Author Archives: lornajane

31 Jan
2007

Google Analytics 2006

I have written about Google Analytics before, once or twice but I haven’t managed to put across the sheer volume of information. Today I had a look back at 2006 (the first year for this site) and looked at how it went. I thought I could share the main points with you and show you round a corner of analytics in the process.

On The Front

On the front page there are four views. Here they are in turn with a little bit about each:

This view usually shows a one-week breakdown so you can clearly see how many of both page views and visits there were in each day. Viewing the data for a whole year is completely different and for the first time I started to see how much the traffic levels have changed over the year. The first post on this site is dated 18th Jan although you wouldn’t guess that from the graph.

New vs Returning is another picture that looks completely different now. It usually shows about three quarters new visitors but for a few months back at the start there were a few people producing all my traffic so I’m pleased at how its evening out. I have no idea what proportion of new to returning visitors is “good” for a website but it looks OK to me.

I love the geo overlay picture, special mention to Lig who is the reason for the small blob in the pacific with no visible landmass below it! The map as a whole shows who my visitors are, English speakers and Europeans for the most part. My goal for 2007 is to get some blobs on that map for South America!

Referring sources. Also very weird because this looks quite different to usual. FairyJo what are you doing there?? My referrer list usually shows either phpwomen.org or dotjay but one is new and one only has posts on it sporadically. I’m completely confused how I get so much traffic from del.icio.us and I have no idea if that’s a good thing or how I might build on that.

Search Terms

My top search terms are a source of constant amusement to me, although the increase in traffic has moved me away from the world of bizarre search terms that only bring one visitor. I refuse to cite those there in case I boost my rankings for bizarre search terms :)

For 2006 my top search terms were:

  1. slow cooker recipes
  2. lornajane
  3. crochet
  4. microwave cheese sauce
  5. cheese sauce

Considering I started this site as a place to keep track of technical things that I needed to write down but would then immediately lose in the next house or server move (we’ve had more than our fair share of both), my visitors are clearly more interested in food.

Moving Forward

So, the choice now for increased traffic is whether to learn and then write about some more slow cooker recipes, or whether to be a bit more focussed on the technical areas I cover and get the links to this site into my signature on the various sites I join in with.

Or then again, maybe I’ll stick with my original plan and write what occurs to me as it happens! Hope that was interesting to everyone, suggestions for new direction and demands for more information about the Google Analytics tool are most welcome.

30 Jan
2007

Little Meals: Eggs Etc

For a while now I’ve been meaning to write a piece on interesting meals to make in a hurry for one person. I eat at home each day for lunch time and often make something substantial so that I can grab a sandwich later on my way to another activity, but these are equally applicable to an evening meal for one.

The first set of recipes use eggs. They’re nutritious and easy! If you try these recipes, or have variations of your own, then let me know :)

Omelette

Take a small frying pan, and pop some butter in it over a medium heat. While the butter melts beat two eggs in a small bowl with a fork or wish, grind some black pepper into it as well.

When the butter just starts to sizzle, pour the mixture into the pan and then leave it alone while you prepare your filling. Fillings can be any combination of:

  • grated cheese
  • chopped ham or bacon ( tinned ham is nice )
  • mushrooms
  • chopped onion (I like to fry mine first)
  • whatever else is in the fridge

When the egg is mostly set, and brown underneath, scatter your filling across half of the surface area and then fold the rest of the “pancake” over the top of it. After two minutes, flip the whole thing over and give it a couple of minutes on the other side.

Serve with salad, coleslaw or whatever else comes to hand – bread and butter if you’re hungry!

Spanish Omelette or Tortilla

For this you will need some boiled potato left over from last night’s meal which has been in the fridge. Its fast and filling.

Heat a bit of butter in a small frying pan and chop half an onion (the other half will keep in the fridge for a few days but put clingfilm over it or something so the smell doesn’t go everywhere).

Pop the onion in the pan and fry until it softens, meanwhile chop the boiled potato into cubes. Throw that in the pan and beat two or three eggs in a small bowl with a fork, and grind some black pepper into the mixture.

Now pour the egg mixture over the onion and potatoes, and wait. You can try flipping it or I usually pop the frying pan under the grill for two minutes to finish off the runny egg that floats on top.

Again, serve with salad or whatever else comes to hand. You can extend this recipe to include leftover vegetables also.

Scrambled Egg On Toast

This is a good lunch for a cold day but probably isn’t a meal on its own. You could grill some bacon to go with it.

Put a small saucepan on the hob over a medium heat and add quite a lot of butter (two heaped teaspoons of butter, although I don’t think that’s a traditional measure!). While it melts, beat three eggs together in a small bowl with a fork, add some black pepper.

The key to this dish is not to try to multitask so you should get the plate out of the cupboard, make the cup of tea to go with your toast or whatever at this point. Oh and put the bread in the toaster.

Now pour the egg mixture into the pan on top of the melted butter and stir continuously with a wooden spoon. Just keep on scraping up the mixture all the time from the bottom of the pan, don’t let it form a structure. When it starts to look like scrambled egg, its done. Take the pan off the heat and leave to stand for one minute (allows it to finish cooking and kind of set), then spoon over the toast.

Eat this with relish, salsa, barbecue sauce or whatever you think goes.

28 Jan
2007

PHPThrowdown Coding Contest

This weekend, Kevin (boyfriend) and I took part in the first PHPThrowdown event. While its true that programming contests aren’t new, I haven’t seen one that seemed relevant to me for a while and they do take a lot of organisation – so kudos to the organisers including fellow PHPWomen.org -er Elizabeth Naramore.

The categories were:

  1. php-gtk
  2. inventory management (either home, work.. etc)
  3. games
  4. anything goes

We don’t know much about php-gtk and we were certainly not going to go there in the games category as its likely to be very popular, so we thought we’d think up something on the home/office line and ideas of calendars and to-do lists got kicked about. The problem with something you are going to write in 24 hours and which is going to be tested by people standalone is that a) you need to get content from somewhere or they won’t stay long and b) it has to be relatively simple or you’ll have a lot of buggy functionality and not much else.

So it was that playTAG was born. It turns out that it isn’t an especially new idea, disappointingly, and there are lots of games which work by challenging you to traverse from A to B using related tags. An example is the Wikington Crescent game on Wikipedia. We drew our page layout, data structures and who-does-what lists up and then we began the 24 hour marathon.

The Marathon Begins

So its wasn’t much of a marathon. I went to a party a couple of hours after the contest started and that was it from me for the first 12 hours!! Kevin did much better and managed almost 8 hours before he went to bed. I got up early (ish) and looked at his notes from the night before … we had to check in every six hours so I swiftly did that and then settled down to write my bit. We were both on stream for the final 8 hours and made something which actually works.

Our strategy all along was for me to deal with the admin, making sure we had the right check-ins, writing the README file, and packing the thing. Kevin kept going, ironing out problems and also adding the features as it became clear what we had time for.

The final result

Well the judging starts now and will go on for a while. I’m sure we won’t be hearing anything more about it but since I’m so proud of our day’s work I’ve put a version online to show you! Here it is: playTAG – enjoy :)

24 Jan
2007

An Unsuitable Choice

Well, following on from the earlier episodes in the house hunting saga we have been pretty quiet on that front recently. Partly because we’re a bit twice bitten, lots of times shy. Partly because the houses in Leeds in the areas we’re looking at are all pretty similar and we’ve kind of seen enough.

So when I picked out a victorian semi-detached in a rough area of Leeds (Beeston, I do know it isn’t all rough!), which has four bedrooms, is set over four floors, has no heating and is rather out of the price range, you’d think we’d just leave it … right? Right???

We’ve been to see it twice, we really like it, and the estate agents are negotiating on our behalf (don’t worry, I do know whose side they are on and it isn’t mine) with the vendor who apparently doesn’t need the money and isn’t going to drop his asking price! Are we mad or what?

23 Jan
2007

What Rabbits do best

In the summer, I bought a nabaztag for Kevin as his birthday present. Within a couple of weeks he had figured out how to intercept its web requests and replace them with instructions of his own. The little creature has five lights – one under his feet, three across his tummy and one on his nose. He also has moveable ears (he can waggle them but you can also grab them and move them around) and a speaker.

We called the rabbit Naz for short, as Nabaztag is a long name for a little guy. We both enjoyed writing little programs which loaded different colours onto the LEDs and moved his ears around and stuff. Remember that this relationship kind of grew out of Kevin teaching me assembler at University!

So on Friday, after a hectic day, I got home and “Naz” was in the middle of the floor and Kevin was playing with him, doing some more on the proxy he wrote and whatever. I started telling him about my day, all the while thinking how shiny Naz had got, wondering if something had happened to him. Mid-sentence I cast my eyes across the room and saw the other nabaztag sitting on the ironing board!!

Yes, we have a new Nabaztag. He’s a newer model and works differently to the old one. His name is Tag and he’s shiny. Maybe I’ll post some photos of them, what do you reckon?

Kevin’s proxy and the little programs he’s written so far are at nabaztag.magicmonkey.org, I’ll write a bit more about the whole project another day.

21 Jan
2007

Big Wool Earflap Hat

OK so its Sunday name is “Swing”, but here’s my most recent knitting achievement. Its a hat, with long earflaps that make a scarf:

I has a nice bit of garter stitch around the brim:

And here’s a closeup of the fabulous pompoms:

18 Jan
2007

URLs that suck

Over at the Well Designed URLs Blog they’ve started a movement to tag all urls-that-suck on del.icio.us and they will later rank the top ten sites with utterly rubbish URLs. I think this is a great idea and will be adding my own as I come across them.

Since my recent struggle with Joomla! Pretty URLs I have been wondering whether it was really worth the effort. Suffice it to say that I am now convinced.

You can see how I’m getting on at del.icio.us/lornajane/urls-that-suck. Does anyone have any recommendations?

15 Jan
2007

USB drive letter under Windows XP

I have to look this up every time I do it so here’s a fast tutorial on changing the letter for a USB storage device under Windows XP. I’m using this for my newly-flashed iriver that I told you about recently.

Go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management. Your device will be listed and if you right-click there’s an option to “Change drive letter and paths”.