Alden Bates' Weblog

Once again, I got a popup window while surfing on BlogExplosion. The "Block popup windows" option in FireFox is also being disabled by the same javascript that launches the popup window.

I have reported the problem to BlogExplosion. Of course, when you go back to the same blog, the popup doesn't come up again, making it difficult to trace. I have some suspicions as to what's causing it...

I've added the domain from whence it came to my hosts file to attempt to block it

Here's hoping the 21st century improves from now on!

I went to see The Incredibles yesterday. Pixar's story of a family of superheros forced into living "normal" lives by the government is (typically for Pixar) full of quirky humour and should be appreciated by young and old.

The showing I went to was more or less full, most of the audience being children. The small child on a tricycle who pops up a few times during the movie proved popular with them...

A while ago I placed a text ad on BlogShares and only got one hit as a result. When I moved my mood icons/user icons pages to a new location, I thought I'd give it another try and set up an ad for 100,000 impressions.

From those impressions, I got a total of 57 hits. Most of them were from individual blog pages, or the main text ads page. Not a huge return rate, but it still made BlogShares the second biggest referrer (not counting search engines) for the main Tetrap domain for December.

Speaking of referrers, the referrer-spamming bots have been hitting my site again - one hit the NZDWFC site some 150 times or so this month. I've taken to banning any such bots on sight. They're so stupid and easy to spot too.

I noticed there was an update to Windows Media Player, and promptly told my computer to fetch it. Of course, partway through the installation, the CPU hit 100% usage and reset, hosing WMP...

The only thing stopping me from taking this heap in to get fixed right now is the fact then I'd be stuck at home without a PC for a week or so. :P

Winter/Christmas themed entries I found while surfin' about on BE:

• Santa's reindeer are female
• Things not to do to a sleeping polar bear

I've been discovering one of the hazards of surfing on BlogExplosion is that a few blogs seem to have popups. I guess popup makers are beginning to find ways around FireFox's popup prevention. Already scanned for Spyware, so I'm fairly certain it wasn't that...

But it's makin' me nervous...

On another note, why is there no Google International Zeitgeist for New Zealand?

I realised today that I'd completely forgotten to watch the Firefly premiere last Tuesday. Having enjoyed Buffy and Angel, I was interested to see what Joss Weadon would do for a space series. Fortunately my dad, who also likes Science Fiction, still had it on tape.

In case you didn't get the parallels, all the incidental music appears to have been ripped from a Western, as well as the clothing and the look of much of the worlds they land on. Would probably appeal to fans of Cowboy Beebop. It also reminded me a lot of the group from Alien: Resurrection, which Joss wrote... I took an instant liking to most of the characters, and it's good to see Gina Torres in something again. :)

Shame we're getting to see it two years late, but better late than never...

Jeff pointed me to Ex Astris Scientia, a formidable Star Trek site. I spent hours reading the "Inconsistencies" section, which has some interesting discussions on TOS versus new-style Klingons, various scientific problems, etc, etc.

I installed Prime 95, which includes a "torture test", running your CPU at 100% and testing a number of the functions.

My computer reset by itself after approximately 40 seconds of running.

I tried installing ITE Smartguardian, which came on the disks for my motherboard. I think it's broken - it displays "Temp 1" as 201°C all the time. "Temp 2" is a slightly more realistic 48°C, but it doesn't seem to get any hotter while the stress test is running.

I rang the shop from whence the PC came, and they said they couldn't pass a diagnosis without the machine there to run tests on, so I will probably have to bite the bullet and take it in after work starts in the new year.

Edit: Oh, I should add that after my previous entry, I also downloaded a piece of memory testing software from Microsoft's site, and that checked my memory out as fine.