It has been some time…

Humm it has been some time since I have posts on this site let alone even check up on it. I let it do its updates and that’s about it. Do I not have anything to blog about? Not sure, there has been a lot going on in my life between school, programming projects, robotics, 3D printing, movies, TV shows, events I have been involved with. I don’t know but I guess blogging has been something I forgot about. There is lots of places to post junk but I don’t even do much if any posting on sites like Google+ or Facebook.

It may have something to do with the fact that I want to rebuild this site as a blog but not on WordPress because I don’t see the value in WordPress or its junk ecosystem. I have other sites I should be posting about my projects as I get closer to the end of my CS degree. Like my profile site has been rebuilt quickly to clean out a broken Drupal install. I have some plans on how to make that into a better repository of my work / projects. But that stuff doesn’t need to be here.

Typing this has been kind of interesting… But I should be working on some code I also want to get done. But writing words about something is different than code. And this post will be some rambling any way. My site visits have dropped a lot, mostly because a LifeHacker writer rewrote my post on Handbrake DVD ripping and no longer link over. I have also not been able to get Handbrake to work on my system last time I tried 6 months ago.

It’s late and this post wont make much since, I will probably rebuild the site and put my code snippets here using my own CMS setup. Mehh

Adblock This…

2015-02-15 01_35_33-Cryptograms.org - HomeI really hate how sites that have lots of ads always try to guilt you if you block the ads you had no plan on ever looking at or clicking. Take the screen shot in this post, the site says they spend $20,000 on hosting. What that’s a crazy amount of money for a site is not main stream. What are they spending over $1,600 a month on most dedicated server hosting costs for a good server $200-400 a month that could handle anything this site could send to it.

OK so that is a lot of money for servers so this guy must be poor and not make any money. But look you can get a “Premium Ad Free” account with them for $0.11 per day, that adds up to a few cents over $40 per year. Doesn’t sound too bad right? Well if you look at their forms used for registration on the site there are 30,306 registered members. And if only say 25% of them are so into this site they pay the $40 a year to be a “Premium” member that is a nice $303,060 little lump of cash. Even at 10% your looking at $121,224 a year from such members.

Those calculations of well over $100,000 a year of income from premium members didn’t include money made from ads that almost everyone else dose not block and may click from time to time because they get tricked into clicking on ads when they though that the ad was part of the site. The money from ads can be quite large for a site with good amounts of traffic that this site seems to get based on users. My own site that I have 2 ads per page on gets on average 100 views a day gets me about $100 a year or every other year. I don’t push my ads, I don’t care if you block them, its cool to get a little extra money but that isn’t the content of the site.

I just get tired of people acting like because people block the ads, the trackers, the like buttons, the email list pop ups that they are some how ripping off or making it so the site can’t possibly survive if you don’t see the ads. If I am looking for something to buy I go looking for it, I don’t need some ad to tell me to buy it. The ads just confuse people most of the time, are not entirely relevant, and distracting from why I went to a site. So I will continue to block ads and I don’t care for one instance your site will not exist if you don’t get me to see your crappy ads.

Rare Historic Photos

July 2013 Update

It’s been more than a few months since I posted anything on this site! I was working on a post every day and that sounded good, but wasn’t working out how I liked and when I started my classes I just didn’t take time to work on any of my websites. In about a month I will be back in school and studying for my classes, but this time I hope how I have my classes organized it won’t be as crazy. But I do plan on doing more studying then I did last semester.

So what am I doing on this site, views are lower than 6 months ago when I was updating things, but I want to post regularly about what I am working on. I hope to write about programs I am making for classes, things I find interesting in my classes and some of the things I do to relax. This may include some projects I was testing doing game play videos with my kids or something like that.

As for Tek4.me I am looking at reviving that site but with a lot of changes to what and how I cover tech news, I was spending too much effort just having a post about some product that was announced each day, and I wanted to be writing about what was really useful and fun. Will see what happens but I need to get something going so expect something to happen with that site.

Expect some updates, I say this every time I don’t do anything with my sites for a while but ya…

Happy New Year 2013

Just wanted to post a Happy New Year message for 2013, and put out some goals for my websites. This year I have had amazing amounts of traffic to my Handbreake setup guide with almost 600 views in one day to the site the 27th of December 2012. I also started the Tek4.Me site that was starting to get good amounts of traffic but I stopped updating the site the past few months when I change some of my plans, but I am not going to abandon the site more to come on that.

I have been working on building a recipe site for learning and also just for fun, I also have in the works a event listing site that will be my next ground up web project that I hope will become a good place to find events and also post events.

As for WebLuke.Net and Tek4.Me, I have set a goal to blog post every day, my not be on both sites but I should have something. I have set goals like this before but things are changing, this domain is 12 years old, I am starting some new schooling this month and I want to include blogging in my new daily plan.

Hope the year is good for everyone, and we both can work hard to achieve our goals and plans for 2013.

6th Healthiest Isn’t That Good

6th isn't goodSo I saw this “News” item in Google News today and just thought I would point out a few things. First off the title stating that Connecticut is 6th healthiest state in the nation, OK that’s nothing to be too happy about its not like they are first or second or even third so why waist our time with this? Second if they are “Healthy” why have a photo of a bunch of fat women walking down a street that doesn’t show they are all that healthy. And finally this is the real point of this story “high number of people who get immunized”!

What this is, is a story that was paid for by drug companies to promote that being healthy means you get immunized! But why do they care all that much, its because you cant sue them if you get sick from any immunization, they get you to take there drugs with out even being sick, and they are all putting a lot of money in new immunizations as there new money makers because the patents on expensive medications are starting to run out giving other companies the ability to produce generic versions and let people who need them not have to play a large amount of money for them because one company controls the formula that may save some ones life but only if they are willing to pay!

I’m not saying that all immunizations are a bad thing, most of the ones that you can get for free from a heath office when you were a kid and have been given out for a long number of years should be safe but the ones that are advertised to you on TV and have big budgets you may want to look into what it relay dose, or even better why should you even need it before you get too excited on what it may offer.

This is just something that I noticed and just had to write about, its not my normal thing to bring up but something I want people to understand. May start adding more of this stuff if I feel like writing it up.

Reflecting on the Past few months of Tek4.me

tumblr_md39piSaRR1rk9vano1_r1_500A few months ago I started Tek4.me technology blog website, and started to build out content. The problem is during the past few weeks I seem to have neglected the site a bit and my traffic is showing that. When I started it I didn’t expect to get crazy amounts of people going there each day but things were looking good as far as no real promotion other than just wringing articles and some free Facebook ads that didn’t bring anyone to the site. It was fun to read though the list of announcements and find ones that I found interesting, then put together an article about the product or service. Problem was when I had other things take some of my time and there was a slow or lame bunch of news for a week I lost a lot of interest.

The site isn’t dead but it seems that way based on traffic numbers, and number of new posts. That brings me to one problem, most of my content was only relevant for a few weeks and then it’s just old news. I’m sure that is what the big sites have problems with also, that’s why they have so many of those filler posts that are tutorials or things that aren’t news but just fun to read things. I was trying to make this site all news and nothing else. So that’s one thing I will be working on. The other thing is I wasn’t writing about things I didn’t find cool, but what I need to do is still cover those things just don’t worry about getting full details like I did for products or services I thought were real cool or wanted.

So what’s going to happen, in January I will start going to University for Computer Science (don’t waste your money like I did with ITT-Tech schools don’t transfer your credits and employers don’t think its good enough) so my focus will be on doing well in my classes, but I hope I can pull myself back to daily posts on Tek4.me. I plan on working to add more content starting this week and get things going again. Also on WebLuke.net I hope I can use this as more of a place to put my experience of school and things. I have wanted also to do more tutorials like my popular Handbrake for Windows 64-bit article. Some other things of note are I have been reading up on how to use PHP again and coding in HTML, I kind of lost my love for things like that a number of years ago and just kind of lost the feeling of how you do things, but I will need to get that all back in my head because I at some point want to build out a recipe site I had once built but lost and also an Events listing website that I have prototype in Drupal but doesn’t work like I would like it to, so if I can get to it that is a long-term project I will work on.

I think this post is me telling myself I need to get things going again and I can do it. With school coming it may make things harder but I have the opportunity to go to school, build my websites, take care of my kids, and learn new things. If only I could monetize this all better things would be a little nicer!

Tek4.ME My New Technology Blog

A few weeks ago I quit my normal crummy job that wasn’t helping me with my goal of working with computers, technology, or the internet. I had gotten my degree as an Information System Administrator but the job market for IT workers is very hard because there aren’t that many jobs where I live, but I had a few ideas on how I can still have an income.

First I have done some service calls for a company installing Internet, and those pay good for the work, I also have some friends that has been offering to get me doing the service calls they do but in my area. Because these calls aren’t consistent I plan to do some other stuff with my time when I’m not just taking care of my kids.

So my plan is to write on my Technology and Gadget blog Tek4.ME as much as I can. It will have topics such as news about upcoming Apple, Microsoft, Google, and other Companies new products and services. The blog will also have tips and tricks for best using your technology and online services. Some of the articles already up include my Hands on Review of the Nexus 7, information on why YouTube won’t be part of iOS 6, and what’s new in Windows Essentials 2012.

Finally I would also like to start building a few websites a month; this would be things like setting up and building a site using WordPress or Drupal for any type of business or organization. If interested check out more information at Grand Junction Computers web site.

Please follow us on RSS, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook for all the updates!

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Carbonite Pop Up Ad WTH

Carbonite pop up ad
Carbonite pop up ad

What the heck Carbonite! When did Carbonite think it was a good idea to start putting pop up ads on people computers who are paying for a service already! I got your stupid email already and I didn’t want it so I didn’t sign up for this service, but now you are putting pop ups on my system. This kind of think will make people jump ship from your service real fast.

Yes I like the service and I understand you want to tell people you have other levels of service but it goes back to the days of adware and scams like that to start this crap. I was ok with the emails once in a while saying you have other services and I listen to the ads on TWiT.TV but I don’t want crap popping up on my computer.

Please stop those ads, and thanks for the service I do have I like how well it works and want to stay in my current plan!