Domain 133tness
Posted: July 30, 2009 Filed under: blogging, Internets | Tags: domain, GoDaddy, godaddy.com, internet 1 Comment »It’s that time of year again for me. Yep, domain renewal time! I just braved GoDaddy’s eye-raping website to ensure that my little corners of the Internet remain mine for another year. I spent quite a chunk of change, but to me, domain shopping is as thrilling as buying stocks or gambling and can be as rewarding as some women (who I adore) find shopping for shoes.
Anyway, I repointed the nameservers while I was on GoDaddy so now you can access this blog by going directly to http://millikandaily.com. You can also still access it at it’s old address, http://arikia.wordpress.com, as well and it will redirect to my domain so no need to change your blogrolls.
K thx!
♥Arikia
Once a Scibling, always a Scibling
Posted: July 29, 2009 Filed under: blogging, Internets, Musings | Tags: Blogroll, Cat Herding, ScienceBlogs 6 Comments »You may notice as you scroll down through my blog that I’ve made some additions to my sidebar links. It’s no secret that I used to overlord at ScienceBlogs, and that when I was laid off I was pretty devastated. I was in it to win it with that group of wacky bloggers, and it’s been hard to transition away from the job that I saw myself making a lifelong career out of. Furthermore, there’s a large community aspect within that network (at least there used to be, I hope there still is), and as older and wiser professionals in the science world and all-around amazing people, I came to rely on them for guidance and support just as much as they relied on me to solve their problems and fix their broken technology. Basically, it’s been hard for me to look at the site since I left. I didn’t really know how to navigate maintaining the social ties that existed with many of the bloggers, and so I just decided to leave the network alone. Not look at it or link to it or anything.
But I don’t really know what the point of that was anymore. Regardless of domain, we’re all on the same network — everyone on the Internet that is. And it seems that people will find each other, and find ways to connect over similarities, regardless of what their platform is or where their site is hosted. So I just spent a few hours going back through all the blogs on ScienceBlogs and adding my old Sciblings to my blogroll. Because they say, once a Scibling, always a Scibling, and I still have a ScienceBlogs t-shirt that says Cat Herder on it. (Ok… I borrowed it from Ginny and never gave it back, but it’s MINE now. Sorry.) I must admit it was strange typing out the url extensions and names that I must have typed thousands of times over the past year. It felt so natural, yet empty at the same time. But in doing so, I think it means I am really ready to move on in my career as it pertains to the science blogosphere.
And just so you all know, I tried to be selective. I was not planning on putting every single one of you on my blogroll, but going through the list it seemed that every blog author I came across had some kind of meaning to me. Maybe we’ve never spoken outside of mass email communication but I just always liked your writing. Or maybe we’ve conversed on AIM into the wee hours of the morning. Maybe you sent me a pair of shoes for Christmas, or a big flower basket when I got laid off, or a cat with a Helskini t-shirt, or wrote me a letter of recommendation. Or maybe, just maybe, we’ve gotten wasted on motherfucking Jameson and I saved you from getting hit by a bus. These are all things that happen when one is a Cat Herder. It’s an eventful job. And I loved doing it for all of you. So I feel much better now that you are on my blogroll. Don’t feel obligated to put me on yours or anything, this blog’s pretty lame. Just know I’ll be around, and that you can come and say hi whenever you want.
Also, I coppied my “Essentials” from the blogroll on Page 3.14. I made that entire page after all.
Me and my Sciblings at ScienceOnline09.
I HAVE INTERNETS!!!
Posted: June 15, 2009 Filed under: haiti, Internets Leave a comment »Well, I am here. It’s crazy awesome. AND it turns out all my fretting about not having internets was for nothing because they not only have a computer, they have THREE computers and ethernet! The factor that I did not anticipate though, is that even though I have internet, I can’t focus on writing anything because my dad won’t leave me alone! I’m sitting in his office area with him and every time I try to write he asks me a question. So…. Internets…. I must leave you once again to go hang out with this guy. He’s pretty interested in me. I guess he’s pretty interesting too. Here’s a pic of the view from here:
Heavy fog rolling over the mountains in the evening.
More later, au revoir!
Say you’re stranded on an island…
Posted: June 10, 2009 Filed under: GraphJam, Internets | Tags: GraphJam, haiti, internet, Palm Pre, smartphone 2 Comments »
Figure 1: My creation using GraphJam.com's Graph Builder. It's a pretty sweet ap.
I finally got around to downloading the Flash Player that I needed to create my own GraphJams and made this earlier while trying to figure out of the Palm Pre’s coverage will extend to Haiti, where I’m going on Sunday. It will be a critical factor in my decision to purchase it. I have read that the Palm Pre is not considered a worldphone and my search attempts were not successful in locating information regarding International coverage. In the event that coverage won’t extend to there, I will be torn about what to do because honestly, I just don’t think I can go that long without my beloved Internets. I go into withdrawal when I am apart for merely hours, and if you think this is a joke, you’ve obviously never been around me for an extended period of time. I get moody and irritable, I start looking for excuses to get out of whatever situation I’m in so that I can go home and get my fix, relationships in my life suffer,
Me: You mean you want to go OUT? Uhh… sorry I have to… work.
Potential suitor: But you’re unemployed!
Me: But I Tweet like it’s my job. Don’t question.
and while it may be classified as an addiction by some, it’s no cause for concern. If I ever attempt to donate my eggs to pay the Comcast bill or start sleeping with strangers for their Internet access, THEN I will check myself into Amish rehab. In the mean time, smartphone here I come!
Some people are surprised to learn that I don’t have a smartphone currently, but it was actually a very deliberate decision. I know that when I get one, it will be the end of my organic existence; it will be the precipitating factor in the chain of events that will seal my fate as a cyborg. Well, OK. Not *the* precipitating factor, as I am fond of determinism and the idea that such a factor is actually indefinable as part of a chain of events that extends well past my birth and therefore we are not responsible for our actions (damn you philosophy!). But yes, dear readers, one of these days, I can quite positively say I will cease to be Arikia the human, and will be born anew as Arikia the badass robotically-enhanced genius computing babe. And I am ready to accept that.
Figure 2: An artist's rendition of me, nonchalantly leaning on a post reading some science news via a future version of the Kindle while a robot dude tries to hit on me. I skillfully ignore him. Some things never change. (Image from Smashing Magazine.)
#goodsex trending thread indicates humanity is DOOMED
Posted: June 5, 2009 Filed under: Internets, World News, WTF | Tags: #goodsex, censorship, China, twitter 4 Comments »A few days ago I was sitting around, being unemployed and surfing the web, and I noticed a trending topic called #goodsex rising to the top of the ranks on Twitter. I’ve been thinking a lot about sex and how it is perceived and practiced in the U.S. lately, as I’ve been developing a website to aggregate the posts related to the Silence Is The Enemy project. With all the horrendous acts of sexual violence going on in Liberia in mind, I was already in a bit of a cynical state before I started reading the #goodsex thread. After reading Tweets like this, my WTF-dar went into High Alert mode:
Harmonygirl30 #goodsex is when you don’t even care if you might of gotten pregnant cause you feel like you got a story to tell them when they older…
I_am_delo: @BscoTT26 #goodsex is when u don’t pull out!
InspiredByTrue: #goodsex when the kids walk in or wake up but you don’t care… U just gotta finish!
BabeHound #goodsex when u pray there’s no condoms
Sorry, BabeHound, but I pray to historical figures in science that there WERE condoms around, for the sake of your future illegitimate offspring. These are just a few examples, but there were hundreds, if not thousands of Tweets about having reckless, unprotected sex written by people who make egregious typos and grammatical errors. Who knew that Twitter would be the tool to give us confirmation that humanity is DOOMED?
Ironically, shortly after #goodsex rose to the top of the trending ranks, #”China bans Twitter” followed as people circulate news of China’s recent decision to ban access to a number of social networking sites including Twitter, hotmail, and flickr. China, I do not approve of your censorship tactics, but seeing as your motivation for doing this was probably based on the #goodsex thread, I will cut you a little slack. I mean, you have population control problems. You don’t want your people getting any ideas from the sleazy Americans. I also think I understand your motivations behind hotmail… it is a really crappy interface. But what did flickr ever do to you?? That is just going too far.
Top Ten Myths About Google Analytics
Posted: May 31, 2009 Filed under: blogging, Internets, Teh Google | Tags: analytics, Google, Google Analytics Leave a comment »I recently came across The Google Analytics Blog via the Twitter feed of my favorite Googler and found it pretty useful for understanding some of the program’s more ambiguous features. I’ve worked in analytics quite a bit in my days, and it can be a powerful tool if you know how to use it to it’s potential. Moreover, if you’re obsessed with online network dynamics like me, it’s a form of entertainment. I used to explore the ScienceBlogs analytics data for hours in the evenings after work marveling at quirky things, like how the traffic from one person’s personal blog that hasn’t been updated in months could contribute more incoming traffic to the site than a highly funded campaign. I do like me some irony.
Particularly interesting on the Analytics blog was this post titled 10 Myths About Google Analytics. While some of the “myths” are clearly an excuse to trumpet their selling points, there are some tidbits of useful advice in there.
One good and crucial thing about this blog is that it links to the Google Analytics support forum, in which reside employees who know the intricacies of that system and get paid to respond to your queries.
Regarding MYTH 2: Google Analytics is basic and doesn’t have any “advanced” features or metrics, if this is a real complaint, whoever said that clearly did not actually log in, let alone attempt to drilldown to specific areas of content and explore different metrics (Hey, did you know you can click things on the Internet??).
As there have been several occasions where Google Analytics has displayed numbers that differed from other analytics sites by orders of magnitude, I will take contention with MYTH 4: Google Analytics is not really accurate. This isn’t because Analytics is dysfunctional in some way that the developers are neglecting to note; they openly admit that using JavaScript tags to college data results in problems such as “JavaScript errors, redirects, untagged pages and slow client-side load times.” However, they don’t mention anything about human error contributing to the inaccuracy, which I would venture is the primary cause of discrepancies. Someone accidentally deletes some code when copying HTML or, if you’re working with a major network, forgetting to add code back in while restructuring or just labeling it something different can cause numbers to change. If it’s because of human error, I recognize that that doesn’t make Google Analytics inaccurate, but I do see it as a problem if the user interface and methods of implementation are such that it is easy for these errors to occur. I’m no fan of “dumbing-it-down,” but it seems as though Google could be thinking more about how to package this product so it can be used more effectively by users of varying technological capabilities.
Another good thing I have to report about this post is the reminder via MYTH 8: Google Analytics does not support A/B or multivariate testing and isn’t well-integrated with other tools, that you can use Google Website Optimizer to test different features that you’re thinking about implementing on your site. A lot of web development decisions are made according to flimsy reasons, like that something “looks good” and are based on the personal preference of a few people. But I like to approach development like a science by starting out with a hypothesis (about a design aspect or wording on a heading) then running tests with both scenarios to let the numbers show which is better received by the masses. Of course, if they were MY personal preferences, they would almost certainly always agree with the science. But not everyone has the instincts of the Queen of the Internets when it comes to navigating sites, so quantifiable data is always nice.
Though top ten lists are all the rage, it sounds like most of the “myths” about Google Analytics come from people who are intimidated by the system and don’t do the proper research to find what they’re looking for before they call tech support to complain. But this isn’t a bad thing – it just means there’s more jobs for nerds like me!
