Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

It was almost half a year ago that I wrote these words:

Google AdSense is gone.  I’ve been planning to do this for a long time but never got down to it.  I don’t want to have any ads on my personal blog anymore.  And, it wasn’t making me that much anyway.

As a tribute to my inconsistency and greed, I wanted to let you know that Google AdSense blocks are back.  Currently you can see one in full post view, between the post content and the comments.  Another two are in the sidebar.  I’m still playing around with the ad types, sizes, colors, and locations, so don’t be too disappointment if they annoy you right now.

Why are the ads back?  What happened?  Well, first of all, I accidentally wrote a couple of very popular posts.   I wanted to see how well these posts can do financially.   Secondly, with the latest theme changes and a round of plugin shakes, there seems to be more activity on the blog (more people are coming in, they are standing for longer, and they do more - read, comment, bookmark, etc).  I started wondering if it’s possible to get a penny out of all you people.  So, you can say that this AdSense comeback is an experiment on my side, with some hopes of earing an extra cent.

Of course, I can be totally wrong and off the track (which happens pretty often, if you need to know), and all the positive activity that I’m seeing around here is fueled by the lack of ads.  If it is indeed so, not only will I earn any money with the ads, but I’ll also lose some of the audience (something I’d much rather not happen).

Anyway, call me what you want, but the ads are back. At least for now.  If they are too annoying for you, all I can suggest is start using Firefox browser with AdBlock Plus and AdBlock Filterset.G Updater add-ons.  You won’t see another web ad in your life…

Somehow I ended up connecting to the Undernet IRC network today and joining #cyprus channel.  Last time I did it was a good 10 years ago.  Maybe even more.  Back then IRC was a huge thing in Cyprus and all Internet clubs were full of kids chatting for hours.  I remember, it was so packed, that I had to buy a club membership to get some priority in queue for my HTML hacking.  And, of course, I did IRC too.  What was happening back than on #cyprus channel?  It was exactly as it is now.  Here is a screenshot for you (I won’t go as far as posting a log of this noise).

What is different about it now?  Well, it looks like they use a tiny bit less of colors.  And they have their own web site now.

Me? I’m living on the FreeNode these days.  That’s where most of the open source fun is happening (#fedora, #wordpress, #perl, #php, and others).

Yesterday I came across a bunch of my old files.  Some things dated back to one of my first jobs in 1999.  Others were slightly more recent, but almost forgotten about.  One of these recent collections of files was the beGucho project.  I did it with a few friends of mine (Michael, Slava, and Igor - the guy who helped me with the theme of this blog), but somewhere on the way we got lost and the project faded out.  It was actually released back in June 2006 (I blogged it) and survived for a month or two.  Here is a screenshot of how it looked like (slightly resized):

The idea was basically to have a mood-o-meter of the web in a sort of Twitter style.  (We haven’t heard of Twitter back then).  People would just come in and share their mood with the rest of the world.  There were two short comment forms - one for bad mood and another one for good mood.  Scales with a huge arrow at the top of the page were indicating the current mood of the web.  History of all moods was available in archives and via RSS feeds.  The whole thing was written in Embperl and was lightning fast and extremely simple.

But as I said, the project didn’t take off and was taken off the web without anybody actually noticing it.  Still, we had a lot of fun building this thing, and I’ve learned a thing or two about team working and user interface design.

Caught this excellent quote in gaping void post:

A lot of people in business say they have twenty years experience, when in fact all the really have is one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.

Well said, indeed. I’m working with computers for 15 years or so.  I’d say I have only about five years of experience with these damn things.

Slashdot runs an excellent discussion on the topic of “What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007?“.  If you want to learn more about what people on the Web had changed their minds in 2007, try this Google search - plenty more there.

What did I change my mind about in 2007?  Short answer: Google.  Continue reading for the long version.

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