After having Google ads on my site for a little over a month, I thought it was time to review how they were doing.
They are pretty discreet in comparison with many other blogs, with emphasis on the top post. And I’m happy to report that I’m making just enough money to pay for hosting, which is all I wanted. Thanks.
That means I’ll leave it as it is and not “tinker”. I certainly won’t be adding sidebar ads, pop-ups, etc!
When you have young children it’s important to monitor their online activity. As my daughter has got older, however, I have reduced the amount of such monitoring I do, giving her more privacy.
At first I used CyberPatrol, which is a paid-for product that will do everything from barring particular websites to time restricting program and internet usage. In time I moved to the free Windows Live Family Safety – this would monitor and restrict internet usage. I also had my daughters email settings send me emails that she received. Now both of these have gone (the latter longer than the former).
Now I no longer restrict what sites she can view but instead rely on being able to check her viewing history. She uses IE as a browser and I can check her viewing history at any point. I also know her email password – and she knows she’s not allowed to change it. In both cases it’s down to spot checks (assuming I make them) which makes it more of a threat of being caught than anything else. None-the-less she’s mature enough now to know what’s wrong and what’s right and that I can give her the level of trust that allows me to do this.
Before you wonder why she doesn’t just clear her viewing history, well, apart from it being obvious that she has, I’ve taken steps in that I’ve created two scripts. These (and they work up to and including IE8) will switch off and on the “General” tab in the Options, which is where the option to clear history exists. This isn’t fool-proof but will certainly do for my needs.
Here’s the code to turn the tab OFF.
REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftInternet Explorer Control Panel] "ProgramsTab"=dword:00000000 "ContentTab"=dword:00000000 "GeneralTab"=dword:00000001 "ConnectionsTab"=dword:00000000 "AdvancedTab"=dword:00000000 "SecurityTab"=dword:00000000 "PrivacyTab"=dword:00000000
And here’s the code to turn the tab back ON.
REGEDIT4 [-HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftInternet ExplorerControl Panel]
Both should be saved as .reg extensions and executed – they need to be run only once.
The first script adds a new entry into the registry and allows you to turn specific tabs off – in this case the General tab, but you can turn off others simply by changing their corresponding dword to 00000001.
The second script removes this new entry and, hence, restores any hidden tabs.
Alternatively, download the scripts here from.
Now I won’t mention which blog I found this on, but doesn’t this look a little, erm, odd…
Surely he’s not advertising for friends? Is he?
I’ve been off work this week – hence the lack of blogs. And I’ve been building the Ikea furniture that was delivered. Oh, it’s been fun. My hands and knees are raw, but it’s done.
The dresser took me 4 hours yesterday. 4 long, frustrating hours. Whoever designed the system of putting the feet on that dressers needs shooting.
But not everything was their fault. I built it in the living room as the dining room was already pretty full – the intention was to move it into the dining room once done. What could go wrong? Well, maybe the opening between the two rooms isn’t as tall as the dresser. Doh!
Anyway, it’s all done now. My computer is now in a corner of the dining room. All I’m lacking is a sturdy shelf – I bought one from Ikea but I don’t think it will take enough weight.
Now I’m off to buy some telephone cables… at the moment my broadband connection is relying on an extension reel run casually through the middle of the living room 😉
Well, my blog has. Yes, I’ve added an extra column to it.
I thought the information down the left hand side was getting a little long. The further down the screen it goes, the less chance of it being read. So I’ve split it into 2 and divided it onto both sides of the page. The left hand side is for information about me. The right hand side is for information about the blog.
And it’s still XHTML compliant.
But in doing so I found a problem with my Simple Wakoopa List plugin – when displaying “newly used” software the links don’t work properly. After having a bit of a fumble about, it would appear the problem is the feed from Wakoopa rather than my plugin – it doesn’t appear the supply them in certain circumstances. A quick fix would be to not display a link if one is not forthcoming from the XML feed. However, just after I wrote the plugin, Wakoopa launched a new API – my plan, therefore, is to move to this. The one downside, though, is that I can’t find an equivalent of “newly used” with the new system. So I’ve contacted Wakoopa. As soon as I get a response I’ll code a fix.
