A new blog in RI consists of marketing tips. I?m still not really sure who runs it, but it?s not really that important to the story here. As one of his blogs (I do know it?s a ‘he’, but it will all make sense later!), he reviewed the advertising potential of the blogs.

As a starting point to find some local blogs, he headed to SNEBloggers.com, (Southern New England bloggers) and picked five blogs to review, mine included.

As my favorite comedian Mitch Hedberg did on his site when he released his first CD, I would now like to review his review.

“Briefly, I’ll review the premise: these reviews examine area blogs to determine what value they might have to advertisers, and what types of businesses might use them.”

I don?t think I’d be keen on advertising on this site. While I’m not going to rule it out, at the moment I’ve got no desire at all for that.

Each of this edition’s five entries will include the blog’s pluses, minuses, what types of businesses might want to advertise with them, and an overall “ad-worthiness” ranking of 1 to 5. I can’t emphasize enough that I’m not judging these blogs on innate quality, just on their advertising potential. The randomly chosen blogs might not have any desire to include advertisements, and if so, they can feel free to denounce me to the blogosphere.

With a statement that like sir, I would never denounce you to the blogosphere, rather I will now profess my respect to you. Nicely done!

After going through a bunch of blogs that aren’t mine…

An interesting personal blog with a good dose of computer talk mixed in, the site is ostensibly co-written by a husband and wife team.

Geez. In one sentence, he managed to say what I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to put it for years.

However, it took me ten minutes to find an article written by Matt, leaving me to figure that Jess, much like my wife, is firmly in charge. (Something about us whipped Rhode Island husbands…)

Yeah, it takes us about ten minutes, too. At least he gave us a couple articles a few weeks ago. Here’s hoping they continue! And, as we like to laugh, (or at least I do, now that I think of it), Matt’s not whipped because I say he’s not. Got it?

Pluses: The site has a lot of content, whether you just like a humorous look at women and sci-fi or something more technical. The writing is good, the formatting is good, and the use of pictures breaks up the text nicely. The gaming section has good advertising potential.

Wow, those are a lot of pluses. Again, nixing the advertising potential, at least he found the gaming section.

Minuses: It’s a personal blog, which has its drawbacks, and a lot of the technical content will only have a limited appeal.

Well, the technical content will have a limited appeal to technical people. Um, I’m pretty sure that’s the point.

Will Appeal to: Technies, gamers, whipped husbands. Local computer and video game stores would be the most likely advertisers.

Yup, see, I was right! Though I said technical people, not “technies”. He makes it sound like a derogatory word. And it will appeal to whipped husbands if they are allowed to read it, remember.

Overall Advertising Potential: 3 out of 5. This is pretty good for a personal blog…just goes to show you that good writing and a specific focus counts for a lot.

Again with the “good writing” bit. This guy’s OK in my book! Er, blog.

Overall Reviewing Potential: 4 out of 5. This is pretty good for a personal blog review. It just goes to show that telling the author they write well counts for a lot.

I warned you I spent a lot of time in the car. I was listening to Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” the other day while cruising down the highway. In honor of all the gender discussions lately, I thought it would be fun to celebrate us techy ladies for once…

Remember, you’ve been warned!

Sung to the tune of Gretchen Wilson’s Redneck Woman: Click for original lyrics

Well I ain’t never been the baby doll type
No, I can’t bear to be called vain, I’d rather type code all night.
In a chat room, or in on a message board, or fragging you while playing Quake,
I’ve got posters on my wall of an old sci-fi remake.
Some people look down on me, but I don’t give a rip.
I’ll stand Doc Martened right by my PC with a big hoop in my lip!

’cause I’m a high-tech woman
I run on high-speed baud
I create products from my source code
And I’ll use Firefox and Opera
And I keep my old Atari on
My TV all year long
Just so I can keep on playing old school games like Pong!
So here’s to all my sisters out there keeping it geeky,
Let me get a big “woot, yeah” from the high-tech girls like me, woot, yeah!

Dell and HP, well their stuff’s real nice.
Oh, but I can build the same damn thing from my spare parts for half price
And it still looks sexy, just as sexy, as those models on TV
No I don’t need no designer brand to overclock my PC!
Well you might think I’m dainty, just part of the d?cor,
But in the room where we play Doom, I just beat your high score!

’cause I’m a high-tech woman
I run on high-speed baud
I create products from my source code
And I’ll use Firefox and Opera
And I keep my old Atari on
My TV all year long
And I know all the words to every Monty Python song!
So here’s to all my sisters out there keeping it geeky,
Let me get a big “woot, yeah” from the high-tech girls like me, woot, yeah!

Well I’m a high-tech woman
I run on high-speed baud
I create products from my source code
And I’ll use Firefox and Opera
And I keep my old Atari on
My TV all year long
And I can watch my movies in DTS mode all night long!
So here’s to all my sisters out there keeping it geeky,
Let me get a big “woot, yeah” from the high-tech girls like me, woot, yeah!

Wow, another blog from me within two days of each other. I have been working at increasing the efficiency of our software and in the process and as a little reward to myself, I have taken today off and possibly Monday. It is a welcomed break from the pre-show hustle and bustle and the post show modifications. Lately we have been focusing on increasing the efficiency of our software and I needed an easy way to time how long it took for a function to execute. A timer is the best way to do it but in C++, the best I could find were the CTime and CTimeSpan objects. We have used those in the past but they are only accurate to seconds. I needed something a bit better that was easy, or easier to use. Ya see, it all relates back to my previous post about saving key strokes. I could write up a class to handle all this for me or just a global function but in the end, everywhere I used the timer, the number of keystrokes in comparison to the macro would be exponential. That?s the purpose of a macro anyway, to save time, or in this case, to tell it.

In C++, there are a lot of practices that are frowned upon but they exist. And they exist for a reason. The problem is, most people abuse them because they are lazy. In my case, yes there is a bit of laziness, but the macros I have developed are only used in debug versions of the software. Once the software is ready for release, the macros redefine themselves to nothing. In this situation, I see no problems using them. Below is the macro

KEY:
Comment Color
String Color
Object Type Color
Code Color
If you can’t guess it, i am a big fan of using color in code to provide easier readablity. Most development environments provide customizable options to allow for this. I higly suggest looking into it as it makes reading code 10 times easier.