Sunday, May 19, 2013

Meaning of the Name Jared

I was watching a TV show and they were talking about the meaning of their names and it got me wondering. My parent's never told me anything about the meaning of my name, except that my dad had known some kid that he met at a pizza place that was named Jared or something like that. It makes sense because I love pizza now - its one of my favorite foods and I love pizzerias. In fact I would love to own and operate a pizzeria in the future, its one of my future goals. I would love to be able to have a great slice of pie whenever I feel like it. My city doesn't have any great pizza places, so I would love to be able to show the people of my town what they are missing.

Anyways, I looked up what my name means and here is what I found out: My name is a variant of the Hebrew name Yared. In the Biblical Book of Genesis, Jared was the sixth link between Adam and Noah; he was the son of Mahalaleel and the father of Enoch. He also lived 962 years. Another spelling is Yared who is the grandfather of Methuselah. My name could also be a variant of the name Yered which is another name for Moses. But what I wanted to know was the meaning of my name. Apparently Jared means "To descend", "descendant", "he who descended", or even "he who shall rule". In the Book of Enoch it is explained that Mahalaleel named Jared because during his lifetime the angels of the Lord descended to earth. I guess I'm the descendant of someone or something. Of whom I am not sure, but maybe in the future it will make more sense to me. Or perhaps angels are going to descend in my lifetime or something like that. Or maybe I am supposed to be a ruler of something in the future. Hmm, that sounds interesting... I like the last one the best. Being a ruler doesn't sound too bad to me.

I got the info from this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared and this page on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared.





Saturday, May 18, 2013

My New Software Development Site For Jared Connell Software

I just put together a site for my software development endeavors. You can visit my new software development homepage at: jared-connell-software.webs.com. Right now there isn't much to it, but I will update it as soon as I compile some programs to put on the site for download. I have a few apps that I am working on so I can finish them up and compile them into executable form so you can download them. Please visit the site and check back often. I appreciate all your support. I take comments, request, advice, and any thing else you want to tell me, so just drop me a message and I'll get back to you. If you have any feature requests or bug reports please let me know also. Thanks!

Please visit jared-connell-software.webs.com for all my current and future software development projects.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

NASA Maps Saturn's Moon Titan with Cassini Spacecraft

NASA has recently mapped Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, with the help of the Cassini Spacecraft. Titan has been called one of the most Earth-like places in our solar system. Titan is 1,600 miles accross, larger than the planet Mercury. However since theatmosphere of Titan is so thick and cloudy, it has been hard to make a detailed map of the planet with ordinary cameras. That is why NASA used the Radar on the Cassini spacecraft to make a 3D topographical map of Titan.

Check out the entire story with pictures of Titan here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-161&cid=release_2013-161

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

What Berry? Is RIM Dead?

RIM used to be the market leader in smart phones. Everyone who wanted a smart phone with a keyboard went with Blackberry. But that was then, now RIM is barely clinging on to a small fraction of their former customer base. Now Apple and Android pretty much own the smartphone market. But can RIM make a comeback?

RIM seems to think so. They seem to be doing everything they can to keep current users and attract new customers or old customers who have since switched to a competitor. At the beginning of the year they released a new phone to the market and just recently announced another model to be released soon.

But today RIM did something that every single pundit and analyst said was a horrible idea. RIM took one of their last proprietary features that people actually want, and made it public. That's right, RIM announced that they will be making their messaging service, BBM, public and available for use to other platforms and developers. BBM was once one of the main selling points for some Blackberry users. If all your friends and coworkers had Blackberry phones and were communicating on BBM you were missing out. With BBM you can message friends, join chat rooms with multiple friends, send pictures and other media, and do lots of other fun and helpful things.

So do you think that RIM can make a come back? Can they even stay away from bankruptcy? I think they can't. I am predicting right now that in about 1 1/2 - 2 years Blackberry will be bankrupt, or very close to it. Unless they have a great new invention that everybody can't live without, and they somehow get tens of thousands of new apps released on their platform in the next few months. If they don't do something very dramatic then Blackberry will go the way of the dinosaurs and the Betamax.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Stargate SG-1

I saw the Stargate movie in theaters when it was release many years ago and I heard about the TV shows that were created based on the franchise. I didn't have Showtime so I didn't ever get to see the TV show Stargate SG-1 at the time, but I recently saw the Stargate movie again and got interested in the shows. I wanted to see more of the Stargate universe and the rest of the story of Daniel Jackson and company.

So I got the DVDs and started watching. And let me tell you this show is addicting. I hate when people use that word with things that are not physically addicting, but this show leaves me thinking about it for hours on end until I can get back to my DVDs and finish watching. I watched over 20 episodes of season 1, almost an hour each, in less than a week. I am halfway into season 2 and I can't wait to see the rest of it. In fact, I am watching episode 14 of season 2 right now as I type this. So if you like science fiction or space related shows, or even if you don't I recommend checking this show out. I don't usually like the typical sci-fi movies and shows, I don't particularly like Star Trek or Star Wars, I've haven't even seen that many science fiction shows or movies as they don't really interest me. I try to watch Star Wars and I can't even get through any of the movies. But when I watch Stargate SG-1 I can't stop. I have to watch the very next episode to see what happens. When the first season ended with a cliffhanger I had to go out and get season 2 that very day. So I recommend to anyone and everyone that will listen to see this show as soon as possible. The franchise even spun off two straight to DVD movies as well as two more TV series: Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. So check these shows out if you can. I highly recommend them. Just make sure you have a few free days because you will want to watch all the episodes back to back in a row. You won't even want to go to the bathroom or eat if it takes you away from the show, so be warned! Check out some of the Stargate DVDs below:

Why The Fuck Can't I Say Fuck On TV? - Why Are Certain Words Banned On TV and Radio?

I understand that parents don't want their kids to see or hear certain things: violence, nudity, cursing - all the standard stuff that is banned or censored on TV. But why do they have to ban certain words just because they are on a certain list of seven dirty words?

They have all kinds of horrible things on TV all the time, including the nightly news. Every night the news shows people dying and talk about rape, murder, and many more worse acts. Even some children's show worse things than simple words like shit or ass. So what is so bad about the words shit, fuck, piss, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits? Why did they decide on these words anyways? Why not words like mekrob? I'd rather wolf down a whole bucket full of shit before I had another plate of mekrob again. If you ask me mekrob is a whole lot more offensive than getting your cock sucked or getting killed or something like that. The FCC is a government agency that was set up to monitor the communications systems that operate in this country. They are supposed to regulate things like bandwidth and frequencies to make sure that companies are operating within their assigned spectrums and things like that. Censorship has ruined cultures in the past, and I don't like what it is doing to our country. I think that censoring words and ideas can only lead to bad things. People and TV networks can censor themselves if they think that kids might see something that they shouldn't. It's not like they are going to show live sex acts during daytime TV where kids will see it. And besides, if kids want to see certain things they can see pretty much anything and everything on the internet. If kids can watch 'Two Girls, One Cup' on the internet, there is a lot more to worry about than what they can see or hear on TV or in movies. So I think that self censorship is the best. When a government tells it's people what they can or can't say then that is the loss of freedom. Especially in a country such as the USA where we are supposed to have free speech. The 1st ammendment guarentees every person in this country can say anything they want. Just because one word might be on some stupid list that means that we can't say it on TV. We can't ban words just because some people don't like them. If we do then what stops the government from banning all speech? What stops them from banning anything they don't want people to hear? Many other countries with a lot less freedom can say or do anything on TV that they want, so why can't we do so in the US? The internet allows people to talk about anything they want, using whatever language they want. So be sure to voice your opinion no matter what words you use. Otherwise soon your freedom of speech may soon not be there.

A Bus Life Blog

I take the bus a lot to get around, and on my travels I have realized that there are some funny events that take place on the bus. Some interesting people ride the bus, and in turn they have some pretty funny moments that I have witnessed. So I created a blog about some of the funnier trips that I have had on the bus. I call it A Bus Life. You can visit my blog in order to read about some of the funny events that I have seen. I plan on taking photos and videos also when I get a memory card for my phone. That way I can take pictures and videos on the bus without the people noticing. I don't want them to notice otherwise they might stop their funny behavior, or if I am real unlucky I might get beat up by some of the crazier ones. But for now I usually just write about some of the funny, odd, or even frustrating events that take place on the bus. Visit A Bus Life Blog to read more about my life on the bus.

Referral Spam - The Worst Way To Get Unqualified Traffic and Bad Links?

Short answer: yes. Long answer: absolutely.

If you don't know what referral spam is I'll give a brief overview. Whenever you click a link on a web page to visit another page, your browser tells that page the URL of the one that linked to it. This is stored in the web server's logs and is used in many analytics programs. This helps webmasters see what pages bring them traffic. Referral spam is when the referring web page is spoofed, usually by an automated program that takes a list of URLs and spams them all in a row. One of the most popular programs that does this is call PRStorm. I have used this app before and I talk about my experiences with it at the end of this article.

This spoofing shows up in logs, it usually is only visible to the webmasters themselves, but some sites make their analytics stats visible to the public on the web. This is what the spammers hope for because these pages contain links to the top referring sites, and since they are visible to the public they are therefore crawlable by the spiders of search engines. Other sites that do not display their stats online do not provide links to the spamming sites - the only person that will see the URL of the spammer is the webmaster who views the logs. Sometimes the webmasters will go through the logs and be curious about the sites that are referring traffic to their pages and visit the URLs that they find in the logs. This gives the spammers views to their sites, increasing their stats. And since many webmasters have the Alexa toolbar installed in their browsers, this helps increase their Alexa ranking as well. However most webmasters visiting sites that have spammed their own site do not like the fact that they have been spammed and obviously they are not interested in the spamming site so they are about as untargeted as traffic can get. So basically the spammers hope that every one in a million sites that they spam has a curious webmaster and that every one in a thousand has public stats visible online so that they can get a backlink. However I am sure that Google, Bing, Yahoo, and any other search engine knows about this little trick and they probably don't give much weight to links that are on analytic pages. Especially since there is no real content on these pages since it is just a bunch of numbers and other statistics. So even if the links do get counted, they are not good links. Pretty much all webmasters know that one good link is better than a whole slew of bad links. Some even claim that bad links harm their search engine standings more than they help.

So basically the whole process of spamming is a waste of time in hopes that they might get a few bad links and a few unqualified visits. I have tried this in the past on a few various sites and I know that I got few visits and I'm sure that all of them were just trying to find why my page referred visitors to them and once they realized it was fake they left immediately. And I never found any pages that actually included my site in their public analytic pages so I never even got any backlinks, whether they were good, bad, or indifferent. So I know that this is a waste of time from firsthand experience. So if you are wondering about referral spamming with PRStorm or another similar program, and whether it works or not, don't. It is a waste of time, bandwidth, and CPU power. I don't want to knock PRStorm or its developers, it works as advertised. It is just that the whole act of referral spamming is a waste of time and energy that is best spent elsewhere getting worthwhile links and visitors that actually want to visit your site. If I have learned anything about SEO in the past few years that I have been learning about it, it is that quality trumps quantity. So don't spend time getting thousands of worthless links. At best it will barely help your rankings. At worst it will get your site sandboxed. Try to create content that people want to link to because of its quality. Try to get visitors that want to visit your site. You want visitors but untargeted traffic is about as good as no traffic. They will not click your ads or buy your products, they will just visit and leave within seconds. Spam may work for some, but most spammers make users mad. So be a good webmaster and netizen and don't spam. Like they taught you in school - just say no!

I Am A Geek God! (Proof)

I always knew deep down that it was true. I think a lot of people around me like friends, family, coworkers, etc. felt it as well. Well now there is undeniable proof. Look below if you don't believe me.

My computer geek score is greater than 100% of all people in the world! How do you compare? Click here to find out!

Don't even try to come close. I am the god of geekiness! Bow to me!

Friday, May 10, 2013

Basenji Training Blog and Ebook

If you have a Basenji then you probably would like some more information on how to raise and train your dog. Basenjis can be a handful sometimes but they can also be a very great companion if you raise and train them properly. You simply need to train your Basenji in the correct way and he or she will be very obedient to you. Whether you want health info for you Basenji or tips on how to potty train and teach new tricks to your Basenji, this Basenji Training Guide is a very helpful resource. It has tons of information regarding Basenjis and how to raise and train them in the proper manner so that you and your dog will have the best possible relationship. Also soon there will be an Ebook that will be available on this site that will have even more information for you in one single resource that you can easily refer to any time you need help with your Basenji. So if you have a Basenji or know somebody that does, check out this site: Basenji Training Guide and Ebook.





Thursday, May 9, 2013

Las Vegas Guidebook Blog

As a Las Vegas Native, I am the perfect person to be the administrator of a Las Vegas Guidebook blog and eBook. So that is exactly what is happening. I have been posting pages and posts on my new Las Vegas Guide Blog and upcoming eBook. You can see the blog by visiting this link: Las Vegas Visitors Guide Blog. This blog is perfect for all people who visit or are planning to visit Las Vegas or any part of Southern Nevada around the Las Vegas Valley such as Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, Boulder City, Lake Las Vegas, Henderson, Paradise, etc. Whether you want tips on when and where to visit to how to get the best deals on travel and hotel stay or whether you want to know the best places to go and visit while you are in town, this is the best place to check out. As an insider in Las Vegas, I have all the best info on where to go and what to see, I have been to all the top places and seen all the hot sights that visitors would want to check out and I can give you tips and information on the best places to go. I also take advice on places to cover as well as questions about everything you may want to know about, so ask me anything and I will be sure to answer. Leave a comment on any of the pages, or send me a message if you want and I'll answer you as soon as possible. So to all upcoming visitors to Las Vegas, check out my blog here: Las Vegas Guidebook blog, and I will be publishing an eBook soon that I am working on, so check back often for that. I plan to offer it for all eBook readers and formats so please take a look, I do it for you guys, the visitors!




Bulldog Training Guide

If you love Bulldogs or know somebody who does, then this is a site that is worth checking out. My all new Bulldog Training blog and coming soon an accompanying eBook training guide tells all that you need to know for raising and training your Bulldog. From puppy to late adulthood, all Bulldog masters need a little bit of help with their dogs now and then. Although it is just starting out, this site will eventually have all kinds of information regarding Bulldogs, from health and grooming tips to guides on how to train them and teach them commands and tricks. Check back often for more and more information regarding Bulldogs and their training. Again here is the link: Bulldog Training Guide and eBook.




Thursday, May 2, 2013

Home Theater Do-It-Yourself Guide

Having been in the audio/video industry for most of my lifetime, I know a thing or two about home theaters and electronics. That is why I have put together a Home Theater How-To website and will soon be launching an Ebook to supplement it. I will detail everything there is to know about having a Smart Home, including a home theater, home automation, home security, and much more. Whether you want to upgrade you sound system to match your high end TV or you are starting from scratch and want an entire smart home, this Home Theater and Home Automation site has all the info you need. Everything from the basics of home theaters and smart homes, to designing and installing the entire system yourself, I can show you how to do it all. Just visit my Home Theater and Smart Homes site.