Just wanted to wish everyone a happy new year. Be safe, have fun, and put your photocopiers away for a night, ok?

Thanks.

PS: I think I’m the first to get the newyears video online (currently uploading to youtube.com). Woot.

I love it when technology just works. In my most recent  reason for loving Ubuntu Linux, I plugged my new video iPod into my laptop and was surprised when the device showed up on the desktop, named correctly and ready to play music (I didn’t have any video on the device when I plugged it in).

Now, this shouldn’t be a big deal, I understand. Plugging an iPod into a computer should result in the same result. However, I’ve found that to be grossly uncommon. For instance, I used to have Windows XP installed on my laptop (as well as several desktops) and was frustrated by devices* not working when attached - my previous iPod for instance.  Even when the device was formatted (via iTunes), every few connections would either fail or result in difficulty to eventually disconnect the device (such as having to click on the ‘remove device’ icon and figure out what USB device was the iPod).

So, to wrap this up: once again I’m blown away by how smooth running and efficient Ubuntu has been for me.

*Devices for me include my digital camera, the iPod, and even a mouse or two. And yes, I’m pretty proficient in being able to figure out formatting and drivers.

I’ll be removing AdSense (all the google.com ads you see on these pages) as soon as I can. I’ve had an increase in traffic over the last couple of months, and even with the increase, I’ve seen a decrease in my earnings from text-based ads.

I’ll be going back to the less obtrusive text-link ads very soon.

Update: I have now removed Google AdSense and have re-submitted my site for Text-Link-Ads. I’ve had Text-Link-Ads running on the Corinthians version of my site and have been very happy with the company.

There’s an interesting little post over at OSNAP.net about traffic to the home domain.

OSNAP.net doesn’t usually generate a lot of traffic for itself - there’s not much to see there. OSNAP.net has always been built with the idea of “we’ll hide in the background” as to keep the focus of our project on the live event information. When traffic spikes (as it did the last few weeks) to the home domain, we take notice. Especially when the traffic spikes to one or two network owners.

Lately, the traffic has been returning to normal. However, we did notice one network in particular that has been visiting quite a lot.

Take a look at the post at OSNAP.net to find out who that network owner could be.