I've implemented a truncation for posts on the main page of the blog. You'll notice it as a link that says »See the rest of "POST TITLE"». All the great blogs have truncation, like Gizmodo, Engadget, and Lifehacker. It's so I can have long posts, but not have them clutter up my main page and make it really long.
If you'd like to do this on your Blogger blog (if you have one), the Blogger help pages has a nice section on how to do this: How can I create expandable post summaries?
I've put up a new poll, the other one about the layout was getting so old no-one even knew what the old layout looked like. The new poll is about the new post truncation and can be found in the sidebar. The results of the previous poll question: "What do you think of the new layout?" were It's great! 8, No opinion 1, and Old one was better 0.Do you like the post truncation?
I'd like to have a FAQ section, but first I need some questions first. So go ahead and send me an email (to stop spambots, you must have javascript enabled to view the email address.) or something with some questions. They can be about me, my site, or the town I live in (Ketchikan Alaska). Or something completely random.
That email address I have listed in the paragraph above is also something new I'm trying. It's written in with javascript, so the spambots can't scan the page and get my email. I've had this system in my About section when I first put it up, but it's a little more complicated to do in a blog post. I had to re-write my script so it can be used for multiple instances on the same page.
Here's an impressive thing I saw on YouTube, an elephant painting a picture of an elephant. I don't care how the elephant was taught to do that, it's impressive.
Elephant Paints Self Portrait
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
«Trying a Few New Things»
Monday, April 14, 2008
«Motivational Monday: Unique»
We're all unique in our own way, right? And for some reason we think that's a good thing? It's not always...
Sunday, April 13, 2008
«More About Sea-Monkeys»
Because of an unusual interest shown by my readers, I'm talking about sea-monkeys again. I was going to wait until May 16th (that's National Sea-Monkey Day) to talk about them again. I've had mine for at least 10 years, so whatever I'm doing must be working.
Sea-monkeys are little brine shrimp on the order of ½ - ¾ inch long as adults. They can be found in most toy stores in sealed freeze-dried packages like the one pictured to the right. It's also possible to buy them with a tank included, but you can use any 12 ounce (354.5 ml) container. Or, of you use more than one package, you can have a bigger container. I think the plastic cashew container I have mine in is 48 ounces, so I used 4 packages.
When you start, it's best to use bottled or rain water, all the chemicals like chlorine in tap water is not good for them. Pour packet #1 into the water and stir until dissolved. Then let that sit for 24 hours. Packet #1 neutralizes harmful chemicals and metals in the water, and also has the salt the sea-monkeys need. They are brine shrimp, after all.
After the 24 hours, open and pour in packet #2, and stir gently. Packet #2 is the eggs and a little food. Some of the eggs will hatch once they hit water, thus they call it “instant life”. Although you may not see them right away, they are extremely small, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. If I were you, I wouldn't expect to see them until a day or two pass.
About 5 days after you put in the eggs, it's time to start your feeding. You feed them once a week from the green food packet, with the small end of the yellow plastic spoon that came with them. Just one level small spoon-full a week is all they need. Any more and their water will get cloudy, and they could die. If their water gets cloudy, stop feeding until it clears up. On adults, you can tell if they're getting enough food by looking at the dark strip on their underside that runs the length of their body. This is their digestive track, and as long as it's dark they're just fine.
When their water level evaporates down about 2 inches, re-fill their tank with bottled or rain water. You never need to use another packet #1, because the salt remains in the tank and doesn't evaporate with the water. As the water level goes down, the salt content of the remaining water gets a little higher and causes the sea-monkys to molt (shed a layer of skin) so they can grow more. So it's important to allow the tank level to evaporate down before re-filling. Never change the water... You'd throw the babies out with the bath water so-to-speak. There's also no need to clean out molted skin or dead sea-monkeys.
A sea-monkey colony is a little unstable until you get the clumpy blue-green algae to grow. This will take a while. I think this algae comes from their food packet. Once it takes hold, you can all but stop feeding them; the algae will provide for them. The picture to the left is of my tank (click the image for full sized), about 11 months ago. The red circles are around visible sea-monkeys in the picture. As you can see, I have a fair amount of algae.
There are 2 types of algae that can grow in a sea-monkey tank, one good, one bad. The good type is the clumpy blue-green algae I spoke of above. The bad type is a green slime. If you're getting the slime, the tank is getting too much sun light and could cause an algae bloom. The slime grows fast, and much of it dies in the night and is eaten by bacteria, and that consumes the oxygen in the water that the sea-monkeys need, so they will suffocate.
I recommend a moderate amount of sunlight. The temperature of mine is anywhere from 62-75. 62 is probably a little cold. For the most part whatever temperature the room is at is fine.
So that's the basics of caring for them. Long-term care on the order of years requires progressively less feeding as the algae grows. I only dump the small end of the feeding spoon every other month or so with mine now.
You'll notice the blue-green clumpy algae will create bubbles and float to the surface when it's in the sun. Those are oxygen bubbles, and as long as the algae sinks again afterwards, there's no harm in it floating. However, you don't want it to always be floating. Sea-monkeys do need to reach the surface from time-to-time, and they can't if there's too much algae floating. This is why I cleaned my tank just the other day. There weren't too many adults left...
Eventually, you'll get too much of the clumpy algae (like I did) and you'll want to fish out some of it with a wire. I used a bent paper clip. Don't remove all the algae, because they've become dependent on it. A nice layer covering the bottom is what you want. One thing I did was mix up a batch of packet #1 and replace the volume of algae I took out. I figured the algae I took some of the salts with it, so I wanted to replace that.
I already have tons of babies flourishing since I've cleaned the tank, so I think my colony is going to last a while longer. They survived a move into this house a few years ago. I'm gentle when I move their tank, and I make sure I don't knock it over. If I knocked over their tank or dropped it, that would be their end.
For any more information, go to the Sea Monkey Worship Page or the Official Sea-Monkey Site.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
«Caturday: Surprise Edumaction Sing-a»
I haven't actually done a true Caturday post yet. Sure, I've posted a random cat picture every now and then, but I haven't had a post dedicated to Caturday. So here it is:
I don't what this post to go too long, so for more go to I Can Has Cheezburger [sic]. They're famous for creating many Caturday images.
EDIT: Due to a supposed copyright violation, the "They r make fun of me" LOLcat picture has been removed. (Now how an I suppose to know if a picture is public domain or not?) Note to the owner: you could have just asked to have it removed.
Friday, April 11, 2008
«Musical Taste: Blutengel»
Parts: 1, 2, and 3.
The next in the series is Blutengel. The song entitled Lucifer was released in 2007, and is the first of the 3 videos below. It also happens to be my favorite song by them (that I've heard so far anyway). The song I'm Dying Alone was the first of their songs I heard.
Do recall, the videos primary purpose is for the music. I try to find official videos made by the band, but that's not always possible. In this case, all the videos were made by fans.
BlutEngel - Lucifer
Blutengel - I'm Dying Alone
Blutengel - A New Dawn
Thursday, April 10, 2008
«A Skull Sunny Side Up»
A few random pictures to hide the fact I don't have anything else to blog about. I always have random pictures to fall back on... Click an image to view full.
Now that's a drink that might burn your throat a little...
This thing reminds me of a Behir from D&D for some reason. Someone must have had some extra time on their hands, and some warped creativity to create this thing.
Would you like your skull sunny side up?
What, that's all for today?! You'll notice I tend to do things in multiples of 3. So yes.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
«The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air»
Now this is a story all about how my
Bel-Air. For some reason it's become an Internet phenomena (also known as a meme). It's common for someone to tell a story that sounds believable, and end it with the lyrics of Bel-Air (usually starting from the "and my mom got scared..." part); indicating the story was fake.
Believe it or not, the song is embedded in the image to the right. Save the image and try opening it in a music player. When you go to open it, you may have to select "All files (*.*)" in order to get your player to open an image file.
Here's the lyrics of the song:
I like the Cyanide and Happiness take on it...
Life got flipped turned upside down
And I'd like to take a minute just sit right there
I'll tell you how I become the prince of a town called Bel-Air
In west Philadelphia born and raised
On the playground is where I spent most of my days
Chillin' out, maxin', relaxin', all cool
And all shootin' some b-ball outside of the school
When a couple of guys they were up to no good
Started makin' trouble in my neighborhood
I got in one little fight and my mom got scared
And said, "You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air."
I whistled for a cab and when it came near
The license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror
If anything I could say that this cab was rare
But I thought, "Nah, forget it. Yo home to Bel-Air!"
I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8
And I yelled to the cabby yo holmes smell ya later
Looked at my kingdom I was finally there
To sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-Air.
Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net
And to top it off, here's a YouTube video with the part the image/audio-hybrid file (or the lyrics) above didn't have. As I understand it, they removed the extra part after the first 3 episodes.
The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air Theme
All of that, and I've never watched a single episode of it.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
«Blogging May be Hazardous for Your Health»
Blogging As Fast As We Can
Well... Heart attacks possibly caused by blogging? To be fair, these are professional bloggers who do multiple posts a day and are always trying to find the next big story.
I do know of the burden she speaks of. I'm always trying to find ways to get readers to my blog. Although I don't like to signup to something just to promote my blog. Most of those blog directories wouldn't drive any traffic to your blog unless you were already popular anyway. Same with Digg and other similar sites. So far I pretty much rely upon search engines and links in message board signatures. I get a good portion of my viewers from Google Groups.The burdens of blogging can be felt by anyone who blogs, even amateurs. The urgency to express an original thought, and to post it first, is constant. The strain to find topics that will resonate with readers, unrelenting. Most importantly it's the constant pressure to drive page views that is onerous.
I also struggle to make each blog post interesting, or at least about something my readers can relate to. I kind-of find it ironic that I hated English class so much in school (especially writing), and now I write a blog post every day. But try as I might, I can't always come up with something good to blog about.
I suppose that's one reason I haven't centered on a single topic to blog about here. It leaves me open to blog about any random topic if I can't think of much. See the rest of “Blogging May be Hazardous for Your Health”»
Monday, April 7, 2008
«Motivational Monday: Neon Signs»
Don't you just hate it when one of the letters burns out on your neon sign? I can see a Super 8 Motel from my window here, and the 'T' is burned out. So it's a Moel now. Sometimes a letter burning out can be a little worse than that...
See the rest of “Motivational Monday: Neon Signs”»
Sunday, April 6, 2008
«Musical Taste: Deine Lakaien»
You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Part 3 is an insight into Deine Lakaien; a German darkwave group with Alexander Veljanov as the vocalist and Ernst Horn as the musician. One of Bernadette's pictures reminds me of the lead singer for some reason. I first saw the picture at the Doodle Page.
Generators
Deine Lakaien - Into My Arms (Original Version)
Deine Lakaien - Return
Saturday, April 5, 2008
«Sea-Monkey Tank Cleaning»
I finally cleaned my sea-monkey tank today. When I say tank, I mean the plastic cashew container I've got them in. There was a lot of excess algae growing and floating to the top. You want some in there, it provides food and oxygen for them. I pulled some of that out with a paper clip, and used a toothbrush to clean the sides of the tank. The water is murky right now because I stirred everything up, but it should clear. I think I've did this cleaning twice before.
Looks like there's still a few of those things alive in there. I've had them for years. I'm not sure on the exact time, but I'd say 10 years or so... I've never had to repopulate the tank. The lifespan of a sea-monkey is 3 months at most, but they reproduce.
A sea-monkey is just a little brine shrimp, about ¼ - ½ inch long. When they hatch, they're hardly big enough to see at all, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. They just swim around in circles, nothing too exciting.
Totally unrelated, here's a cat for Caturday:
Photoshopped? Definitely. But still cool looking.
Friday, April 4, 2008
«South Point Higgins Beach»
Here's a few pictures I took yesterday on South Point Higgins beach here in Ketchikan, Alaska. I set up the camera on a tripod and took a few pictures. I would have put up pictures of the lighthouse out on the island you can clearly see from the beach, but the sun was directly above it and there was too much glare on the water.
The images are 2560x1600; the exact resolution of the 30-inch wide screen monitors. Feel free to use any of these as desktop backgrounds. Click the images to view their full size.
EDIT: Well, Blogger (Picasa) doesn't like images that big. It shrank them down. That makes me unhappy...
EDIT #2: With my new domain, I'm able to put up the size I wanted. Yay!
Thursday, April 3, 2008
«Time for a Picture»
Wow, I just realized it's been a while since I had a picture on my blog... There's been nothing but boring text. So here's a random picture.
«Cross-Domain Tracking»
When clicking on a link to another section of the website, you may notice a long and seemingly random string of letters and numbers in the address bar. That's just part of the multiple domain tracking I've implemented. If you copy the link, you only have to copy the stuff before the # symbol. As for the 400 error, that's a problem with blogger, it's seeing the
The two domains I'm using are mastermarf.blogspot.com and mastermarf.googlepages.com. The homepage of the googlepages domain will re-direct here to the blog unless you disable javascript. I was tracking the two domains separately, but that was starting to give me inaccurate data. It would register as leaving the site when going between domains. This messed up stats on bounce rate, page visit depth, referring sites (they would refer to each other), even number of visits among other things.
I looked into how to fix it and found a page in the Google Analytics help files that gave instructions for doing exactly what I wanted (never mind the little typo in the instructions; ">" before "onclick" in step 2). So I followed the instructions. The result was a 400 Bad Request error when you clicked on one of the links between the domains. Nice.
I posted a question about it in the Analytics Help Google Groups and got the answer I was looking for. It was blogger's problem, I just had to instruct the tracking code to use # instead of ?.
Here's what was said:
So all I needed was to add ", true" and it worked. Why am I saying this in my blog? Because I couldn't find the information clearly anywhere. Maybe someone with the same problem will now run across this blog post and not have to go through what I did trying to figure out what went wrong.
__utma, __utmb, stuff in the URL and saying "those aren't valid
blogger variables" and then dies.
Try setting useHash to true, so the __utm* is in the hash (#) and not
the query string (?)
onclick="pageTracker._link(this.href, true);"
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
«Games Section... For Real This Time»
Ok, now that April Fools Day is over, the real Games section is now up. This also marks the decommissioning of Realm of Marf, when I get to it. So far I have the following games:
I had a spike of visitors yesterday, with a total of 164 visits (105 of those were viewing the fake games section). I promoted my little joke on a website and got a quick 100 views before I fell off the first page.
See the rest of “Games Section... For Real This Time”»
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
«April Fools Day»
I've launched the long-awaited Games section today, have a look at it. I told you it would be up by this week...
Sometimes I hate being in the Alaska time zone. By the time a day starts for me, it's already pretty much over for half of the world. Let's take a look at what Google has done this time...
Google's gDay
Google's gDay with MATE (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation), from the Australian Google center. You can now search a day into the future. The FAQ on the page is worth a look also. No doubt this is a play on time zones similar to what I said above. I, being in Alaska, can search for pages in Australia and their dates will, in fact, be a day into the future...Project Virgle
Project Virgle, a joint venture between the Virgin Group and Google to colonize Mars. They're accepting applications to be a pioneer. You can apply online and answer a questionnaire (I failed it, somehow). They have a pretty detailed plan of locations to build colonies, and what spaceships to use to get there. They even have the layout of the first colony. I especially like this page. I do in fact take a certain pleasure in crushing the hopes and dreams of a fantasy world.Gmail Custom Time
You can now select when to make it appear that you've sent the email. Emailing a late report to a professor? Set the "sent" time back to before the due date and tell your professor to re-check their email; you're sure you sent it on time...YouTube Rickroll
YouTube rickrolled their featured videos list. Click on any video in the list and it brings you to this video...Rick Astley-Never Gonna Give You Up
[Embedding has been disabled for the video, click the link above to go directly to YouTube and view the video] See the rest of “April Fools Day”»
Monday, March 31, 2008
«Motivational Monday: Blogging»
I first saw this one in an Escape Hatch post. I knew it would make a good Motivational Monday picture here. In my quest to find a larger version of the poster, I found out the name of the guy in the poster; he's Easton Ellsworth.
See the rest of “Motivational Monday: Blogging”»
Sunday, March 30, 2008
«Large Hadron Collider»
Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More
Like I said, the next thing on the list to kill us all is the Large Hadron Collider. Now there's a lawsuit against it in Hawaii, no less (the Large Hadron Collider is in Switzerland). They claim it could destroy Earth, and possibly the universe (?).
I've already explained in a previous blog post why the collider isn't a threat... Nature throws far more energized particles into our atmosphere and we haven't been consumed by a micro-black hole yet. And the universe? There are massive black holes in the center of galaxies, why would some micro-black hole threaten the universe?
Heh, I have a motivational poster about the Large Hadron Collider, but it's NSFW... The Large Hardon Collider.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
«Caturday: In Honor of Caturday»
I present to you, the 100th YouTube video from Wise Beard Man. It is made of Epic Win... Behold, Wise Beard Cat & Wise Beard Kitten!
Wise Beard Man's 100th YouTube Video
«Musical Taste: Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows»
You can read Part 1 here.
Part 2 covers Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble of Shadows. Perhaps the most tortured music I have ever heard. It's not a band, but a single artist, by the name of Anna-Varney Cantodea. She can be described as transgender or perhaps between genders, but she prefers to be referred to as female. She's German, but most of her lyrics are in English. Throughout her life she's been in a very deep depression.
Her music can be a bit of a shock to someone not fully prepared for it. I don't blame you if you don't like it. It takes some getting used to, but I have developed a sort-of connection with it.
Sopor Fratrem Mortis Est - Sopor Aeternus
In an Hour Darkly - Sopor Aeternus
The Conqueror Worm
Think my taste in music is odd, yet?
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