PigPog

After posting recently about AdSense and Chitika, the recent changes Citika had made (which I hadn’t expected to make much difference to us) seemed to hit us pretty hard. The number of clicks a day went from a few to zero. Then it went back again. Looks like we just had a couple of unlucky days.

Anyway, I took the chance to do a bit more tweaking, making two main changes…

• Reduced ads for logged in users – if you create an account and log in, you’re more likely to be a regular visitor. Regular visitors are good, and we love them, so we shouldn’t bombard them with as many ads as someone who just drops in via Google. I’d already made a bit of progress on this, but it’s more so now. In return, though, even logged in users get the little links bar at the top, and a bar of ads at the bottom. In the content, there’s just one small ad on the right, and the manually inserted Chitika ones (what? Keep reading…)
• Finally figured out how to get Drupal to replace hidden tags with ads, and feed it the keyword. This means we can stick a code in the article, which will be ignored if the code to process it isn’t there for any reason (broken by an upgrade, say), but will be replaced by a keyword-based ad if it is. This could be anything later, but for the forseeable future, it’s a Chitika ad, with the keyword passed to it as the search term. This means we can put ads in the middle of long articles, and make sure they are really relevant to what we’re talking about – if possible, for the actual product we’re talking about.

I’ll show you what I mean – here…

The second type will only be going in some of the longer pages, and only where there’s something relevant to link to, so we’ll try not to push it.

Like the other ads, these will be smaller and less intrusive for logged in users.

Anyway, as ever, do drop us a comment if you have any thoughts.

Amazing project – a pinball machine made entirely from lego – over 300 hours of work…

• Pictures

(Thanks to Make:.)

• Crypt of the Phantasm – not a quick or easy one, but if you feel like putting some time and effort into your decorating for Halloween, it could be worth it. (Thanks to Make:.)
• Derek Greenwood’s Halloween Projects – an assortment of things to make. (Thanks to Make:.)

A mathematician at Cornell University, Dr Diana Taimina, has been crocheting hyperbolic space. I won’t even pretend to understand the maths behind them, but they’re pretty.

Oh dear, it’s hyperbolic mathematics, and we’re reduced to saying “Oh! That’s pretty!”. Anyway. Pretty things…

• Article at The Institute for Figuiring.

(Thanks to Make:.)

• Pumpkin Carving 101 – guide to various ways of carving pumpkins.

I love anything with bluetooth. I’m also quite into things with neat folding designs, to make them portable.

This sewing machine from Itay Potash has both. Quite a combination…

• Article on Make:

(There’s going to be a bit of a blast of posts from Make: today – I’m just catching up with several weeks’ worth of posts.)

Eric Grohe paints some impressive murals on the sides of buildings – inside and outside.

* Article on StressBuster1 including lots of pictures of his work. * Official Site – nice Flash intro showing his work, but a bit much if you’re not on broadband. * Official Projects Page – lists lots of his projects, with pictures, movies, and maps of where they are.

The thing that sets Eric’s murals apart from others is the realism of them – they make a flat wall look like it has depth – in some cases, looking like it’s a gateway through to an incredible scene in the distance.

Penguin have started their own podcast. (Podcast? Downloadable ‘radio show’ type things, as MP3 files.) There’s only been two of them so far, both freely downloadable, but both featuring Jamie Oliver – bit of a problem if you have a Jamie Oliver allergy.

• Penguin Podcast 1
• Penguin Podcast 2

There’s a certain irony here – this year, Buy Nothing Day is on the day of our first attempt at selling our merchandise at the Rufford Christmas Market. So, yes. Don’t buy anything. Except maybe our stuff

We never did come up with the host of interesting articles we promised after visiting the triple-whammy of shows at the NEC…

• Hobbycrafts
• Art Materials Live
• Crafts for Christmas

Unfortunately, this was because there wasn’t much there that inspired us. If you’re into card making, or needlecraft, there would probably have beena lot more of interest, but these aren’t things we’ve really got into at all. There were a few presentations going on on techniques, but relatively little on materials and tools.

The whole thing was a bit overly crowded for our liking, too, and a bit of an expensive experience. Entry was fairly cheap (£8 each for all three shows, I think), but parking was another £7, and a small bottle of water was £1.40. It all added up to a fairly expensive day. Not something that would have worried us when we were both working, but now that I’m a layabout

We did meet one splendidly interesting artist, making creatures from hubcaps, but more about him in another post.

On the whole, it wasn’t a bad show, but we enjoyed the Patchings Art Festival a lot more, which was just down the road from us. There were more materials and tools, and more interesting artists showing off what they could do.

The one point the NEC had over Patchings though – they didn’t ban photography – so at least if the stallholders were ok with it, we could get snaps to share with you – just a shame there wasn’t as much we wanted to share.

One stallholder we did want to do a little feature about wouldn’t allow any photographs of his work – he was worried that if photos of his art appeared on the web, it would be copied by “someone in China”, and he wouldn’t be able to make money any more. Seemed a bit short-sighted to us – if we can’t show people what he does, there’s no point in talking about it, so no free publicity. If he can’t put pictures of his work on the web, he can’t explain to anyone what he does, so the only way to sell is face-to-face.

Anyway, for another time, we won’t be returning. If you’re into card making, or needlework, it might be worth a visit, but there’s probably better options. If you’re just looking for a Christmas market, it’s not at all bad, but the costs would be a bit much.

If you went along, let us know what you thought in the comments – especially if you found it more useful than we did.