DummySpots.com

Just got back from the Blues Jam. Early night tonight.

I was thinking of a friend of mine who’s a musician. He lives in a constant dilemma.

You see, he wants to play his own, original music for others, but they don’t show up to hear his music. They show up to hear the old familiar tunes, the ones they know and can sing along with.

He knows exactly how to bring in the crowds- he can play the cover songs like ringin’ a bell, as they say. He can drive the traffic if he wants to.

Here’s his dilemma: Does he ignore his own music, his passion, and cater to the crowds? Does he play his own songs for whoever drops by, and hope that one day the crowds come to him? Does he stop playing in public altogether?

Or does he continue to play covers, strategically inserting an original of his own now and then once the audience is in the house, so that they have to listen (much like throwing green leaves on a fire once it’s started, hoping it will be hot enough that they will ignite)?

If you gotta play at garden parties, I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang, I’d rather drive a truck
But it’s all right now, I’ve learned my lesson well
You see, you can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself
(Ricky Nelson, “Garden Party”, 1972)

Ever have so many projects in the air that you can’t seem to get any one of them out the door? That’s where I am right now.

I have multiple articles in progress right now with lots of words like Federal Reserve, deflation and *&%!! in them. I want to get them finished and published before the Fed lowers (25 basis points on September 18, quite possibly before, my name is Will and I approve this message).

Then I still have that Major Backtesting Project I undertook through the Spring and much of the Summer which changed the way I trade, and so far at least, it’s looking goood. I’ve got to get that article out.

And this past week, I’ve invented my own currency. No, really. It’s an idea I came up with in the late 90s and never implemented due to the divorce, the work, distractions, obligations, nymphomaniacs… just not enough time in a day.

The market, yeah. Motorcycles, yeah. Trading, good wine, cold beer, all passions. But the one that eclipses everything is my passion for parenting. I can objectively tell you that my daughters are the best, most wonderful kids in the world, and if you don’t believe me, just ask me.

Well, you parents know that you don’t want to deny them the things they want, but they’ve gotta do their part (the connection between freedom and responsibility, choices and consequences is my life’s mantra, particularly in regards to parenting). And when they refuse to do their part, you can’t just crack their heads open, no matter how much you feel like it at the moment.

So, I pay them. But not with small denominations of U.S. Treasury notes. Nope, not with Uncle Sam’s money. I pay them with my money. You see, that way, I completely control the money supply, the exchange rates, and most importantly, the rate of inflation.

They mow the yard? I pay them a predetermined amount of Funny Money [(I’m very generous with the pay scale) -Ed.]. Do the laundry… more Funny Money. Ditto for everything I want to encourage them to do, from chores and good grades to homework and going to bed on time.

What if they want to go to the mall? They pay me.[(with Funny Money) -Ed.] Talk on the phone for an hour? Pay me. Go to a sleepover party? Pay Daddyo. Spend the night at the boyfriend’s house? Not in this lifetime, young lady!

If they refuse to take on enough responsibility to earn sufficient Funny Money, they in effect ground themselves because they can’t afford to do the things they want to do when the time comes.

They can exchange their Funny Money for real money, also. As above, at a predetermined rate [(right now I allow them to trade $2fm for $1 U.S. at any time, guaranteed) -Ed.]. Of course, if I were like an unscrupulous Federal Reserve, I could gradually make the Funny Money worth less and less Real Money, and “inflate away” the value of their efforts. But I don’t.

Anyway, we had a great time this weekend, and I got to try out my latest mondo lens (77mm front element, yum) taking pictures of them playing in the rain this afternoon. (Don’t tell the teenage friends, that might not seem cool). As I was transferring the pics onto the computer, we looked back through some earlier shots and I saw this one I took of the middle daughter a few months back (she’s 13, don’t get any ideas):

Her comment? “Argh, I look fat!”

…. teenagers!

Wired magazine has a recent article entitled How to Hide Your Email Address from Spambots. They give some popular and effective approaches, but even having the words “contact me” in the source of your page (instead of the word “email”) can easily be caught by the spambots, and you never want an actual mailto: link in your source code.

I’d like to suggest a similar, but in my opinion simpler and equally effective alternative to the solutions they provide:

• Use an onmouseover javascript function to break up your email address in your page’s source, but to re-assemble it when the link is clicked. Very easy, very effective.
• Make the link a picture, not words. No keywords for the ‘bots to catch, so you don’t have to worry whether they’ll notice “contact me”, “email me” or anything similar.

This is exactly what I’ve done in my sidebar for years, and so far it’s been 100% spam-proof. Wish I could say the same for comment spam on the blog!

You’ll have to decide what you want on the image, but make it really obvious that it’s an email link. Once you have that, here’s how the code looks. It simply goes in your HTML source where the dreaded malito: link was before. Note that there’s a “fallback” a href link to your website in case the user’s computer doesn’t do “onmouseover” (if it doesn’t, they’ve got much bigger headaches than having trouble sending you mail):

For example, if your email address is you@yourdomain.com and the link to your contact image is http://www.yourdomain.com/images/contact.gif, the code would be this:

The hardest part of this process for me was fooling around with the images, trying to come up with one I liked. Decisions, decisions!

We change, learn and grow, or we get left in the dust.

I’ve needed to upgrade my Wordpress version for some time now. Trouble is, I hacked and hacked until I had a custom theme that looked and performed like I wanted, and it’s not too upgrade-friendly.

Then it hit me: What I was shooting for back in the day, and finally ended up with a satisfactory version of, was a website, a destination. In other words, a dinosaur. RSS readers (with Google Reader rapidly becoming the de facto standard) have changed all that. People don’t click from favorite site to favorite site anymore, drilling down into each individual site’s content. They happen across one article they enjoy, they click “Subscribe” in their RSS reader, and their experience of your brilliant and witty observations begins there.

Website design has everything to do with layout (assuming you have some decent content!). Get that content front and center, make it intuitive and easy to navigate, and for Chrissakes, make it readable with the font, colors and spacing you select. And your traffic depends largely on how well your site welcomes visitors and encourages exploration.

A site that’s just an RSS feed generator, on the other hand, could be black type on a black background with no navigation or links whatsoever, and people would still get the content just fine through their reader software. And, like it or not, what most of us (and especially bloggers) have here anymore are mainly platforms for generating RSS feeds.

I used to visit sites and click around on their various links, digging down into their content. But to be honest, I haven’t visited most of my favorite sites in weeks or months, short of clicking on an individual post to leave a comment. Some folks had changed their layout months before, and I never knew it. The ones where I did know were only because they mentioned it in a post, which I read on my RSS reader, of course.

As well, many of you fellow bloggers may have noticed this phenomenon: All those nice links in your sidebars and headers are getting fewer and fewer hits as time goes by. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve directed readers to Trader Mike’s classic expectancy article in emails, only to find out that they didn’t know that article existed because they didn’t get it via their feed.

In short, all of us website builders have been doing something similar to setting up a bookstore- so that all of our content is visible, readable and readily available. What we have to realize is that, more and more, people aren’t visiting the “store” and browsing through our content any more. They’ve subscribed from home, and only receive and read the latest issue. Our brick- and- mortar business is waning, even though it’s only virtual.

So for any of you folks who visit my actual site, you’ll see the new look. Leaner, cleaner, faster, cheaper. I couldn’t find a Wordpress Theme I liked, so this one is another “Will special”, which means I’ll be tweaking it and squashing bugs for some time.

If you want to read the old stuff, it’s still here. You’ll just have to dig a little deeper. And there’s still a secret link and a breadcrumb or two for the true freaks. (Yeah baby, I know who you are).

Meantime, see ya on the feed.

Some weeks ago I was tagged by Craig at the Taz Trader Blog. Just saw it. Sorry, man, I’m truly that far behind. I have sleep scheduled for some time in July.

Here are my responses to the tag:

My Five Obsessions:

• Trying to find the balance between overly permissive and hypervigilant on the constant highwire that is parenting (and no turning back or redos!).

• Trading. Duh.

• Hot Coffee.

• Cold Beer.

• Motorcycling.

• Bonus #6: Faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, more money (that’s an old Tom T. Hall song for you young people).

Five Reasons Why I Blog:

• Handy way to keep from having repeat my rants. I just give out the url.

• Somehow, getting stuff out of the attic (points to head) and onto paper, er, pixels helps to sort it out. Keeping it all in makes me insane.

• I learn. It seems like I share an ounce of my questionable experience with others and get a pound of clear thought and good wishes in return.

• It’s cathartic. Hard to explain, but somehow it really is. I’m sure others will agree.

• Chicks dig it. Yeah, the other guy may eat caviar and have a Learjet and a Ferrari, but I’ve got a bucket of chicken, a six-pack of beer, and DummySpots!
  [note- editor is well aware that Trader-X has a blog AND a Learjet and Ferrari, darn him to heck]

***

That’s all I got. It’s probably too late for me to tag anyone who hasn’t been already, so please consider this an open tag to YOU!

1. Find a subject you care about.
2. Do not ramble, though.
3. Keep it simple.
4. Have the guts to cut.
5. Sound like yourself.
6. Say what you mean to say.
7. Pity the readers.

* quoted in Science Fictionisms (1995), compiled by William Rotsler

Comment spam is like the mosquitos down here in Louisiana- even a few are a major PITA, but once they locate you (your blog has been around a while and/or gets some traffic), you can get swarmed to the point where you have to go inside and shut the door (i.e. disable comments) in order to keep from being eaten alive.

For bloggers wanting to allow legitimate commenters unfettered access, the Dynamic Duo of Akismet and Comment Timeout have proven to be the “mosquito net and Deep Woods OFF” combination we’ve needed.

I’ve used Akismet for about 6 or 8 months now, and it’s truly a lifesaver, as it can separate “real” comments from spam with amazing accuracy, allowing real people to post on your site, and segregating the trash to be reviewed/deleted by you behind the scenes at your convenience.

However, during some of those periods where the comment spams “swarm” (hit your site by the hundreds or thousands), it becomes very difficult to review them all, and we bloggers usually end up clicking “Delete All” to be done with it. Many of us would prefer to review the spam queue, just in case a legitimate comment got tagged (very rare, but it happens).

Adding Comment Timeout reduces the overall number of trash comments by about 90%, and since I added it (so far at least), I have only a few spam comments a day to review and delete- takes all of 5 seconds or so.

The next step would be to add a verification word/number for commenters. I’ve not seen that as much of an inconvenience when commenting on others’ sites, and I wouldn’t hesitate to add it if necessary to preserve my readers’ ability to comment on mine.

But at this point, Akismet and Comment Timeout are doing the job nicely.

Unless you’re one of the rare “cult personalities” on the internet, people aren’t reading your blog because of you… they’re reading it because of what it can do for them. An All About Me blog is fine, but not if you want more readers. What we do and think isn’t nearly as interesting to potential readers as it is to us.

The above quote is from Be Humble, the second of the Seven Blogging Virtues published by the excellent Creating Passionate Users site.

(Of course, when I read that first line about “cult personalities,” I couldn’t help but think of TraderMike and Maoxian!).