Aug 24 2009

Kittens Available Soon In Astana

Category: Dasha&Kittens,Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 3:47 am

Tishka (Dasha’s daughter) has had four kittens this Sunday, and once they have been weaned and are ready for the big wide world without their Mummy around, they will be available (free) to anyone prepared to give them a good home.

NOT Tishka's Kitten. Just Cute.

So, if you live in Astana, know how to look after cats, and are interested, click the Contact page for e-mail addresses etc., or leave a comment here.

(Fairly) Obviously, the image above was just a google search, as the kittens themselves are very small, and living over at the in-laws. Will try and grab some proper ones next weekend. By which time, Dasha, these kitten’s Grandma, may have had her litter.

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Jul 28 2009

SearchTerms Tagging 2

Category: WordPress — ChrisM @ 6:25 pm

Just wanted to write a quick post about a (WordPress) plugin I’ve started using recently. It is called SearchTerms Tagging 2 (I’m guessing I missed version 1?), and the idea behind it is quite simple.
As you may know from my posts about the WP GotLucky plugin, I find it interesting to see what people were searching for when they found my blog. Obviously a lot tends to be based around Astana or Kazakhstan in general, but sometimes people are looking for quite specific information about a software configuration issue they have, or for other people’s thought on a holiday destination. With the GotLucky plugin, I have an RSS feed and e-mails sent each time this site is found via a google search, but without running the search myself, I can’t tell specifically which post they ended up at. With SearchTerms Tagging 2, each post has a list of the search terms used to find the post (if this has occurred since the plugin was installed), and on the config page, I also have a list of which terms (and associated post) were found most regularly.
So, head on over to the page linked above if this sort of plugin sounds of interest you. If you have any queries/feature suggestions, check out the comments, where you’ll see the author is pretty quick and helpful in his responses/upgrades 🙂

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Oct 30 2008

100K Almost!

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 3:53 pm

As I write this post, the blog is 332 people away from having received 100,000 unique visitors since it began (back in July 2006). In case the phrase ‘unique visitor’ is new to you, this is basically one person visiting the site. If they return within 24 hours, the repeat visit does not count towards unique visitor statistics (unlike a simple hit counter). Also, any visits from bots or spiders (from the search engines mostly) are not counted at all by both statistic packages I currently use (AWStats and FireStats).
So, if someone visits my site once a day all through October, my stats would show an extra 31 unique visitors. If they visited 31 times in one day, only ONE unique visitor is recorded. Anyway, thanks to those who know me and pop in occasionally to see what is new in our lives over here, thanks to those of you who come here from the search engines (I use a plugin that pings me each time I rank well for a google search) and especially those of you who come back again.
I’ve recently cut down on the adverts displayed on this site, especially those that were only shown for American visitors – the ads weren’t at all content-orientated, sometimes looked tacky, and to be completely honest were not generating anything like the income I had hoped for. You’ll also never find any sort of pop-up, pop-under, or full page sponsorship advert before you can access the site; each to their own, but I hate them when I’m randomly browsing around, so don’t want to inflict them on my visitors.

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Nov 30 2006

200th Post

Category: In The Media,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 12:59 am

200 Down, Who Knows How Many More To Go?
OK, so I was too impatient to wait for the 200 post mark to pass naturally…
In case anyone is in any need of further proof that I didn’t just insult Mr Arafat’s widow in the e-mail below, check out THIS google search and spot the amazing similarity to other documented 419 scam letters, albeit with other front names attached…

And while I still have your attention, check out How to Calculate Pi by Throwing Frozen Hot Dogs (though, as the article freely admits, you could just press the Pi button on your calculator) & also the latest interesting declaration from our colleagues to the west – U.S. to North Korean leader: No iPods for you! (Link removed, article no longer present at CNN) Whilst I’m not known for blindly supporting any Bush strategy, at least this particular sanction isn’t likely to directly affect the daily life of your average North Korean.

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