Archive for the ‘MeraTalk’ Category
MeraPixel.com
Sometime last year I decided it was time to start blogging the life of Mera Pixel within Second Life. So I went out to register merapixel.com. What? Not available? Some minor digging found that merapixel.com was registered *two days* before Mera Pixel, the avatar, was created.
Well when Mera turned one year old, I rechecked the merapixel.com domain, it hadn't been renewed. Hooray! A month later it was expired, yet still unavailable as it moved out of the expired status. Two months, same thing. Three months, still the same. I started checking daily, sure it would come up soon. Then one day…registered by someone else! Who wants merapixel.com?? It spent an entire year as a registered domain without a site, am I just doomed to not have my own name as my domain?
Well as an interesting turn of events, I was renewing some domains that I own and decided to search on merapixel.com just one more time. It was available! So yup, that's right, http://MeraPixel.com/ is online. Looks pretty darn similar to this site that you're reading right now, too!
Enter and rejoice this pedestal
So I had the notion the other day that it'd be nice to be able to show what music I'm listening to on my blog. I'd written something long ago for my own blog software, so surely it would be easy to find a Wordpress plug-in to do it, right?
The trick is to get both a plug-in in Wordpress which accepts song info, and a client-side script that posts periodic updates to said plug-in. There are a few out there, and I half-heartedly gave them a whirl to see what they could do. Unfortunately none were quite what I wanted or trusted enough. Enter my username and password into the script and let it log in for me every 60 seconds? No thanks.
Enter last.fm. I've seen it, but never had a lot of interest. I'm not a MySpace-er, and about the only community I'm really interested in, kinda, is Second Life. But hey, they have a way to track what I'm playing and display it on my site. So who am I to not be selfish and use this site for my own nefarious plans?
Well it turns out that not only do they provide their own little customizable means to place last played music info on your website (via a nifty little interface, I may add), but there are a few WordPress plug-ins which will instead read their XML feed and provide you with a means of build your own output.
Well that's the route for me. As this also allowed me to customize the plug-in to display how long ago each track was played instead of the last time it was played. I'll have to tweak things a bit more to fit my liking, but so far I'm happy with it. Plus, little projects like these give me a nice sense of accomplishment, which everyone needs now and then. Especially when it feels like you can't get anything done.
Site Statistics
It's always fun to run around and check on your website's statistics from time to time. Traffic for this site has grown steadily for a while now. I have to admit that the readership is up to what I would call scary levels. But the real fun comes when you look at the search phrases that brought people to your little piece of the web. Sure the most popular phrase to bring folks to me is "mera pixel". Although I will say it's a bit frightening to see how often people are searching on my name each month. Another popular search phrase is "3rd birthday party ideas". Sorry folks, if you're looking to find ideas on making Timmy's birthday a special one, this is the wrong place for it. The 3rd Birthday party that I planned was for Second Life. And while it's still known to throw a tantrum or two, it's a bit different than balloons and chocolate cake.
Now while this is all interesting, I do want to say to those of you looking up, "mera sex pic"…
FOR SHAAAAAAME!
ecto & Wordpress 2.1
If you happen to be an ecto user with a Wordpress 2.1 blog and notice that you can't actually use ecto anymore, worry not. There is a known bug in Wordpress and a solution to the problem. You can apply it yourself or wait for the maintenance release. I don't like to wait. 
Purple without the Blue
I always knew she was cool
I've got AdSense up on the site now. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's not hurting you, so be quiet. Anyway, it's such a nifty little app that it puts up ads based on the content of the site, because hey, you're reading this, so you must be interested in it somehow.
So what is the first ad to show up? Have a look to the left. (No, no clickey. It's just an image now.) I know at least one person that will be amused by this. I totally wish I could buy some stock, cause I know it's going up!
Stats Prove Anything
Yeah, so they're useless numbers. But since there's been a couple of posts about site stats, I had to peek and see how mine has fared. Looks like I not only have over 150 loyal readers (amazing and I have to ask what you people are thinking), but I've got over 12,000 hits on the site. Now you'd think this would add pressure to actually write more often. But no, it doesn't. Look away. Nothing to see here. You're eyes won't influence me. No, not even those puppy-dog eyes. Hey! Quit it!
Performancing
Had to give the Performancing plugin a whirl. It allows you to make blog postings from Firefox. It's also one of the first I've seen to actually connect to my site without a lot of fuss.
powered by performancing firefox
hmmm. Kinda sucks that it added *that* ^^^^
**clicks the uninstall button**
Designing Designs
This started as a comment in response to Erbo, but it got large, so I'm making it a post.
Thanks Erbo, glad you like the new design. I can't take credit for it so much, as I'm good at taking good ideas that I've seen and implementing it in my on way.
One thing to look out for, though, is more change. I've recently put together some of the best design work of my career at the office…for a project that most likely won't see the light of day. But doing super cool things at work simply inspires me to do more on my own site.
Oddly enough, the reason I made the new theme was to make this into a three-column site, as my sidebar was getting a tad long. As you can see, I hit the target dead-center on that one. Soooo, yes there will be another design, maybe even more originally mine as I now understand the Wordpress themes a bit better.
“We Fear Change”
Made a few changes. Bet you can't guess what.