Lewies Blog

A while back, I signed up for a few blog exchanges. These would be
Blog Clicker, Blog Crowd, Blog Exchange, Blog Explosion, and BlogAZoo. These services allow you to surf other blogs. As a reward for surfing other peoples blogs through the system, the system will direct a few people to your own blog. This is great for those of us who are searching for a few more hits on our blogs.

I was really into them at first, but I tended to get bored after a while. I started to see many of the same blogs over again. I also became inpatient with the amount of time that they made me wait until I could go on to read the next blog. Eventually, I tried paying for a few of my hits so I didn’t have to surf to get them.

For anyone new in the blogosphere, this may be a good choice. I got many new loyal readers out of the deal and had a lot of interaction going on. I could see spikes in my websites statistics of the system actually working.

Here is where the problem begins. I am in a bubble. I am only getting people to my site who are fellow bloggers themselves. The trick to getting some fresh eyes is to break out of my bubble and go outside of the blogosphere and attract other people to my site.

I have found that my site statistics are reporting that Google is competing neck-and-neck with one of the blog traffic exchanges that has given me the most traffic. Google is free and is outside of the blogosphere niche. I think a large amount of my visitors from google can be attributed to the large variety of things that I talk about. I almost have 1,000 posts as well since September of last year.

The problem with incomming Googlers is that they probably are not bloggers. The concept of a blog may be unfamilliar to them. The front page is not where they usually enter my site. They may not come back.

So now the trick is to figure out if fellow googlers are able to get the concept, and if not - how can I improve my blogs template to help these folks out. Also, Google seems to be the #1 search engine everyone comes in through. I’ll have to figure out other ways to get my site indexed better on other search engines.

Tags: Search, Search Engines, Google, Blog Exchanges, Statistics, Visitors, Traffic, Template, BlogAZoo, Blog Exchange, Blog Crowd, Blog Explosion, Surf

My computer broke down last week and stopped working. I had a spare computer, but the game would not play well on it. Everything on the spare matched closely with the original (2.6 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 160 GB HD), except for the video card.

I was using the card built into the mother board. This ment that my computers CPU was handling all of the software renduring. A trip to the store on pay day resulted in a $100 dollar purchase of a Mad Dog video card. I chose it because it had the NVIDIA chipset, and it was cheap for 128 MB RAM compared to the other cards.

Angel tagged along with me as well and picked up some new speakers for her computer. She is also into WarCraft now as well and loves the interface. She has played a few online 3D games before but the interfaces usually turned her away.

I installed the video card fairly quickly and was back into my addiction …

I believe I didn’t get any sleep until 6 AM Saturday morning. I went out to the kitchen and realized that there was daylight outside. Oops! I promptly logged out and caught some sleep.

Tags: NVIDIA, Video, Game, Video Game, WarCraft, Sleep, Repair, Interface, Angel, Mad Dog, Addiction, Shopping

A few of you may know that my eye is looking towards financing an HDTV sometime in the far future. I came accross an aticle about video game consoles today:

Games created for two next-generation consoles, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, and the PlayStation 3, which Sony introduced late Monday, would display video in wide-screen high-definition format if the console is connected to a high-definition TV. Only Nintendo’s entry, code-named Revolution, will not cater to HDTVs.

My brother has been raving how the Xbox already has very good support for HDTV. The Sony PS2 has limited support and the games themselves have to be specially compatable with the new HDTV’s to get any benefit. On regular television, Xbox beats the PS2 hands down with its crisp resolution.

It is no wonder that sony this time is investing heavy into graphics. There new system is capable of playing 8 streams of HDTV simutaniously. They are also using the NVIDIA graphic chipset. NVIDIA is my preferred chip when it comes to 3D games and I have it in all the video cards in my computers that I play games on.

The Xbox 360 is due to come out this fall. The Sony PS3 is due to come out next spring. My brother has both the Xbox and PS2. I only have the PS2 and haven’t seen a real need to go with the Xbox just yet. The main game that I play is Grand Theft Auto 5 (San Andreas). It came out on the PS2 last year and my brother is still waiting for it to come out on the Xbox. He is holding out for now by borrowing my PS2 game.

I can’t wait for the PS3 to come out with GTA6.

Tags: Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, Sony, Microsoft, Games, HDTV, Video Games, Console, Video Game Console, VGC, GTA, GTA5, GTA6, San Andreas, NVIDIA

In the beginning there were people, and it was good. But eventually, the people got bored and started looking to each other for entertainment. There was gossip, teachings, theories, and jokes. All of these were orally transmitted, as there were no such things as televisions or electricity or even paper for that matter at that time.

Later in life, some people evolved into monks and spent entire lives in silence writing large thick books with fancy letters. These books would be read by the rich who could afford such an honor as well as the skills to be able to read.

Suddenly, a guy got the idea to chisel some wood plates, dip them in ink, and press a paper against them. What an ingeniouse idea. The speed compared to those monks was phanominal. The monks raised a brow, but then realized they could write five copies of a book by time a wood block was ready.

Another person got the idea to arrange a lot of tiny wooden blocks with letters on them so that they could be reused. The monks would have been furiouse with silence except that as an effort of good faith, the first book that was mass produced was a bible. People loved it. Anyone who didn’t have a friend to hear the latest gossip could simply buy a paper and read it.

News papers and books had evolved little over time until some chap invented electricity. With electricity came a wide range of new inventions. One was called the telegraph. The telegraph would send electronic signals accross the country where they would be written down and then added to the stories to be written in the Sunday paper.

Eventually there was a guy who had nothing else to do but play with gizmos and gadgets. He even had a friend to help him out. The two of them accidentally figured out how to do what it was that they were trying to do. Besides that, they also invented a device in which they could hear what the other was saying without being in the same room. Out of this little invention, the telephone could then be invented. Reporters would call up people on the other side of the country and tell them what to print in the Sunday paper.

Later there was radio. Radio made it possible to turn electric signals into air waves and then convert them back into the original signals with a receiver. Combining this technology with the electronic signals produced with the telephone and you would get audio broadcasts from places now known as radio stations. Rather then read the paper every Sunday, people could just turn a radio receiver on and listen in to what someone has to say in a one-way conversation. This benefited many people who were illeterate, or aspired to become illeterate.

After radio came the television. Television was much like radio except that along side audio signals, there was also a signal for video. People no longer needed to watch the pictures in there head when it was setting rite in front of them. This changed many things and opened up oppertunities for the deaf.

Next came the computer. The computer was much like an interactive television without the television stations. In fact, it still doesn’t have them today. Today though, your computer is most likely connected to the internet in some way. The internet is like a donut (make up your own analogy as to why). But because it is like a donut, we can connect to many sources of media. It can be overwealming at fist, and continue to be overwealming until the day we have been predetermined to expire.

Well, I was going to make this into a post about how I really wanted to get an HDTV this year but my wife said no. I forgot that I already blogged about it anyway. Some how I got off track when I tried to be funny about it and ended up writting something that was entirely off the subject.

Tags: HDTV, Evolution, Darwin, Media, TV, Cable, Computer, Internet, Radio, Gossip, Monk, Book, Funny

What do you get when you have a 12 year old dream, a pair of pet gerbils, and a paycheck? You get a complex city that grows.

I was explaining to my brother that each section in my little gerbil setup has a function. I do not know if he was amazed or was just thinking that I was crazy, but all in all, I still had fun explaining it to him.

Naturally, gerbils love to burrow. They’ll try and dig deep into a cage - even when they are down to the plastic. To help prevent any mess, I get a generic plastic container. I get mine at PETsMART from Keep-A-Critter Item #60804

I fill it up with fresh pine shavings every weekend. They seem to be very comfortable with it because they spend lots of time digging under all the shavings. It is really easy to clean up. I simply dump it in the trash and haven’t seen any mess left behind. The wood shavings seem to absorb everything.

The newest addition is the sand bath. I went with the Keep-A-Critter container again and filled it up with a container of Kaytee Chinchilla Dust Bath. Gerbils use the sand to clean up like a shower. It’s called a dust bath. It elliminates extra oil and moisture. It is a very fine powder.

The gerbils didn’t take too well to the sand at first. Stewey is constantly in and out of there pushing the powder around. Ying doesn’t seem to be too worried about his hygene just yet.

The next part are the individual gerbil cages. I got two small Critter Tail cages mainly because … they were cheaper and when I started out, I thought it would be nicer for them to have two rooms rather then one big cage.

The smaller of the two cages (Critter Trail Mini One) is the feeding cage. Each day I throw out what is left and give them two teaspoons of food. They seem to understand it is food time when I’m holding the yellow dish. This is also the sleeping cage where I introduce all of the bedding. When I go to sleep at night, I will usually seperate this small cage from the city and replace the connecting tube with the original small water bottle. Then the cage sets in a spare bedroom over-night.

Above the smaller cage is a lookout tower. This tower is used often as the restroom. It is by far the most disguisting smelly item to clean out of all the cages. I’ve put litter up there, but they always move the litter out.

The larger of the two cages (Critter Trail Mini Two) was originally the gym. It came with a wheel, but it was too small and the gerbils wouldn’t use it. For a while, I had there old wheel in from the old Critter Trail Three cage. It bent the bars a little and I found myself removing it too often due to how wobbly and noisy it was. These days, this room is where they get there water, and where they have a little wooden hide away. Also, I place alfalfa from a mini-bale in there every couple of days.

The last and final part of this system is the tubing. The tubes alone can count as there own room and seem to be the most exciting part for the gerbils. Every few days, I connect the tubes up in a different way and afterwards, these guys spend about one or two hours just running through them forwards, backwards, and into each other. As time goes on, I continue to buy more tubes. Today, I was able to finally get enough tubes so that they can have more then one path to reach the same destination. They went crazy.

My gerbils have this problem of excessive knawing. I showed my brother all of the plastic shavings covering the surface where the cages are. I explained to him that it wasn’t litter, but from the inside of the tubes. These guys have so many things to knaw on, but it would appear that they prefer the plastic.

I buy them wooden homes ever few weeks that they hide in at first, but eventually knaw through. I got a container filled with Hamsteroids that they like. These things are like rocks. They’ll knaw on them at first, but get bored of them easily. I have wooden blocks, wooden vegies, and wooden toys all for them to knaw on. They prefer the plastic. They even knaw on the sides of there plastic dish and it is beat up bad.

I read that excessive knawing is due to either a poor selection of things to knaw on, or a need to escape out of boredom. So as a gerbil owner, I’m continuing to try and make there life exciting. This is the reason why I have so many accessories.

Tags: Gerbil, Dust Bath, Fun, Hobby, Pets, City, Petsmart, Critter Trail, Gnawing, Burrow, Hygene

Life … is hard. I installed SharpDesign to start programming. I got a simple “Hello World” program started up. Everything worked well, but the UI just isn’t the same. Things that I use on a daily bases with Visual Studio.Net just are not present. CTRL+J is a keyboard short cut that shows me all the methods, properties, fields, events and routines available for just about any object. In #Design, this just doesn’t work the same. Some kind of code shortcut drops down that lets you paste in some code for common functions.

I got my little technorati tagger too program to compile and load up with the software. Thank goodness I still had access to the code.

I got agrivated using the program and started doing other things. I started working on my moblog template. Blogger advertised that you could just send an email from any cell phone over to go@blogger.com and you instantly have a blog. I tried it out and sure enough, I got messaged back with a code that I had to use to claim my blog. They created a random address at http://nowfen.blogspot.com/. I had the option to change it to an existing blog that I had, or to change the name. I decided to just keep things as they were.

Anyway - I updated my template tonight. I made it very simple. It almost looks like those old web pages that I ran into when I first got on the internet.

• The dull gray backgrounds.
• The lack of cool effects.
• Horizontal rules used to seperate each section.
• Limited formatting.

Well, it should be simple enough to look at and navigate through. Just click a picture and you see the full size.

The one thing I don’t like is that blogger.com keeps sending me a text message every time they receive a picture from me. This takes my phone out of camera mode and prompts me to look at the message. You know … I don’t want to see these messages. I already know that I uploaded the image. I trust that they receive it. I wonder if there is a way to prevent that from happening so I can upload more pictures on the fly.

Tags: Technorati, Visual Studio.Net, Programming, Moblog, Template, Blogger.com, Hello World, Tagger, Phone, Camera, digiCAM, Upload, Text Messaging, go@blogger.com

The building I work in just got its own portal website. I must admit, it is a nice place to work. I always feel like I don’t belong in such a nice environment for some reason.

Tags: Website, Work, Portal, Building

Lacking the funds to purchase Visual Studio.Net 2005 for my spare machine, I went on a search for a free C# IDE. Lookie what I found! This programmer is legally happy.

Tags: C#, IDE, Programming, Free, Open-Source, Software, Website, Visual Studio.Net, Screenshot

Last night, my computer crashed when I was playing World of WarCraft. I was about to join my guild mates of the Camineet Avengers on an instance. It took about 4 hours before I could get back into the game by swapping another computer and installing everything that I needed. However, the performance was very bad.

In the picture, you can see me looking at a house where the walls seem to be missing. This happens everywhere with NPC’s, Players and just about any object that is not static. The first time that I tried to get into the game, it crashed out to the desktop.

Both machines have 1GB of ram and they are 2.4 and 2.6 GHz. The only difference that I can see is the video card. I went to go and install the video card in the spare machine and found that it didn’t even have an AGP slot.

For the moment, I’m running the game with the bare minimum of detail that I can get away with. I’m still having problems, but not as severe. I’ll need to look into some video cards for this paycheck.

As for the other machine, I think the problem may have something to do with the motherboard. That’s going to cost around $300 to replace. I can’t think of anything else that it could be. Nothing worked with that computer, but everything works with the spare. The keyboard, the monitor, USB devices … everything works.

I tried just plugging the power cord only and starting the box up. It would normally beep and squak at me about a missing keyboard. Nada!

Tags: WarCraft, Computer, Troubleshoot, Motherboard, Crash, Problem, AGP, Video Card, USB Device, Keyboard, Monitor, Power Cord, Bug, Game, Glitch, CPU, Memory, RPG, Addiction

My brother is a vegitarian. It doesn’t suprise me that he would find something like this (Grocery Store Wars). I was cracking up watching it.

Not so long ago in a supermarket not so far away …

These are dark times. For over a thousand generations, organic food like this lived in harmony with the ways of the farm. The farm gives them there power. It’s a kind of a “field” that creates all edibal things. But alas, the market has been taken over by the dark side of the farm. An empire of pollution and pesticides …

Tags: Starwars, Movie, Darth Vader, Darth Tater, Parody, Humor, Funny, Groceries, Vegitarian, Organic