Albert Hubo Update

Original Yahoo News post here.
Oh, I know what you want me to say, but I don't think I will. It's all too easy to come up with about 50 different smart, sarcastic things to say about this picture, but I really can't drag myself to state the oh, so, obvious. What I do really like about this picture is the caption.

"U.S. President George W. Bush shakes hands with 'Albert Hubo,' a 54-inch-tall, two-legged robot topped with a head modeled after Albert Einstein as leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum toured South Korea's hi-tech exhibition in Busan, South Korea, Friday, Nov. 18, 2005"

If the robot is only 54", how big is the little guy standing next to it? 4'8"? He's amazingly small. You just know G.W. is probably thinking, "I am the mostest giantest man on the world!"

IE part deux

Okay, after going through all the code for the site I can't, for the life of me, figure out what's wrong with the page in IE. It's like it's completely different code! The CSS used, and not by me, makes a shadow around the inner edges, but in IE there's nothing there. I can't explain it. If you are using Internet Explorer, don't. Go and get firefox, it's much better.

IE

I just noticed that IE does not like what I've done with the site. I also noticed that using the span tags from within w.bloggar gives unexpected results. Work! I command you to work! Time to pour through the code and see if I can't find the problem. I hate IE :(

Google Analytics Update

After being extremely frustrated with Google Analytics for the past few days, and then realizing that I was mad at a service that is completely free, and I'm lucky to have it, I checked today after work and it's now working. Here's what I have to say about it. It's excellent. For something free it gives you a ton of information. I don't know if a lot of that information is useful to everybody, but to me it is. Take this graph right here, it shows me that out of all the people that visit my site ten of them have visited 9 - 14 times, eleven have visited 15 - 25 times, and seven of you have stopped by 26 - 50 times. Well, to each one of you in each category, thank you for coming back. I know it's been a bit awkward in the last while, with me changing things around, sending all of my personal stuff to a new blog, and then drastically changing the look of this blog (which I'm totally unhappy with, by the way, and will be changing again soon).

I think what I'm getting at with this post is reflected in my post from last night on my personal blog, here. I'm trying to make this experience better for myself and for people who visit, and hopefully more will visit in the future. If they don't, I'm okay with that, too. So, I'm going to ask a favour. I'd like some feedback on the site. What do you like, if anything, and what don't you like? Is there something to add? Is there something that really bugs you that needs to go? Lay it on me. I'm a big boy, I can take it. You can either leave a comment on this post, or email me at kaievan@gmail.com. People say constructive criticism is helpful. Well, I think even if it isn't constructive, it still gives me insight into what's going on.




This next graph tells me that of the 100 or so unique visitors to / <BEGIN EDIT> sorry, I just realized that not everyone would know that / meant 'root' or the homepage <END EDIT> since installing Analytics, about half were returning visitors, and the other half were new. Now, the keywords used through Google to get to my site, and the entrance and exit points, both tell me that about 30 of those visitors were searching for a specific topic (the Einstein Robot was popular), but the others have been coming back. Each one of the people that do come back view about 1.67 pages. I know that's because the new material is on the front page, and the other 0.67 pages are comments.

So what does all this mean? Well, it means that I can monitor the activity on my blog, fine tune it when I see spikes in readership, and rip out the stuff that's not interesting to people. I like it. If you haven't signed up for Google Analytics, do so now. It's interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes.

OPEC tells European countries to cut oil taxes

The world's top energy producers, under pressure to meet global demand, have called instead on leading consumer states, mainly in Europe, to cut taxes on oil to alleviate hikes in prices.

OPEC, which supplies about 40 pct of world oil, and heavyweight member Saudi Arabia, made the call at the opening of the permanent seat of the International Energy Forum (IEF) in Riyadh Saturday.

As a driver of a car in North America, I have to completely agree with this. Have you ever seen the stickers on the pumps that show where each percentage of each dollar goes? I know I have. I also know that it's just a sticker, and maybe it can't be trusted, but it shows an interesting bit of information.

Most of your dollar that's flowing into your tank goes to one form of government or another through taxes. I drive a small car, so a fluctuation of a few cents really doesn't make a difference. Two cents more per litre means I pay 60 cents more per tank. Not that big of a deal. It's when the consumer drives a big SUV or a van like the one I use at work. It also makes a difference when the price of gas jumps from 89.9 cpl (cents per litre) to 139.9 cpl. That recent jump left most of us with a really bad taste in our mouths.

Sure, a hurricane in the southern U.S. is horrible, but should it affect the price of gas in Canada? I don't think so. With the amount of oil extracted each day out of Alberta, we could easily survive without OPEC. Of course, the better option would be if the prices for hybrid cars would come down, and possibly more government money could be invested in new clean technology. Maybe then the price of gas wouldn't matter so much.


Original article here