gocek.com/net/org

Moved a webcam outside!

Mon, 30 Jun 2016 12:00:00 GMT

gocek.org now offers TWO webcam images from the Gocek house, and both are outside, at least for the next few months (while the indoor camera can handle the outdoor weather).

Ads at gocek.org

Thu, 03 Apr 2016 12:00:00 GMT

I have been gradually updating content on the gocek domains to be more "responsive" so that the pages appear properly on full-size PC screens as well as small phone screens. One of the things publishers must worry about are advertisements. Do ads negatively impact the content? Are ads always bad for all visitors, or are some ads OK for most visitors?

The gocek domains get about 35,000 unique visitors per month, according to my hosting company’s statistics program. Details are available on the site map page. I use Google Adsense to monetize my site. I make about $25 per month from ad clicks. This pays for the hosting and domain registration fees. Ad revenue has decreased over the last year or two. The decrease is partly due to the way visitors get information these days; much internet traffic in general has transferred from web sites to phone apps. Most gocek traffic comes from web searches, rather than branded information, so a gocek app probably doesn’t make sense.

Ad-blockers probably reduce my revenue. My response as a publisher is that Adsense ads support LEAN standards (see IAB LEAN The gocek domains don’t currently use HTTPS (that’s the E part of LEAN), because there are no logins or financial transactions here. (I’m thinking about HTTPS, but it costs money to do it right.) You won’t be exposed to huge ads here or popups/popupunders. Page load times are not noticeably affected by the ads. The ads scripts are a tiny portion of the overall page content and Google determines the context and serves the ads very quickly. Compared to a miserably slow site like Huffington Post, the gocek pages simply don’t hang up your browser.

We independent publishers are aware that advertising on some sites ruined your surfing experience. However, it remains the case that the internet isn’t free, and we white-hat publishers are trying to stay on the right side of the line between reasonable monetization and heavy ads that overshadow the real content.

Christian Symbols acknowledgements fixed!

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 12:00:00 GMT

See Christian Symbols Since I migrated this web site to Visual Studio 2015 last summer, the acknowledgments page for the Christian Symbols section has been missing. I just noticed the error today and replaced the page.

Two webcams!

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 12:00:00 GMT

gocek.org now offers TWO webcam images from the Gocek house!

Why are web designers always changing things?

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 12:00:00 GMT

Don’t you hate it when a web site you use changes its layout? OK, you probably don’t care much about gocek.org, but I mean, for example, your banking site or your favorite shopping site. It takes another few months to figure out where your information is. In designers’ defense though, technology is changing really fast. Many users have switched completely to a smartphone only a couple inches wide, and they expect gigabytes of data to pump through the device instantaneously. So, once in a while we have to rewite everything. Hope you like it.

Rednecks on NYS Route 104

Sun, 22 Mar 2015 12:00:00 GMT

I live near Rochester, NY and have family in Oswego, NY, so I have been making the drive along NYS Route 104 a lot for the last few months. What is it with you people? Do you really think it’s just bad luck when a snowmobile rider gets hurt, or might it be related to sledding through the woods at 60 MPH while road vehicles are passing each other on the shoulder because their trailers full of tree trunks have to get somewhere as soon as possible? Do you really think the Troopers patrol 104 so heavily because they hate you, or might it be that ticketing is so lucrative for the towns due to your redneck driving behavior? Do you really think that the red light can be ignored at the intersection with Route 3 near Fulton? Doesn’t the white strobe give you a hint that you really need to stop? I don’t know how to describe your driving without using the word "redneck".

The EAB battle continues

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 18:00:00 GMT

My insecticide arrived for combatting the Emerald Ash Borer as soon as the snow melts. There are six ash trees on my propery that I hope to save, so I have been using a soil drench product. Then again, with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the EAB, I have not heard that any trees on residential properties have died due to EAB. I don’t know the actual odds of my trees getting infected, even if the EAB comes to my town.

Brief scare with the furnace

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 12:00:00 GMT

Woke up this morning to see the morning thermostat program had not kicked in. We had had a furnace problem earlier in the winter and a switch was replaced, for a few hundred dollars, with a repairman’s warning that other parts are also old. But today, it turned out that when I pushed the thermostat clock ahead for daylight savings time, I bumped the day of the week and the program was set for Sunday instead of Monday. Still, we’re starting to look at new furnaces.

Amazon Affiliate rejection

Sun, 08 Mar 2015 12:00:00 GMT

The Amazon Affiliate program rejected my application. This would allow me to post ads for Amazon products and get a kickback if a buyer is referred by my site. The main reason is that gocek.org is a mish-mosh of content, and in many cases there is not a lot of content on any one thing. I get good traffic, but the contextual algorithms don’t know what to make of gocek.org. So, I’ll just keep on keeping on, such as to blog more.

Church of England to allow female bishops

Wed, 30 Jul 2014 12:00:00 GMT

On July 14, the Church of England’s Synod voted (at long last) to allow female bishops. This is a great step, even if it took too long. Queen Elizabeth should have beheaded someone over this delay and simply decreed it.

Selfies bad? Web sites good?

Tue, 25 Mar 2014 12:00:00 GMT

I was tempted to write some sort of rant about people who post selfies on Facebook. Then I remembered I maintain an elaborate web site dedicated to, well, me and my interests. Certainly, I say good things about other people, but still, it’s mostly about me, even if slightly more camouflaged than a selfie. It’s about my great struggle to optimize my search engine performance. It always shocks me that a guy who owns gocek.org, .net and .com can’t get a top 10 rank.

The pope is a good papist

Fri, 12 Jul 2013 12:00:00 GMT

Pope Francis this month cleared two former popes for sainthood: John XXIII (even though he has not been credited with the traditionally required second miracle) and John Paul II (on track to be canonized eight years after his death, beating the former fast-track record of 27 years for the canonization of Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva). So then, why these divergences from tradition? If sainthood is important, which is clearly the position of the Roman Catholic church, isn’t the process important? Regardless of Francis’ authority to make these adjustments, why adjust this process for these men? Are they just that saintly, or are do they get extra points for having been popes? I do not accuse Francis of trying to set himself up for sainthood, but what’s the rush for John and John Paul? John simply doesn’t have that second miracle, and John Paul left a legacy of sex-abuse coverups and Vatican scandal. I’m not saying John and John Paul would not eventually deserve sainthood, but one more time, why are they so special? If the traditional canonization process is flawed, then should all traditions be adjusted? Will we soon see women priests, same-sex marriages and birth control? Or, just more sainted popes?

Chicken soup

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 12:00:00 GMT

I will laugh in the face of winter storm Nemo as I make Grandma’s chicken soup. I suppose there’s not all that much special about it. I peel the chewy strips off the celery, but still, it’s just celery. It’s fun to think of Grandma, though.

Fracking

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:00:00 GMT

I used to be mildly against hydraulic fracturing. The continued exploitation of fossil fuel resources distracts us from the development of cleaner or renewable energy sources. But, then I moved from an all-electric house serviced by a cheap municipal energy provider to a house that uses both electricity and natural gas, serviced by a commercial provider that charges a LOT more for electricity. My new home’s summertime energy bills were three times my previous bills. Regardless of how long New York’s fracking discussions have dragged on, does anyone really believe that fracking will be outlawed in NYS forever? Opponents should be focusing on oversight rather than what I believe will be a fruitless quest for outright bans.

Scandals

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Regarding that federal GSA conference in Las Vegas that cost taxpayers 800 thousand dollars and cost some officials there jobs, it’s hard to even figure out why these conferences occur in the first place. I am not a fan of comparing government management to business management, because they really are different, but "team building" has to have its limits. The best we can now hope is that extravagant managers lose their jobs and are forced to take middle class, paper pushing jobs like the rest of the 99%.
As for the Secret Service mess in Cartagena, I have to believe that this is not an isolated incident. Our agents apparently bop around from country to country, partying their brain cells into oblivion. They got caught this time because one of them was too cheap to pay the hooker, and she made a stink.
Many federal workers travel frequently, and I don’t expect them to sit alone in their rooms when they’re not working, but taxpayers should not have to pay for it.

Health care USA

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Health care needed to be reformed in the USA. We elected Barack Obama and a bunch of Democrats in 2008. They reformed health care in the USA. So, what’s the problem? We should all be insured. We should have a single-payer system, but if that’s not possible, an insurance requirement is necessary. If you want to reduce the federal deficit, stop suing the government.

Important

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:00:00 GMT

If anybody really cared what Rush Limbaugh thought, Barack Obama would not be the president. Pro football players are paid to hurt each other; are we really just figuring this out? Prescription birth control should be covered by insurance, but women won’t achieve fairness for themselves by trying to pass revenge legislation that treats men less fairly. Iran had better hope that the USA does not get out of Israel’s way. The Church of England should consecrate female bishops, and the Episcopal Church USA should finalize an official same-sex marriage rite. The software isn’t finished until the last user is dead. Jesus used His gifts to do what He could; that’s what He asks of the rest of us.

Occupy Gocek

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:00:00 GMT

I don’t know what Occupy Gocek means, but it sounds cool.

Secure 511-NY feed fixed

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 12:00:00 GMT

The New York State traffic and road construction event feed switched from a standard to a secure HTML feed, and this broke my webcam page’s radio button, but it is up and running again.

Dan passed the bar!

Wed, 2 Nov 2011 12:00:00 GMT

Yes, he did!

The Future of Software Development

Mon, 4 Jul 2011 12:00:00 GMT

I’ve been reading some blogs during my long, American holiday weekend, and wonder what I’ll be doing as a professional software developer over the next several years. Certainly, it takes fewer developers today to create and support a feature set than it did in the past, but users constantly demand newer and better features, and there are simply more applications to write. I see articles about how Facebook and YouTube started with very few developers, but at the start, they didn’t do that much, and now those companies have many more employees of all sorts to support expanded features. Offshoring can be disconcerting if you’re on the wrong shore, but I think we’re already seeing that each shore will not undervalue its labor forever. There are pros and cons to working on distributed teams; communication requires effort, especially when different cultures and languages are involved, but it’s kind of cool to work from home. The other constant (in addition to demanding users) is that we software developers must continually evolve our skillsets.

Done with MySpace

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:00:00 GMT

I read an article that predicted the death of MySpace. I think it’s because it’s just too painful to look at. There’s stuff laid out all over the place, and popups, etc. I haven’t been using it, and I don’t need to visit yet another web site to promote pop music that I don’t buy, so it’s not worth the effort to maintain my account.
UPDATE July 4: I see MySpace was purchased by investors including Justin Timberlake. This does not change my perspective. Also, I have uploaded my live recordings, dated as they may be, to my personal page.

Royal Wedding, Anglican Letdown

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:01:00 GMT

At the royal wedding of William and Kate on April 29, 2011, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed the world to his "house", that most prominent Anglican venue known as the Westminster Abbey. This was an opportunity to show off Anglicanism, the English ancestor of the American Episcopal Church. The spectacle left us wanting more of Harry and Pippa, but it was not a good day for the Church of England. The archbishop’s unkempt hair and eyebrows were distracting, and one of the female "chaplains" (nuns) sitting next to Will and Kate has been the object of internet jokes about her Reeboks. Although 65% of churchgoers and 40% of full time clergy in the Church of England are women, Canon Jane Hedges was on the altar only briefly, with no active role. Even the choir was all male. Historically, Western Christian Churches supported the abuses of colonialism. The colonies are mostly independent now, but the indigenous people remain poor while Westerners get fat. Maybe the couple and the hundreds of millions of viewers wanted a fairy tale, but so what? It is not the Archbishop’s job to look pretty, but it is his job to promote social justice in the name of Jesus Christ. Instead, he put trees inside the Abbey, the beautiful people oohed and aahed, and an ugly world turned even though they pretended it had stopped.

Home page updates having an effect

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:00:00 GMT

It’s hard to tell exactly, because the search engines show geographically optimized results according to IP address, but it seems that the home page updates here have put us back into the top 10 when searching for ’gocek’. The most beneficial change seems to have been reducing the link-to-content ratio, but you can read Gary’s SEO tips (click the blog link and view the tech blog).

Dan wins moot court competition

Sat, 9 Apr 2011 12:00:00 GMT

Today at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville, Dan Gocek and his teammate Chris Cariello won the 82nd annual William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition. The contest began with preliminary sessions during the 2009-10 school year involving close to 200 law students. The students wrote briefs and presented oral arguments until only two teams remained. In today’s final session, Dan and Chris faced Lynzi Archibald and Matt Hanson. The teams argued their points in front of federal judges who agreed to participate in the contest. Lynzi won best oralist. The four students will graduate in May.
Previous winners include Ted Kennedy, that’s a 2004 photo of Dan looking at Senator Kennedy, is that prescient or what?

Yet another home page update

Sat, 2 Apr 2011 12:00:00 GMT

The link-to-content ratio was too high on the old home page, so I made some changes. In other words, the old home page appeared spammy to indexing robots. The blog content that includes this text hopefully resolves that. I own com, net and org, but it is a constant battle to grab hits from the Gocek keyword.

Gary in a Hall of Fame

Mon, 1 Jun 2009 12:00:00 GMT

On May 31, Gary was inducted into the Liverpool Fine Arts Hall of Fame. See the LHS music pages on this site.

Palm Desert pub features 897th info

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:00:00 GMT

The Historical Society of Palm Desert recently issued a book featuring WWII training era photos from Julian Gocek. See the 897th pages on this site.

New blog content, and they accept comments

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Many topics now have a blog or news page, where readers can leave comments.

Christian Symbols editorial page now in bloggish format.

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 12:00:01 GMT

The Christian Symbols editorial page has been reformatted into a standard blog.

Webcam with weather info now online.

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 12:00:00 GMT

A webcam showing local weather conditions (visually and textually) is now up and running.

897th page now shows this day in history.

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Find out what the 897th Ordnance HAM Co was doing during WWII on this calendar day.

Financial calculator at version 20060603

Sat, 3 Jun 2006 21:12:00 GMT

Calculate your loan or savings results with your browser (JavaScript).

Football pool generator at version 20060603

Sat, 3 Jun 2006 21:11:00 GMT

Produce a 10x10 football pool grid with your browser (JavaScript).

ProtectOCon for Outlook contacts at version 20060414

Sun, 14 Apr 2006 14:00:00 GMT

An Outlook macro that saves contacts as vCards and creates lists of email addresses.

REML recipe manager at version 20050521 (0.8)

Thu, 08 Jan 2006 12:00:00 GMT

A Windows program that helps you manage your recipes. Uses the Recipe Exchange Markup Language.