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Yesterday was one of those marathon sessions of 15 hours that I thought I had left behind in my 20's, but apparently not. The net seems to not be a workplace for old men...       But, after getting out this monstrosity, which was delayed several times by people having to do the QA after a launch and then a retraction and then a launch again, I found some solace in the following video:              Yeah, I know. I'm posting a lot of videos lately from things that amuse me. Has the web really come to this? Well, yeah. It's either this or more bitching about crippies and art students. Who needs that?

It appears that Google has finally done an update to the PageRank system. It had been a seriously long time in coming being that the game since the last one was nearly six months! Many people rely on these updates to rate the worth of their site. I'm sure that if pressed about the delay, Google would respond, "You and your users should determine the worth of your site." Of course, if something like this were the only judge of a site's worth, then there would be little use to make the PageRank public.       I had the great pleasure of once having a rank of five on this site. After the last update, I went from a five to a four though, which kinda sucked, since nothing had changed. With this latest update, I really dropped, from a four to a three. This is really unfortunate as that's something of a sucky rank. Or at least, it used to be. I noticed that SF Gate dropped to a five, while other new sources didn't change. One friend of mine is now a four, while he has less content on his site. Another friend is still a three and he has a great deal less content on his site.       I have been musing about this for the last couple of days, since it really felt like a blow to some kind form of my pride. The only thing I can figure is that the index has been recalculated based on the number of sites out there and in reality, I was just on the cusp of a four and this new review bumped me to a three. That still doesn't really explain it and I suppose I'll just have to keep writing the best articles that I can, get a few more links (oh yeah, I have more links from other sites now as well), and keep updating my photos. I suppose at this point we all exist at the whim of Google saying we exist.

For those who don't know, Blog Action Day has come and gone this last Monday. It was a novel idea about trying to get everyone in the blogosphere to chat about a single topic; in this case, the environment. I wrote a post for it because I blather endlessly here and figured, hey, why not?       It seemed like it might do... I don't know, something. Well, in looking at the statistics that they amassed and my own site, it really appears to have done nothing. I think the post on Slashdot summed it up pretty well:              You can almost hear the sound of the vacuum created by bloggers thinking that their words matter when the people with control don't even know how to read the tubes. Lick a stamp or march- that's harder to ignore.              They're right. A great deal of us write just to hear our own voices and blogging is in general something of a reference system as opposed to an action system. And because of the ubiquity of blogs and email, using them for any kind of campaign doesn't really have the impact that we could hope it would.       But, back to the stats thing for a minute. Did I see anymore traffic on my site because I was one of the 20,603 bloggers posting about the environment that day? No. In fact, my traffic was a bit lower last Monday. Sure, I'm just one of thousands and a minor voice in a vast cosmos of bit and bytes that are running around the planet and I don't mind being overlooked. What I do mind is that this hasn't really brought any new faces in to the game. All the big posters that you can see on the Blog Action Day site were already big posters. The Technorati authority ranked blogs are pretty meaningless because to get up high in that list means already being high in that list. In other words, it's a joke, like getting in to something by having experience doing that something.       Maybe in the future, some juicy tidbit that someone wrote will surface and lead to a change in how we do things. But really, we're all bloggers and that was bound to happen with or without this event. So, in a nutshell, what has this really done except use up more electricity that's going to have an more of an impact on the environment?

I've seen this time and again from both personal experience as well as watching friends who work in web design go through it. You come up with a good design and it really works well. People are in to it and then just before it gets deployed, the marketing department says something to the effect of, "Oh, but we need to have ads in there!"       I've never quite figured out why these things don't get thought of much more in advance, but I've found that there is a reason ads look out of place on sites: they're an afterthought. I think it comes from the general scope of marketing in that they don't seem to be able to think big picture (in my experience) and that is really ironically, their biggest job. Web designers are then forced in to a position of having to take these things in to account or just not giving a damn about what happens to their design after they hand it off. I try to find a mix of these two paths and it's worked well generally.       To illustrate this, I point you to CitySearch San Francisco which was redesigned in the last few months. I never cared much for this site before, but I found the new design very appealing. I say 'found' because the first time I was looking at it, I liked it and then the last thing to load was some banner ad on the top from an ad server that was, as usual, slow to load. This then pushed the whole design down and had a blocky, crappy element on the top of the page that mangled everything. It was sad really, because this ad was the same ad that appeared within the page. Let me state that I'm not completely against ads, they just need to be more subtle. When you see something like a banner ad on the top or to the side (like in SF Gate), we've all become conditioned to the point where we ignore it because we've been seeing these buggers for over 10 years now. An ad within the content looks more like content and is something that you're likely to click on. Ever wonder why Google has been so successful with AdWords? This is why.       Beyond eliminating ads from a site altogether, a site like Diablo Magazine is a little bit better done. While this is a publication with next to no content and mostly ads, it's obvious that they were planning to have ads in the final layout, unlike Citysearch. Of course, I have to criticize those colored buttons on the left of the page, because yes, they do stand out, but in an obvious marketing way that shows no loyalty to the original design which is actually quite nice when you ignore that.       The ultimate joke in all of this is that a lot of us are seeing less of these ads these days. People using Firefox with Adblock installed as an extension don't see any of these ads. I suspect that as time goes on, the entire way that the web is making money will have to be re-evaluated because tacking ads and other sham-looking things in to a site are short-term solutions to making the web profitable.       I might add that below, I have included some simple instructions on how to make the Citysearch design work better that their marketing people might be able to understand.

Ugh, I hate it when I find little things like this. I hate to admit it, but apparently the reason I've gotten no hate mail for awhile is because there was no way to send me hate mail. I go and post the contact links all over the site, but due to changing the site oh... three months ago when I was first in Spain, I never updated the sending mechanism for email. Idiot!       So, that's fixed now, as well as a few other things, so that everyone who was happy to tell me what an idiot I am for my white dreadlock rants can send me said rants again. I'm sure this will come as a big relief.       Oh one other thing, since that if you feel like you've been missing out on new comments to posts that you comment on, you can subscribe to receive updates whenever someone posts. I just hope it will encourage more comments, since I really like getting those!       Here's to version 6.1.3. Let's hope it's a good one.              Oh yeah, one last thing in that I'm going to try and balance out any techie posts with more general interest posts, because if there's one thing I've learned these last three months, it's that people like to be much more generally interested in things.

So, for anyone who follows my blog with any regularity, you will notice that my posts have been a bit sporadic. There is a good reason for this; I'm in The Europe. This is much like the normal Europe that a great many people go to, but the key difference is that I'm in it and using unneeded articles of speech when trying to talk in other languages.       But, in between all of this, I have managed to redesign the whole website. That's actually a bit of a lie as there are still large chunks of this that need to be dealt with, but I mainly wanted to pull all of this together so that I could upload something of a new version of the site while leapfrogging between major cities in the Mediterranean. Currently, I'm in Barcelona and loving it. Great city. Far too many tourists, but such is generally the case for great places. Hopefully I'll be able to knock out some blog posts that talk about this more than just patting myself on the back for rebuilding my website.

I love launching new sites. I would use some over-zealous phrase like it's "giving birth to a new child", but that's a bit over the top and smarmy. Still, it's fun to release them on the world and see what happens.       The new site in question is www.elia.ws. Why .ws you might ask? Well, try and find elia dot something that isn't already taken and you'll be hard pressed to find one that's free. So, this was the best choice and it's rather fitting since Ms. Elia who writes there is a world traveler and the .ws extension was originally supposed to mean world site. While it was just one of the countless new domain names that ICANN has released in recent years, I find it quite fitting in this instance.       But, who is, Elia? I'll let you read what she says in her own words. Oh yeah... one other thing I might want to mention... the site is completely in Spanish. This proved to be a bit of challenge, but one that was worth undertaking because you have to get creative with things like month names (MySQL only outputs in English) and non-English characters (UTF-8 is a wonderful thing). Beyond those little stumbling blocks, as long as you have the lovely Spaniard with you to work on the site, it will all come up roses.       So, dust off your Español, or get out your BabelFish and get reading. She happens to have a delicious photos section if you're feeling linguistically impaired at the moment.

I've been around for a bit in this crazy world of the internet and I've learned a few things with time. Naturally, I'm no expert on everything, but I've found that working as a contract web developer has its ups and downs. I thought that I would share a few of these so that others could commiserate, or learn about potential pitfalls before they happen. Why only seven? Well, that's all I could think of at the moment. Maybe I'll expand on this in the future, but for right now, here you go:              1. Always have a contract.       This may seem elementary or a real pain to deal with, but I've found that if you have a solid outline of the work at hand whether it's a $500 job or a $5,000 job, you're going to be a lot happier in the end. Every client I've worked with where there has been a relatively explicit contract has been a good experience. Every client where I've gone without has been a nightmare. Even if it's just bullet points on one sheet of paper, have each of you sign off on it.       2. Avoid restaurant websites.       When you're out looking for work, you don't really want to turn anything down and if you're like me, living in a metropolitan city, you'll see a new eating place open up or realize that one of your favorites doesn't have a site. You think, "Ah, I should pursue this." Ah, but you shouldn't. While it's always a good business practice to drop a card to test the waters, I've found that restaurant owners in general are clueless when it comes to the web. They tend to not want to pay anything (despite the fact they'll ironically spend a fortune on print ads) and then they want everything. Trying to pin them down on a design is like pulling teeth, even if they have a heavily designed space and you try to copy that. If they really come to you for their site and have a solid idea (write a contract) and be very cautious. But, if they require the least bit of chasing, don't bother because most of the time, this is one-off work that will not provide any steady form of income.       3. Avoid jobs under $200 (scale for locale).       For those who, like me, survived the dot-com crash, this may seem like an arrogant attitude. But, every site that I've worked on in this range, whether it be a favor or just to try and help out a group with little money has been a disaster. Think of this this way: $200 buys you about 4-6 hours of development time (in San Francisco anyways) and if someone doesn't want to pay anything close to a partial going rate, then they most likely don't understand the work involved, yet don't realize that they can't do it themselves. You're much better off doing a job for free so that you can cut your ties to it if it gets out of hand. While generating some bad karma in the process, at least you're not liable for anything.       4. Watch out for "designers".       These types are in the print world as well and are nothing new. For those who don't know of these, what I am talking about are the people who really think they can design and will want to basically control the mouse through you. These might work out all right if you can swallow your pride and just let them do whatever they want to do no matter how ugly or unusable the end result. I am getting better with this type, but it's a hard thing to do and it really just makes the work feel meaningless. This group are also another good reason to obey rule #1 because they will often have you go through 20 mockups and still be unhappy.       5. Don't maintain sites that require DreamWeaver access.       Hey, I love DreamWeaver. I use it daily, but I hand code everything and make it as lean and compact as possible. DreamWeaver has this top heavy habit of creating a new definition for every freaking bit on the page when some things can easily be condensed for clarity and speed. These types of jobs are also tricky because the reason that people want the DreamWeaver access in the first place is so that they can muck with things, which inevitably means that something is going to get broken and you'll have to wade through .denseBlue1, .denseBlue1a, .denseBlue2, and .denseBlue to figure out which damned class is creating some table that has it's display set to inline and is looking like hell.       6. Count your friends and family carefully.       I always try to help the people I know and love. Some of them, I will do anything for. In the past, I've always tried to be there until one day I realized that I was only working on pet projects for other people and not my own pet projects. No matter how silly they may be, I love my pet projects and it wasn't until I went on vacation for month and wasn't able to work on others' sites that I realized how much time they were taking up. Naturally, keep working on others' sites that you care about, just make sure to budget your time.       7. Find some way to holiday.       It's so easy to let the web life take over your life. Some new site or new feature is coming out all the time and you want to be on top of it. It also seems that if you leave for a little bit, you're going to lose clients and the momentum you've built for the work you do. Naturally, all of these things can happen, but if you don't get away from it once in awhile, you'll burn out and go insane. I recommend anywhere from two weeks to however much off each year to go hike in Banff or float in a sailboat on the Adriatic. Your body and soul will thank you for it.

Based upon the fact that this guy seems to actually know how to code, I'm guessing that this Never Validate bit is a complete joke, although his source code is pretty crappy... Anyone who actually puts this down in with any seriousness should have their web developer license revoked.       Just to clear up the geek speak for everyone else, validation is what you do during or after you've built a site to make sure that it adheres to the standards of web construction. While it may not seem like a big deal if the site works and looks good for users, Google thinks it's a big deal.

Upon browsing the log statistics for this site (which is possible my fourth favorite hobby), I was happy to see that the percentage of Internet Explorer 6 users sits at about 41% of total traffic for March. For those who don't know, IE6 is crap. It's broken. It's bug-prone. It's a security hazard. And well, just get Firefox. Firefox is by far and away the best browser out there right now and naturally, it's free! It also happens to be the case that 21% of total traffic to the site uses Firefox. An unfortunate 6% are using Safari which is really just IE6's slightly less inbred cousin for the Mac.       But hey, I realize that not everyone wants to use Firefox (despite it's awesomeness) so I won't fault a person for using Internet Explorer 7 on Windows. This browser is much better than version 6. I'm still convinced that Microsoft bought Opera's codebase from them because so many bugs are similar between the two, but whatever the case, it's an improvement. It's the fact that 20% of the users of this site are on IE7 that I'm pretty sure that Hudin fans are smarter than most others.       Compared to other sites, these statistics are amazing. I've seen IE6 usage around 55-60% on other big sites, which is just sad. I know that upgrading can be a real pain, especially if you're on a slower connection, but if you can, get Firefox! Hudin salutes you :)