Google Analytics - nice, but delayed
I've been playing with Google Analytics since I saw Tim Bray mention it last week. It looks like Google bought the Urchin webserver stats cruncher, rolled into their Adsense service, and are offering it for free. Although it seems rather tilted towards optimizing Adsense revenue, it's also quite useful for non-Adsense usage.
I've been letting it chew for a week to see what kind of data it came up with, and am really impressed with the reports it provides. My only real beefs are that the data is delayed (-1/2 star) - by sometimes a day or more - and that it borks in Safari (-1/2 star). And, the interface seems really complicated (-1 star) - I keep forgetting where the various reports live. Are they visible under "Executive" mode? "Webmaster"? "Marketer"? And, some of the terminology used to describe the reports is a bit non-intuitive. Maybe not if you're an Adsense geek, but for a regular web-head, I keep thinking "uh, what does this report tell me - they do provide nice paragraphs under each report to give the gist of it, though.
Market vs. Community Based Economy
Stephen Downes posted a link to a Salon article on Community-based economy.
It strikes me that moving away from a market-driven economy (in whatever form that may take) would solve or at least alleviate many of the things that bug me about Modern Life. The omnipresent advertising. The insane bubble-and-burst stock market. TV being so dumbed down as to make the vast majority of it useless, or IQ-decreasing, or worse. The need to "monetize" everything. The resistance to making difficult yet necessary decisions (like, say, avoiding the Peak Oil crisis, for example).
Homeless in the Learning Commons
Our office space is being renovated/downsized to make room for a new bioinformatics lab. All of the construction/cleanup/setup on our side of the floor was supposed to be done over the weekend, but it wasn't. And they've already started demolition of the area I was in last week. So... Until they finally get around to correctly setting up my area, I'm homeless at work. I'm poaching an ethernet line from a nearby cube today, with the iPod cranked waaay up to drown out the noise of movers and furniture-setter-uppers. If I didn't have stuff that I promised would be done today, I'd just write off the day as "downtime" and head home. No chance of working from home with Evan home (and awake).
iPod battery replacement
Well, that was easier than I thought it would be. I've got a whole lot more respect for the Apple hardware designers. The metal back of the case isn't epoxied or glued in place, even though it feels completely solid. There are some locking mechanisms between the edge of the metal and the plastic front of the case, and it just pops off with the special tool (and pops back on with some gentle pressure). Very cool design.
Update on the unplugging-at-home experiment.
It's hard. Much harder than I would have guessed. I was upstairs the other night, gathering Evan's laundry to throw in the wash. The laundry was in the hamper in the home office. The computer was just sitting there, begging me, pleading with me. Just check your email. See if someone's commented on your blog. Check a couple of blogs. What harm could it do? Who's gonna know? Come on.... You know you want to....
iPod Battery is Here
My new FastMac battery for my 3G iPod (a TruePower battery) arrived here today. It was on campus yesterday afternoon, but just missed the on-campus delivery truck. That's amazingly fast delivery from California to Calgary, even adding some time for the package to be opened/searched by Customs at the border.
I'll try upgrading my iPod's battery tonight, and will take pics of the process to show what it looks like when a total hardware upgrade amateur tackles it (I've upgraded RAM and hard drives in Powerbooks, but that's about it...)
Tips for Collaborative Projects now Wikified
The Tips for Large Projects post I made earlier makes more sense as a wiki page.
And now it is one. Enjoy.
Flickr Faves for 2005/11/16
A brief photographic interlude... Again, pretty darned easy to see where my head is lately...
FastMac ships to Canada, eh?
I was just chatting with Mike, from FastMac, about that iPod battery failure post I wrote up a while back, and the follow-up attempt to buy a new battery. Apparently, FastMac can ship to Canada for something like $10, express! Other guys charge more than the cost of the battery to ship it up here, but FastMac has a network of Canadian resellers or something, so it's much cheaper. They haven't updated the website with this info yet, so check back with them later to see what the official story is for shipping to Canada.
Webstractor - nice app, wrong direction
As part of the ADCE blogging project, we apparently get thrown some new stuff to try out (and likely to review). The first thing that came my way was Webstractor - a cool sounding app that is kind of a combination between Safari and DevonThink. It acts as an offline searchable cache of web pages you surf, and generates tables of contents for sets of these pages.
Tips for Very Large Projects
Update: I've wikified this list to make it more useful.
Some notes I've gathered while working on some Very Large Projects™ over the last couple of years. Some of the projects have done some of these things, and some have done few/none of these. Live and learn... I'm just documenting them here so I can refer to something quasi-concrete on the next big-ish project that comes along.
None of these tips are written in stone. They are also not necessary for a project to get done, but these should make things much easier on everyone. YMMV. IANAL. YHBH. Wait. Not the last one...
Unplugging at home
Janice just dared me to go a whole month without checking the computer while at home. Apparently I'm a little addicted to checking in (RSS feeds, email, writing blog posts, etc...).
So... I'm going to give it a shot. No non-work-related computer access from home for one month. I plan on leaving the Powerbook locked up on my desk at work.
Unplugging until Monday morning...