The Random Blogger

While I appreciate that Microsoft is trying to make sure our computers are safe and secure by encouraging people to use their automatic update features, it does have one hugely annoying and potentially dangerous aspect: automatic restart.

After some updates which it downloads and installs for you, it will then pop-up a message to say that you need to restart your computer for the updates to take effect, and you have two choice - restart now or restart later:

There are two problems with this.

The first is relatively minor, but it’s all too easy to click on the Restart Now button when you meant to click on the Restart Later button.

I know - RTFS (if you’ve come across the popular term RTFM then you’ll be able to work out what this means), but as this nag pops up when you’re probably focused on doing something else (e.g. work, playing games), then it’s still too easy to do.

The second is much more dangerous - you may have wandered off from your computer for a while (e.g. to eat, sleep, or other natural functions), and are not there to respond to the nag.

Now, if you’ve gone off and not saved the latest changes to your Word document, then shame on you - I’ve no sympathy.

But what if, like me, you run data back-ups every day (as indeed you should do)? Then having Windows restart your machine in the middle of that back-up job is plain inconvenient and inconsiderate, because you have to start it all over again.

I choose to back-up my Outlook Express files overnight because this particular job takes about two and a half hours, and with it being the quietest time of the day from a business perspective (we offer 24 x 7 phone support to our customers), then it’s the obvious time to do this necessary housekeeping.

Or supposing you’ve started, or scheduled, a massive download, and then you find that Windows has kindly rebooted your machine for you right when it got to 99% complete?

P*ssed off wouldn’t even begin to describe how you’d feel!

So, fed up with the nag screen, I went on a hunt for a solution, and found two things that may be of interest to you.

Firstly, I found a video, although it appears as though it’s aimed at Windows Vista users only:

Secondly, I found a very helpful post on Technize.com, that provides instructions that work for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, with both termporary and permanent methods for solving the problem.

When I moved to the US from England in 2005, I learned that a US gallon is smaller than a UK (or Imperial) gallon: the UK gallon is 160 fluid ounces, whereas the US gallon is only 128 fluid ounces.

And that’s because there are only 16 fluid ounces in a US pint, compared to the 20 that are in an Imperial pint.

But what I hadn’t realised, until today, when I was working on one of our new websites, is that a US fluid ounce is actually equivalent to 1.0408423 Imperial fluid ounces.

I’d always assumed that a fluid ounce is a fluid ounce, but apparently this isn’t the case.

So now you know!

While working on one of our many websites a day or two ago, I found a really cool image magnification effect that I’d not seen before.

Eager to track it down, my first port of call was my favourite site for this type of script, Dynamic Drive, and lo and behold, I found it instantly.

It’s called jQuery Image Magnify v1.1, and it’s dead easy to install (and it works on IE, Firefox and Opera).

Give it a try - you’ll love it!

I’d never really thought about this matter until one of our customers asked us a question about it, but did you know that there are different canine blood groups?

According to Wikipedia, there are as many as 13 dog blood types, and of these, eight of the so-called Dog Erythrocyte Antigen (DEA) types are internationally-recognised as standard canine blood types.

And, just like humans, some dogs’ blood type can be considered a universal donor type (that would be DEA 1.1. Negative, in techno-speak).

Conversely, others that are known as DEA 1.1 Positive (which represents just over one third of the canine population) are universal recipients, which means that they can receive transfusions from any canine blood type without risk of adverse reactions.

My brief research took me further, and at a bit of a tangent, as I found that there are even different diets for different blood types, which is an interesting concept I may pursue, if and when I get the time.

I really don’t understand how some companies stay in business!

Let me explain …

We recently experienced one of the coldest nights of the year - 12 degrees (and that’s Fahrenheit)!

Needless to say, some of our pipes froze, and in the morning, we found that we had no water.

Initial superficial investigations revealed no obvious leaks, so we rang our usual plumber, whom we found back in April and who has turned out to be one of the best trademen I have ever come across - he goes out of his way to be helpful, and his approach to customer service mirrors what we try to achieve with our own pet health business.

Anyway, Bill came out on the next day - a Saturday - to take a look, and much as we feared, it wasn’t anything Bill could fix as it was (more…)

Since launching our main business website in February 2007, we’ve had to learn a lot about Internet marketing, including what is now popularly known as SEO (i.e. Search Engine Optimisation), which is nothing more than trying to make sure that your site is easily found in the search engines.

Getting good rankings on the search engines used to be easy - ten or more years ago - but there has been a world-wide explosion of people trying to make money online since then, and it’s now no mean feat to get your site listed on the first page of Google’s results.

So, we’ve spent a fair amount of time and money over the past two years or so reading up on SEO techniques, buying ebooks and training courses, and most of them have been fairly so-so, including some that cost thousands of dollars.

Always keen to learn (or maybe always a sucker for more), we recently found a product called Supercharged SEO that promised 100% automated SEO strategies, which, given what we thought we knew about this subject, seemed a bit on the hypey side.

But, the price was only $17, which is practically nothing these days, and so we bought it, not expecting too much.

So, was it worth the money, and did we learn anything new about SEO?

Actually, it was probably the best SEO product we’ve ever bought!

What you get are three well-made videos, with a total duration of about one and a quarter hours, together with supporting PDFs that include copies of each slide from the videos, a list of resources referenced, as well as a few WordPress plug-ins and other code that are part of the strategies he reveals.

These strategies, once you put them in place, truly are 100% automated, as he promises, because once you set the framework up for any given site, the rest just happens all by itself.

You do need to be aware that these strategies are focused on WordPress blogs (and ones that you host yourself, rather than ones hosted by Wordpress themselves). To be fair, he does state this on the videos, and he also says that many of the techniques will work on other types of sites too, but for some of these, you may be left to work it out for yourself.

Having said that, it’s a minor issue, given how popular WordPress is, especially as more and more people are using this platform in place of the regular HTML mini-site / sales page.

I would also say that it’s probably not for the absolute beginner, as some experience and understanding of SEO and blogs would be advantageous. Again though, his explanations and supporting materials are really good, so I doubt you’d have any problems implementing any of these strategies.

So, in conclusion, even if you think you know SEO already, as we did, I highly recommend Supercharged SEO, and I’d be very surprised if you didn’t manage to give your sites the set-it-and-forget-it supercharge that he promises.

I’ve used PHP redirects to cloak things like affiliate links for a long time now, and I’m therefore a bit rusty on the other techniques (e.g. JavaScript and Meta Refresh).

So, when a guy I’m collaborating with on a project or two asked me how to cloak his affiliate links, I started by setting up a sample PHP script for him, but then when I tried to remember exactly how to use the other non-PHP methods, I ran into a wall of amnesia.

As always in this situation, I turned to Google, and happened upon a brilliant website where you enter the URL you want to redirect to, and it instantly gives you copy-and-paste code you can use in all three formats (i.e. JavaScript, Meta Refresh and PHP).

It’s quick, simple, and means you need to know or understand practically no code at all.

The site is called My Redirect Code, and I highly recommend it.

(BTW, my friend has written an excellent short report called Unlimited Profit Streams that’s well worth a read, and it’s only $7 USD. If you can’t make that back after reading and applying what he teaches, then I suspect Internet Marketing isn’t for you.)

Well, we took the plunge a few days ago and signed up for our very first VPS hosting account, after spending a day or two researching suitable candidates.

Our requirements were quite specific, for reasons that are not relevant here, and the sign-up process and post-sales set-up were not without their problems.

However, I should make it clear that none of these were the company’s fault - it was more to do with our lack of understanding about VPS.

You see, I have a fair bit of experience in managing websites using the standard cPanel, as offered by what’s probably our favourite hosting company, Host Gator, but VPS is a whole new world, as we recently discovered - the learning curve appears to be steep.

Firstly, the O/S we chose, ubuntu 8.04, only comes with a thing called Virtuozzo Power Panel, which is fine for one of the reasons we wanted this server, but it apparently meant (more…)

When you call a TV series “Bored To Death”, you’d better make sure that the name isn’t too apposite.

Sadly, the pilot show of that very name came very close to leaving me in that state - it was slow to get going, with a character that still needs a lot of development, and it’s hard to see where it can go to get a good deal better.

I’m willing to be proven wrong, but with so many competing shows and so little time to watch TV, it had better get its finger out soon.

Although we had a Siamese cat, called Ming, when I was very young, I don’t really recall too much about it, partly because of my age and interests, and partly because it lived with our next-door-neighbours for most of the time, even sleeping in their bed with them many nights.

All I can really remember is that it had that typical Siamese look, and as far as I know, it was what is called a chocolate-point.

And I thought all Siamese cats pretty much looked the same, the only difference being that they had different coloured “points”, such as chocolate, seal, blue and lilac.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to me, earlier today, to find out from one of our customers that there is a completely different style of Siamese cat known as an Applehead.

It turns out that this type of Siamese is actually the true traditional type, and it’s one of the oldest breeds of domestic cats known.