neatocool.com

Search Engine Optimization

Rick — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 13:21:19 +0000

Every now and again I seem to fixate on some topic for a few weeks and attempt to learn everything I can about that topic. To give you an example, earlier this year it was woodworking with hand tools. It was a fun topic, and I learned a lot. Anyway, this new phase finds me a bit obsessed with Search Engine Optimization, or just SEO for short. I figure since I’m starting to get back into web design again, I might as well learn how to promote a site correctly since this seems to be something that is overlooked by most web designers.

The problem with learning SEO is that it is treated like Voodoo – many people claim to practice it, but most people have no idea how it works. Those that do, make it seem very mysterious so that they can sell you either some information or tools that allow you to do it better. It also doesn’t help that when learning about SEO you will eventually cross paths with the internet marketers. These guys not only want to sell you tools to help you manage your SEO “empire”, but they also want to charge you every month to be part of their network and send you information. Everything I’ve learned so far says say away from these guys since much of the back-end information these tools allow you to access are being pulled from publicly available sources like Google and Alexa anyway – you just have to dig to get it. These guys marketing to the same type of people that start playing MMORPGs and buy the top quality game equips so that they can be “733t” on the server from day one rather than learning how to play the game.

Already the research is starting to pay off as I’ve managed to promote the Dragoon web site in the Google search rankings from #48 to #28 when I checked this morning. Not bad for making a few adjustments to the HTML and waiting just over 2 weeks. At some point I need to do a revamp of this site and take the information I’ve learned about SEO so far and do something with it. The question is: Do what with it?

Dragoons.info Website Makeover

Rick — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:20:32 +0000

Some of you might remember me saying in the past that I don’t do web site development for people. Dealing with clients can be a very unpleasant experience, and this is the primary reason that I was happy to just do corporate intranet stuff at Big Pharma. Well, now that I find myself unemployed for longer than expected (even after taking most of January off) I find myself in need of a web site portfolio for some of the jobs I’m considering, and trying to describe web sites that that are behind corporate firewalls isn’t going to cut it. So, I now find myself making a few exceptions to that rule.

The first exception in finally online, and while changes are still being made to the site (photos being updated, last of the old pages being converted), I invite you to have a look for yourself: www.dragoons.info.
To really get an idea as to how much of a change this was, let me show you some screen shots of how the site used to look…
As you can see from the screen shots, the old version of the site was not far away from centered links and animated GIFs, but for circa 1999, the site was par for the course. Given that it had been almost 10 years since the last major update, you could see that an update was required.

Silicon Mold Initial Result

Rick — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:04:53 +0000

Getting ready to create the initial silicone mold layer with a coin pressed into a thin wax layer.

Given that I’ve never worked with the Smooth-On Oomo 25 silicon before, having something go wrong was sort of expected, so I didn’t spend too much effort on including sprue and vent channels in the first molding attempt. If it worked, I would have cut them later. I did, however, include the registration marks since those would be difficult to add later. Oh, and I should probably also point out here that the coin being molded here is real 1735 George II penny (or half penny, I’m not 100% sure) and not one of the copies I bought last year.

The first layer separated from molding container.

The initial mix and pour for the fist half of the mold went well and there were no problems demolding. The final product was soft and deformable under light finger pressure, though this was expected. I suspect this might eventually be an issue when it comes time to do an actual casting.

The coin and first layer of the mold made ready for the second layer of silicone.

The actual problem didn’t come until poring the second half of the mold. Not knowing if the second half would stick to the first. I brushed the first half with a light oil and decided to see what would happen.

The result of the first silicone mold attempt - a solid block of silicone.

Now, in case anyone was wondering, yes, I did have both petroleum jelly and talc on hand but I wanted to see if a brushing of oil would be sufficient to keep the two mold halves from sticking together. As it turns out, it was not. The second layer of the silicone stuck to itself so completely it could not be separated from the first. In fact, the layers were so well bonded, there was no real indication where one layer ended and another began. This is actually very useful information for later should I attempt to pour two part mold layers that are not completely flat, like an “L” shape layer for example.

Unable to separate the layers of silicone, the only option left was to cut the coin out.

So, the next step is to try the whole again with petroleum jelly to see what happens. Also, I will probably use about 1/2 of the amount of silicone in the next mold after seeing how deformable the larger blocks are. I had hoped to avoid having to create something like a plaster backing for the silicone, but it seems that even the larger blocks with probably still require some extra support to keep the mold cavity from deforming when the two halves are are clamped together for the casting.

January Posts

Rick — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:36:05 +0000

In case anyone is bothering to read this I’m still in the process of cleaning up a few January unposted entries that may or may not appear in the near future. Rather than let this hold things up, I’ve decided to proceed with newer posts and fix the old ones later.

It’s not like I’ve been doing anything interesting last month, so you are not missing much.

Florence Griswold Museum

Rick — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:47:04 +0000

Florence Griswold Museum main gallery.

Cath and I went to the Florence Griswold Museum today after picking up two free passes at the New London public library. Since I’m not working right now, free is good. The picture gallery in the main building was OK - nice paintings, but nothing really outstanding. Perhaps it was just me, but the building seemed like it had more spaced devoted to non-accessible function rooms than actual gallery space.

The Florence Griswold boarding house.

For me, the best part was the actual Florence Griswold house where the artists lived while venturing out into the countryside to paint during the warmer months of the early 20th century. I’ve always been more interested in exhibits showing how people lived in the past (go figure), so I felt that this was far more interesting than the main building.

An art installation at the Florence Griswold Museum made entirely of twigs.

One of the more unusual exhibits that happened to be on the museum grounds was a structure built out of branches cut on site. I can’t recall the guy’s name that made the structure, but I’ve seen pictures other work that he has done on the web before.

All in all, a good way to spend a few hours.

Baking Bread

Rick — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:31:38 +0000

Home made bread.

I have to admit that while I can cook, quite well IMHO, the one thing I really had a problem with until recently was baking. Now that I found myself with a bit of time on my hands, I decided to take a crack at correcting that. It took about 6 days of making one or two loves of bread a day, but I finally managed to get to the point where I can consistently make a loaf of bread in about an hour and a half. That’s the total time it takes from starting to mix the ingredients to cutting the first slice. The loves themselves are not very big since I try to make at least one loaf of bread a day for practice. More importantly, I’m the only one eating them, so there’s not point in making them larger just yet.

Now if I could just figure out how to make a good sour dough bread, I’d really be happy.

Unemployment +22 Days

Rick — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 07:10:22 +0000

Connecticut unemployment web site hous of operation.

Trying to get unemployment in Connecticut sucks. All of the unemployment offices were closed some time ago, so if you want to file for unemployment benefits you have only two choices: phone or web page. The web page seems like the obvious choice, but is so overloaded that it didn’t work for until recently. This wasn’t an IE or Firefox optimized website issue, the back end web server were just completely overloaded by the traffic. To top it off, parts of the web page are only “open” at certain hours, so this forces people to hit the web site during a specific time range instead of spreading the server load across the entire day.

Calling is not much better, but at least that I can understand since staffing phones 24 hours a day would get expensive. Call wait times run about two hours before you can talk to someone and the hold music occasionally stops completely making you wonder if the call dropped or not. To make matters worse, there are times that you can’t even get through to the number, so the best time to call is in the early morning just after the phone lines open.

Given the two choices you might think that the web page might be the better option, but this is where you get to discover the real fun part of the process - you have to do both. Yep, first you need to file an initial claim on the website, then you need to actually call someone so that they can read back everything you entered on the web page, then OK the claim. Very irritating, but thankfully you only need to do this once.

Unemployment in One Week

Rick — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:38:02 +0000

One week left at Big Pharma. All through today keep thinking of that 80’s song “Final Countdown” by Europe and it makes me smile each time. Most of the loose ends are taken care of and all that remains is to finish documenting my job for the the outsource guy that will be replacing me on the team next year (good luck with the project dude). Soon all that will be left to do is wait for the the time I turn in my badge and laptop.

Unemployment in Two Weeks

Rick — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:02:20 +0000

Well, it doesn’t look as though I’ll be working at Big Pharma much longer, and my end date is about two weeks away - Xmas eve. What will happen is that I will leave for the Xmas break, just like years past except that I don’t come back in January like I normally do. I could probably be doing more to get a slot at Big Pharma next year, but the truth is that I’m happy to just let events run their course. After over 12 years at Big Pharma I’m looking forward to a change of scenery and a bit of downtime. After a short break (and a bit of skill development), I plan on taking a few short duration assignments involving some trendy technologies and then look for another long term assignment or an FTE slot somewhere.

Until then I have have an enormous amount of accumulated crap that I need to start bringing home.

2009 Dragoon Annual Dinner

Rick — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:41:45 +0000

Cath and I (with Rich in the background) at the 2009 annual dragoon dinner.

Placeholder for the 2009 Dragoon Annual Dinner. Not much to say about the dinner, really, other than the food was great as always.