I’m not entirely sure if this is a new feature or not, but I use analytics all the time (and if you don’t, you should promptly head over and sign up for an account), and I don’t remember seeing it until just a few minutes ago. It appears Google now has a new analytics section where you can track internal searches on your blog. So while Google Analytics already shows you how other people are reaching your site from Google, you can now see how people are navigating within your site based on searches within your blogging platform. To configure it, you have to go edit your website profile from ...

Wow, what can I say. That is a pretty impressive sum of money. I read this before going to bed last night on Digg, but I thought it was fake. Turns out that Microsoft has just extended a 44 billion dollar offer for Yahoo! To be honest, Google has really handed Yahoo! their hand in search. I personally don’t know anyone that uses Yahoo to do search, although I’ve been told it’s still fairly popular in Asia. I have friends over at Yahoo!, and I once showed them my web logs from my blog indicating that something like 98% of all searches originate from Google. They refused to believe they were ...

As some of you know, last year I went from having my blog hosted on GoDaddy to using shared hosting services over at HostMonster (and before that, I went from having a Linux box on the floor of my bedroom to GoDaddy). Shared hosting is a fairly cheap way to set up a website, and you can usually get away with it for less than $10/mo. For the most part, I was pretty happy with HostMonster shared hosting, although in these last few months their databases kept falling over, and I had intermittent connection problems. To their credit though, they always answered the phone and fixed everything in a ...

I woke up to my phone ringing basically non-stop thanks to Hesty and Sean at work. There’s a big career fair out at UBC today, and I guess they are all going and wanted me to go too. I woke up with a nasty sore throat though, so I’m going to leave the recruiting to those guys. I’m going to pass around a bit of link-juice this morning. First, we have Rebecca and Keira, who are packing up and heading to the island for some licking and snowboarding. That means John is currently wifeless, so I think him and I are going to figure out something fun to do this weekend. Judging by the weather, ...

Last Friday I met a pile of people from the Vancouver technology scene down at the Lamplighter pub in Gastown. Apparently that location is surrounded in controversy, since the Lamplighter has recently changed hands and has been transformed into a more “modern” establishment. I can’t say that I ever hung out in it before, but it seemed like a pretty cool place on Friday. I would have shown up and mingled regardless, but on Friday I volunteered to drop by and take some photos of the Vancouver Technology Women for this year. That list was put together by none other than blogger-extraordinaire, ...

Well, well. Lookie what we have here.. Somehow, Google is in a state of flux. My top #1 position has indeed been usurped, but thankfully I still have a few weeks to get it back. I’m not going to get too excited about daily changes, but I definitely don’t want to lose out, especially after all my trash talking. So, I’ll see if I can pull a few aces out of my sleeve in the next week or so. At the very least, this is a pretty neat exercise in the realm of search engine optimization. You can read about my last post about the Vancouver Blogger War here, and more about the Vancouver Blogger challenge ...

Ok, seriously. The things I would do if I had a few million bucks. I’m amazed to no end how many things about the internet kind of suck. Things that you’d think would be easy to fix, but for whatever reason nobody gets around to fixing them. First company that I need to bash is YouTube. Seriously, Google buys you for 1.6 BILLION dollars and what’s the first thing you do? Stick your head in the sand. How come there aren’t any cool features, or you know, like standard features coming your way. Why do you always screw up the audio/video sync on EVERY video I upload? Another prime example ...

I’m currently at the internet cafe on Davie street killing some time waiting for a Dr’s appointment next door. I’ve been waiting for some test results from that whole stupid bacterial infection thing I got in the hospital last year. Not really sure what’s going to happen there. Tonight I’m also the official photographer for the Facebook Developer Meetup down at the Vancouver Film School. Rebecca (aka Miss604) will be down there doing the official live-blog, so make sure you check it out if you want to follow remotely. I’m looking forward to taking it easy next weekend. One of the things ...

This is a rather interesting move made by Facebook. Apparently on Friday they announced a new javascript library that would let you put Facebook applications on your own web page. Facebook announced Friday a new JavaScript client library that will allow Facebook apps to be displayed on any website. The client library allows users to make Facebook API calls from any web site and create Ajax Facebook applications on that website. Wei Zhu from Facebook explains the benefits: Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can ...

Tonight I met up with the gang to celebrate Amy’s birthday down at Wing’s on Granville Street. We had a few pitchers of beer and demolished somewhere on the order of 16 pounds of wings as a group (I’m now officially “winged out”, so I probably won’t go back there for a while). It was tons of fun, even though I ate that one hot wing that melted my mouth. Afterwards we ended up down at the Bowling Alley on Granville and played a few games. My head was still a tad sore from the night before (the danger of drinking for free at a bar), so my game was a bit off. I took a pile of photos ...

Just got a call from Vancouver General Hospital. Turns out in just a few weeks I’ll get the privilege of relaxing inside a big metal tube for an hour down in the MRI clinic. Apparently I can wear my own clothes, as long as there isn’t any metal on them at all. Otherwise the metal will probably rip out and go crazy in the huge magnetic fields. The good news is that MRI’s don’t use radiation, which means my super powers will probably not be affected this round (I figure with all the CT scans and X-rays I had last year, I’ve had my share). Should be a fun time, staring at the inside of ...

I was reading a quote by Donald Rumsfeld this morning: Private media does not get up in the morning and say what can we do to promote the values and ideas that the free Western nations believe in? It gets up in the morning and says they’re going to try to make money by selling whatever they sell… The way they decided to do that is to be dramatic and if it bleeds it leads is the common statement in the media today. They’ve got their job, and they have to do that, and that’s what they do. We need someone in the United States government, some entity, not like the old USIA . . . I think this ...

Well, it’s almost the weekend again. I awoke this morning to some major construction going on in one of the units around me, and I sure hope it’s done before Saturday morning rolls around. Last night I hit Wings on Granville with Rebecca, Keira and John. For those of you who haven’t been, it’s a quaint little spot next to the Howard Johnson hotel on Granville Street that has cheap wings from 2-6pm daily. Rebecca and Keira, photo by KeiraThe girls basically did two pitchers of beer by themselves, so I imagine they were feeling pretty tipsy by the time they left. This weekend is already ...

By now I’m sure you’ve heard that Heath Ledger, one of the stars of the movie Brokeback Mountain, was found dead in NYC. While nobody really knows for sure what happened, police have said he was on both antidepressants and ambien, which is a relatively new form of sleeping pill that a few of my friends have taken from time to time for insomnia. Ambien by itself has a relatively good safety record, but when taken in combination with any other agent that has the ability to suppress the central nervous system, it has been fatal before. Why I’m writing this entry is because the last few entries ...

I went through my google analytics this morning for a few minutes. The one thing that surprised me was those of you who somehow get to my site by typing “duanestorey.com” into a google search. If you are part of the 219 people who did that last month, here’s a little tip for you. Up top in your browser is a little white thing we like to call the “Address Bar”. You can simply go up there and type in either “duanestorey.com” or “www.duanestorey.com” into it and press enter, which should immediately take you to my website. You’re more than welcome to use the not-so-standard “Google ...

I watched Test The Nation tonight to see how the Bloggers and Rebecca faired on the show. The bloggers, in pure geeky awesomeness, managed the win! Here’s a shot of Rebecca holding the winning trophy! Photo by Miss604 Congrats guys! You did us all proud. John Biehler posted some great clips of Rebecca rocking Test The Nation. Check it out (and listen to the idiots booing in the background — I guess they thought they’d win?) I’m bookmarking your blog too. ...

Yes people, today is a great day in TV land. Jack Bauer, aka Kiefer Sutherland, was released from jail after serving 48 days for drunken driving. Now I gotta say — getting in a car while loaded is a dumb thing to do. I can openly admit I did it as a young adult once and a while, something as a grown adult I now look back on and realize how dumb it was. The trick is of course to plan ahead, otherwise you’ll find yourself stuck in the boonies with no way home. Now, I just refuse to get into situations like that, or at least have the means to pay for a long cab ride if I have to. I do understand ...

I hate Air Canada, really I do. They have screwed me over so many times and are at least partially responsible for how much I hate flying these days. The last time they gave it to me was last year coming back from Boston. I arrived 90 minutes before my flight and was told that due to weather they were going to delay us a while in the airport. Since I was hungry and needed a beer, I said no problem. So, they booked me on a flight two hours later and said it would be fine. The funny thing is even though it was raining outside, every other airline appeared to be operating normally. After dinner ...

I woke up this morning and briefly turned my laptop on to check my email. After about ten minutes of cursing Leopard for not being able to connect to my wireless network I realized that the power was out in my building, which would explain why my wireless router was down (along with everyone else’s). Apparently there was a memo about it, but I’m not so good with memos. So, power is still down after four hours. I’m at an internet cafe on Davie grabbing a quick jolt of caffeine, and then am going to cruise around and buy a few small things I’ve been meaning to pick up (like some more glasses). ...

I was up late playing around with some stuff on the computer, and didn’t manage to actually lay down until around 2:30am. I figured since I was getting up at 6:30am to drive Rebecca to the airport that four hours should be enough time. Unfortunately I think forgot to factor in the amount of caffeine I had had over the course of the evening. So when my alarm started beeping at 6:30am, I realized I hadn’t really had any sleep yet. Upon arriving at the airport, Rebecca had a call from her people out in Toronto letting her know that her flight had been cancelled. So we went to Milestone’s ...