to technorati and favourite anyone who has favourited you. It first checks to see whether they are already in your favourites.

So far I have a total of 261 favoutites. I would estimate that about 40 of these would have been on my list without the exchange programs. I have been favourited by 100.

While I don’t know how relevent it is my tachnorati rank is now 75,388 which seems ok to me given that I haven’t done a lot of active promotion other than the fav’s exchange so far.

And yes I do know how to spell “favourite” - we spell proper in Australia.

“You can’t coach that”

My Dad brought this to my attention recently. He was having Heinz spaghetti on toast for breakfast from the small (130g) can. Thinking that the taste was not what he was used to he looked at the nutritional information printed on the label and compared it to the contents for the larger (420g) can. He was surprised to see that the small can had 38% more sugar and 27% more sodium than the larger can. On querying Heinz he was told that the cans were manufactured in different factories and the contents were sourced separately.

Could Heinz be taking advantage of children’s liking for all things sweet. After all the likely consumers of the small can of spaghetti may be children. In a time of growing childhood obesity this is not the sort of situation we need.

“You can’t coach that”

Friday, April 27, 2007

Well not literally who invented them, obviously birds invented the whole egg thing. What I really mean is who thought up the idea to eat them? I just can’t imagine someone sitting around the campfire, or wherever people sat in the pre-egg eating days, and upon observing an egg fall out of the back end of a nearby chicken saying to themselves “I think that would make good eating”. It fell out of the bum of a bird! (I know, not the actual bum but in the vicinity). Why would you eat something that did that. Did people have a “let’s eat things that are excreted by birds” weekend? Was it a dare? Hey I dare you to eat the white shiny bird turd.

I am equally perplexed by the concept of potatoes. While they are one of my favourite foods, after all they fry up a treat, I just don’t get why anyone would dig one up and eat one. Imagine the trial and error involved in finding out that potatoes are a form of fuel for humans. How many thoroughly disgusting things were consumed on the way to discovering what would one day become the humble chip (french fry for you Yanks). The thing in its natural state could easily be mistaken for the droppings of a giant Wombat so how many times did people eat the droppings of giant Wombats before they found potatoes (another flaw in my logic of course, potatoes aren’t native to Australia and Wombats are thin on the ground in Ireland).

Chips and Eggs for dinner tonight I think.

“You can’t coach that”

As of Tuesday of this week, 24 April 2007, I am officially working for myself and not the tax man. The Centre for Independent Studies has calculated that, on average, the money earned by Australians up to that day is sufficient to satisfy the average amount of tax paid for the calendar year. So for the rest of the year the money is all mine.

Tax freedom day for the US will be 30 April and for the UK it will be 1 June.

Not that it probably means too much but noticed today that cantcoachthat has made it into the top 100,000 blogs at technorati. I guess the technorati favourites exchange achieved something. 

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Today, 25 April, is ANZAC day. We pause to remember those who have given their lives in all wars.

“Lest We Forget”

Monday, April 23, 2007

Wanted - One Blog Assistant.

Duties include reading dozens of interesting blogs, summarising the interesting and informative articles and drafting a series of witty and topical comments for my perusal and final approval. Suggestions for equally informative and interesting articles will also be expected.

The successful applicant will have the following qualities:

• The ability to read (at least until after the fourth drink of the day after which time allowances will be made)
• The ability to type with at least one finger.
• An excellent command of the Queen’s English (Swahili will also be spoken after the fourth drink of the day)

Physical characteristics are not important, however should you be interviewed on a day my wife is out of town, blonde hair, blue eyes and large breasts will be all that I will notice.

Renumeration will be based on a percentage of the advertising revenue generated here so it would be helpful if you were financially secure.

EDIT: Duties will include keeping up to date with numerous Technorati Favourite exchange programs  

Thursday, April 19, 2007

I have been surprised by the number of blogs that I have chanced upon and then later found they are written by Aussies. I’ve added two of these to my friends list:

Cruftbucket and

Goldcoaster

Like all in the list they are well worth a read.

“You can’t coach that”

This thing has grown legs big time. I think the blogs that already have a good readership already might be the big beneficiaries but I have no evidence for this, purely a gut feeling.

Staying up to date with the favouriting is taking quite a bit of effort. I am staying up to date with people who comment under my previous entry and in a day or so will post with a link back to the blogs I know are doing similar exchange programs.

Is all this worthwhile - buggered if I know.

“You can’t coach that”

As an occasional listener of net radio through Pandora I note with interest the recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington to increase the royalties paid by Internet radio stations. An email I received from the Pandora founder claims that this will force internet radio off the air. The story has been getting a lot of exposure so doesn’t need me to add to it. The story has been dugg and I headed over to read what people were saying about it. One particular comment caught my attention:

This is why I pirate all my music now, I will not give money to the industry.

If I could give money direct to the artist I would, but most don’t have that option.

What a load of bullshit! Don’t make me laugh, pirates pirate music because they don’t want to pay for it - end of story.

If you are in the US and want to have a say you can head on over to savenetradio.org to sign the petition.

I have intentionally not commented on the right or wrong of the increase in the royalties or whether signing the petition will make any difference. If you would like to educate me feel free in the comments.

“You can’t coach that”

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Sorry folks, i couldn’t resist this one.

Dan at The Wrong Advices recently posted about “How much time do you spend on your blog” and I have been thinking about it ever since. After all, time is something most of appear to have in short supply (oh dear what a cliche). I include time reading other blogs as well as that is part of the overall appeal for me.

I have come around to thinking about this question from another angle - what do I give up for the blog?  This for me is a more relevant question considering my lifestyle and the stage I am up to in my life. The answer to the original question is probably too much, however, I think that as long as I am not prioritizing blogging over more important activities then I can justify the time spent doing it. This justification is of course to myself but more importantly to my family.

So what am I giving up? The main thing is watching TV. I love nothing better than to sit in front of the idiot box and not contemplate the problems of the world. The trouble is that this is a very non-productive activity. At least with blogging it forces me to think a little bit occasionally (perhaps not always evident from my posts). Unfortunately, I also on occasion blog instead of doing the work that I bring home that I actually get paid for so I will have to watch this so that it doesn’t become an issue. Finally, I am trying to get a sports related blog up and running and writing this post is keeping me from doing some design work on the templates so I am going to stop waffling.

What are you not doing?