mattgadient.com

A few years ago, the only place you would see an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) was on a server. Many companies and institutions couldn’t afford to have their server being abruptly shut down by the weather, or when other issues were wreaking havoc with the power company. A UPS, while not terribly cheap, was an effective solution to deal with minor power outages.

In recent years, the price of a basic UPS has dropped significantly. What used to cost hundreds of dollars is now available for under $100, and sometimes even in the $15-50 range. Even if you’re not plagued by continuing power issues, it might make sense for you to buy one of these devices. continue reading…

Some CMS programs have an issue when you try to put specific code within the site. Joomla is one of them. If you try to put ads in a content page with the “script” tag in them, the tag becomes garbled enough that your ad doesn’t show.

Adsense
There are a couple Adsense options that I’m aware of. continue reading…

Today I made the switch. I’d been considering moving to WordPress for the last week. First, I’m going to tell you how I switched, and then I’ll tell you why. continue reading…

Power Supply Review

Fortron Sparkle FSP/SPI – ATX-400PN
400W ATX 12V 20/24 PIN 120MM Fan
P4 AMD Ready OEM w/Noise Killer
P/N: ATX-400PN-B204

After a few changes in our home network, namely the addition of a computer acting as a file/print server, I was in the market for a new power supply unit. The computer already had a power supply, but it was the typical no-name type included with a cheap case. I was looking for a quality PSU with a low price tag attached – not always an easy feat. After some searching, I came up with the Fortron ATX-400PN from NCIX.com. The regular price was a little over $40, and the sale price was $37.98 CDN. continue reading…

A bios flash gone bad can kill your bios. Yes, sometimes you can create a boot disk that automatically reflashes it, but sometimes it’s fried.

So what do you do if you’re in this situation? ABIT will send you one for free. continue reading…

Usually when there’s talk about computer power supplies, the main concern is one of the following:

• low price
• quiet (low noise)
• sufficient wattage
• stable voltage on the +3.3 +5 and +12 volt rails

Rarely is the efficiency a big concern. However, it should be. continue reading…

Last night, I decided to start up another website. This one was going to use a subdomain redirection script. I registered xyURL.com, found a script, and finally today finished setting it up on the site. “What’s a subdomain redirection script?” you might ask. Quite simply, it’s a script that automatically generates subdomains on a website and allows those subdomains to point at various URLs. These scripts in particular allow a user to register a subdomain, and then point that subdomain to one of their web pages or web sites. In my case, someone can register http://username.xyurl.com and have it point to their own website. continue reading…

Two days into Chitika, and I was faced with some pretty discouraging results… Adsense was performing very much the same – quite surprising, as I expected a 50% drop. I was faced with perhaps a 10% drop. Chitika on the other hand was not performing… at all. That’s right, much to my surprise, there was 0 revenue. Yes there were ad impressions, and no, not one click.

Reasons? Well here are a few possibilities that went through my mind…. continue reading…

The first web host I ever used was CanadianWebHosting.com. It wasn’t for me, rather my father’s site, and we were looking for a Canadian-based web host for his small business. They offered domains for $15/year, and 100mb monthly storage / 5GB montly transfer for about $5/month.

A couple years later, I was looking to obtain my own domain name and web space for a small site. continue reading…

Background

Most of my sites use Adsense, but as wonderful as Adsense is, it’s not perfect. For those who don’t know how Adsense works, it’s a form of “contextual advertising”. What happens is Adsense scans the content of your web page, and provides ads that are targeted to the user, based on the content of your page. That’s what contextual advertising is all about. Really neat idea actually.

Except there’s a problem… Sometimes Adsense guesses wrong. continue reading…