February 19th, 2007
It’s OK to leave a note here and there so you don’t forget things…
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October 23rd, 2006
We can’t do it alone.
But we must begin with ourselves.
StampAndShout.com for hundreds of similar inspiring designs.>
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October 21st, 2006
I was away from my machine and my Internet account for approximately 25 hours last weekend.
This (below) is what happens when I go away for approximately 25 hours.
Over 600 e-mail.
When you e-mail me and I apologize for the delay in replying, this is why.
gs
Posted in Canadian Social Research Links, Musings, Rants | No Comments »
October 18th, 2006
Say…
Do you have a footer appended to your outgoing e-mails?
For example, at the bottom of an e-mail message, I might see:
Joe Bleau
Research Associate
This-or-That-NGO
www.thisorthat.org
———————
[NOTE: this example applies to someone in a non-governmental organization, but I've seen the same short-form URL style used in the e-mail footers of government people and academics]
———————
It’s wonderful that you would include the URL for your organization’s website, but you know what?
If you don’t include the butt-ugly-but-functional “http://” in front of it, the link doesn’t work, i.e., I don’t get anywhere by clicking on it. You can paste an Internet address that starts with “www.” into your browser and it’ll work, but if you want folks to visit your website via your e-mail footer, you could increase your chances by adding the front part of the URL so that mail programs will activate it, i.e., make it clickable.
You might get only 10% of your e-mail recipients to click on your website link at the bottom of a message, but 10% of something is better than 100% of nothing.
Gilles
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/
www.canadiansocialresearch.net
Posted in Canadian Social Research Links, Rants, Tech Tips | No Comments »
October 17th, 2006
For many years now, I’ve been a donor of blood products at the Canadian Blood Services (formerly known as the Canadian Red Cross).
Like most donors, I started by donating whole blood – my first donation was at age 18.
I realized early in the game that it’s not everyone who is cut out for blood donation – in fact, if you’re feeling a little queasy just reading this, you’re one of those folks who should probably stay away from the venipuncture area.
Don’t despair, however – there are a number of ways that you can give to the Canadian Blood Services if you’re looking to contribute to the program that may have kept you or a close relative or friend alive at a critical time, or if you just like to do something for others.
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October 16th, 2006
No, you don’t need all the bells and whistles that the latest model has to offer!
Here’s where I work on my site and my newsletter:
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/images/csrl.jpg
Nothing fancy, nothing cutting-edge. The machine in the photo is a Dell 933MHz that I bought back in early 2001. I use that as my second machine now, since purchasing a refurbished IBM Pentium 3.2GHz a year ago at Trailing Edge in Ottawa (Bell’s Corners, actually). [NOTE TO SELF: update photo on website. At some point.]
If you live in the Ottawa area I recommend Trailing Edge, by the way – excellent deals and friendly, helpful service. Another place I’d recommend because I’ve been satistifed with some computer bits and pieces that I bought online from there is Tiger Direct, located in Markham Ont. Those prices are hard to beat!
I use Dreamweaver 4 to do all my website work, but I still use Netscape’s “Page Edit” function to do my newsletter, for old time’s sake. Until my son and another tech buddy talked me into buying Dreamweaver 4, I was perfectly happy using Netscape to do everything on my site *and* newsletter. I also used a modest (free) FTP program to upload pages to my site.
My browser of preference is Firefox.
I don’t use Internet Explorer unless I have to. Why?
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/news/2004/06/15/why-you-should-dump-internet-explorer/
Even when I have to use IE, I prefer to open it as a Firefox Extension called appropriately enough “Open in IE”.
If you use Firefox, do take a few minutes to check out the large selection of extensions (in the “Tools” drop-down menu at the top of the browser page) – you’ll be impressed with all of the time-savers you’ll find there!
Posted in General, Tech Tips | No Comments »
October 16th, 2006
The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize winners were awarded on October 5, at the 16th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre.
http://www.improbable.com/ig/2006/2006-details.html
Follow the link above for the complete list of winners. I was particularly intrigued by the pair of winners in the Medicine category and their novel cure for hiccups…
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October 12th, 2006
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October 12th, 2006
When I started my own site late in the last millennium (‘97), I was perfectly happy with the deal that my Internet Service Provider offered – a few megs of storage for my site files, plus a modest amount of monthly traffic. Then, over the next few years, as site content grew and the number of visitors increased consistently, the site started straining at the seams. I moved the site to CVO.CA, a local (Ottawa) web hosting service, because I wanted to be a good, patriotic webmaster by buying Canadian. It was also nice to know that the folks who take care of my account were just a short drive from my home.
Oh yeah? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Canadian Social Research Links, Musings, Rants, Tech Tips | 2 Comments »
October 6th, 2006
I know that some of you are interested in website stats, so here are some visitor numbers for the past month for my website, Canadian Social Research Links. My web hosting service, Total Choice Hosting, offers an extensive stats package – this is just a short excerpt from my September stats. Total Choice Hosting is the best deal in cyberspace, BTW, but that’s a whole other blog entry – it’s on my to-do list.
First, some context:
During September 2006:
21,289 unique visitors came to the site
28, 576 visits took place (1.34 visits/visitor),
81,076 page views (2.83 pages/visit)
227,790 hits ===> this is a ridiculous statistic that counts even graphics as “hits”, so that if a website has a ton of graphics, it sounds as if they have far more traffic than is really the case. Ignore “hit” statistics.
************************************
My Top Ten Pages for September 2006!
Page Number of page views
Home Page (index.htm) 4996
Key Welfare Links in Canada (welfare.htm) 2847
Guide to Welfare in Ontario (onwelf.htm) 1929
Crass Casualty (my blog) 1469
Ontario Government Links (onbkmrk.htm) 1153
Minimum Wage Links (minwage.htm) 822
Non-Govt Organizations (ngobkmrk.htm) 802
Welfare Reform in Canada (welref.htm) 771
Social Statistics in Canada (stats.htm) 748
Sites de recherche sociale au Canada
- page d’accueil en français (sitesoc.htm) 656
My interesting social control experiment:
During September, my ClosetCam page was visited 74 times and my ClosetCam Archive page, 71.
[Both of these links are on the home page of my site. ]
Why do I call it social control?
Because there’s something in this that reminds me of the classic monkeys-and-bananas model of conditioning or social control.
The Stroop Effect page of my site was visited 189 times during September, which is 14 times more than the U.S. Government Links page. There’s something reassuring and yet mildy unsettling in that statistic…
(;-D
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