On blog comments

Friday, September 4, 2009 ~ 9 comments so far

I always get excited when I see an email in my inbox with a subject line that starts “WordPress:…” as it means someone has commented on one of my blogs. Such a simple delight I know but hey, you take pleasure in the little things I guess.

Sometimes that delight is instantly crushed when I realise it’s a spambot that is trying to add a comment containing a link to either some ‘enhancing’ pharamceutical, a flirty comment from a hot chick, or just complete nonsense accompanied by a phishing URL.

However there seems to be a rise in the number of “real” spam comments these days, and that is hugely disheartening. These comments are left by, it seems, real people who have taken a fraction of a second to search, for example, for “Olympics” found my blog post from a couple of years back and added in a perfectly unoffensive comment, with a link to their specialist Olympic Boxing in 2012 website.

And in a weird way that, to me, is worse than any automated spambot. The fact that there is (again, it certainly seems that there is) a real person that has left the comment makes the whole thing feel tainted and dirty.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hugely precious about this blog but really, this new development in comment spam is just ugly. But then it’s always the few that spoil it for the many.

Censorship

Friday, July 31, 2009 ~ 5 comments so far

I’ve been writing this blog for quite a while, so I must admit that I’m surprised that this is the first time I’ve found myself in my current position.

Perhaps it’s because I tend not to make inflammatory statements (aside from that post about the Bible being a work of fiction written by the Devil, obv) but I’ve never had to censor any comments before.

Luckily I have a Comment Posting Policy which states:

I reserve the exclusive right to moderate all comments posted on my site, including but not limited to… deleting comments that contain offensive language. Repeated use of abusive and offensive language will be deleted and banned.

So, said comment is gone, forever banished to the land of dead pixels and binary dust.

*tweak*

Sunday, March 29, 2009 ~ 2 comments so far

Just a quick note, for those in RSS land, and for those not, although less so for you as you (I hope) have already spotted what I’m about to mention. I did, finally, update the banner a little and add a splash of colour too. If you aren’t seeing any changes, please refresh your browser (press the F5 key on your keyboard or CTRL+F5 (PC), CMD+F5 (Mac)).

I’ve also updated my other websites appropriately (here, here and here).

That’s all.

Told you it was a quick note.

Tinkering

Monday, March 23, 2009 ~ 4 comments so far

In my usual style, just when I should be doing something else I find the spare minutes and hours (which aren’t actually spare) being whittled away by something completely different.

And I don’t mean in the Monty Python sense.

Speaking of which I missed a Python reference the other day, but thankfully re-gained some geek cred by asking if anyone else knew how C3-PO got his name (or R2-D2 for that matter).

So, despite the fact I’ve got a website to build for a client (I HAVE started it, honest!) I find myself, once again, with Photoshop open, working through a variety of potential options for reworking the banner of this website. I’m a bit stalled on this and, as it will affect the my other websites, it’s kinda crucial that the whole ‘brand design’ thing works.

No, I don’t think of myself as a ‘brand’ but I do like things to be neat, and lined up and uniform and have a sense of design to them. Yes, it’s a bit anal and weird, no I’m not apologising for it, and yes I will be making similar changes to all my other websites.

However, as I’m stalled on this, I thought I’d open this up to you guys and gals. I’d like your opinion on the following, please. Leave a comment with your thoughts.

(more…)

More, more, more

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 ~ 3 comments so far

For the past few days I’ve been noodling about in Photoshop, trying to come up with a revised banner graphic for this blog (and, subsequently a theme I can take across the other two ‘one man’ websites). It’s been quite educational, mixing general research with photoshop tutorials on what is probably pretty basic stuff but is all new to me.

Whilst the change won’t be radical it will add another colour to the theme, and generally make the website a bit richer. I’m all for minimal but I do think the design needs something … else … a little more … oomph …

I’ve also been playing about with Yahoo Pipes, largely inspired by http://www.gregorsmith.com/. If nothing else it’s something to do with my name domain website (that’s www.gordonmclean.co.uk, if you were wondering).

What all of this means is that, for the moment, my writing mojo is in short supply. I do have a couple of things drafted I want to publish but I don’t think I’ll be doing that here in the first instance, mainly because I’m determined to publish something to the excellent Writer’s Bloc; you have been to visit, haven’t you? Some wonderful, wonderful writing there.

In fact, it’s a little daunting, submitting something to another website in the hope that it might get published. What if they said “No, it’s rubbish, you are rubbish, never go near a keyboard again your horrid horrid word mangler you”? I don’t know if I could stand it.

Perhaps I’ll just go back to faffing about in Photoshop, it’s much nicer there.

Get off your RSS

Thursday, January 29, 2009 ~ 31 comments so far

January draws to a close (already!!) and it is time for me to own up. I’ve been experimenting on you. Sorry about that but, on the bright side, it’s not like some weird alien abduction involving probes and brain washing.

In fact, if I’m honest, it’s only really occurred to me these past couple of days that I’ve been experimenting.

I’ve been posting to this blog for a very long time and it’s fair to say, and indeed I did say it, that my blogging mojo was slowly eroding. To try and see if it was just laziness I decided that I’d try and post every single day for at least the month of January, and then see how I felt.

This is contrary to most of the advice and reassurance I was given, which largely boiled down to the fact that I need only post when I wanted to and that the lovely, smart, beautiful people who read this blog would be quite happy.

Quality not quantity they said.

Pfffftttt, I said.

Which brings us right up to date.

Putting aside the part of me that writes all this for the sheer fun of it, I turn to my stats. Surely with a more regular stream of content, my stats would be on the rise? I may it stands to reason, doesn’t it?

You’d think.

It hasn’t. Not one jot. My average (130 visits a day) remains as it was throughout all of last year. Flat, static, constant.

Mind you, I don’t actually know how many people read the posts via RSS (dear people who make clever website stats thingies, can’t I get ONE single via of all the consumers of my content?). I’m an avid RSS user myself and I know how often, on average, I actually click through to read a website

So I’d like to extend my experiment a little. For today only, could I trouble you, dearest RSS reader, to click through to the website? You don’t have to leave a comment, just load up the website if you read this post.

I’ll post before and after stats, so come on people LET’S MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!

Small changes

Monday, January 19, 2009 ~ 4 comments so far

Sometimes it’s the little things that add up to make something better.

The realisation that I probably post to Twitter more than I should hit home recently. I use Twitter to update my Facebook status and, as a few work colleagues can see my Facebook profile, one of the jovial nitwits has created a special Facebook group just for me, titled “Gordon Mclean cannot stop updating his status”.

However, despite jokingly suggesting I might stop using Twitter soon (it has jumped the shark, hasn’t it?) I don’t see that happening, in fact I’m still finding new ways to use it.

One of the first applications I put on my iPhone was Twitterific. It was good enough for me to buy the Pro version (not hugely expensive) and it’s been my Twitter client for a while now. However it does have some limitations and when I heard mention of Tweetie I thought I’d give it a try. One intriguing part was the Instapaper hook up it has built in, with one click I can add a link that someone posts to Twitter to my Instapaper account to read at a later date.

Now, a few months ago that wouldn’t have been much use but as more and more of my fellow peers (technical writers and their ilk) start using Twitter, and as I use Instapaper for marking articles and posts that might be useful to feature in the monthly column I write for the ISTC… well it’s a match made in … Tweaven? (sorry).

In other fascinating news, I’ve been tweaking this very blog a little, mainly adding in a better view of the comments. Those of you with a gravatar should see that now, those of you that don’t get a randomly generated pattern (or you can always sign up and get a gravatar, it’s free).

OK, I’m sure you are all in need of a lie down. What an exciting whirlwind of a life I lead, eh?