Greg In The Desert

At the end of last year Google did something with its page rank algorithm that caused my site to loose most traffic from Google. I thought the problem was due to excessive load times on my site. I used Pingdom to narrow the load times to a javascirpt from a Wordpress contact form plugin. The javascript took about 4 seconds to load and was loading on every page, including pages that did not have the contact form.

Once disabled the load times were down to a more reasonable level, although they have crept back up according to Google Webmaster Tools. As far as I can tell it’s images causing the load times. It was a good exercise for me to understand load times but it was a change made completely on Google’s part that caused the loss in traffic. The site not only got the traffic back but it increased a little. Also, when the traffic did come back the site had a significant increase in comment spam, so much that I had to turn off comments for certain posts.

Meanwhile, I took a much need break from the blog and completely ignored everything (except approving comments) and missed that TechCrunch linked to one of my pages. Causing a nice spike in traffic.

If the HGTV Dream Home Sweepstake doesn’t work out, there’s a raffle for a $190,000 house in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. I looked for it in Google Maps and found that part of the Cabezon development that the house is supposed to be in is photographed properly but not mapped properly. I had to use a few different mapping programs to find the house, which doesn’t seem to actually built yet It will probably be a fine house if you don’t mind living next to dirt lots for a while.

2483 Corvara Drive in Astante Villas Gated Community at Cabezon in Rio Rancho, NM. GRAND PRIZE: Win a beautiful brand new home valued at $189,900 or $100,000 CASH. Additional 100 CASH Prizes to be given away. Tickets are $75.00 each. Drawing will be February 27, 2010 at the home to be given away. This raffle benefits El Ranchito de los Ninos Children’s Home — a home for children who do not have a home of their own and are unable to live with their biological families.

Google has decided to stop sending people to my site. Most of my traffic comes from Google searches.

It might be because it’s taking too long to index my site (in milliseconds). I can’t seem to figure out what is causing this.

Update: According to Google Webmaster Tools, Google has no back links to me at all, which is a change from before. Hopefully Google will restore these in the near future.

I normally haven’t been writing “year in review” type posts, but this year I thought I had made significant enough improvement to Greg In The Desert to make a few notes.

I would like to think that my actual writing has improved. I have spent quite an effort on editing and I think it shows in my posts. It’s not where I would like it to be but it is better. I have also moved to dedicated hosting using Wordpress and it has been a huge improvement over the previous systems I used. I wished I had switched sooner.

It was difficult to get back into writing posts when my dad died this summer, but I’ve started to pick up again in the last few months. I’ve been able to increase traffic and increase affiliate and google adsense income. It’s enough to cover the costs of hosting plus a little (maybe enough for a few tanks of gas). To better target subject matter, have considered breaking Greg In The Desert into at least two blogs with Greg In The Desert’s subject matter focusing Home Improvement and Automation.

I can see the potential to make real money on the internet by blogging. Whether I have the time needed to devote to it is another matter.

Here’s a top 10 list of posts by raw page views.

• Resolving The 6X Red Blinking Light Of Death On My Sony TV (with pictures)
• Costco La Crosse Technologies Weather Station WS-2810
• iPhone App 2 Of The Week: Bikini Blast
• Original Lego Space Theme Is 30 Years Old
• iPhone App Of The Week: Jaadu VNC
• Baja BE500 500 Watt Electric Scooter
• Robert Kearns, Inventor of Intermittent Wipers Dies
• 1957 Buick Super For Sale
• Albuquerque Craigslist: 1950 Fleetline, 1967 Mustang & 1973 F100
• iPhone App Of The Week: iHome Remote

After Newsgater totally screwed up NetNewsWire with the last release I have started using Google Reader’s web based interface (and ByLine on the iPhone) for RSS reading. I would love to use a desktop app for reading RSS feeds on my Mac but other than the now banned NetNewsWire, none of the other Google Reader compatible applications are stable.

That leaves me with the web interface in which I have a love hate relationship. I now how two more reason to love Google reader since they added an Explore section and a Personalized ranking.

The personalized ranking has done a pretty good job of pulling out the most interesting items from the several hundred subscriptions I have. When I run out of my own feeds to read (often known as reaching the end of the internet), google can show me the most popular feeds from everyone else’s feed and suggest other feeds.

When I was a kid growing up in Arizona one of the few memories I can recall is visiting the Ahwatukee Arizona “House of the Future” with Boy Scout troop 456. The house was built in 1979 at a cost $1,200,000 dollars. It was a demonstration for a planned community. It appears to have lost money every year it was sold.

Surprisingly there is no Wikipedia entry on the subject but I did find a June 23rd, 1980 article from InfoWorld on Google Book Search.

The house was designed by Charles R. Schiffner of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Built over 30 years ago it featured an advanced home automation system with five Motorola 6800 processors linked together. The system was designed by Motorola who was the major employer in Arizona at the time.

It’s important to note that the Ahwatukee home is not a computer controlled home, rather the home permits the tenant to to be in complete control of his environment, making the important decisions which will then be carried out by the microcomputer system.

That’s a quote from Charles E. Thompson, some marketing genius who seems to want to keep people from being scared of the computer controlled house. It’s also worth mentioning that 30 years later, I have been able to reproduce everything that house was capable of for a few thousand dollars and that such home automation capabilities have not yet caught on although the energy saving technologies have.

The house still exists today at 3713 Equestrian Trail, Phoenix, Az and can be seen on Google Maps. Although they gave tours back in the day for $3, I can’t seem to find any information on who the current owner is or even pictures of the interior on the internet.

My poor cat Saturn started peeing on things while I was traveling. At first I thought it was behavioral and that she was trying to tell me something (like stop leaving me). It turns out she had a urinary tract infection.

One of the clues that it wasn’t behavior related is that even though she peed on my bed, she peed a lot. It was like someone pour a gallon of water on my bed. She also wasn’t peeing in her litter box.

It makes it easier that I had several layers of blankets and sheets on my bed and a layer of foam. Not much leaked onto the mattress.

I have a front loading high capacity washing machine. Normally I would load up to capacity with clothes then use a standard detergent. This was done initially with the blankets from the bed and urine could still be detected by the human nose.

After consulting with Google, I put the peed on blankets in one at a time. I then put it on a rinse cycle and filled the detergent, softener and bleach reservoirs with standard 5% acidity vinegar. If I would have had stronger 20% vinegar I would have used it.

I’m not sure if the vinegar was necessary, the next step may have been enough. But vinegar is good for the washing machine, it removes soap residue and calcium from hard water and should be used regularly in any case.

The next thing I did was to use a normal wash cycle with warm/cold water and mostly Oxi Clean with a little normal detergent. Oxi Clean contains sodium percarbonate which includes hydrogen peroxide and is often recommended to clean urine. I used as much Oxi Clean as I could fit in the reservoirs and I think it was the most effective ingredient in the process.

Haven’t tested it without the vinegar and hope I never have to.

None of the blankets, sheets or foam padding have any smell of cat urine and a black light scan shows no evidence of cat urine. For the mattress, I used an enzyme based cleaner. My cat Saturn has not tired to remark her scent or scratch at the area (trying to cover up) where she peed before. I’m calling it a success.

A high school teacher in my hometown of Chandler, Arizona claims to have found a scorpion in his bag when he bought an egg McMuffin from McDonalds. The story on Channel 15’s website describes the scorpion as a baby and more venoumus than an adult.

It wasn’t just any scorpion — it was a baby scorpion, which is even more venomous than it’s adult counterpart.

Both of these statements are false. The scorpion appears to be a Vaejovis spinigerus, that looks like the same kind of scorpion I find in New Mexico. This is probably an adult as they don’t get much bigger than this. Had Channel 15 bothered to just use google, they would have found the ASU’s “Ask A Biologist” website where Christopher Putnam states

Other people say the sting of a baby scorpion is more dangerous than the sting of an adult, but again, this is false. The venom in a scorpion’s stinger is the same all through a scorpion’s life.

I suppose it is possible for the scorpion to find it’s way into the bag. I would hope it didn’t get into the bag at the restaurant but maybe in at the manufacturer or during transport. I wasn’t able to find where the bags are made. Scorpions are found in Chandler, but since the city has become more developed they are not nearly as common as they used to be. I find the whole story suspicious.

I’m glad Brent Simmons posted an updated on NetNewsWire for Mac and iPhone, my RSS reader of choice, on his blog at inessential.com. I was getting ready to post a pithy comment on the Newsgator forums about the lack of progress.

Brent says that NetNewsWire 3.2 for mac and NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone are in competition for release. Although he does not give a time frame for either. He describes NetNewsWire 3.2 for Mac as not a major upgrade except for the Google Reader synchronization options and NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone as a huge upgrade.

He goes into some detail about iPhone performance and NetNewsWire 4.0 for mac so if your interested I would read his post.

• Movie Awards Story | Exclusive: Shia LaBeouf Reveals ‘Transformers’ Villain The Fallen – Show Story | Headlines | MTV – "He is the king bee," LaBeouf told us recently as he discussed the Fallen, unveiling him to "Transformers" fans for the first time anywhere. "He's the patriarchal figure, he's the main dude. He's what all of this came from."
• North Korean Economy Watch » North Korea Uncovered – (Google Earth) – This Google Earth project offers an extensive mapping of North Korea’s economic, cultural, political, and military infrastructures. Through the topic menu, users of this program have easy access to geographical information on North Korea’s agriculture projects, aviation facilities, communications, hospitals, hotels, energy infrastructure, financial services, leisure destinations, manufacturing facilities, markets, mines, religious locations, restaurants, schools, and transportation infrastructure. In addition to locations of economic interest, this map also displays anti-aircraft locations, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and Northern Line Limit Line (NLL), incarceration facilities, political monuments, political residencies, military bases, and nuclear facilities.
• Jeremy Clarkson Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid review | Driving – Times Online – It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.
• Are high ceilings a sign of wretched architectural excess or just good taste? – By Witold Rybczynski – Slate Magazine – Certain features are taken for granted in today's residential market: granite countertops, glass-walled showers, and, judging from this recent ad for a new Upper West Side condo, very tall ceilings. Not so long ago, 8-foot ceilings were the norm. What changed?
• News : Rio Rancho police answer call to protect President – Rio Rancho Observer – Hosting the President of the United States is no light matter. There’s much work involved preparing for his arrival and ensuring his safety.

  The Rio Rancho Police Department feels it rose to the occasion last week as President Obama’s historic visit to Rio Rancho went off without a hitch.

• Why our ‘amazing’ science fiction future fizzled – CNN.com – Forty years later, we're still waiting for those congestion-free highways — along with the jet pack, the paperless office and all those "Star Trek"-like gadgets that were supposed to make 21st-century life so easy.
• Tempe-based Syntax-Brillian Corp. rises, falls fast – What each box really contained – and where the shipment was headed – is unclear to accountants, attorneys, investors and creditors looking into Syntax-Brillian's practices since the company filed for bankruptcy in July 2008. They say the peculiarity raises yet another red flag about how the company did business in its last years, when revenue soared.
• Automating Twitter | Mac OS X | Macworld – Jason Snell recently explained how to use Applescript to automate the popular Twitter client Twitterific. But, with the help of some simple shell scripting, you can also send quick status updates directly to Twitter from within an Automator workflow.
• The Evolution of House Cats: Scientific American – The findings suggest that cats started making themselves at home around people to take advantage of the mice and food scraps found in their settlements.
• No. 2 Albuquerque, New Mexico – Kiplinger.com – Population: 819,576
  Income Growth: 7.8%
  Cost of Living Index: 98
  Median Household Income: $45,634
  Percentage of Workforce in Creative Class: 30%

  What Albuquerque wants, Albuquerque gets — and the city and state crave high-tech jobs, especially in the renewable-energy industry. So when Schott North America made overtures to many cities about hosting its flagship solar-panel plant, Albuquerque and New Mexico pounced.