Opting out of Google’s new privacy policy and data collection is really not that difficult: http://grownupgeek.com/opt-out-googles-privacy-policy
Tips For Content Writers Looking For Work
This week I posted an ad at the DP Forums looking for a news-writer. This is the second time in two years I’ve made such a post and since the type of responses I got were nearly identical both times I feel that I owe it to the world of potential content writers out there to give some tips on getting work:
- READ THE FUCKING AD!! If the ad says “send me a private message”, don’t reply with a public question. If the ad says “I DO NOT WANT XYZ TYPE OF A WRITER” do not send me a PM (or worse, post publicly) that you a very good “XYZ” writer and ask me how much I’m going to pay you for all your great XYZ writing!
- Don’t bother me if based on the very few requirements in the ad, you are not even close to being qualified! If the ad says “you must be able to write in near grammatically perfect English” don’t send me a message written in Pidgeon English at the grammar level of a 7 year old asking how much I am going to pay you
- When sending an example of your work, make sure it is your BEST work! And OMFG, if that is your best work, please refer to #2
- Don’t send a clearly ‘canned’ response that really has nothing to do with the ad/request that I posted. You are supposed to be a professional writer, right? At least put in some effort and WRITE a response.. and for God’s sake, don’t send something that has been re-written by some kind of 10 year old “keyword rewriting” program
- Don’t make ME work – Don’t make me go searching some spam-farm looking for your samples of work, or make me beg multiple times over multiple emails to see examples of your work.
- If you can’t read, can’t speak/write english, have the IQ less than 9 year old encephalitic, or worse, all of these things combined, then please, leave me alone and just keep writing for eHow.com – you two will go well together.
Fortunately out of the 100 or so responses I received, there were 2 or 3 that actually met my requirements and will have some work waiting for them should they choose.
New Video Intro
Aside
Our new video introduction clip for all those video reviews we post.
Facebook Meta Tags for Drupal
I was having trouble getting Facebook “Likes” and Facebook “Shares” to properly pickup my page summaries any time someone would “Like” or “Share” a page. Instead of picking up the first few sentences of text from the page, Facebook was picking up my Adsense code – showing (Adsense code) jibberish on people’s Facebook Wall any time they shared one of my pages. Facebook was also picking up the wrong images to display with the “Share”.
After 3 minutes of research and by using the Facebook Debugger Tool (VERY helpful!) I found that the Facebook crawler was confused by my lack of Open Graph (OG:) Meta tags. I was using the Facebook Social Drupal Module but it only provides the bare minimum Open Graph meta tags for Shares and Facebook “Likes”.
For getting these additional Facebook meta tags, I found the Drupal Open Graph Meta Tags Module.
This module makes it easy to add Open Graph meta tags (http://opengraphprotocol.org/) to a node to enable it to be come a “rich” social object. For instance, Facebook uses this information to work out how to preview shared content in a user’s Facebook profile (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/share).
This module makes it easy to select the image thumbnail used to represent the node (used by Facebook when constructing a preview). The editor is shown a list of thumbnails of all images associated with the node (both as fields as well as images embedded within the node’s body content).
If need be, meta tags can be restricted to specific content types and access to administering and editing meta tags can be restricted by role using Drupal’s built-in permissions system.
After getting your Open Graph meta tags configured, you may notice that when Sharing or Like-ing pages, Facebook is still not seeing your tags – this is because the Facebook crawler has the old page cached. You can force the Facebook crawler to re-crawl your page and update it’s cache by using the Facebook Debugger Tool. Just enter the URL and hit the DEBUG button, and the Facebook crawler / bot will recrawl your page and update the Facebook cache.
My (DNSBL) Blacklist list
Here is my current list of DNSBL’s that I use for blocking [much] spam, proxies, hijacked PC’s and “problem” IP’s. Note that even using all of these DNSBL’s at the same time still will not prevent all spam, but when used in combination with Akismet, your site can be 99.9% spam free.
The real use for these DNSBL lists is to block open proxies and other IP’s that can cause trouble:
- rbl.efnetrbl.org
- spam.spamrats.com
- combined.abuse.ch
- xbl.spamhaus.org
- web.dnsbl.sorbs.net
- dnsbl.ahbl.org
- problems.dnsbl.sorbs.net
- opm.tornevall.org
- cbl.abuseat.org
- dnsbl-2.uceprotect.net
- dnsbl.mags.net
Ghosts And Sex
For the last year or two one of my personal hobbies has been “paranormal investigation”. I don’t mean ghost-hunting like those fools you see on the TV shows chasing shadows in the dark with useless gadgets with absolutely zero basis is science or reality. My interest is more in documenting claims, and usually debunking them, or showing if for no one else but myself that the person making these claims are mostly full of shit, looking for attention, or, just plain crazy. Of course I do remain open-minded in the event I should actually come across any sort of evidence of any kind of supernatural forces or entities. If I were to do so, I would surely become rich and famous! Unfortunately, I haven’t come across any real evidence yet.
In keeping with practicing what I preach (“build websites about things are you know about or are interested in..“), some of these interests have been creeping into a couple of my websites, InsideTheIE.com and www.Everythingaboutghosts.com.
Part of this hobby of mine is reading up as much as I can on the internet about all of the [crackpot] theories on what ghosts or spirits are, etc. Of course none of these ghost theories have any testable basis in anything even remotely close to something you could call scientific, but they are at the very least entertaining. Many of these ghost theories revolve around the idea that ghosts are somehow leftover or residual ‘energy’ of a person or event that somehow replays itself over and over at a location, or perhaps is ‘implanted’ into the environment, allowing people to sometimes see this energy either visually, or perceived visually but actually somehow transmitted directly into mind of the person sensitive enough to see it.
The energies required to implant themselves at a location (haunt a location) must be very strong, and as some of the theories go, usually arise as the result of a traumatic event such as a violent murder, an extremely evil person (such as a murderer) or, a combination of the two. Many ghost stories have these reoccurring themes, so of course this makes perfect sense to believers.
Today, as I was putting on my shoes and my mind was wandering aimlessly, for some reason the thought of ghosts and sex entered in. In these claims of hauntings (residual energy of traumatic events or evil people) why do we not hear of hauntings or ghost stories staring naked ghosts, or, of ghosts having sex? Surely there have been traumatic deaths of honeymooners being murdered while consummating their love? And of course there are hundreds of sexual related crimes (rapes, etc) ending in murder every year going back thousands of years. Any one of these events should be traumatic enough to ‘imprint’ itself on the environment, or cause a lost soul to wander the earth!
So why then, are there no, or so few stores of ghosts engaging in sex? I have a few theories on naked ghosts or ghosts having sex:
1) The immutable laws of the spirit world simply do not permit naked ghosts or any activity with a rating of higher than PG13
2) The people imagining their ghost sightings are pre-conditioned (based on movies, previous ghost stories, etc) to only make up stories in their heads of fully-clothed ghosts
3) It’s all bullshitery