AI Love Letter

There's been a lot of talk lately about OpenAI's ChatGPT and its capabilities, so here we look at using it to generate poetry and / or old-fashioned love letters.

zoso.ro certificate expired

We have recently learned that the self-appointed “father” of Romanian blogosphere or blogo.ro-oaie had allowed the HTTPS (security) certificate for his main website, the zoso.ro blog, to expire. Visitors to his blog were greeted with the certificate error below.

Mayor Gabriela Firea takes Blogger to Court and Cleaners

An important blogger in an Eastern European country was sued by that country’s [major city] Mayor. We hope he’s appealing, even though he's not so personally.

Game of Thrones S08E02–Death has many faces

Having watched Episode 2 of Season 8 a little before it’s official projection, I thought I share with you my thoughts. If you read it before watching, this should be enough to peak your interest; after, feel free to tell me if we’re on the same page.

Looking at Vlogging

Spurred by the ROTLD announcement I started considering monetizing my blogs. That means, for most of them, a new look and more frequent posting. I started by looking at a few Romanian blogs and even considered vlogging or video blogging.

ROTLD moves .ro ccTLD to yearly renewal

Some annoying news from our TLD administrator, ROTLD: they will start to charge for domain names so that Romania “is aligned .. to policies adopted all around the world”.

OLW OpenLiveWriter Happy Happy Joy Joy

Microsoft has released Windows Live Writer (WLW) code on GitHub, under the moniker Open Live Writer. I downloaded it right away.

Submitting articles while preserving formatting

Virtually all websites accept now articles and most will actively court collaborators. While some have built-in mechanisms for article submission, many accept them by email only. Here we look at two ways to ensure that your article formatting is preserved without complicating the editor's life.

OSS WLW and quitter bloggers

As blogging is dying, those of us who still cling to this habit are occasionally baited by news we'd like to think will come true, only to be proven otherwise. One such news items suggests that Microsoft might release the source code of Windows Live Writer or WLW.

Disqus support fatigue

#Disqus has become the de facto standard in commenting, being used not just by small blogs, but even major newspapers and other high-traffic sites. I was one of the early adopters of Disqus, after having tried the Blogger 'left-behind' system, then the Intense Debate which ended up acquired by Wordpress parent. Compared to alternatives, Disqus is still the best, but there have been and still are problems, and that is what this article is about.

The 2015 CBC Creative Competitions

I have only learned about this competition now, and decided to participate. It ends soon (March 1) - so if you're interested, you'd better send your stuff in soon! Before you spend the time to read more about, know the limitations: Canadian citizenship or permanent residence, 1200-1500 words, $25 entry fee.

Styling links with the rel attribute

One interface improvement I was planning to implement but have yet to do so is styling links with a favicon. This can be done via JavaScript, by getting the client browser to do the work, or simply with rel attribute styling.

Amazon Affiliate linking made easy

Affiliate marketing is a great idea if you can trust the company you essentially work for to pay you and if your volume of referrals is sufficient to pass their threshold and result in income. There are many people who claim to make a good income this way, but as far as I am concerned most such claims are exaggerations. Nonetheless, in this article we'll be looking at how to easily generate links with your affiliate tag embedded.

Who was Andrew Sullivan in Blogging?

I recently read about some blogger - Andrew Sullivan - announcing his retirement from blogging. I don't care much about celebrities, so I did not think much of it. And yet, this announcement has dominated a sizable chunk of news media, warranting a deeper look into it.

WLW or Windows Live Writer 2012 Portable–redivivus

With so many reports decrying the death of blogging, I thought I share with you what is most likely the last article ever on Window Live Writer or WLW - more precisely, how I am moving it and backing it up and how I am planning to move away from it.

Moar Refreshments (mai multe piscoturi)!

The Romanian word “piscoturi”, loosely translated as “refreshments,” has become associated with the meagre price deontology or blogger ethics commands on the online advertising market (i.e., “piscotareala”) in that many are willing to sell not only their blog, but their soul and their mother’s soul for a few cookies and a coffee. Being a writer is a job everybody would love to have, except the writers themselves. Few other jobs (except maybe acting or singing) have as many people trying and so few succeeding. Being a blogger is somewhat less glamorous than being a writer, at least not in the traditional sense of the (former) word, as it combines traits of several other fields, such as IT, publishing, PR, but it still has a strong creative component. In this article, we take a look at the Romanian refreshment (piscot) market.

Combining Two Blogger Blogspot Blogs

I have long ago started several blogs as I have quite a few areas of interest and points of view, some apparently contradictory. I wanted to explore different sides of my personality but as it often happens, I never had enough time to fully develop some of these blogs. Since I hardly have enough time to update them any more, it makes sense to combine some under one single address.

Feedburner Feed Stats–useless

I have recently decided to suppress the FeedCount, "another cool way to promote your feed" - a Feedburner option. I found that my subscriber count varied wildly, with a minimum below my email subscriber count, suggesting that there is something very wrong with the way Google has modified said algorithm after taking over this service. How wildly?

AdSense, Chitika and advertising alternatives

Having covered recently how to modify a Blogger template (i.e., Layout) to add AdSense to your Blogger / Blogspot blog, we shall now look at a different way of placing said ads and also other advertisers, beyond Google’s AdSense.

Google SERP Ranking on ccTLDs–iMacro script

I recently abandoned a domain name, having moved a blog to another domain name. That name was quickly acquired by a spammer and, concerned that he scores higher in searches in certain countries, I decided to write a script to check.