Tag Archives: site news

Thoughts

A few site improvements

Over the last few days, I’ve been making small changes to the site design. You may or may not have noticed them. Here are a few:

  • Made the header graphics smaller, to reduce page height. This change was subtle, but it did save about 80 pixels.
  • Moved the byline and feed flares to the top of each post. They were previously located at the bottom. The feed flares are the links that allow you to share posts with others via social networking sites or email, should you find them interesting. If you do, I encourage you to use them. I put a LOT of time and effort into my blog every day, and it means a lot to me when others find value in my content and spread the word about it.
  • Removed certain sections from the sidebar, to reduce clutter.
  • Moved the translation links from the sidebar to the footer. These links allow you to do a one-click translation of whatever page you’re on into another language, using Google’s Language Tools. If you speak another language, try them out, and let me know if you’re happy with the accuracy of the translation.

I finished upgrading the site to WordPress 2.2.2 tonight. It took a couple of hours, but I like the new admin interface, and the new built-in caching capabilities should help as the site traffic continues to grow. I highly recommend WP’s extended upgrade instructions, in case you’re thinking about upgrading your own WP installs.

I’ll continue to make various improvements to the site here and there to ensure a good user experience. If you have any suggestions about making the site easier to read, or making content easier to find, or some other feedback about my blog, please let me know.

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Thoughts

The winner of the "Java I/O" book drawing

A few days ago, I announced a free book giveaway. The book was Java I/O, 2nd Edition, by Elliotte Rusty Harold (my review). All you had to do to qualify was to leave a comment on that post with your thoughts about ComeAcross — what you liked, what you didn’t like. There were only two takers, Jeremy and Cosmin. I held the drawing tonight — actually, the word drawing is a bit fancy. It was a coin toss. I went by the order of the comments and Jeremy got heads, Cosmin tails. Jeremy came out the winner, and will get the book. Jeremy, please send me your mailing address, and I’ll ship the book out to you! 🙂

I also promised I would post a link to the winner’s website directly in my blog post. Here is Jeremy’s blog, and it’s pretty cool. It was started in February of this year, and it deals with photography, technology and programming.

Stay tuned for more book giveaways in the future! I have plenty of books that might be useful to others, and would like to give them away if I can. Doing it through my blog is a pretty nice way to do it, too.

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Thoughts

Book giveaway: Java I/O, by Elliotte Rusty Harold

I’ve got a whole bunch of new computer books that I’ve reviewed, and I realized I’m not using most of them. But I know there are people out there who need them. So, I thought I’d hold a free book giveaway. That’s right, it’s FREE. But you will need to pick the shipping method and cover the shipping cost, which you can PayPal to me.

The rules

So, how does it work? It’s simple, really. I’m always looking for feedback and ideas on how to make my blog better. All you have to do to qualify is to leave a comment on this post telling me what you like and don’t like about ComeAcross. I’m looking for thoughtful, considerate feedback. You don’t have to write entire paragraphs, this isn’t an essay. Just get to the point in a few sentences or less.

All of the people who leave comments will be entered in the drawing that I’ll do this Saturday evening. I’ll announce the result at that time, or on Sunday morning. I’ll contact the winner via email to get his or her mailing address, and if they’ve got a site, I’ll link to their site in a post right here on ComeAcross. That reminds me: please don’t post your mailing addresses in the comments… I’ll contact you to ask for it if you’re the winner.

The prize

The book I’d like to give away is “Java I/O, 2nd Edition“, by Elliotte Rusty Harold. It retails at $33. You can read my review of it right here. As a matter of fact, I encourage you to read my review before you ask for the book, just so you know what you’ll be getting.

I’ll be waiting for your comments, and thanks! 🙂

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Thoughts

A lot of good things are happening

I’m pretty excited, because Canon confirmed today that they’ll be shipping out an EOS 30D to me for review. It’ll come with an 18-55mm zoom lens, which is actually going to act like a 28-88mm lens because of the 30D’s 1.6x focal length conversion factor which, being an EF-S lens, won’t be affected by the 30D’s 1.6x focal length conversion factor (thanks Erik!). So I’ll have that gorgeous camera for 30 days, and I’ll be sure to take lots of photos with it. Meanwhile, I’m saving up for an EOS 5D, and may be able to purchase one in a few months.

My blog readership is growing as well, and I don’t know yet if it has to do with my use of Twitter. At any rate, my thanks to all of the new subscribers!

Finally, I’ve just finished a review of the Fuji FinePix S9100, and I’ll likely submit it to BlogCritics tomorrow. After that, I’ll publish it here as well. While the review’s good (tooting my own horn, I know), the camera isn’t. Stay tuned for the details.

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Thoughts

Here's to a few milestones

This weekend, I (or rather my photos) reached an important milestone. I/they crossed over 100,000 views. That’s amazing as far as I’m concerned. In the relatively short span of four months, I got to the point where I’m getting more than 1,000 views per day, and have now reached 100,000 views. It was just back in October that I passed 10,000 views, and here I am today.

I’m really happy with the progress I’m making, and even more than that, I’m happier that my photographic skills are visibly improving. I’ve learned so much in these past four months, and have benefited so much from interacting with fellow photographers, that my success is doubly sweet.

This next “milestone” is somewhat dubious, but it’s worth mentioning. A few days ago, I reached over 30,000 spam comments, right here on my blog. Yeah, it’s disgusting. But, none of them made it to the live site. All of them got caught by Akismet, my WordPress spam prevention plugin. I featured Akismet in this post I wrote at the start of January, and I meant every word I said about it. The only improvement I could make to it is a CAPTCHA. I find that more and more spam comments make it to the Moderation Queue instead of the Spam folder these days. Spammers are either using fresh batches of IP addresses or finding ways to sneak past Akismet’s spam filters. Still, NONE of them make it to the blog.

While I’m on the subject, I’d like to reiterate my very ardent wish that ALL spammers (in particular sploggers, spam commenters and feed scrapers) be flogged publicly. I would gladly volunteer to perform this duty myself. I think they all deserve it for poisoning search engine results, making blogs uglier, decreasing my content’s rank, and littering the Internet. I don’t know how likely this is to happen, but a fellow can dream, can’t he?

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