From the Mountian View Voice “Toxic vapors found in Google offices“
Over 1,000 Googlers moved into “the Quad” near Whisman Road and Middlefield Road in June of 2012, an area once home to Fairchild and Intel, among others. Those companies used TCE (trichloroethylene) as a solvent in the manufacturing of the first silicon computer chips, leaving behind a massive plume of contaminated groundwater discovered in 1981 — one that may take many more decades to clean up.
The Google Glass video on youtube “How It Feels [through Glass]” appears to show video from the albuquerque balloon fiesta at the start and end of the video.
Published on Feb 20, 2013
Want to see how Glass actually feels? It’s surprisingly simple. Say “take a picture” to take a picture. Record what you see, hands free. Even share what you see, live.Directions are right in front of you. Speak to send a message, or translate your voice. Get the notifications that matter most. Ask whatever’s on your mind and get answers without having to ask.
All video footage captured through Glass.
The video does a good job showing how the Glass can film video. Big deal. I can do that with a helmet cam. They need to show more of the other stuff the Glass can do like searches, etc. So far I am not $1500 worth of impressed (the supposed price point of the device).
Sometimes I go out and buy a lot of food to cook only to find the kitchen a mess and decide to go out and eat instead. This is how this blog has become. I have recently made some changes to clean up and focus the content, in the hopes of actually writing more.
The first thing I did was to delete about 30% of the content. I removed all posts about politics (there’s plenty of more qualified people writing about politics). I reduced the number of categories and re-categorized posts.
greginthedesert.net is supposed to be about Me, Greg, in the desert. So I have started a new blog called alwaysverybusy.net to write about tech and gadgets and other stuff that keeps me always very busy. I’m also considering another spin off site where I can focus on photography.
I’m still in the process of moving and removing posts. I still have the problem of Google not indexing this site so more work is to be done.
Google has a map showing the various fires in the western US. The Google US Wildfire Crisis Map gets it’s data from various sources including InciWeb.
Google has apparently made a page rank algorithm update on about June 23rd 2011. I can tell because traffic at greginthedesert.net has dropped to about 1/100 of it’s normal traffic.
This is not the first time a Google PR update has affected traffic negatively and I’m hopeful this will be a temporary situation as it has been before.
People are still looking for the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstition Mountains in Apache Junction, Arizona. Including Jesse Capen who disappeared looking for it in January of 2010.
He had planned to return to Denver in time for Christmas, but he either walked away or was taken from his campsite, and his whereabouts remain a mystery. He could have been bitten by a rattlesnake, shot by another prospector or fallen and broken his leg and been devoured by a bear, Burnett said.
“Deputies suspect foul play may be involved because there is no sign of him,” she said. “Even if he would have been eaten by wild animals, there would be shoes and clothes left behind.”Capen, who had never married, worked a graveyard shift as a bellhop at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel the past 11 years. For 10 years, he spent his free time studying the legend of the Lost Dutchman mine.
“This is beyond obsessed,” Burnett said. “He has more than 100 books and maps on the legend. This was like research for a Ph.D. This is a classic case of a man’s search for treasure.”
I’ve been camping a few times in the Superstition Mountains when I lived in Arizona as a kid. It’s hard to believe that a area relatively close to a major city, with today’s technology of Google Maps and GPS locators that someone could disappear so easily.
As far as I know, Jesse Capen has not been found.
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.