So,  what have I been up to? Well…

1)  I have decided to up the amount of support I offer on Ubuntu Forums.  Generally lurking about more and posting whenever I can help someone.

2)  Playing around with Gambas still.   I even compiled an application,  though Paultag has somehow broken it because it won’t  install on his personal computer 

3)  Being brave I have gotten involved with alpha testing of Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04.  I have only had a couple of problems so far,  no real issues.  Biggest one seems to be the lack of battery level icon.    Hopefully nothing too difficult to fix

4)  For some reason I have decided to try and get on Ubuntu Beginners Team Council.   Hopefully I can take the team forward and restrore it to its former glory.  I think I have to try and repair the damage.   I shall try my best.

Rather brief summary of the events of recent days,  but pretty accurate.  Works been the same as usual really.  Busy,  technically challenging and headache causing.   For some reason I like working where I am   Guess I am lucky.

Sitting in today, watching traffic buzzing by, and faces nosing in
A victim of regret, it glitters and it fades away, like silver turning grey
Washed it all away, waiting for this dream to end, before it sucks me in

I’m climbing high, up above the streets and rows of neon lights
I’m holding out my hand but I’m alone
Wish I could show you
Wish you could see through my eyes
Tomorrow shines through
But I’m missing yesterday

Crashing on the ground, the silence seems to suffocate, and bury me again
Waiting for a taste, of happiness to lift me free, and carry me away

Lost another week, feeling like a leper in, a world of vanity
It’s killing me today, addiction pulls you down, you know
And she’s the drug I need

Wish I could show you
Wish you could see through my eyes
Tomorrow shines through
But I’m missing yesterday
Wish I could show you
Wish you could see through my eyes
Tomorrow shines through
But I’m missing yesterday.

I am looking forward to seeing the new theme out on the desktop environment.   Very nice to finally see the back of brown   This is definitely a good move forward.  It looks cleaner,  less childlike and very professional.  Top job by the design people

More pictures of the new look can be found here. It includes new website look,  logos and themes.  Quite the overhaul

Lets start at the weekend.  Saturday I was just about over a cold so decided to try and sort out my new passport.  I got the forms for a biometric passport from a post office.  It should be pretty easy to get and even better news that it doesn’t need to be counter signed by my doctor

Sunday I went to a medieval market.  It was REALLY good fun looking at all the little nick knacks.  I picked up a couple of wooden chests and also a new fox skin.    A little pricey,  but I saw it and wanted.  Simple as that really,  a bit of spontaneity in my otherwise boring life.

Monday was very busy at work.  I have been working on getting our new Fedora 12 file server working properly.  Its been a real practical education.  Got to have a play with SAMBA and WOL.     That was fun,  I even learned a little more about mapping network drives in Microsoft Windows XP.   Everything was unfortunately returned to its original state as I hit a few problems that could not resolve quickly.  Mainly permissions based.  Looking to address the situation when time allows.

Today I have been doing some scripts that will produce sage compliant csv files for one of our web order systems.   Nothing new here,  just a little housekeeping.   Killed a few hours today,  so wasn’t too bad.  Looking forward to going into the office tomorrow.  Pretty sad I guess,  but I have learned what is really important is personal enjoyment.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics  about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that the product is aimed at marketers as opposed to web masters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew. It is the most widely used website statistics service, currently in use at around 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites.

GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.

Integrated with AdWords, users can review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals). Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. These can also be monetized. By using GA, marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, providing the information to optimise or cull campaigns.

In my opinion it is a very powerful collection of tools to be using.  It will give feedback on many different aspects of your site.  I mainly use it to track visitor origin,   time on the site,  most popular pages,  bounce rate and traffic sources.  I flung a few “technical” words just then so let me define them all

Visitor Origin:  The country of origin that the user who visited your site came from.  GA displays these on a map,  which is a really nice visual representation of the data.

Time On The Site: How long the visitor stayed on your site.  GA also allows this to be broken down to individual pages on your site.

Popular Pages: The pages which your visitors are drawn to.   GA displays this information by means of a percentage of all visits

Bounce Rate: It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.  A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-time-out occurs. There is no industry-standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session time-out of the analytics tracking software.

Traffic Sources: This indicates where visitors were before coming to your site.   For example you may have a twitter account that directs people to your site via links.  You could see how effective that is at getting people to visit your site.

Okay,  so this sounds good.  How do I get it working?

As mentioned before this is a Wordpress Blog.  This is important because I used a plugin on this site to use this tool.

I used the plugin :  Google Analyticator

First you will need a Google account setup.  You can created one on this page.  It should take less than 5 minutes to get going   Once that is done you will need to sign up for GA.  You can do this here.    Simply enter in the required information and you should at the end of this process have a Google Analytics UID shown to you.  Very important to copy it.

After you have installed and enabled the Google Analyticator  plugin visit the settings page and enter your Google Analytics UID.  Simple as that!  Google Analyticator has a FAQ and Support page.  If you have any problems I suggest you read them   If all went well you will then be able to log into Google Analytics and monitor your site traffic.  Please note that it may take upto 36 hours for the tracker to become fully operational.

Coming Soon: Using Google Analytics on regular web pages.  Also Search Engine Optimisation for Images.

Blue Eyes
Holding back the tears
Holding back the pain
Baby’s got blue eyes
And she’s alone again

I am not really sure what brought it on,  I guess its just one of those random things.   I thought about trying to do two new things.  First I wanted to use a timer and second I wanted to try and get a system beep.  The best way I could think of combining these two elements would be to build a countdown timer that produces a beep when the time is up.

Here is the code for you to look at:

#!/usr/bin/python
import time
import threading

msg = ’Input Time In Minutes: ’
uin = raw_input(msg).strip()
intSecAsMin= int(uin) * 60

class Timer(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self, seconds):
self.runTime = seconds
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
def run(self):
time.sleep(self.runTime)
print ’\a’
print ”Time Up!”

t = Timer(intSecAsMin)
t.start()

Sadly the beep part is not working.  I have tried one or two things but nothing seems to work.  I have also started a thread on Ubuntu Forums seeking help.  I am beginning to think the only way to produce an audio alert would be to have the python script play an mp3 file.  Not quite what I am after but an alternative.  Still,  its been a fun little program I wrote for no particular reason.   Learnt one or two things,  so not a complete waste of time.

Edit:  Wordpress seems to have messed up the indintation and consiquently the code will now not run without some adjustments.

The Sun Will Shine On You Again
A Bell Will Ring Inside Your Head
And All Will Be Brand New

Come Alive, Come On In
Here’s Something That You Know
The World’s As Wide As Your Life Is Thin
So Entertain Your Goals

I Can Tell You What You Wanna Hear
I’ve Been There Once Before
You Pulled Me Through My Empty Nights
Sleepless On Your Floor

The Sun Will Shine On You Again
A Bell Will Ring Inside Your Head
And All Will Be Brand New

I really  enjoyed my trip despite the very cold weather (-4 degrees celsius during the day).  During my visit we decided to go and see one or two museums.  Boring I know,  but their is a limit to how often you can go see La Tour Eiffel and such like.

As promised to Pleia2 here are some pictures from The Musée Rodin.  Hope you like

We also went to the Musee d’Orsay and were able to view the Van Gough exhibition,  not to mention wonderful works by Pissarro and Monet. Sadly still in the middle of sorting the pictures out,  but I will post them soon.

I am already thinking about my next trip to France,  possibly somewhere new.  Maybe Toulouse or Monaco.  Definitely South,  but not exactly sure.   Time to start looking at the map and making plans!