Random Thoughts

Posts Tagged ‘blog’

… And It Was Good!

Wasn’t planning on adding a blog post here, I’m getting ready to move my site to a different hosting provider, and backed up all my content last weekend preparing for the move, but figured why not, I’ll just do another backup and be ready to go later.

My Motorola Triumph came in yesterday, a day later than the estimated arrival date I got from Amazon. No big deal, I know it’s an approximate date, but usually Amazon beats their approximate arrival date by a couple of days, can’t remember when something arrived late. (Had to laugh though, I was following the tracking info, and it started out about 9 hours from here, in Kentucky. By the end of the first day, it had gone further NORTH and was now 12 hours away. Go figure. Next day? It ended up in Charlotte, about 3 hours SOUTH of here. Finally got to Raleigh on the estimated delivery date, but too late to be delivered. So it got here the next day. Would have been faster for me to just drive up there and pick it up as far out of the way it went getting here, LOL.) But again, no big deal, didn’t have time to do anything with it yesterday anyway.

Opened up the package this AM, figuring I’d activate it before work, then tinker with it at lunch time. HA! Per the manual: “Step One: Install battery and charge.” Whoops. The Optimus V instructions actually said that THAT phone had enough charge to do the activation, THEN we were supposed to plug it in and charge it the rest of the way. Sort of figured the Motorola would be the same way. Guess not, huh.

So I left it charging for the day today, and after we got done with our TV watching binge for the night, sat down, got it activated via the website without a hitch. Then figured out the IP address of the phone so I could add it to my “approved” IP list on my home WiFi network, and got that working.

Then came the fun of all the updates and app downloading: First up, Silent Boot, to shut up that annoying Virgin Mobile boot up sound. Then did all the updates from the Android market of all the preinstalled apps. Added Remote Web Desktop (one of the few programs I’ve liked well enough to pay for, makes it easy to access my phone content on my PC.) Then went to install the Netflix app, only to remember that I’ve put my Netflix account on hold temporarily, so no streaming at home or on my pc or *sob* on my phone either. Wah. Reinstalled Thickbuttons, Barcode Scanner, was able to install Google Earth, Firefox, and Adobe Flash (none of which were Optimus V friendly)

Then downloaded the Amazon App Store (love it, an app to get more apps! LOL) and Amazon MP3. Tried to download Jenga, which crashed the Optimus every time I tried to install it on THAT phone, and it works on the Motorola. Sweet! Then started going through my list of Amazon Freebies of the Day that I’ve ordered each day they were free, and started downloading a select few of them (I’ve got 200+ that I’ve “ordered” but not all I want to put on the phone at any one time)

In no particular order (although I started from the back of the list to get Tweetcaster, so they’re kind of in reverse alphabetical order):

• Tweetcaster Pro* (* apps are the paid versions that Amazon gave away on one of their giveaway days)
• IMDB
• Tune In Radio Pro*
• Solitaire Megapack*
• Random Mahjong Pro*
• Pocketbooth (this worked on my old phone, but didn’t have a front camera on that one)
• Plants vs Zombies (Maybe I’ll have room to keep this now!)*
• Peggle (another WiFi only download, so gotta do it from home) (currently downloading)*
• Gem Spinner 1 and 2*
• Fruit Ninja
• Fancy Widget Pro*
• Convertr
• Collapse!
• Bonsai Blast
• App 2 SD Pro*
• Angry Birds Rio
• Angry Birds Seasons (another one I had to delete due to space issues)
• Abduction 2*
• 180Ultra*

Not seeing Fireball Deluxe in my Amazon list, nor Apps Organizer (which I love to death, keeps all my zillion apps, well, organized, into categories), and must have gotten Apps Backup, Cool Reader and E-Reader, Get Glue, Zinio, QuickPic, ComicStrips, GhostTown elsewhere. And a MUST have before Friday night, the Fringe Glyph Translator, to convert all those funky images before the commercial breaks on Fringe into their respective 5 letter words.

Man, but Peggle is taking forever to download, even on WiFi. As soon as I get that, I’m going to bed, and will download the rest of what I’m missing at lunch tomorrow.

In another moment of utter geekiness, I thought I’d see if I could export from the Joomla website a list of all my webpages within the site and what their page ranking was based on the number of hits each has received. Then pull it into my WordPress blog as a post. Lo and behold, “there’s an app for that!”

And as expected, no big surprise here, the John Barrowman pages are naturally the most popular, taking up 7 spots in the top 10 places (out of those, the video page has a wide lead, with over 7800 page views). U2 places second with two, and my 2008 Lunar Eclipse page coming in 3rd. (Oddly enough, my photo page of Creepy Crawlies doesn’t seem to rank quite as well, LOL).

THIS is why I keep telling my boss we should drop John’s name into our company website; nothing brings in the traffic quite as fast as that ole Barrowman name.

Check it out, here’s the list by Rank, Page Name, and Number of Hits.

Well, that was a fast 10 weeks. I posted earlier today about the show because I didn’t want to have to worry about accidentally posting spoilers for the Torchwood finale, then I realized tonight, as I’m wanting to yammer on at length about the finale on The Twitter, and couldn’t out of respect for the folks in the UK who for the most part, don’t get to watch it until next Thursday, that it’s my blog, I can spoiler if I want to. So you have been warned. Definitely spoilers ahead.

But for those who have seen the show and want a place to comment about it, there is a comment section at the bottom of the page.

Oh look! Stickers! Earned the whole set from the show. Wonder how long it’ll take for Get Glue to send me the hard copies.
(Including them here in case the “read more” link isn’t hiding the balance of the post, and it apparently isn’t, you still have time to leave before getting to the spoilery stuff.)

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Sometimes geeky Google Analytics perplexes me.

No surprise that the Barrowman pages are the most popular on my website. (I keep telling my boss that if he wants to increase the page hits to the company website, to just let me sprinkle the name John Barrowman liberally here and there throughout the site, and the number of site visitors will skyrocket, LOL). Didn’t start my website with the idea that it would become 80% Barrowman related, but discovered him in Torchwood at the same time I started playing with Joomla as a CMS, so essentially learned how to design webpages in Joomla by making and breaking and fixing all those Barrowman pages.

But can’t figure out exactly how 21 people [edit: 56 people! since I first posted this] so far today found their way to the JB media pages on the site from FACEBOOK. I do have an account there, but rarely use it for anything, almost never post, only signed up for it so that nobody else would swipe my user name when they changed over to real name screen names.

Certainly haven’t been posting my JB site updates there, at least not that I know of. So it’s a bit of a mystery. A lot of the other referrals make perfect sense: Twitter, Brizzly, LiveJournal… I tend to make mention of my site updates to those three fairly regularly. But Facebook is like the forgotten skeleton in my internet closet, just never think to post regular updates there.

So again, it’s a puzzlement.

Do LIKE Google Analytics, though. Gives me a general idea of who is visiting what page, how they found it (keyword searches are particularly amusing sometimes; someone recently found their way to my blog by doing a search for “dudley douchebag”, a reference from Desperate Housewives),  how many times they visit, how long they stay, and from what location. The location info in particular is of interest, love seeing how many people from other countries come and visit.

And well, it must be said that I DO find it rather *squee*-rific when I find a visitor to the Barrowman pages coming from a location where I know the man himself is at the time. The realist in me knows it could be and most likely IS anyone else, but yes, my inner fangirl did do a mental happy dance when I got hits from Glasgow and Manchester while JB was there shooting Tonight’s The Night, or more recently, hits from towns in Spain during the three weeks he was vacationing there, particularly when I’ve never gotten hits from Spain before. Was it JB? Prolly not. But if it makes the inner fangirl happy to think so, who am I to burst her bubble?

Of course on the flip side, if the Powers That Be DO visit the site, there’s always that concern that I’ll get some sort of cease and desist notification from them, since I AM going a bit rogue by capturing and streaming UK video to worldwide audiences. But I look at it this way, it’s a win/win for everyone. Non UK fans get to see video they’d never get to see otherwise, and it’s promoting the heck out of the BBC, ITV, JB, etc. Essentially free advertising for them. And it’s not like I’m making any money off of it or even attempting to. So one would hope that I’m not ruffling any feathers with my site content.

Just thought I’d stick a real blog post in between all of these “Tweets o’ the Day” that always show up when I’m too lazy to do a blog post of my own. LOL.

Just activated an ebay listing for the pair of U2 tickets that Doug and I are NOT going to be using after all. Originally bought a pair of tickets for New Jersey for LAST summer, but that was when Bono threw out his back, had to have surgery and the whole North American leg of the tour got postponed until THIS summer. So we already had tickets for the New Jersey show later this month. When they set up the new summer schedule, Pittsburgh was added as the last show of the North American leg this time, and since I always wanted to hit a “last show of the tour” concert, we made use of two of our allotted fanclub presale tickets, and bought the pair for Pittsburgh, planning on selling the New Jersey tickets.

THEN U2 added on a Canadian show, scheduled AFTER the Pittsburgh show, and suddenly Pittsburgh was no longer last show of the NA tour. After much discussion Doug and I opted to go back to our original plan and see the Jersey show instead, which would allow us to also catch a Mets game at CitiField in NY the day before the U2 show as well as visit with his family in New Hampshire for a few days AFTER the show. And since then have actually added on seeing Spiderman – Turn Off The Dark the Sunday before THAT, so it’s turning into quite the trip.

But still have this issue of the now unneeded Pittsburgh tickets. Enter ebay. Anyone interested in some nice front row upper deck tickets for the U2 show at Heinz Field? Not asking any more than I paid for them, actually asking a little less to keep it neat, AND offering Free UPS shipping. Just want to give them a good home since we can’t use them now.

Ebay listing is HERE.