Category Archives: Interestingness

Still No Amazon Affiliates Love For Illinois

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As a resident of Illinois, I can’t participate in the Amazon Affiliates program due to a law passed in the state awhile back that was supposed to protect brick-and-mortar businesses from online businesses that didn’t charge Illinois tax. I thought maybe that might have changed since there had been some stories about the law being ruled unconstitutional, but not according to this newly updated boilerplate from the Amazon Affiliates page. I still get their emails, I just have to keep hoping this will change someday.

In addition, if at any time following your enrollment in the Program you become a resident of Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina, Rhode Island, or Connecticut, you will become ineligible to participate in the Program, and this Operating Agreement will automatically terminate, on the date you establish residency in that state. In addition, you must promptly notify us in writing of your Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina, Rhode Island, or Connecticut residency, which you may do via the Contact Associates Customer Service form available here.

via Amazon.com Associates Central

Gobekli Tepe: Amazing 11,000-year-old site predates Stonehenge by thousands of years

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I’m watching an H2 program called Civilization Lost, covering little-known sites that hint at entire civilizations that have been lost to history, the segment on the Turkish site Gobekli Tepe was striking to me. The History 2 channel seems to be slightly more “woo-woo ancient aliens!1!” than the regular History channel. Also covered: Varna, Tel Hamoukar, the Minoan culture, and others.

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced its the site of the worlds oldest temple.

via Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

Gobekli Tepe: Amazing 11,000-year-old site predates Stonehenge by thousands of years

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I’m watching an H2 program called Civilization Lost, covering little-known sites that hint at entire civilizations that have been lost to history, the segment on the Turkish site Gobekli Tepe was striking to me. The History 2 channel seems to be slightly more “woo-woo ancient aliens!1!” than the regular History channel. Also covered: Varna, Tel Hamoukar, the Minoan culture, and others.

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced its the site of the worlds oldest temple.

via Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

Yahoo Ruining Flickr? Ach! SSS!! NOOOOOO!

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Really hope this is nay-saying… I have 3 Flickr accounts, don’t relish moving them all to… where? Picasa Web Albums? Meh.

This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.

via How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet

Happy Easter! I’m Off To Sing The Hallelujah Chorus

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It’s that time of year again – I’m singing at the Easter Vigil tonight at St Nicholas, and we’re doing the Hallelujah Chorus tonight and tomorrow. Much like in 2007, in fact, but we’re much more experienced now, and the freshening we’ve felt with Father Manny beginning his tenure has been a LOT of fun!

I’m also the web and social media boffin for St Nick’s so I do the website, Twitter, Facebook, and whatever else that’s internet-y. So I’m always interested to know how people find St Nick’s. I’m also on the Welcome Committee, just  so that all makes a kind of sense.

Work is good too – not that busy, but expected to get busier after the “spring break lull.” One exciting thing: we’re all going to be working from home, the entire office. It’ll be a big undertaking but I’ve asked to be put on the list for the first wave. One of my teammates is already working from home and loves it, and I have a spare bedroom that’s small enough to be kind of ideal for a home office. All the tech gear and connection will be handled by the office, so we’ll be very interested to see how they deal with the wiring.

I’m looking for computer parts these days anyway; my desktop computer lost the graphics card I upgraded it with (WAAAAH!) so I’m limping along on the default one. So far it looks like we’ll swap for a bigger case and power supply, and then there’ll be room for a good quality graphics card. Hoping to spend less than $500 on it, maybe a lot less as prices are about to come down.

Anyway, Easter. My music is all collated, in spite of the best efforts of my choir mistress to keep throwing new pieces of music and hymns in that she planned for but never gave out because it was “in our Anglican DNA” and thus something we ought to know. Ah, well, it’ll be a good service and I’ll be very, very happy when we get through the “big stuff” like the Hallelujah Chorus.I also get to chant in the dark, which is always… fraught, but fun when it sounds good.

More later. Happy Easter, can’t wait to see who Bunny Stig turns out to be at church tomorrow.

Google Reader Sharing Still Crippled

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I’m still pissed off about the Share feature of Google Reader being ruined, and it’s weeks and weeks or months and months since I did any blogging of stuff I ran across in the Internets tubes.

Somebody at the Google Reader user forum, in a thread entitled “I HATE the new format” came up with a possible solution: share your old Shares page to Google Plus (ugh) and use tags to add items to it. However, it was dependent on another site, which has since shut down (and I suspect Google of being evil).

Farther down in the thread, someone else points out a link that at least shows you your shared items in a Google Reader link, but it leads to the same old familiar page. However, it’s now possible to use Reader’s crippled Share button to add items to my Public Google Plus page… from my REAL Shared Items page.

It’ll only be updated from iPhone or iPad as there’s no app for the desktop that allows old-style sharing. That guy at Hivemined has lost all credibility with a very, very enthusiastic group of potential users; he grabbed the limelight and then didn’t know what to do with it, and in the end we’re all burned.

 

 

via I HATE the new format. Why don’t my shared items show up on my shared page. – Google Groups

And Snow, It Finally Begins

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Was home Friday, had a thing I couldn’t schedule on the weekend, an errand at village hall, and other chores. Originally had a vet appointment for Riley, but pushed it to tomorrow, as I didn’t want to mess with fresh snow and traffic snarls while trying to transport him (he gets spectacularly carsick). He had a scary problem earlier this week, vet thinks he has GERD so now I get to give him the kitty dose of Pepcid AC in addition to the other stuff. He’s maintaining weight, though. And last night he entertained us with his Bowl o’ Cat trick. I was laughing too hard to take a picture, so my husband David took it.

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Riley is to bowls as Maru is to boxes, apparently. Anyway: SNOW, we finally has it!

It’s finally looking like winter in the Midwest as the season’s first big snowstorm crawls across the region, leaving skiers and snow-reliant businesses giddy but greeting morning commuters Friday with a sloppy, slippery drive. After starting as one of the warmest and brownest winters in recent history, parts of Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri were blanketed in white before the storm moved into Illinois and Michigan. Snowplow drivers were out in force overnight in Chicago, as six to eight inches of snow and plummeting temperatures moved in.

It’s about time! We went to a cross-country ski club meeting last week, guess the requests for everyone to do the Snow Dance worked. Sorry, everybody else. Link: Midwest Finally Gets First Big Snowstorm Of Winter : NPR

425-390-8105 Is Probably the ANTI Do Not Call Database

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I received a call at work from a Renton WA number, and immediatly after got a spam text message. When I called the Renton number back, it was a voicemail saying “Welcome to the Do Not Call database. If you would like to be added to the database, enter your 10-digit phone number.”

Note, no “Federal,” no mention of a US governmental entity. So I assume that it was actually an opt-in database for phone spammers, based on a bit of Googling around as seen below. One commenter remarked that it’s probably “out of country” spammers using some kind of bundling service based in Washington state.

Link: 425-390-8105 / 4253908105 1/5

Not so Simple: Simple Facebook Connect « WordPress Plugins

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I finally got Simple Facebook Connect working between the St Nick’s webpage and the Facebook page, mostly.

It was both simple and not simple: Facebook had changed the look of their Apps page, and there is more than one Apps page. So one “how to install this app” tutorial I tried to follow was visually outdated, but a text update had been added at the bottom.

The plugin developer had not bothered to remove screenshots on an old blog post on his site, but added a terse update noting that the instructions in the plugin readme.txt file and on the options page are correct, and that the link to the correct Apps page was correct. Also, to link to a Page (business page, fan page), where the Option page says “Enter the ID of your page,” he means the number contained in your Facebook fan or business page, not the entire URL.

Once I finally got that, and deleted the duplicate app I created with the wrong domain name, and recopied and pasted the correct app ID and Secret key, and saved, and authorized additional permissions for SFC and saved AGAIN, I was good to go.

It now automatically reposts from blog post to Facebook page, and I can manually publish both posts and pages.

I followed instructions at the developer’s website to get the enhanced comments working. Code details in the extended post.

I’m using a different plugin, Tweet Like Share +1, to add more share boxes. They don’t seem to conflict now, after enabling SFC first, then enabling TLS+1. Testing to follow, the SFC developer has +1 on his blog but doesn’t include it as an option.

Otto is rather… blunt about not using other Facebook plugins, so proceed carefully and follow directions to the letter. Your own assumptions, and selective blindness, are your biggest stumbling blocks when installing Simple Facebook Connect. Also, older posts and comments on his support sites can be helpful, but may be outdated.

Screenshots and the steps that eventually worked to follow.

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