Despite the fact that today was dominated by my sister Kristen’s wedding, I actually managed to find time to work on my kayak this morning. The hull is now laced on and looks pretty good, but there are still some wrinkly parts along the gunwale that I want to try to resolve before I start cutting and gluing the ends of the kayak. Most of the wrinkles are around areas where I first started lacing. I may go back redo the center area now that my lacing technique has improved quite a bit. Of course if redoing the lacing doesn’t help things I’ll just have press on.

I took the next three days off from work and I’m really hoping that I can finish my kayak by Wednesday so that I can launch it if we go up to visit our friend Randy’s cabin on nearby Davis Lake. Davis Lake is the perfect setting for a kayak because it’s a quiet little lake that doesn’t allow motorboats. Unfortunately there’s still a long ways to go on the kayak skin and finishing by Wednesday morning will be quite tough.

I stumbled across a “reference on Recording Thoughts”:http://www.recordingthoughts.com/2005/04/01/new-form-of-handwriting/ to a cool alternative writing system called “Handywrite”:http://www.alysion.org/handy/handywrite.htm this morning. It works by writing English phonetically using a symbolic series of loops, lines and curves. I can see how it could be quite effective as a shorthand for taking notes once you’ve mastered it (I just noticed there is in fact a “Handywrite shorthand”:http://www.alysion.org/handy/handyhand.htm that is even more condensed), but I think quite a bit of practice would be required before you could reach the point of writing faster than with the conventional alphabet.

Since “Handywrite”:http://www.alysion.org/handy/handywrite.htm is basically unintelligible unless you understand its symbols and rules it also makes for a cool simple encryption scheme. If you wanted to keep a journal or diary that most people couldn’t just pick up and read, “Handywrite”:http://www.alysion.org/handy/handywrite.htm would work pretty well. In fact, if I were still a kid back in middle school or high school I think I would have found passing notes written to my friends in Handywrite fairly amusing. Of course I can’t see too many non geeky kids taking up the task of learning the system though, but that probably would have made it more appealing to me back then anyway.

Incidentally, the “backstory”:http://www.alysion.org/handy/handystory.htm on how Handywrite came to be is fairly interesting as well. Apparently its developer became fascinated with studying shorthand writing while in his college years during the 70s and actually travelled across the country by hopping trains and hitchhiking to get to various libraries that had the information he was looking for.

After reading through the comments of a “post over at ProBlogger”:http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/08/05/interview-with-jason-calacanis/ this morning I decided to try and add a few categories to some of my AdSense ads for improved tracking purposes. My initial attempt didn’t work very well though because when I went to check my category reports they reported no data.

Originally I had tried adding a category name to a pre-existing AdSense block so I decided to start from scratch and create a new code block directly with the AdSense customization tool. It was then that I discovered that Google actually assigns a number to represent the category in the code block rather the text string name and that was source of my problem. That seems like kind of an unfortunate design choice on Google’s part since it makes using, changing and reassigning categories that much more complicated. At least now that I know how categories work in the ad blocks I can deal with them properly even if it is a pain.

Twin brothers “Cameron”:http://camworld.com and “Damian”:http://mrbarrett.com Barrett are trying to get cast on the latest “Amazing Race”:http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race8/. They’ve got a new website called “bloggertwins.com”:http://bloggertwins.com that they’re using along with links from fellow bloggers like this one in an effort get the attention of the shows casting directors. Having read both their blogs for several years and as someone who has followed the Amazing Race for the last several seasons (it’s Mary’s favorite show so I’d be forced to watch it even if I didn’t like it) and I can say without reservation that they would make great competitors.

I can think of well over a dozen reasons why would make great cast members for the show, but I’ll try to keep it simple and just list a few of the best reasons to include them:
* As their tryout video demonstrates they’ve got kind of a quirky/geeky quality that’s a lot more interesting than the glut of mactors (model/actors) we’ve seen in recent seasons.
* Unlike just about every mactor couple that has ever been on the show we would never have to hear them repeatedly say “C’mon Baby!” to each other while they’re urging each other on.
* They’ve got the cerebral “Michael Chiklis”:http://imdb.com/name/nm0004821/ look going for them.
* If they ever encountered a shortcut or challenge that required them to shave off all their hair they would just laugh rathering than worrying about how it would impact their “careers” and chickening out.

So you see they’re clearly a can’t miss proposition. Good luck guys! Bloggers everywhere are pulling for you.

After reading “Simple Adsense Tips”:http://recordcard.blogspot.com/2005/08/simple-adsense-tips.html it occured to me that I should flip flop my content and sidebar positions to maximize my ad exposure. I wasn’t quite sure how complicated that would be to implement so I cautiously took a look at my @style.cs@ file. I wasn’t optimistic, but after locating the relevant id tags, I discovered I could make the necessary change merely by exchanging the @float@ properties for the content and sidebar ids. Simple, elegant and painless!

*Question of the Day:* Are AdSense users more likely to click through on ads on other sites that use AdSense? Personally, now that I’ve seen some first-hand evidence of how hard it is get click throughs in general, I sometimes like to take a moment to tip a weblog for a post that I appreciate by clicking through on one of its AdSense ads. It only costs me a moment of time and it also allows me to satisfy my curiosity and do a little research on the types of websites that our buying ads through Google (since I can’t use the ads on my own site in this fashion).

Furthermore isn’t what I’m doing sort of the ultimate form of voluntary micropayment? People have talked about micropayment systems for content for a long time, but there’s never really been a viable universal infrastructure that I’ve been aware of. Google AdSense finally seems like a workable implementation because it’s the ultimate micropayment solution. Instead of dollars and cents, it allows you to pay a website with something even smaller and easier to part with: a few seconds of your time.

Comments are open. Let me know what you think about this idea.

Thanks to the hard work of Wayne over at “Acme Tech”:http://www.acmetech.com/blog the “AdSense Deluxe WordPress plugin”:http://www.acmetech.com/blog/2005/07/26/adsense-deluxe-wordpress-plugin/ that I was running into some problems with a few days ago has already gone through a couple revisions has added some pretty nifty features as well. Besides fixing the quote escaping issue I was running into Wayne also “fixed a glitch”:http://www.acmetech.com/blog/2005/08/03/wp-tiger-admin-wordpress-plugin/ that I noticed when running his plugin with the Tiger-Admin plugin installed simultaneously. Plugin support doesn’t get much better than that.

Wayne also recently wrote “a post about the adsense strategy”:http://www.acmetech.com/blog/2005/08/02/using-adsense-in-your-blog/ he uses in his blog and there’s some good information in there. I’m in the process of adopting a similar strategy of no ads on multipost pages and two to thee ads for my more popular entries here in Axodys using his plugin. Additionally, it sounds like he’s working on an article on techniques to increase ad click-throughs and I’m definitely looking forward to reading more about that when it comes out. I’m sure he’ll have some useful tips.

Well, time to download the new plugin and upgrade.

*Update:* I’ve added two “AdSense Deluxe”:http://www.acmetech.com/blog/2005/07/26/adsense-deluxe-wordpress-plugin/ powered banners to the content of this post for demonstration purposes.

I haven’t been following my Seattle Mariners at all this summer. Too many new faces. Too few standout players. Too few wins. Too depressing. Now to find out that Mariner pitcher Ryan Franklin has the “distinction”:http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/baseball/mlb/08/02/bc.bba.drugs.franklin.ap/index.html of being the 8th Major League player to be suspended under the new steroid policy I feel like I’ve reached a new Mariners (and baseball) low. I mean if a below average pitcher with a 6-11 record and 4.61 ERA(Earned Run Average) is taking steroids, doesn’t it seem somewhat likely that a whole lot more players than we realized are using steroids throughout the league? What a disappointment.

The Seattle Mariners have given me many fond memories over the course of my life. I was an M’s fan long before their magical run back in 1995 and I always figured I would remain one for the rest of my life. Now I’m not quite so sure. The magic is waning. There’s not much mojo left in the SoDo. And there’s only so much more I can take.

I’m not asking for a World Series. Or even the playoffs every year. I’m not greedy, I just want a respectable team. A record on the plus side of 500 and class players that can play a little bit and do things the right way. A general manager and ownership that can actually supply the above. It’s really not that complicated. Quit letting your fans down.

Well, it looks like after years of clamoring from the computing masses “Apple”:http://apple.com finally did it and introduced an “updated mouse”:http://apple.com/mightymouse. But I don’t think anyone quite saw this coming. In true Apple style, the mouse they just announced totally blows the doors off existing mice with its unique design and features.

bq. Meet the mouse that reinvented the wheel. The scroll wheel, that is. At $49, Mighty Mouse features the revolutionary Scroll Ball that lets you move anywhere inside a document, without lifting a finger. And with touch-sensitive technology concealed under the seamless top shell, you get the programability of a four-button mouse in a single-button design.

I have to hand it to “Apple”:http://apple.com for coming up with what looks to be a very nice mouse replacement, but I don’t think I’ll be rushing off to order one for myself. As a “Powerbook”:http://apple.com/powerbook user I’m pretty track-pad centric and rately use a mouse anyway, but it’s definitely going to be a great improvement for desktop Mac users. Maybe I’ll see if I can get my workplace to buy me one for testing purposes.

At this point it’s not clear to me that they’re ready to ship the new “Mighty Mouse”:http://apple.com/mightymouse as the standard mouse on iMacs and PowerMacs. I just went to the Apple store to look at what kind of mouse the iMacs come with and there was no mention of the new design in the configurations offered. When will this come standard with desktops? Additionally, the pictures and tech specs page seem to indicate that “Mighty Mouse”:http://apple.com/mightymouse is strictly a usb based mouse. Is there going to be a bluetooth version as well? Hopefully the answers to these questions will become clear soon.

*Update:* “Robert”:http://bump.net pointed me to a nice “hands on review by Russell Beattie”:http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008561.html.

There’s a cool “AdSense plugin”:http://www.acmetech.com/blog/2005/07/26/adsense-deluxe-wordpress-plugin/ that allows you to set up individual ads in specific posts. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get it to work properly because all the quotation marks in my ads are getting escaped and that seems to break things. I’ve tried a couple different things to resolve the problem, but I’ve had no luck so far. I haven’t found any other reports of the problem either. Irritating.

Ultimately this is a feature that I want to put to use in a couple of my most popular posts, but I guess it’s going to have to wait until tomorrow to resolve.