It’s true, I’m a nail biter. I have been for as long as I can remember. I blame it on my mom, she was a nail biter too!
The thing is, I’ve been biting them so long that for the most part I don’t even know I’m doing it. That’s what makes it a hard habit to stop. It’s not like smoking where you have to go find the pack, pull out a lighter, and then light up. I’ll literally be on the couch and realize my hand is in my mouth and I’m biting.
I’ve actually never been successful quitting, but I’d really like to stop. I’ve tried all those fancy polishes that are supposed to help ...
Turns out I haven’t written anything in almost two weeks now. Truthfully, I almost completely forgot about my blog, partially a consequence of not having anything to write about, and partially due to all the things I have going on lately. I’ve actually quite enjoyed taking a break, and don’t really think you’ll see much in the way of content over the next few months, other than a post here and there when I’m bored or have something on my mind. If you want, follow my Twitter stream for some random amusement.
I spent the last weekend pretty close to home. My friend Jeff had a birthday ...
Tracy tagged me in a blog post, so I thought I’d better step up and deliver. So without further ado, here are six things you probably don’t know about me (and most likely, didn’t want to know about me).
1) I have a queen sized bed, but only own one pillow. It makes sleeping strange.
2) I drink way too much diet pepsi, and usually have an empty bottle somewhere in every room
3) I typically buy the same thing whenever I’m at the store. That explains why I have four jars of salsa in my fridge, three tubs of vitamin E cream in my bathroom, and a freezer full of ground beef.
4) I type over ...
I met with Rebecca and John tonight and we started finalizing the plans for WordCamp Whistler. We’re hoping to nail down a venue in the next week or so, at which time we’ll open up official registration. Given that we want to make the event as awesome and as interesting as possible, we’re going to be charging a small admission for the event. In addition, we’ll also be accepting sponsorship from a few organizations, which will hopefully cover the costs of the venue, and the social.
Stay tuned in the next week or so for some official announcements. As of now, the date is still set for January ...
I posted an article about QR Codes a few months ago. QR Codes are two-dimensional barcodes that can contain a great deal of information in a relatively small area. They are heavily used in Japan, and are slowly starting to gain traction in other parts of the world.
One of the best uses of QR codes in my mind involves the inclusion of QR code hyperlinks in printed media. That way a user could be reading a poster or a paper version of an article and still be able to navigate hyperlinks using their phone. Typically this is accomplished using a QR code reader on a cellular phone, which causes the ...
Over a few beers a few weeks ago at the AdHack launch party, Jay Grandin and I started talking about Twitter and thought it would be pretty cool to have some place to showcase all the best tweets from the web. We did a quick domain name check and realized that TweetDuJour.com was available. Since I had my iPhone with me, I quickly purchased it.
After work tonight I decided to finally whip something together really quick for it. We created a user on Twitter called TDJ (Tweet Du Jour) and tied its @replies into the TweetDuJour website. We’re hoping people who encounter cool Tweet’s during the ...
I recently had the priviledge of attending WordCamp San Francisco, a conference dedicated to WordPress enthusiasts in the Bay Area. It was a great time, and I met a lot of great people.
Next month, Rebecca Bollwitt and I are organizing the WordCamp Vancouver event to coincide with BarCamp on Sept 27th. For those of you who are unfamiliar with BarCamp, it’s a day long conference where the participants, first thing in the morning, decide the format and the topics for the rest of the day. Everyone who attends has the potential to be a speaker, and it’s a lot of fun.
This year, the event is over ...
Well, the event is all over now, and I officially have a small hangover to remember it by. I met a lot of really great people last night at the social, and it was a ton of fun. I have yet to meet a blogger I didn’t like, and last night was no exception. Everyone was friendly, and a pleasure to hang out and drink beer with.
The social event was at Pete’s Tavern, which is conveniently located directly across from the baseball stadium. The bar was completely open as were the pool tables upstairs, so there was lots to do. I tried my best to walk around and meet as many people as I could, but I’m ...
I’ve been lying in bed for about 20 minutes now, trying to slow my brain down enough so that I can finally catch up on sleep. Unfortunately, my mind has been racing ever since blogathon, and it’s been rather difficult to shut it off.
While in bed tonight, I started thinking about the day I had today, the people I spent it with, and the events of this past weekend. Like a hiker nearing the end of a long trek, I forced myself to stop and survey the trail from which I’ve come; the moments of exhaustion, the long rainy nights, the hills and the valleys, and the painful blisters that may never ...
San Francisco is without a doubt one of my favourite cities in the world. It’s situated right on the Pacific Ocean, nestled snugly between Marin Country and Oakland. While Napa Valley is usually extremely hot, San Francisco boasts a fairly moderate climate, with sunshine occurring on most days of the year.
In August, there’s going to be a WordCamp session down in San Francisco. Given that I’m a huge WordPress advocate, and that I love the Bay Area, I registered today and made the quick, impromptu decision to attend. Flights out of Vancouver are around $400, but are only around $250 return ...
Well, I imagine by now many of the early morning shift people are in full swing. It seems like so long ago I wrote my first entry, and here I am at number 28. It sure is getting difficult finding content on short notice, but I’m managing to stay ahead of the curve somehow.
My Blogathon Setup
Rebecca did a quick tally on her blog, and I think between all the participants we are up to around $500 so far. That number doesn’t include people who have gone directly to their charity’s website and donated directly, so ultimately the number will be a bit higher. In terms of people on this blog, ...
I read this interesting article today that basically said that most people in the United States were only 11 days away from financial ruin. That is, if they were to lose their jobs tomorrow, they only have enough money to last for about 11 days:
More than a third of adults could survive financially for only 11 days if they were to lose their job or be too ill to work, according to a survey.
The finding gives a worrying insight into the lives of millions who are living on a financial tightrope.
Researchers looked at how much people spend every month and how much they have in savings.
It found ...
Thanks to everyone who has pledged so far. I’m currently up to $140, which will ultimately go to the Union Gospel Mission. I’d like to hit at least $1000, so if you want to sponsor, please head on over and contribute. I’ll keep everyone updated during the event. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for my blogathon posts.
Tonight at 10pm I start blogathon, a 24 hour blogging marathon that will hopefully bring some exposure to the charity of my choice, the United Gospel Mission. The Union Gospel Mission is a charity in Vancouver that helps people in need:
Union Gospel Mission has been ...
Yes, sports fans, it’s been twelve days since I decided to move my hosting back onto my living room floor. So far, it’s been 12 days of pure bliss, of heavenly visions filled with bunny rabbits and endless fields of sunshine and happiness, where kids run forever.
But seriously, things have been going rather great. I haven’t had a single hiccup, and get complete SQL backups emailed to me twice a day, just in case something were to ever go wrong. All my data is backed up with RAID 5 storage (and will email me whenever a drive starts to get old, thanks to hourly SMART diagnostics), so unless ...
Well, it was an interesting day in the blogosphere, one that I’m thankful is over. Tonight I was sitting at home debating drinking myself into a coma when Rebecca pinged me online and said I should come over for wine. I was pretty comfy in my flannel pants and briefly debated staying at home. But since I really needed a few drinks, I decided to head over as I was, flannel pants and all. So for the last few hours I’ve been sitting on Rebecca and John’s couch in my flannel pants with a big-ass afghan draped over me. It was pretty much exactly what I needed tonight (although I’m looking forward ...
As most of you know, there are several popular methods for obtaining statistics for your blog. While Google Analytics is probably the most comprehensive one I know (with the added benefit of being free), it is limited somewhat by the fact the the statistics are not real-time. For most practical purposes, that limitation isn’t a big deal, but it’s sometimes nice to be able to see what’s going on within your website in real time.
On the recommendation of a friend, I splurged the $30 to finally see what Mint was all about. If you haven’t heard of it, Mint is a commercial statistics package ...
As you can see, my little advertising experiment with Commission Junction is pretty failtastic.
Which is strange, because the ads are fairly targeted based on a few specific, popular pages of mine. I’m not a big fan of advertising to tell you the truth — I ripped Google Adsense off here a few months ago. To me, it’s worth $10 a month or whatever not to have them pollute my main page. I was testing a new concept though with more targeted ads that I choose, but so far it’s not working.
Is anyone here actually making money with your blog (i.e, enough at least to pay for hosting)? ...
I’ve been dabbling with a new caching engine for WordPress over the last few weeks. While WP-Cache does a pretty decent job, it falls short in a few areas, and it’s something I’ve been trying to fix. In particular, here’s what I don’t like about it:
It relies on the entire WordPress engine to do it’s caching
It doesn’t make use of proper HTTP caching headers
The problem with the first item is that even if you have a cache hit, the entire WordPress PHP core is parsed and partially executed. What that means is the caching system will always be limited by how fast the PHP parser is ...
So I’m currently at my mom’s place looking at her new computer. While checking out her new monitor, she spilled the goods:
Mom: “Hey, you know that blog entry about people getting to your blog by googling duanestorey.com”
Me: “Yah”
Mom: “Don’t tell anyone, but it was us.. That’s what we do”
So there you have it. My mom needs a few lessons in how to browse the web. I still love her though. Even though it means I might be adopted. ...