Still Strugglin'

Take a look of this great animation I found that someone made using one of my favourite songs:



'This is the first (thing I remember)
Now it's the last (thing left on my mind)
Afraid of the dark (do you hear me whisper)
An empty heart (replaced with paranoia)
Where do we go (life's temporary)
After we're gone (like new years resolutions)
Why is this hard (do you recognize me)
I know I'm wrong (but I can't help believin')
I'm so lost
I'm barely here
I wish I could explain myself
But words escape me
It's too late
To save me
You're too late
You're too late

You're cold with disappointment
While I'm drowning in the next room
The last contagious victim of this plague between us
I'm sick with apprehension
I'm crippled from exhaustion
And I dread the moment when you finally come to kill me

This is the first (thing I remember)
Now it's the last (thing left on my mind)
Afraid of the dark (do you hear me whisper)
An empty heart (replaced with paranoia)
Where do we go (life's temporary)
After we're gone (like new years resolutions)
Why is this hard (do you recognize me)
I know I'm wrong (but I can't help believin')'

(Stockholm Syndrome - Blink-182)

What's *way* cooler than regular dogs?

Dogs With Lasers!

One of the best Flash series I've ever seem.

Warning: The content is EXTREMELY gross, obnoxious and all of the ugly words you can think of.

Link: Retarded Animal Babies.

A very, very funny animation based on Metal Gear - Click here to watch it.

Why are the Japanese so God damned weird? I descend from them and from Netherlanders (I am pretty sure this is not the correct word but I don't know how to call a person from Netherlands in English).

UPDATE: Hey I guessed right! w00t!

But, back to the point... Watch this freakin' video:

I have always wondered how to make real money from blogs, now that I have been confined to my home for almost a year (yeah yeah, severe case of Atopic Dermatitis, God damned disease).

I guess you just have to find a niche and blog about it. Or make a really popular site. One of the few guys who live off (very well, I should add) a single blog here in Brazil has one stupid, stupid blog with tutorials like 'how to make an account at blogger', 'how to add music to your website (urgh! WTF?)', a section of wallpapers, animated gifs, and all he blogs about are funny links like 'Make your custom South Park character' and stuff like that. And he earns money because everybody goes to the guy’s site, so he put a script for Mercadolivre (Brazil’s eBay) that shows products from his site. And he lives off comissions that he earns from the sales within his affiliate link.

But, as far as useful content for anyone who is remotely familiar to blogging, it’s close to zero. But since he has a GPR (Google PageRank) of 7, you search Google for, let's say, Digital Camera (in Portuguese, of course, our language here) and you get results from his website MORE than from the official Mercadolivre site (which is the most popular auction site here - http://mercadolivre.com.br).

I guess luck is a factor too. I was never able to generate more than USD 200 in a month (not from Google Adsense) and never got much traffic, but I’ve had blogs (in Portuguese and English) that, for no apparent reason, got PRs of 4,5 in a matter of months. But my content is not 'for the masses' like this guy’s, and the niche thingie is not that hot here yet (that’s the reason Orkut is so popular among Brazilians, most people here like sites that they can find all kinds of stuff like in Orkut communities instead of going to a specific forum about, for example, Playstation 2. they prefer to use the Orkut communities (which are half-assed forums, with no search functions, no mail notificications, et cetera) for this subject and all others they are interested. And meeting people of course, I've had several great experiences from meeting people I found in Orkut or who found me via my Brazilian blog (though I take care, I never met a friend, male or female, or a girl exclusively for making out without at least two or three months of long MSN chatting and phone conacts as well).

Have you had success from making money from blogs? If so, how (not asking for specific details) and which country are you from?

Dreamhost has just quadrupled their Disk space and octupled Bandwidth allowance! Check out their incredible plans clicking here:


And use the following codes to get discounts (in the fifth page of the signup form, valid for all yearly and bi-early plans):

DREAM80 - save $80 off any 1 or 2-year plan (I get $17).
DREAM85 - save $85 off any 1 or 2-year plan (I get $12).
DREAM90 - save $90 off any 1 or 2-year plan (I get $7).

So, imagine having 20 GIGABYTES of space, 1 TERABYTE of bandwidth and the whole unlimited domains and subdomains package, including full PHP, MySQL, Ruby on Rails support and et cetera paying less than 40 dollars for a whole year if you use the DREAM80 code. A little more than 3 dollars per month.

Why all those codes? Because I have a sad story and could use some help (I'm a 28-year old doctor who has not been able to work this whole year - or even get out of my house - because of a severe case of Atopic Dermatitis, also known as eczema). You can see my story in this blog. I guarantee that if you search on google images for 'atopic dermatitis', you are likely to be impressed with the state these people's - and mine - skin can get.

Nevertheless, I hope the codes are useful for you.

1) Find the right place - Most website visitors read content that is in the middle of a webpage. As a result, the best place to put your Adsense block is in the top part of the page, at the beginning of your web content. You want to weave the Google Ads into your web content to give the appearance that they are extra links which expand on the information of the page.

2) Use the Large Rectangle -With Google Adsense, you have the option of picking different ad formats. Most of the time people opt to use the Leaderboard (728x90) or Wide Skyscraper (160x600) style ads. Unfortunately, this is the wrong choice, because both look like blatant advertisements. Instead smart webmasters have found that using the Large Rectangle (336x280) yields the best amount of click-thrus.

3) Ditch the border - Many people experience a sharp increase in Adsense revenue when they changing their border. What they change is very simple…they get rid of the border on their Adsense blocks. This is another way to make the advertisements look like useful web content.

4) Adapt the font - Whenever you write content, it should be the same font size and style as your Google Adsense block. This will help make it appear that the advertisements are a natural part of your website.

5) Match the colors - In addition to changing the fonts, you also should match the colors of your website. For instance, if your content is written in black, and your hyperlinks are blue, then the Adsense blocks should also be the same color. Again, this helps the advertisements appear to be normal web content.

6) Don't have too many distractions - On a webpage, it is important to give web visitor a limited number of options. By having too many links and graphics, the web visitor might go to a section that doesn't help increase your profits. While it is important to inform and entertain your web visitor, it is also vital that you monetize your site. So if the main focus of your site is to earn an income through Google Adsense, then get rid of all non-essential links and graphics.

1. If you see a host advertising 20Gb of Space and 500Gb Bandwith for $4 a month you know there's a catch in most cases. You can sometimes pick up "Genuine Bargains" but in alot of cases these sort of deals are not worth the trouble, for instance you may find a super cheap host, but take into consideration their uptime Guarantee and other features such as Support Systems. Use your common sense.

2. Also please do read your host's terms of service - many low cost hosts have you cornered in a 12month contract!

3. It's always a good idea to pay monthly rather then yearly, at least until you rely on the host enough to pay a full year.

4. If you are considering a reseller hosting plan, make sure you go with a half-decent company and make sure their servers are located in good data centers.

5.Make sure you check whether or not your host provides a control panel - preferably cPanel - unless you are an advanced user, you will find it very difficult to manage your hosting account.

6. Make sure the host has a secure billing system before entering your card details!

7. Make sure there site is completed if you are ordering via their URL (no missing images and links, for example).

8. Do not host with companies who have a free Url Address (such as .tk .free domain). It may sound absurd to some of you, but I have seen it.

9. Search for reviews on your "to be host" www.google.com is your best friend when doing this - a good search string to use is [name of host] problems. It's not always good to use [name of host] review because lots of review sites are bastards who affiliate with the host companies and promote them by putting up glowing reviews in professional-looking websites.

10. Make a whois search query on their domain name via www.whois.net- type in your hosts domain name into the search box followed by the extension.
Be sure to check the following details or certainly take them into consideration:

- See if the domain is registered with a email address and avoid hosts with public email addresses like host@hotmail.com or adamsmith@hotmail.com - you get the idea.

- See if the whois data looks "Genuine"- for instance, if the domain is registered to "Jack Black" and the address is "12345 Hollywood Boulevard", you know that it's unlikely that's their real address.

11. If the host provides a phone number, check it and see if it works.

12. Send the host a random pre sales question and see what their response time is like. More than 24 hours is unacceptable, my host answers me in 30 minutes to 1 hour via e-mail.

I use Phatservers, their support is great and speed is awesome but they provide little space.

Dreamhost is a nice option if you want a host with a lot of space and bandwidth, and you can use the code DREAM85 in their 5th page of signup to get 85 dollars of discount, and their speed is decent too (one of my sites, Meiobit, is hosted there because it requires large bandwidth and lots of space) - but to get the discount, you have to pay an year in advance.

One of the options in the middle is IXWebHosting (yes, this is an affiliate link) - they offer cheap prices, decent space and bandwidth and they are also well rated.

GameStop has begun to take pre-orders of PS3 games, with all 32 titles currently listed priced at $59.99 and stamped with a Pre-Release ETA of 10/1/06. No word yet on console pre-orders.

(via Joystiq)

Project Seamonkey arrives at 1.0 version. It's a community effort to keep the Mozilla suite of browser, email client, irc and html editing alive.

Download it here.

Ok, it's been available for awhile in the torrents, but now Micro$oft has released it officialy. I have no idea what its improvements are because I'm a Mac user, but anyway, get it here. Requires WinXP and SP2.

Click on image to enlarge: