Category Archives: Blog Blather

Are You a Hippie? Which File Extension Are You? Which Survivor of the Impending Nuclear Apocalypse Are You?

Quizzes… blogthingies… you’ve seen them everywhere. Although I often run off and checkout the latest novelty doing the rounds, I don’t usually post the results on my own blog. Partly because heck, you lot have all seen that stuff hundreds of other places before, partly because I think it clutters up the look of a blog, and partly because I don’t like to cut and paste other people’s code into my blog, without thoroughly checking it out. And mostly, I’m just too lazy to check it out! But today, I did a new quiz, and I actually considered pasting the info… and this time, I did check. And boy, am I glad. The makers of the geek, dork, nerd quiz are doing something a leetle bit naughty, something which the nice people at Google don’t look kindly upon.

Link stuffing 😡

Inside the tables that make up the ‘graphics’ that display how much geekier, nerdier or dorkier you or I are than others*, there are invisible 1×1 pixel images which also happen to be links to the online dating service run by the providers of the quiz. Sneaky sneaky. There are 6 of these invisible links in each slab of code that is posted into a blog. Hundreds (maybe thousands?) of blogs each providing 6 links inward to the dating service adds up to a lot of links, and should provide the dating service with a tidy little increase in their Google Pagerank (that thing which gets you listed higher up in the search results). Pagerank calculations give great importance to inward-bound links. I checked, and the site in question is indeed ranking at #1 for the particular search term they’re sneaking into blogs everywhere.

I don’t especially care that they’re getting an artificially high Pagerank – I’m not in the market for an online dating service. Most likely every other dating service on the Web is engaged in equally clandestine behaviour. I do care that they are using unsuspecting blog-authors as their weapon, however. So don’t fall for it, people! At the very least, check and understand the code you’re cutting-and-pasting into your blog. Link-stuffing might not be the worst of what you’re unwittingly putting in there.

*For the record, I’m 78% Nerd, 17% Geek and 30% Dork. You see! I always tell people I’m not really a Geek – I just like to learn, and at the moment, I happen to be learning Geekstuff!

I gots da smilies, yay, yay yay:giggle:

So I was a WordPress convert before I even decided for sure I was going to do this blog thing. I ummed and ahhed about having a Blogger blog for months, as that’s where most of the cross-stitching blogs seem to be. The big appeal to me here though, as I was saying, is the CSS, and the tinkering with the nuts and bolts of the thing. Not so much the blog itself. When I read a little bit about WordPress, the decision was made. The install was super-simple, and took less than 10 minutes, even for me!

WordPress is a PHP application, so if I get the inclination, I can tinker with a whole lot more than just the style. But better… there’s a whole lot of people already doing just that, and making their code available as plugins and hacks. Hence, courtesy of Alex King, insta-smilies in my posts and comments (go see:wink:). Colour me happy!

My current theme and smilies are by the talented Becca Wei at Beccary. You can find the smilies here, and download the Ocadia theme from here.

The Journey of one Million Stitches begins with a single X. With apologies to Confucius, of course. I merely seek to explain my blog-title of choice.

Egads! That ‘B’ word. Wasn’t going to do it, wasn’t going to do it, wasn’t going to do it. I’m somewhat of a luddite, really, for an aspiring geek! It’s a introvert thing. I’m happy to be all over the Web and all its greatness, in blissful anonymity, but when it comes to putting any of my Self out there, I hesitate. But finally the allure of CSS drew me in (Templates… beautiful lovely templates!) Oh, and the blog crowd (ok, ok, blogosphere) got so big that I can hide in here now without drawing attention to myself!

So here I am. Don’t expect much for a while. Exams beckon (which is of course why I’ve developed a new time-waster in the first place!)

Oh, and the Million Stitches thing? I wish. Haven’t had so much time as to do one Hundred Stitches lately, sadly. I live in hope.

Author’s Note: the original name of this blog, referenced by this post, was ‘Million Stitches’. It has (obviously) since been changed.