Jeff Epler's blog

Turning off ads and google analytics

Over 1 1/2 years ago, I put google ads on this blog. Just recently, I reached the $100 threshold to receive my ad revenue from Google. It's also a convenient time to end the experiment with letting Google inject javascript into ever page I serve.

I've long been a user of ad blocking and anti-tracking technologies, and I wouldn't say a word against a user who surfed my public websites who blocked these items. In fact, in that post where I announced the addition of ads, I encourged their use.

With ad blocking back in the news (once Apple enables ad blocking, it's suddenly the next big thing, eh?) I want to take a step and say that there is an Internet for people who don't want pages full of flashing banner ads and which secretly extract tracking data in an attempt to make those ads even more effective; and that furthermore, my website should be a part of that Internet.

It costs me just $5 a month to host this website, a cost that is almost certain not to grow compared to the price of a cup of coffee. Let's all host our little, independent websites and supply good content according to our interests just like we did back in the 90s.

Eek, ads

I'm experimenting with ads on my blog again, as well as google analytics. If you don't like these technologies, then install privacy and ad blocking software like adblockplus or ghostery. I don't mind a bit if you do—I wouldn't surf the internet without blocking ads either. But I also wouldn't mind making a few bucks off of people who will click ads.

Changing hosting providers

I'm trying out a different, VPS hosting provider, DigitalOcean (link is referral code). I expect the performance to beat DreamHost shared hosting and the price to maybe be lower (if the 20GB instance is enough storage for me). On the downside, DigitalOcean doesn't currently offer IPv6. If you see this post, you're talking to the new machine.

New thing: BlurBlog

On my front page sidebar, you'll see a new item labeled "BlurBlog". These are links to interesting articles from sites I read and which I resyndicate via the rss reader newsblur. You can click through individual links to visit the original pages, or the "BlurBlog" heading to see larger extracts from the articles and subscribe to the BlurBlog as an rss feed.

Hosting Troubles

My shared hosting server apparently burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. It looks like my main blog is back, but images and css are still missing. Ugh. Hopefully in another day or two everything will be back to normal.

Moving my blog hosting

(M)(L)

50mm f/1.8 bokeh

I'm in the process of moving my blog hosting from my basement to dreamhost. If you're seeing this article, then you're looking at the new site. I think it's time to throw the switch.

New Site Look

I recently decided it was time for a new look on my website. The new design is based on twitter bootstrap for css and a bit of javascript. I hope the result is a new look which is still light and simple but which also fits better with the sensibilities of today's web.

Caching

Here are the changes necessary in the aether blog to enable filesystem-based caching: