A carnival of technology

I’ve been running this website for some number for years in some form or another, and, though it really doesn’t cost me anything since it just runs on whatever Internet service I would have anyway, I’ve at times made attempts to make a buck off it. I offer no goods nor services, but isn’t that what the Internet is all about? Besides the photos that no one ever tries to buy (possibly because they’re not very good photos), the most persistent attempts have been a Paypal donation link and Google ads. The Paypal link was probably a bad idea, since it got me some worried messages about whether I was broke or shutting down the website (but no donations), whereas the Google ads, though less intrusive in that they ask nothing of the reader, have been a smashing failure. Besides the fact that I have no control over the ads and am effectively stuck with whatever some advertiser buys for random words that I might use, this is a fairly low-traffic site, so it’s not likely that I’ll ever make enough to get paid. Google pays when accounts hit $100, and I so far have $14.03. I’ve effectively made fourteen bucks or so for Google to keep.

I’m trying something new now as far as ads. I’ve signed up for Project Wonderful, which has some neat ideas behind it. I’m not sure yet how well it will work with trickles of traffic like mine, but I guess I’ll see. The idea behind Project Wonderful is, rather being paid when people click a content-based ad, I sell space per-day to the highest bidder. I have control over what ads I accept, and advertisers buy space based on traffic and the descriptions I’ve provided for the site. Right now all the spaces are filled with $0 bids, but maybe it won’t stay that way. If you have something you’ve wanted to advertise here, now’s a good time to get in on it. It’s cheap.

In other news, Matt, my best friend for about as long as I can remember, went and got hitched. The wedding itself was in an LDS temple, thus Gentiles (I meant that jokingly, but the webnet says that that’s actually what the LDS church uses to refer to non-members. Huh. Maybe I should have used “English”) like me were unable to attend, which is probably for the better, since I don’t own a suit. I did make the trek back to Alabama this weekend for the reception, though, where I was able to wear a Hawaiian shirt with dark slacks without anyone complaining. I have some pictures, mostly of the vandalization done to Matt’s car. I hope that Matt and Clarissa have many happy years together.

In other Decatur (AL) news, the local newspaper provided some entertainment during my stay. The front page story on Friday was about the hat ban at high school basketball games. The stated goal of the ban is to prevent gang activity (NB: there are no gangs in Decatur). I might be jaded from living in the big city, but there are no streets in Decatur where I would be the slightest bit nervous walking at night, and the city has an average of one murder per year. I’m not sure if my usual Atlanta method of applying racism as the underlying motive works in this case, but whether the administrators are attempting to stop kids from looking too “urban” or if just bowing to the pressure of an imagined crime wave, there is no discernible gang activity to stop. Anyhow, the people upset about the ban are the over-60 crowd. Old people like to wear hats, coming from a time where everyone wore hats and an onion on their belt, and they’re pissed that they can’t dress the way they want when they see their grandkids play some b-ball. I find this hilarious.

Another thing I find amusing yet frequently forget about Decatur’s newspaper is one of their columnists, Franklin Harris. Mr. Harris’s writing always makes me think of the comic book guy from The Simpsons. He writes about various things happening in comic books, anime, and science fiction, none of which really relates to things happening in Decatur. His column this week was about the Library of America releasing a volume of Philip K. Dick’s work, perhaps opening the doors for science fiction to become a legitimate part of literature. It is kind of a big deal, since with Phillip K. Dick the Library of America is jumping straight into the crazy end of science fiction, bypassing the more gradual routes they could have taken with authors like Bradbury, already a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s award for distinguished contribution to American letters, or Vonnegut, who has in the past lamented his categorization in this genre that “critics mistake…for a urinal.” Back to the column, though, that’s the kind of thing that Mr. Harris writes about: things that interest people that go to science fiction conventions and hang out in comic shops, people that thing Robbie the Robot is pretty rad, people that have an opinion in the Kirk vs. Picard debate. I guess it takes a city of fifty thousand to fill that particular niche.