Category / Technology

by Greg

Strange Things People Search For

Google Search Terms from Google AnalyticsIt’s always fascinating to me to see the various ways people find this website.

First, of course, are direct visits: people using bookmarks or typing in “gregshead.net” into their browser’s address bar. Then, I know that the main referrer of visitors to GregsHead.net is Facebook.com. Some of that is from links shared by others, some shared by me directly, and probably the majority of it is from the automated daily syndication to the GregsHead.net Facebook page (facebook.com/gregsheaddotnet) of the content originally published here.

Then of course you have the search engines. That’s where it gets interesting! There are of course the standard search terms like, my name, “greg campbell blog”, even just “greg’s head”, and other obvious search phrases. But the best ones are (in the case of this website) the most curious, and, oddly, most common ones clicked through.

Nowadays, these sorts of things can be tracked using fancy do-hickeys and other such thingamajigs. (Otherwise known as Google Analytics, among others.)

Here’s a brief list of the Top 8 Search Phrases and the Posts They Link To from the past three months.

8. “Clean Your Bombilla”

You might not even know what a “bombilla” is, but apparently someone does! And, somehow this person must have had the same problem as me. Unfortunately, I’m not sure they got much help from my post about cleaning your bombilla… I just realized that it’s a good idea to do it! Good to know other yerba mate drinkers are stopping by for a cyber visit, though!

GH Post: Clean Your Bombilla

7. “Why Does Everyone Hate Glenn Beck?”

I have been a Glenn Beck listener and fan for well over a decade… which is well before most people decided to hate him. I think there were plenty of people who hated him, just not an entire segment of the population. 🙂 Well, it really did fascinate me back in 2010 (when the hatred was really ramping up) just how vile and personal many of the attacks on him were becoming. The article actually becomes much less about Mr. Beck, and more about how we (especially Americans) treat each other, and even more, how much—or little—we listen to each other.

GH Post: Why Does Everyone Hate Glenn Beck?

6. “Types of Sucker Fish”

Now this one is interesting, because it was the subject of a recent “From The Archive” post. Apparently, the way people get to this website from that search phrase is not really much of anything from the story (the word “type” is used once), rather, somehow the photo of our beautifully little sucker fishy is the third result out of about 214,000 results for that search phrase. Fascinating! Well, the curious Knowledge Seeker may not learn much about the various types of sucker fish, but they got an entertaining story about how indestructible those little “suckers” are! 🙂

GH Post: Super Sucker Fish!

5. “Hiccough Etymology”

My favorite part about this one is not that the article I wrote and posted is, at this point, becoming quite dated (though, with this subject, I suppose that is rather irrelevant) … it’s that the search term is “hiccough” not “hiccup”! Who spells it “hiccough”??? I guess I did… Click the link and learn what many (apparently) are yearning to know…

GH Post: The Etymology of The Word “Hiccough”

4. (Tie) “Spiral Illusion” and “Focus On The Dot”

Technically, these are #4 and #7, respectively. And interestingly enough, the lower one on the list (“focus on the dot”) maintains the Search Visitor’s interest the most of any other search phrase. (That means, those who click through to GregsHead.net after searching for those words, click through most often to more pages on this website. Crazy what they can track, huh?) This particular post (below) is discovered, like the Sucker Fish post, by a Google Images search. And the best part of all, the post was originally “inspired” by an email forward from my Dad! Nice!

GH Post: Illusions, and maybe also Optical Illusions

THE TOP THREE…

(Are you excited? On the edge of your seat??)

3. “Random Bible Verse Generator”

Really??? #3 is in reference to a very short post from 2008 where I offer a link to a small widget I discovered that displays a random verse from the Bible upon every page load. (You can see it near the bottom of the first of the two sidebars to your right, if you are on the main website…) It would seem that others, even to this day, are in dire need of a random Bible verse generator. Thankfully, they have this 4-year-old post below to guide their way! 🙂

UPDATE, MAY 2012: The creators of this widget emailed me this week and they are discontinuing the service. This post has been removed from GregsHead.net… where are people going to find their random bible verse generator??! 🙂

2. “Thomas Jefferson Rules To Live By”

My favorite part about number two on the list is that this post wasn’t even (mostly) something I wrote! I saw it on a friend’s blog and really liked it (was also reading a bunch of Thomas Jefferson’s writing at the time) and so I shared it on my blog. AND, apparently, it is needed information! (They really are quite interesting, and helpful… click below and read/re-read for yourself.)

GH Post: Ten Rules To Live By — Thomas Jefferson

AND, THE NUMBER ONE, MOST-POPULAR SEARCH PHRASE…

1. “Steve Burns”

Yes! The Steve Burns, aka Steve from Blue’s Clues! Having young kids in the house, we of course have seen our share of the animated blue puppy and her friendly owner, Steve. But, we, like apparently many other folks on the interwebs, were uncertain as to why he so quickly left the fame and fortune of this quite popular preschooler’s TV show, and needed to find out. After a bit of incredibly investigative journalism, Steve Burns current location was discovered and shared! And search after search keeps bringing people to this site to discover the truth: Steve is alive and well! 🙂 You know you’re curious, too …

GH Post: What Ever [sic] Happened To Steve?

And there you have it! The most recently popular search terms bringing people to the pages of this site.

What is the number one overall search term? By far it’s #3 above. But curiously, the #2 overall search phrase (since I began tracking with Google Analytics in 2007) is “fundamental transformation of america” which links people (most likely) to a post I am particularly fond of, actually, titled, The (True) Fundamental Transformation of America.

Now that you have enough reading for the week… better bookmark this post!

Enjoy!

by Greg

[RCS] Amazon Prime

Welcome to another edition of RCS:

Really Cool Stuff!

Being readers, it makes sense that we are big fans of Amazon.com. (Remember when they just sold books?)

Over the years Amazon has kept improving their amazing collection of books (both sold from their warehouses, and links to seemingly thousands upon thousands of booksellers around the world) and along the way added so many other items. It’s really the first place we look for just about anything we plan to purchase: books, appliances, food, diapers, computer hardware and software, music, videos… really, nearly everything.

About a year ago, Jen discovered Amazon Mom, where she found so many great deals on the things we need for our youngest ones (like diapers, wipes, pull-ups, and more). She then discovered that you could save even more over the already better-than-most-places Amazon price by setting up a Subscription to these items. Since we already purchase these anyway, it was a no-brainer. We subscribed!

As a bonus last year (not sure if they still do it), Subscriptions to these Amazon Mom store products you’d receive one free month of Amazon Prime service. If you haven’t heard of it—and you’re an Amazon user—then you’re missing out! (Plus, you’re either an infrequent user of Amazon, or you really don’t pay attention to anything on their site…) 😉

Well, Jen figured out a way to get that monthly service extended to the maximum 12-month offer. So, we had free shipping on every order for a year! That definitely spoils you!

Once that year expired, we debated whether or not to spend the $79/year to reinstate our Prime membership. We decided to let it slide, and save the $79.

It didn’t take us long to decide we wanted to go back!

We love the free shipping option. It’s 2-day shipping, too, not just a super economy shipping option. Also, Prime members can get next-day shipping for $3.99/item. We purchased a fairly large, heavy item when we reinstated our Prime membership and it was shipped to us for free!

Neat! 🙂

Amazon almost sold me on purchasing an Amazon Prime membership and a Kindle when they announced this: the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library.

At first glance, I really thought this was the idea I’ve had for a while: a library system with the catalog of (someone like) Amazon.com. Nearly every book, available for purchase or to borrow.

We love our library system. It’s dozens of libraries offering their catalog of books as one joint collection that we can easily browse and borrow—and all from our “home” library! So great! But even with the number of libraries involved, there are frequently books (or videos, audiobooks, and other media) that they do not have. (There are SO many books!)

So what if they had more resources? What if the pool of books and lenders was larger.

What if the books were delivered electronically!??!

Kinda like Netflix meets Amazon, for books.

I really thought they had it, but the fine print convinced me to hold off on my Kindle purchase for a while longer. Unfortunately, for your $79/year you can only borrow one book per month. Bummer. The way I read, I’m usually reading about 10 books in any given month!

That slight disappointment aside, we can still wholeheartedly recommend Amazon Prime membership. We love it! Jen loves the speedy FREE shipping. I’ve been using the free streaming video service. They have quite a large selection of streaming video that is free for Prime members. (We even found Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood! You might find it odd to place an exclamation point at the end of that previous sentence, but we’ve been looking for that everywhere for a long time, and it’s harder to find than you’d think!!)

So if you’ve really not looked into it, we do highly recommend that you do.

Full disclosure: Because I am an Amazon Associate, links to Amazon (with my user ID in them) will generate a commission for me, if you make a purchase at Amazon after clicking the link. (That’s true of any link on this site to Amazon.) BUT, Amazon is in no (other) way compensating me for this glowing review of their awesome Prime membership program. 🙂

by Greg

Shutting Down Individual Apps in iOS

I learned something new today.

On a visit to the Genius bar at our local Apple Retail Store (Apple Eastview), I remembered to ask about a different issue I’d been having, and that turned out to be the biggest success of the trip!

My iPhone 3Gs has been slow. Verrrrrry sloooooooow. When you tap an icon, you can go do something else for a while while it thinks about loading the app you just requested. Once it finally gets around to it, often the moment has passed you by. (Think photos… when it takes 12 seconds to get ready to take the photo, your 2 and 3 year olds are long gone!)

I figured there was probably something similar to the regular Mac OS, where it’s a good idea to reserve about 10% of your disk space as an available playground for the OS to function properly. I do that on all my machines, but since we have an 8GB iPhone model, well, it sure is hard to leave 800 MB free. But still, I try.

First thing I learned from my new Apple Store friend, Kelly, was this: iOS does not need the obligatory 10% free disk space! (Could have something to do with the fact that it’s got no ‘disk’ in the first place?)

I was very happy to learn this, but still needed to know more.

“So what is it that’s causing my phone to just keep slowing down more and more, no matter what I do? I even power down, and restart… to no avail.”

“Do you know how to shut down individual apps?” asked the congenial Apple Specialist.

And my iOS world was changed forever!

Double-Tap

I already was aware that when you double-tap the home button on your iOS device you get to see the multi-tasking bar: all the apps that are currently open. What I didn’t realize—and this is the very important part—is that every app you’ve ever opened (and not intentionally shut down) stays open for the rest of eternity. It doesn’t matter if you power down and restart the phone. The App will relaunch itself, ready for your next command.

This is wonderful in concept, unless you don’t know that this is happening!

When I double-tapped tonight, at Kelly’s instruction, I noticed that I had—no lie—at least forty apps open/running on my tiny little 8GB 3Gs iPhone.

Poor little guy! He didn’t have a chance!

So, here’s what you do.

Just like on any home screen, hold your finger on any app icon in the multi-task bar for one second and they all start their little app-changing dance. Except this time, instead of the little black “x” to remove the app from your device, you’ll see a red minus. When you click this, the icon disappears, and the app has been shut down! Anything else is like closing the window, but not quitting the application. Ever. And never restarting your device.

That leads to a slower iOS experience!

So, thank you, Kelly! And I’m sure the happy reader who discovered this post thanks you as well.

Score another one for the Apple Retail team!

For another fun Apple Retail Success Story, check out my post from 2006, My Computer Had A Heart Attack.

by Greg

[RCS] WP Word Count

Welcome to another edition of RCS:

Really Cool Stuff!

One of the things I most love about WordPress is the huge variety of plugins made available by the creative open source community using and developing for this platform. I switched my blog over a few years ago, and I’m still quite glad I did.

(In fact, I use the WordPress CMS—Content Management System—for many of the sites I build for clients these days. Check out a few of them here.)

As you are composing articles, WordPress tracks words per post by default. You can monitor the total at the lower left corner of the content box. Since I’ve been trying to publish one post per day I thought it would be good to limit those posts to no more than 1,000 words per day. Thus, I’ve been watching the word count closer than normal.

I recently thought it would be interesting if there was a plugin that would aggregate all these word counts into larger categories. If you’re a WordPress user, you’re saying with me, “There has to be a plugin for that!”

And of course, there is!

WP Wordcount is just the tool. It lets me see the total words published per month, all-time, and breaks it down into published and draft posts even. And I thought the top ten posts by word count was interesting to see, too. (My two longest posts were the birth stories of two of our sons, Ian and Cameron.)

So, if you’re looking to add some fun stat-tracking to your site, I recommend checking out WP Wordcount (I believe there are also widgets you can show publicly on your site, too.)

Wordcount for this post: 280

🙂

by Greg

Joining The PIPA/SOPA Cause

OK, so I’m a bit late (publicly) to this cause, but I have been following along (actually for quite a while now, when there were just “whispers in the wind” on such legislation mentioned on This Week In Tech and other TWIT shows…

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America = Not really the “good guys”) and the US Congress (again, not necessarily currently the “good guys”) are teaming up to put a halt to internet piracy. No more peer-to-peer downloading of movies and music and other things that you haven’t paid for! And, while I completely agree (especially as a content creator) that this is not a fair, honest, just, commendable practice, the answer is most definitely not granting the RIAA via the federal government the power to shut down any website they deem a potential piracy threat.

Please do read more. I’m going to post several links here below. It’s pretty easy to add your name to some existing petitions asking Congress to vote these bills down. But you can do more.

For this reason, GregsHead.net is joining the internet-wide strike against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)/PIPA (Protect IP Act of 2011).

The internet, for better or worse, is definitely a tool for the people—every person—to protect freedom. And it should remain that way.

So, enjoy the day off. Stop by here again January 19th, and we’ll pick up where we left off.

For now, please do visit these links. Let congress know that you want to keep the internet as free of federal regulation as possible.

SOPA/PIPA Info Links

by Greg

Who Me? A VCR Repairman?

Perhaps one of the strangest things I’ve done of late is a bit of repair man work on my office VCR! Who knew I could fix those? 🙂

One of the services I offer as part of my web/graphic design business* is analog-to-digital conversion. So, you bring me your old audio cassette tapes and I’ll convert them to CD, or just any digital audio format you’d like and deliver them back to you electronically. Or, you bring me your analog video in any format and I’ll convert it to a digital format of your choosing (DVD or otherwise). It’s pretty fun, and the projects range from a simple dump of the old-version content (no editing) onto the new-version media, to a full-on, shiny, professional end product.

While in the midst of one such project the past couple weeks, I found multiple issues with this antiquated technology. Fun!

I was converting old VHS-C tapes. That’s where the fun began. First, neither of the two VCRs we use would accept the adapter that the customer provided. My main VCR even refused to eject the cassette for many minutes. (I’m not even sure what made it change its mind… but the cassette finally popped out.)

So, attempting to be resourceful, I called up the owner of the cassettes to be converted and asked for their camera, thinking I could likely dump the data from there. All seemed good when I got the camera. Battery, check. Charger, check. Video out, check. We’re set!

However, working with old technology almost never goes as you’d expect. 🙂

The battery charged overnight, but didn’t hold a charge. At all. No power to the camera at all. So, I tried again. Still a “no go”. Then I noticed a tiny round battery slot on the underside of the camera. It wasn’t clear what this was for, but I figured it couldn’t hurt trying to replace it.

Off to Radio Shack I went!

Thankfully the folks at “The Shack” were quite helpful and I left the store with a new tiny round battery, as well as a new VHS-C cassette adapter as a backup plan. (I was quite glad I remembered to have a backup plan!)

The battery replacement did not work. Still no sign of life from the camera. Time to implement the backup plan!

I popped one of the small VHS-C cassettes in the new adapter, loaded in a fresh battery and slid the whole device into the VCR. I was quite relieved when the VCR accepted it, and loaded the video, ready to play it.

All went smoothly until I rewound the tape.

After successfully loading the video into the computer, and then the tape automatically rewinding once it reached the end, I hit eject, thinking all the techno-trouble was behind me.

Unfortunately, I was very wrong.

At this point, the VCR got even more stubborn than before! It would not only not relinquish the cassette, it kept powering down with every attempt to remove it. (And I was not liking the sounds that were coming from its attempts to dislodge the adapter cassette!)

Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed my screwdriver. (I’ve taken stuff apart before… this couldn’t be that much different, right?)

Thankfully… it actually was a tad easier than working with the insides of the various computers I’ve disassembled, modified, and reassembled.

After removing several parts, and fiddling with many do-hickeys … the cassette came free! I reassembled the VCR—crossed my fingers—and tried to load the next cassette.

I was somewhat surprised to discover that … it worked! And, even more surprisingly, I think it worked better than before!

Who knew I could repair VCRs?

So, it would seem I have found a new calling in life: VCR Repairman. I can’t imagine how much business must be out there just waiting for someone like me to grab it by the horns! There must be so many opportunities to fix these very current, super modern, ubiquitous video devices. Right?

Maybe not. But, if you do need your ancient technology repaired… now you know where to go!

* – Speaking of ancient technology, sorry in advance for the never-updated appearance and condition of my web design website! The saying is true, the cobbler’s family never has shoes! At least I have a website, but, again… sorry. 🙂

by Greg

[RCS] Ordering Online from Mark’s Pizzeria

Mark's PizzeriaFrom time to time here at GregsHead.net, I’ve made a point of sharing things that we’ve come across that are a great value, or just simply worth the price of admission. (There’s even a tag for it.)

Since December 31st, I’ve taken a slightly new approach to producing content for this site. I will be publishing one post per day, rather than several posts whenever—or, no posts ever. So far it’s been great for me to write again (I really do enjoy it) and it also prevents me from overwhelming you, the reader with my writing binges! 🙂

Now that there is a regular schedule of posts, and since I often have recommendations for you of really cool stuff we’ve come across, I decided I’d try to make Sunday’s posts about that very thing: Really Cool Stuff. For short, you’ll see the tag “RCS” before the specific title for the post.

Now, for today’s Really Cool Stuff!

Alright, I may be behind the times, but… ordering pizza online is just so great!! I recently “took the plunge” with our local pizzeria (who has several locations all across western New York) and ordered a sheet pizza online, hoping I could set it to be ready a few hours later in the day.

I could do that, and so much more!

As a web designer, I think I have to say that Mark’s online ordering system lacks a bit in aesthetic and even functional/practical layout, but it definitely does what it needs to do.

Let’s say you’re just ordering a pizza (not any of their other menu items). You choose the size, and then your toppings—which you have full control over with double, light, and half-the-pizza options—and then when you’re ready, you check out. (Mark’s likes coupons, so there are plenty of coupons to choose from in the checkout process, we always get a discount!)

And you also get to choose when you want the pizza to be ready for pickup, or the time you want it delivered. You can add a tip with your online order, too!

I’m pretty sure that I’m never going to NOT order online (from Mark’s) again. And, because they make it so easy (and fun!) that also means we really won’t be ordering any pizza from any other pizzeria. (Unless they offer a similar online ordering system!)

I still prefer ordering food in person, but since you usually order pizza over the phone, anyway, there’s no reason not to give Mark’s online ordering a try! (Unless of course, you’re nowhere near a Mark’s Pizzeria… then it won’t work so well.)

Hope you get a chance to check that out. Maybe today? Sunday is a great day for pizza! (Football games are always better with pizza…) And we’ll have much more Really Cool Stuff for you each Sunday for as long as there’s cool stuff, and GregsHead.net!

Enjoy your pizza!

by Greg

Two Spaces, Or One?

Being one who has loved writing for as much of his life as he can remember, you’d think that the basics of grammar and punctuation would be the proverbial “old hat” by now, right? Well, sadly, I must admit to a(n incorrect) habit that I just CAN NOT break.

ONE space, Greg… NOT TWO!

It’s not something I made up. I was definitely instructed to do so. TWO spaces after a sentence. That’s how you do it.

But apparently, it’s not.

One day I needed to get to the bottom of this conundrum, so I turned to trusty Google for the answers. And of course, it did not disappoint.

I found an article published about one year ago now cleverly titled, “Space Invaders“ The author not only unequivocally states that the proper spacing is ONE space, he also points out some of the reasons we have used—and were taught to use—two spaces.

For example, he explains:

Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It’s one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men’s shirt buttons on the right and women’s on the left. Every major style guide—including the Modern Language Association Style Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style—prescribes a single space after a period. (The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association, used widely in the social sciences, allows for two spaces in draft manuscripts but recommends one space in published work.) Most ordinary people would know the one-space rule, too, if it weren’t for a quirk of history. In the middle of the last century, a now-outmoded technology—the manual typewriter—invaded the American workplace. To accommodate that machine’s shortcomings, everyone began to type wrong. And even though we no longer use typewriters, we all still type like we do. (Also see the persistence of the dreaded Caps Lock key.)

I miss my typewriter … but I guess it got me into this bad habit!

The problem with typewriters was that they used monospaced type—that is, every character occupied an equal amount of horizontal space. This bucked a long tradition of proportional typesetting, in which skinny characters (like I or 1) were given less space than fat ones (like W or M). Monospaced type gives you text that looks “loose” and uneven; there’s a lot of white space between characters and words, so it’s more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule—on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read. Here’s the thing, though: Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s. First electric typewriters and then computers began to offer people ways to create text using proportional fonts. Today nearly every font on your PC is proportional. (Courier is the one major exception.) Because we’ve all switched to modern fonts, adding two spaces after a period no longer enhances readability, typographers say. It diminishes it.

So there you have it, folks. From now on I will aspire to present my elocutions in properly punctuated form: one space, not two.

I thank you in advance for a good measure of grace while I form my new habit. 😉

by Greg

Programming of Life

Wow! We just finished watching this video (which is available in its entirety at their website, where you can also order the DVD).

It was produced by some friends of ours, and man, they did a fantastic job. It’s the incredible story of the cell, DNA and all the “building blocks” of life. Just so incredible. We had seen this video from some other friends of ours who have a website full of Health and Wellness Facts. The kids think it is so cool looking, and we all think it’s AMAZING what happens inside each cell, let alone the whole bodies of living things! (And even more amazing are the bodies of we people!)

When you have the time, please watch this 45 minute video and enjoy!

(And if you can, let them know what you think of it, either at YouTube, their video website, or their business website. From what I know this is the first in a series of at least three more. Already looking forward to them!)

by Greg

Testing The System: Failure?

Curious as to the scope and effectiveness of the Nationwide Emergency Alert System test scheduled for 2pm EST today, I did a little research. A quick scan of various news sources seems to suggest it didn’t go off “without a hitch”.

ABC News out of DC reports that the first-ever nationwide test today “appeared to be a failure“, while CBS New York reported still more technical difficulties.

The ABC report described the test as being, “designed to allow the president to commandeer the airwaves and deliver an audio message to the U.S. people in a national emergency.”

This is either complete technical ignorance and buffoonery, or maybe something slightly more insidious? I’m guessing it’s the first. Hoping?

Haven’t these people heard of social media? Within seconds of the event, the entire world now knows news before any big cable news or radio station can broadcast it. Twitter, Facebook, Google+… you name it. Regular people report the news and literally within seconds to at most minutes, that news has spread with more success than apparently the EAS had today. (And they had their test planned for weeks… even months?)

Fascinating …

Maybe someone can give FEMA a crash-course in the latest technological advancements. Seems like they could benefit from a little refresher.