Royalla Dot Net

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Search Keyword Madness

29 Aug

I make a post like this every now and then because I’m fascinated by how people find this site completely by random chance or typing is crazy search terms, luckily my curiosity is easily sated by StatPress and Google Analytics.

After being back online for only a week it seems that the popular keywords are already suitably nutty but that’s just as much a reflection of the eclectic range of topics I post about as the insanity of the internet. Here’s the top few, for example with the posts they arrived at linked:

placebo
fallout+wallpaper
apple+vs+computer
best+wallpaper+ever
new+dashboard+in+autumn
2 nutjobs web dot com 2 – bunch of broken images on this page, left over from the last time I moved the site, will fix if I can find the originals.
пинбол для вов – this must be Russian for Pinball?

So there you have it. It seems like a fair proportion of these come in search of images, so it’s lucky I’m diligent with my alt tags (actually, I’m not).

Of course, this junk is only of interest to me so posting it is pointless other than to give people searching for these terms one more place to land.

The number of spammy comments has reduced considerably (from 10 a day, to none) since I turn on CAPTCHA on the comments page so that was an easy fix, although I do kinda miss the creative ways these spammers were disguising their garbage as actual comments, for example:

Hi! Is it OK if I go a bit off topic? I’m trying to read your page on my Macbook but it doesn’t display properly, do you have any suggestions? Thanks! Roderick

You can definitely see your enthusiasm in the work you write. The world hopes for more passionate writers like you who aren?¯t afraid to say how they believe. Always go after your heart.

very informative site

They look like real comments mostly, until you take a look at the website or email address used by the bot, they look so scary only a true idiot would click on them.

I do get the odd genuine comment from someone who’s stumbled upon the site and that’s nice. So, if you’re reading this now because you found this site looking for fallout wallpaper, hints on charging your iPod without iTunes or alpaca porn, feel free to leave me a comment, sorry about the CAPTCHA but it’s a necessary evil.

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Posted in Website News

Sync or Swim

25 Aug

This post is about how I have manage to avoid paying full price for most of the iPhone apps I have installed.

Sure, there are some which I have paid full price for and they have been worth every cent (Camera+ -currently unavailable- springs immediately to mind, as does eWallet and SprintGPS) but some apps are good value at $1.19, and even better value at $0 (most aren’t even worth $0 but that’s the topic of another post entirely).

The thing is that quite often iPhone app developers will drop their price for a special promotion, or set the price to FREE for a random 24 hours period to create some buzz, sometimes because they have another app coming out soon and want to raise awareness and sometimes just because they’re batshit insane and like living on two minute noodles and expired beer.

Anyway, it’s not rocket surgery but what I do avoid paying developers for their hard work isn’t completely obvious either, so here’s the deal:

The easy way

Download the Free App A Day app

As the name would suggest FADD offer one paid app for free every day, most of the apps are only free for one day but some persist for several days and the FAAD app keeps track of them for you.

See, I told you it wasn’t rock science. I used to use an app called AppSniper but it became increasingly unstable and unreliable so I removed it and now prefer to use the method below.

The slightly less easy way

Sign up for a Google Reader account
Use google reader to subscribe to the appshopper.com rss feed at http://appshopper.com/feed/?mode=featured
Check the feed on your iphone using the google app or via your browser on the dekstop, as per the image to the right it clearly shows apps which have dropped in price and even notifies you of new ones as they are released.

The other great feature of Appshopper is that when you view the app page in their site it shows you a price history of the app so you can see when the sneaky developer increased the price from FREE to $5.99 then to FREE again within the space of two days. These are the ones you usually know to avoid because they’re permanently free for a reason (not all free apps are shit, but it’s a generalisation I stand by).

You’ll be drowning in free apps before you have time to say “Chris, you’re a certified genius!”

One Caveat: I have noticed a disturbing trend of once paid apps going free but integrating either micro-transactions or iAds in to their normal flow.Tower Madness is one example. This once $2.99 tower defence app has gone free but now seems to offer upgrades to weapons or new maps, for a price. While I understand the developers need to feed their families I much prefer they do so by offering a product which people will actually want to pay for without using dirty tricks.

So there you have it, enjoy your free apps and remember if you like an app you happen to get for free make sure you support the developer in the future, the good ones deserve your money and encouragement and who knows, maybe one day the signal to noise ratio in the app store will favour the apps worth paying for rather than 698 fart apps.

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Posted in Geeky Computer Stuff, Movies, TV, Music etc, Other Interesting Junk, Stupid Internet Crap

One more time with feeling

24 Aug

This WordPress app is kinda buggy.

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Posted in Geeky Computer Stuff, Other Interesting Junk

I hate to get all self-referential, but…..

24 Aug

Comedy gold?

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Posted in Nothing in Particular

One more test

24 Aug

This should auto post to Twitter if all went well.

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Posted in Nothing in Particular

Royalla Dot Net back on the air!

24 Aug

I was >this< close to making this first post in 6 months a Rick Roll but I thought better of it…aah, what the hell!

1 Comment

Posted in Stupid Internet Crap, Website News

Testing WordPress iPhone App

23 Aug

Posting from iPhone

1 Comment

Posted in Geeky Computer Stuff

Don’t Panic!

20 Aug

New site, new theme, no content! I’ve moved the site to an actual host rather than hosting it on my NAS via my home connection which means that it should be faster, better, stronger….well, at the very least it will be UP!

Of course, that doesn’t promise posting more frequently, if at all, but at least I’m now paying for the right to not post and hopefully that will inspire me to actually keep the site going more than I have over the last year….maybe.

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Posted in Nothing in Particular, Website News

Apple iPad, shitty name, nice device.

28 Jan

9.7 inch touch screen, 1024×768 resolution, WiFi, 3G, Accelerometer, compass, 1Ghz CPU, running iPhone OS, this is pretty much a gigantic iPhone (without being an actual phone).

I think for someone who doesn’t already have an iPhone (and wants one but is most likely locked in to a contract with a shitty device) this would be a good option. Same goes for anyone looking to buy a netbook who only cares about social networking, IM, surfing the web or reading ebooks. This makes the Kindle look like a sad little joke in that regard.

I’ll be interested to see how the 3G data is packaged in Australia especially since there will be an unlimited data plan in the US for $29.99 which is cool since you can run Skype on this and essentially use it as a phone, if you wanted to.

I’m puzzled over the lack of a camera, but then again, the iPhone doesn’t have a camera for use in teleconferences either (i.e. no front facing camera) so it’s not surprising.

I’m torn about if I like that it’s based on the iPhone OS rather than Mac OS, but each has it advantages. iPhone OS means all the apps you own on your iPhone will run on the iPad, but it obviously means you can’t run full apps you are running on your Mac. I think they went the right direction with this, considering the target market.

For US$499 for the base model, the iPad is competing with the netbook segment but interestingly would be about the cheapest netbook with a touch screen, of course, if you go for the 64Gb 3G model you’ll be looking at US$829, which is approaching full laptop price.

I think for sitting on the couch surfing the web and IM’ing this is pretty much a winner. I’m looking forward to using it when someone enters my study and swinging around in my chair holding it and saying “What is it, number one?” in a British accent.

(note, doing a google image search for “Picard trek padd” revealed some pretty damn disturbing images)

1 Comment

Posted in Nothing in Particular

Time for a new OMGWTFBBQ

07 Jan

Our old 3 burner beast is about to give up the ghost after 15 years of faithful service. It’s had some issues in the past which I’ve overlooked, the flame tamers don’t, there’s rust/other gross stuff where there shouldn’t be, it look generally old and tired and the auto lighter thingo hasn’t worked on two of the burners for years.

The other night the middle burner wouldn’t light so I tried doing it with a match..nothing…I could hear gas coming from somewhere so I just left the match there a couple of second and WOOOF, the section near the dial lit up like Christmas and started happily flaming away, nowhere near where the flame actually needed to be to cook anything unfortunately. Then last night Kristie went to do the same thing on another previously working burner and the same thing happened…this time enough gas has built up to give her arms a little scorch so we decided it’s time to put the old thing out to pasture and look around for a new one.

I’m kind of partial to the new Webber kinda-compact ones like this

Webber Q 300