The Real Ryan J. Parker

So I’m in the process of making a transition from my 9-5 job to working from home. I originally anticipated making this transition sometime next year so that I can finish my math degree, but my 9-5 has been forced to reduce its workforce. Unfortunately for me, I was one of those to be reduced. My wife cringes when I say the words laid off, but that’s what they call it. At least it comes with a severance package.

My first attempt at working from home will be freelance programming. This seems to be the best way for me to generate income in the immediate future, so I created profiles on eLance and Guru:

ryanjparker.elance.com
profile.guru.com/994494

So far I like eLance the best, but I haven’t even been doing this a week, so that is subject to change. I’ve had a small success so far, as I accepted my first eLance project on Friday.

To be honest I haven’t heard rave reviews about freelance coding services, as the feeling seems to be that most people want the world at a cheap price. Hopefully I can avoid those sorts of projects.

My plan is to develop one of my own websites during this process, WhichTeamWins.com and work on some open source software. Hopefully I can generate some meaningful income (either directly or indirectly) through those projects as well.

I’m interested in hearing from anyone that has made a similar transition (successfully or unsuccessfully). If anyone has any tips I’m all ears!

Now that FeedBurner is owned by Google, you would think they’d have time to fix their math.

For example: I have 14 people subscribed to a feed using SendMeRSS, yet FeedBurner only counts 4. I know it’s 14 because SendMeRSS lists the number of subscribers in every e-mail that is sent out. Yes, I’m one of the 14 because I want to know if it’s ever broken.

Also, Google’s feed fetcher only reports 7 subscribers, yet FeedBurner counts this as 14. I know it’s 7 because the Googlebot comes to my site first before being re-directed to FeedBurner.

I figure this is just a parsing issue, but conspiracy theorists could suggest that Google wants to make it look like everyone is using their service.

Regardless, I just want to have an accurate subscriber count. Is that too much to ask for?

What another nonsense TLD: .info.

Hopefully by blacklisting .biz and .info I can keep Akismet happy.

While we’re on the topic: anyone actually own and/or use a .info TLD for a legit purpose?

Tags: .info, spam

Does anyone use .biz for a legitimate commercial service?

After much interruption, I’ve finally added the .biz TLD to my WordPress blacklist. This shouldn’t affect any real commentators, as it seems no one uses this TLD for legitimate purposes.

I guess the point of this post is to see if anyone has heard of anyone using the .biz TLD for a legit business. I haven’t, but there has to be someone out there, right? I mean, that’s what it was created for, right?

Or, more likely, .biz is simply another way for domain registrars to try and sell you yet another domain you don’t need.

To prove the point, just look at a recent post from Guy Kawasaki on how much it cost to build Truemors:

I spent $1,115.05 registering domains. I could have used GoDaddy and done it a lot cheaper, but I was too stupid and lazy.

I registered 55 domains (for example, truemors.net, .de, .biz, truemours, etc, etc). I had no idea that one had to buy so many domains to truly “surround” the one you use. Yes, I could have registered fewer and spent less, but who cares about saving a few hundred bucks compared to the cost of legal action to get a domain away from a squatter if Truemors is successful?

Let’s assume the website becomes a smashing success. Is it really worth buying these domains even though that domain isn’t really worth anything? These squatters aren’t impacting your bottom line very much, are they? Gotta respect Guy, but I don’t follow this logic.

Lastly, have you ever or do you ever plan on buying a .biz? I hope not–you’re blacklisted.

Tags: .biz, spam

Until AuctionAds realizes that they should write their code into an IFRAME, it is best you create your own IFRAME for these advertisements.

This is important for two reasons. First, the latency between your website and the AuctionAds website might be different causing your pages to load slower than normal. Second, if the AuctionAds service is down for whatever reason your pages will load extremely slow.

By placing your AuctionAds inside of IFRAMEs you won’t have to worry about these issues keeping your visitors from viewing your website’s content.

Creating the Code

First, you’ll need to make an HTML file on your web server that contains the AuctionAds code you wish to embed into your website.

Next you’ll need to create the IFRAME where you wish to code to reside:

<iframe src="aacode.html" width="WIDTH" height="HEIGHT" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" ></iframe>

Make sure you replace aacode.html with the appropriate path to the HTML file you uploaded to your web server, and also change WIDTH and HEIGHT to the appropriate values for the ad code.

That’s it! Never again worry about AuctionAds affecting your website’s performance.

Now if they’d only do this for us…

UPDATE: Poking around I see AuctionAds does put their code into IFRAMEs (not sure when this was activated or if it was always like this). That said, AuctionAds hasn’t been the most reliable service, so keeping with your own IFRAME will keep your website from screeching to a halt when there is an outage.

Tags: auctionads, iframe