Jon Sullivan Diary

The Fit Is Go!!!! - Jul 1st, '09

1) BatGrl was toying with the idea of getting a new car a while back, and though that's unlikely to actually happen, it's fun to think about what sort of car she might get. Something small, lots of room, practical, four-door, room for four adults, plenty of cargo space, safe, media savvy, etc. The clear choice it seemed to me was the Honda Fit. It's gotten glowing reviews, and many reviewers have been calling it a Tardis since it has way more room on the inside than it appears to on the outside.

Unfortunately the catchy slogan Honda decided to use in their advertising - The Fit Is Go!!!! - is somehow very annoying to Miss BatGrl, so the car is off the table, as it were. Perhaps that dislike has something to do with me shouting gleefully "The Fit is GOOOOOOOOOO!!!" every time I see one.

I only mention all this since I recently noticed that Honda is using the terms fierce and menacing in the Fit marketing now. If they would only have claimed the car is stern the trifecta would be complete. This is all an inside joke I doubt anyone but myself and the Bat Scowler will understand.

2) Drupal is growing on me. And at the same time I'm rewarming to an idea I had years ago - If I had 10 sites doing as much traffic as the photo site I could retire my day job. Trouble is, setting up and maintaining that many sites would be an admin nightmare. But..... Drupal makes it all pretty painless. Assuming I can come up with content the rest is easy.

Sites that fit that business model have to be good at one thing though - Drawing Google traffic from people who won't find what they want, thus making the ads look better than the content. At least for folks who aren't regular readers.

So...... Now I need ideas for such sites. Photography? Cooking? Warcraft? Reviews? Patio gardens?

11 Comments

Too Much - Jun 29th, '09

1) Way too much. Between working 12 hours a day, trying to get out on the weekends, and getting back up to speed on current web technologies, I just have too much on my plate. I still don't have all the party photos formatted, and now we have a bunch more photos from the OB street festivals and chili cookoff we went to Saturday. So..... we went to a chili cookoff. We had a great time. You won't hear about it for another week most likely.

I think that means my blog is really going to be about what happened to me 1-2 weeks ago.

2) I've put all of the "private" Montana party photos up on the private SmugMug site (store link to the left). I think there are some pretty good ones there. Let me know if you need the password. Mom has it too.

3) I'm currently working with the Drupal CMS. So far it seems pretty robust, but it's causing all sorts of unknown 500 errors on the server. Which is very bad.

But moving away from the old and busted CMS that is running this site is likely a good idea. It's good at what it does, but there are so many other free tools now that are much better. No sense rewriting the code here. Hopefully it will end up working seamlessly without errors, but so far it's looking seriously complicated in terms of tracking down that sort of random stuff.

2 Comments

Steal This Photo - Jun 26th, '09

I found this thread very interesting in light of how my photography "business model" works.

The article in question is someone arguing that it's perfectly okay to find an artist's work online, download a digital image of that work, and then make prints to decorate your home, all without paying the artist or even letting them know. Her point is that you can have great art in your home without paying a fortune, because it's fair use.

Many in the thread are countering that the artist only put the work online to try and make money, and if you decorate your home without paying you are literally stealing. The argument seems to be that by doing an end run around the price an artist would charge you are straying into commercial use, thus fair use doesn't apply.

Most of the thread is taken up by a slap fight over what fair use really means (which is silly, as even lawyers don't agree on what it means), and whether artists throw away all their rights by putting their work online.

I find it all amusing. I put my work online, invite anyone in the world to print and hang it to their heart's content, and then deposit checks every month from ads sales and donations. In other words, the exact horror which is upsetting the artists the most is the exact way I'm making money. Sure, I'm only making a small amount. But I also don't have to run a gallery, or take wedding photos, or stress over marketing, or deal with customers.

For me, the article author's suggestion to print out things on the Internet is pure gold. Yes, please, find art online and print it out.

2 Comments

Photo Stuff - Jun 25th, '09

Miss BatGrl has a ton of pictures from the Montana party - here, here, here, here.

As for my photos, I'm still working on them. However, I do have some of the photos from the Idaho move up on the SmugMug site. To see those use the "Store" link over to the left here, then go to the Sullivan gallery. You'll need a password which I'll send you if you ask. If you see a picture you want, click on it and you'll see a "buy" button. That will let you get prints, or merchandise, or download a hi-res version. All of that is at cost except for the downloads which cost 50 cents (I can't do anything about that I don't believe).

The idea is that people will either have an easy way to get prints for the family photos, or download the file and print it themselves.

I'll have the party photos up soon, I just need to get some free time. Working 12-15 hours days is cutting into my photo time.

3 Comments

I Hate AdBlock - Jun 23rd, '09

I'm slowly moving over to using Firefox as my primary browser and giving up on Opera. The main problem is that hardly anyone uses Opera, and Firefox is by far the most popular browser right now - 46% use Firefox, with 41% using IE. With so many people using it, Firefox is just going to have more support and more of a future.

The problem is that Firefox has a very easy plugin architecture. And one of the most popular plugins is AdBlock. This basically just removes ads from the pages you're looking at. That sounds wonderful, but one of the things it removes by default are the Google ads on my photo site. Which means that a significant percentage of people visiting my site never see the ads. Which means that the only income I get from the site isn't even seen by an increasing number of people.

I see myself as a "good" user of banner ads. I give stuff away, and the ads seem to be targeted at people who will actually find them useful. More pointedly - The ads allow me to give valuable things away for free. This seems like a good thing. And I'm not getting rich, I'm barely paying for the thing.

Over the last few years I've seen more people coming to the photo site, but at the same time ad revenue has been going down. I can't help but think that Firefox and AdBlock are the issue here. And as more and more people get AdBlock I will end up moving closer and closer to the point where I have to take the site down.

But I have no idea how to deal with that. AdBlock doesn't care about whether an ad is a good thing. They just want a scorched earth policy. Hopefully I can find a work around.

4 Comments

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