RobiNZ CAD Blog

The joy of a hosted blog

TypePad was briefly off-line this week but was pretty much fixed by the time I saw this tweet: We really appreciate our bloggers - through this frustrating downtime you have been gracious, witty, and tenacious. Thank you very much! — Typepad (@typepad) March 5, 2014 They were subject to a distributed denial of service attack (and were not alone*): Update on Recent Typepad Downtime - Everything Typepad On Wednesday from approximately 1:15 to 3:45PM Pacific Time, we experienced downtime which prevented the Typepad application and blogs from loading, and we are truly sorry about that. The downtime was due to... Read more →

Kiva and RobiNZ Blog team milestones

The video shows what Kiva microloans are about and some of the proceeds* from this blog are allocated to a Kiva Lending Team. 2013 was a big year for Kiva and closed with a significant milestone for the blog team. Thanks for your support 10,000 times over. Kiva Lending Team: RobiNZ Blog A team since Dec 10, 2008 This team shows loans funded from Supplier Donations, TypePad crediting hosting costs and additional Advert income. The 'Amount Loaned' is a total of donated funds + reinvested loan repayments. * The balance goes towards one off donations to other Charitable organizations. Read more →

The blog stats “Are you human?” test results

A few days ago a post asked Are you human? Prove it! by sending an email. It was a rather unscientific way to see how web stats relate to actual readers who will take action in a 24 hour period. So what happened in the stats? According to the site stats there were: 501 Visits, 468 Absolute Unique Visitors, 652 Page views According to FeedBurner the RSS feed generated 44 views (in feed readers and on the web) which resulted in 54 clicks. What happened in the inbox? I asked people to reply via email. There were 26 messages and... Read more →

The blog stats test: Are you human? Prove it!

The Question: The FeedBurner subscription count on my blog varies between 500-3500/day (?). TypePad and Google tell me several hundred to thousand/day land here via search, direct visits or social media. Stats are nice but wonder how many of those numbers are real vs “search bots”, and the like, so thought it worth testing. The test: NOW CLOSED – The results are HERE If you’re reading this, are human and can send an email: To: Subject: I’m human Body: 10c for Kiva I’ll add nz $0.10 for every email received to the RobiNZ Blog Kiva fund. It may validate those... Read more →

Thanks TypePad, helping me support Kiva

TypePad have generously waived the hosting fee for my account again this year. This has enabled some Kiva loan contributions which I added last night. Kiva leverages micro fund organisations so these are loans, not donations, but I re-loan repayments as they accumulate. Thanks to TypePad for the support and Kiva for making it so easy to mange the distribution and reporting. PS: RobiNZ Blog is now on the Kiva Bloggers List. If you are interested in being involved see this post on the Kiva Blog for the complete list and on-line signup details. Read more →

Ribbon Hero! A Microsoft Office game from Office Labs

I only just found, and installed, this but had to share it due to my ribbon affection. It’s a “game” that aims to improve your Office skills while you work. Read all about it on the Office Labs blog: Play Ribbon Hero and hone your Microsoft Office skills - Office Labs Hi! I’m Jennifer Michelstein, a Program Manager and casual games enthusiast in Office Labs. My current project is Ribbon Hero, which works on Vista and Windows 7, and in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word 2007 and 2010. Ribbon Hero watches what features you do and don’t use, and then it... Read more →

Want your own “Love the Ribbon”?

Due to popular demand, ok a couple of comments after posting this, these are available at RobiNZ Blog Store. Any profits from these sales will go to RobiNZ Blog Kiva Micro Fund Lending Team. NOTE: As I don’t have rights to reproduce a real product ribbon the CafePress image has a brand less generic ribbon in the arrow portion. See what this is all about on my The Love the Ribbon page Read more →

Merry Christmas

Happy Holidays, thanks for visiting & clicking! Read more →

Thanks TypePad!

i couldn't get Quicken to reconcile recently, then realised it had entered the annual TypePad hosting fee (as a scheduled transaction). It was out of balance as TypePad have generously waived th... Read more →

2008 Blogging Highlights

About this time I do a Blog related review of the year so here goes… Best Blog Discovery: This was the year I started reading SolidWorks blogs . That may seem strange considering I don't use... Read more →