Website Wednesday - Handy add-ons for improving your blog

Hello and welcome to Website Wednesday. That day of the week where I point out some nifty tricks about Blog's I learnt, and also why hitting your head on your desk is a bad idea.

Did I seriously post a screenshot of my blog onto my blog?
Yes. It's oddballception.

If you, like me, find that you're interested in spending copious hours of your daily time exposing various faucets of your life to the internet for the common masses to consume and judge you upon. (Sounds scary when I put it that way actually.) Then you may be interested in starting one of these whimsical and to be honest fairly frightening things we call "Blog's". What is this "Blog" you ask? If I couldn't answer that, I fear my highschool Computer Applications Technology teacher would track me down and skin me. (God know's she said it enough.) A blog is something of an online diary as she termed it. A place where you post things about your day to day life in order to inform. (or in my case typically, entertain.)

I'll be blunt about it. Blogging isn't easy. I have in my lifetime started... about 10. Ranging on subjects from art, to philosophy, to reviews. A common problem for me was a tendency to grow bored or run out of ideas (Which led to frequent head-desking and a fair bit of pain.) Luckily I eventually struck upon the idea for this blog which, is to say, I amalgamated all my previous idea's into one package and called it game. No idea why, but it seems to be working so far. That's beside the point though.

If you should be one of those few who feel the necessity to expose your inner mind to the harshness of the world, I would suggest a few things in order to create a far better blog and far more interest in the long run. Firstly, become a master at HTML. (Pfffft. Yeah right. I've been at this for a while and HTML still keeps me up at night.) Nah, I'm joking. You'll likely learn that as you go along if you give it time and Google the odd thing.

I do however, suggest one or two other things... Firstly, take a look around my blog. You may notice I have things such as Facebook Share and Like buttons, a Twitter Feed, and the lovely "Things you may like" list of posts along the bottom of this post. Those are not standard to Blogger nor any other blogging platform to my knowledge. They also took a fair bit of research and tinkering for me to figure out and/or find a tutorial to do.

Lets start with the Facebook Share buttons. I could not actually find a reference to these on Facebook while logged in as a regular user, but thanks to the blessed Search Engine we base our lives upon, (AKA Google), I was able to quickly find this page which provides all the means and instructions to integrate those buttons with your site. Even better, if you have a Facebook Page or intend on starting one, you will find instructions on how to make the "Like" button link to that page, rather than simply a statistic of people that like your blog. That way, they'll begin to receive the updates you post to your facebook page, which is FANTASTIC for recurring traffic. I got those buttons functioning in just under an hour and am fairly pleased with the result if I do say so myself. (For those Blogger users of you who are unsure of where or how to insert 3rd party HTML into your page, I suggest looking into this article here.)

The next item is the Twitter Feed. This was perhaps one of the easiest to install, as Twitter comes with a fairly easy to find widget generator in it's settings menu for those who have registered with them. Simply navigate to the Widgets menu in your settings, put in the necessary information and it will generate the HTML. From there it's as simple as inserting it into your blog and enjoying a personal Twitter feed which is displayed directly on your blog for all to see. As with the Facebook share buttons, the aforementioned article will help you insert the feed if you're a Blogger user.

Lastly, we have the LinkWithin "Posts you may also like" bar. A free service, I find it highly helpful for letting new readers find articles you've spoken about in the past but have since fallen off the radar as newer posts fill out your blog. Simply head over to their website here and generate the widget, no registration required. I did have a touch of pain getting this to work on my blog though since for some reason it doesn't generate code when it attempts to place the "gadget" on Blogger. (Cue Headdesk. I think I need to find a .gif for all this headdesking.) In any case, I circumnavigated that issue by going stating my blog to be of custom design, copying the code from there and then placing that into the code box for the Blogger gadget insert which is shown once you've accepted and allowed it to try and place the widget on your blog. Kudos to Google and some websites I regrettably forgot to save for figuring that one out.

Lastly I've got a relatively simple one that you can't actually see on my blog. Google Analytics. This beautiful (AND FREE!) service from google allows you to see all the traffic as well as various statistics and degree's of information about how they use your website. At first a little confusing, with a little work you'll glean an invaluable insight into how people are finding your blog and what they're doing afterwards. Better yet, Blogger already has Google Analytics integrated. Once you sign up to the service, all you need do is insert your tracker ID into your blog's control panel. (Settings; Other, at the bottom, to be precise.) For those of you looking to integrate Analytics with other blogging platforms or self hosted blogs, I'd suggest searching for one of the many tutorials on Youtube. (Best part, no headdesking involved.)

Anyways, I hope you've found some helpful information here which will make your blogging experiences easier. (And prevent cranial injury due to sudden impacts with hard wooden surfaces.) If you've got a suggestion for something else that's great for improving blogs, or maybe want to tell me I'm stupid for hurting myself so much, do so in the comments below. Maybe even share this with friends who would like to expose themselves to the internet. (Please god no streakers...) Whatever you do, I thank you for reading and hope you have/had an AWESOME day.

(Was tempted to say goodbye in Klingon today for laughs. Realized I couldn't read it. *Headdesk*) 

So cheers people.

Post edit: Handy trick I forgot to mention for Blogger users. You might notice your post shares the wrong text when you post the link on Facebook. Edit the HTML of your post and place a "<p></p>" tag around the text you want to be shown. Facebook grabs the first test it finds in those tags and Blogger doesn't use them by default. If you forget, and add them after you've shared your post, go here and paste in your URL to get Facebook to refresh the info. 

Technology Tuesday - Getting the most out an outdated computer

Hello and welcome to Technology Tuesday. The day where I tell you about some nifty tricks to make the most of outdated computers all while expressing my frustration at their inadequacies.

Caution; computers tend to aggravate me on occasion.

If you are one of those individuals who, like me, suffer from an unassailable level of frugality, you probably try to make things last as long as possible at as little cost as possible. No to be confused with being a miser, I'm happy to spend money on a good purchase, but if there is a way to save money or get a better deal, then on your life; you'll get that instead.

Frankenstein. That's this guys name.
 It's also what I call my computer.

How is this related to Technology Tuesday then? Well, a downside to this urge is that computers become very outdated, VERY quickly. And as I'm sure you can guess, technology doesn't wait around for you to catch up. Your computer can stay sitting with it's dinky little dual-core, but software requirements won't.

With that in mind, I've had to do some research on how to make the most of old tech just to get those last few bangs for those stingy bucks I paid all those years ago. While it can be guaranteed that you can't make any hunk of junk last forever, (Something's going to happen to it eventually. Or you're just going to get tired of waiting all your life for Photoshop to apply filters... I know that pain.), it is handy to know some tricks for making the time until your next upgrade more bearable; which is nice if you have more important things to spend the money on. Here's a couple tricks for optimizing parts different parts of your computer:

CPU

The CPU. Basically the brain of your computer, to be simple about it. Maintain this simple train of thought, (See what I did there?), you can say that the brain can only think about so much at a time. Well, Windows allows you to set 2 things with regards to processes, (Those are basically the things your CPU has to think about.), the priority and affinity of the process. Windows automatically assigns every process it runs a "normal" priority, which basically means that the CPU simply deals with processes it recieves on a first-come, first-served basis. By using the Task Manager, (Opened by pressing the Escape, Shift and Control keys simultaneously.), the user can set individual processes to a higher priority to have the CPU deal with it sooner than other things. Word of advice though. Be careful tinkering with the Task Manager as it's a good way to trash your computer if you play with it. Also, never set anything to more than "Above Normal" priority unless you want to starve system processes and cause a BSOD.

The task manager also allows those with multiple core CPU's, (Which is most of us these days, even frugal people like me.), to set the Affinity of processes to specific cores, thereby ensuring that only that/those cores deal with the process and allowing other cores to deal with more important tasks. Same warning as earlier applies though. Be careful.

For those who are less at home dealing with computers or would rather a more technical, as averse to my summarized, guide, as well as some ways to make the setting of these affinities and priorities more permanent, head over to this article here by techradar.com for walkthrough of these tricks. They were a huge help in getting things to run noticeably quicker for me. (A godsend for an impatient person like me. Also, they effectively saves me brain damage from repeated facedesking)

GPU

If the CPU is the brain of your computer, then the GPU is it's artistic wife. The GPU, which is situated on your graphics card, handles all the graphics calculations and displaying your computer does. (It's what's letting you read this, if you're not sure.) Of course, today's software and games such as the upcoming The Witcher 3 and Photoshop CC, do a lot of calculations, and for frugal people such as me, our older graphics cards tend to suffer under the strain a little. While to be technical, there's not much I can do for any fellow Photoshop artists since you're looking for quality obviously, gamers will find that with some clever manipulation of the settings in the associated Graphics Control Panels that go with the drivers of Graphics cards, they can get a far smoother performance in their games. This has been invaluable to me by allowing me to play games such as Assassins Creed 3 on a relatively puny Nvidia GT-610 card by forcing the use of minimal settings in the control panel instead of in game settings. 

For a blow by blow of the functionality in the Nvidia and AMD control panels and how precisely they can let you fine tune your use, I suggest checking out this article by pcworld.com. The information is laid out well and will surely have something for even some of the more experienced users. (And if not... well, I'm flattered that you would read through information you already know just because you like me.)

Glary Utilities

Hmmm. You may be wondering why I'm talking about a program instead of RAM in general. Quite simply, because Glary Utilities is a highly effective program for a multitude of reasons ranging from scheduled maintenance of various system components, the fixing of broken registry's which can often cause issues in your computers running, to the removal of temporary files accrued while surfing the web, (which can becoming gigabytes of wasted space), and the optimization of your computers boot-up sequence. It also has some other more unorthodox functions which I personally have never really needed to use, but may be useful to others. But the boot sequence optimization is easily one of the more handy faucets of this program, allowing you to stop irritating programs from starting up unless you want them to, and also allowing you to delay the start-up of specific programs so that your computer can get functional sooner. It even gives you a statistic on your relative boot speed compared to other users.

Basically, this program does a lot for your computer, it does it easily, with almost no chance of wrecking anything, (unless you do a defrag of your system registries and the power goes out... that's happened to me.), and best of all, it does it for free. I highly suggest you go over to glarysoft.com and download it. (Or don't. I'm not forcing you to do anything. But it could help. Actually, it probably will help.)

Game Optimizers and other "Could help" programs

There are many programs out there that claim to be able to optimize computers during the playing of games or for other tasks to improve computer performance. They supposedly do this by disabling unnecessary background processes and other small tricks which are aimed at freeing up resources for whatever you're trying to do. While I cannot provide a definitive answer as to whether these programs are actually effective in their pursuits, it's worth noting that many an article, such as this one by howtogeek.com which discusses the effectiveness of the Razer Game Booster. To summarize what they say and give my opinion on the subject, Windows is a complicated operating system, and it's likely that these game boosters use more resources trying to stop parts of Windows from working than just letting them happen, not to mention the fact that it must use system resources to run itself. So in the case of computer users who run an effectively optimized computer, perhaps by using the aforementioned Glary Utilities, the effects of the game booster are negligible at best; though less experienced computer users with a lot of unnecessary background processes might find these programs to be of use.

Anyways, I hope that you've found something useful in this post which will be handy in squeezing out as much as you can from your hardware. Got a suggestion for something I missed or another useful trick, feel free to leave a comment below, and maybe even share this with a friend who's been complaining about his old computer. As always, I hope you have/had an AWESOME day.

Keep well mio compadre's.