Another Opinion Among Many

Our National Holiday to celebrate our country’s inception in 1867 is July 1. It just happens to be that day today.

UPDATE:

It turns out that the fireworks were quite good this year. Fredericton usually goes a bit cheap on the fireworks, but it seems that this year there were a few pennies left for them this year. They were fired off from Carleton park this year, and the view was nice. There was a reasonable variety and a few new ones that I’ve never seen before (one that looked like a gyroscope, for example). After a nice show, the “signal went out” and a blitz of different forms of fireworks were shot off from in front of the lighthouse on the south side of the river. Nice finale.

Sorry - no pictures.  Perhaps Fredericton Cabbie might have a few…

A few people who know me have noticed that I’ve made myself “available” on a venue that, frankly, I didn’t think that I’d be into.  I have become a member of the Facebook community.  This was not really because I want to spend my whole day “poking” friends, although I might do it once in a while.  Its fun to poke a friend once in a while.  Heh heh.

The reason that I joined is bacause its the new social venue for what may become an actual Linux Users Group.  I don’t know for sure where things are going to go, as there are only 7 members so far, and only two of us have actually posted anything on the wall (me being one, and I know nothing about Facebook at all).  But for those who are in the Fredericton area who might want to know more about Linux (or GNU/Linux) or who want to meet up with others who are into the alternative operating system, please check out the Facebook group Linux Fredericton.  We will welcome anyone who wants to get involved and help spread the Linux love.

I followed a link from Matt Mullenweg’s site, which brought me to this article from the Washington Post, found by Paul Kedrosky.  I have to agree with Matt.  This is likely the best newspaper article that I’ve read as well.  I encourage you to read it.  Perhaps we can all take a little bit away from it and slow down a little.

So, there are 37 days left to file your Canadian Tax Returns.  Have you filed? I just did.  Because I updated our address with Revenue Canada as soon as we had moved, we got our NETFILE/TELEFILE access codes appropriately and I could netfile our returns.  It turns out that the RRSP contribution caused a small refund.  Yippee! I don’t have to pay additional tax this year and I still have my money (which I’ll be redeeming down the road, not for retirement, but as down payment for our first home).

If you want an easy way to Netfile, use Ufile.  Its easy and complete.  And, it will calculate the best returns for families, so that you get the best deductions.  They’re also inexpensive - I actually didn’t have to pay (which is good) to file, as our income was low (which is not so good).

This year, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) website was friendly to my Firefox visit from the Linux computer, so either the webmaster read my email last year (probably along with others) and smartened up, or just decided that accessibility was a good idea.  Its nice to visit with a more secure operating system, using a more secure browser, and not be told that I needed to become more secure by using Internet Explorer and Windows. Ha!

I was looking around the net to see what has been said about this year’s early change to Daylight Savings Time (DST) in the United States (US) and found this CNN.com article.  I clicked on a link to view a video and it actually played! The last time that I checked any rich media on the CNN site (or anything simple like page navigation for that matter), I was advised that I needed to upgrade my Windows Media Player before viewing the video.  That’s not a simple task on Linux, as you have to have a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows and have installed WINE and the flaky Windows Media Player under emulation.  Then, you have to get your browser configured to play media with this hacked emulation.  That’s too much.

So, the video played with the mplayer plugin.  This should be the case anyhow, as mplayer is one of the best all around players out there.  Its Windows GUI could use some work, but it still outplays most other players, as it handles almost any codec.   The CNN website merely said that the video was optimized for Media Player 9 and that they couldn’t determine my version, but that I could go ahead and watch if I wanted.  Right on.  The complaints worked (’m sure that I wasn’t the only one who wrote to the webmaster about their lack of accessibility).  Cheers, CNN.  Now about your news reporting…

I’ve seen a lot of sites, especially blogs, lately, that use a form of link exchange to try to enhance their search engine ranking. After reading this article by Lorelle on Wordpress, I’ve decided that she has written a good piece (most of her writing is good stuff anyways) about how to get your site on the search engine and ranked well. The secret is to do what the search engines help documents tell you to do. I won’t rewrite Lorelle’s article, as she does an excellent job herself. Go read it. You’ll change your mind about how you’re currently doing things.

The short story is that “Webrings” don’t work. Once you’ve gotten through the spin campaign, there’s no substance. Who’s gonna want to come back to that? The secret is to not look like a spammer. Write good stuff, consistantly. Stick around. Keep doing it. You’ll climb. If you’re participating in a link exchange scheme, be sure that you’re doing it for referrals of visitors from the link you exchanged with and not necessarily from search engines later. This behaviour usually scores you lower with them.

Gimicks don’t work. Write good stuff, consistantly. We’ll come back.

I am so tempted to moderate this one as okay, simply because of what the message said, but I can’t. You see, the comment was off topic!

“free porn diller” with IP address 87.118.106.104 said:

No way… It is spam ? well… may i trying too
and there was a link to a site called “toon porn”

“May I trying too?” Yeah! That’s priceless! He’s saying, “I’m a Spammer. Am I in the ’spammer’s line’?” That’s chutzpah!