Since leaving my job in the middle of the year to start my own business, things have been non-stop. I’ve finally had the chance to get a site happening for myself, to show off a few of the developments that I’ve been involved in over the last 4-5 months.

The site can be viewed at http://darrenmckee.com and please contact me through that site if you would like some advice, a quote or any help in getting your website off-the-ground or working exactly the way you want it to.

With the rain falling and YouTube-a-humming, there is nothing like reliving some memories.

This is the first episode of Bargearse, starring Tony Martin, Rob Sitch, Jane Kennedy and Mick Molloy. Mick Molloy incidentally is reportedly filiming a pilot for a new Channel 9 show.

These guys are great, and the majority of them are still part of or appear in Working Dog Productions that have produced such shows as The Panel, and Thank God You’re Here, the latter of which has had a U.S. version just begin airing in the States. Jason Alexander (George from Seinfeld) can be seen on it below in the first episode.

technorati tags:Comedy, Tony Martin, Mick Molloy, bargearse

I have previously briefly reported on Zazz here previously, but I thought I would check back in after all this time to see how the competition is going in their efforts to catch up. I find these sites as addictive as sugar-coated nicotine chocolate, and by the activity that is evident on these sites I would say that many other people have the same impulse-buying craving.
Two contenders have surfaced in the last year or so. The first CatchOfTheDay is backed by the DailyDeals site, and have done quite a lot of work to get interesting products onto the site. They have had Catch-A-Thons where they feature a number of products on their sister site, and their day to day products have been quite good. I actually like the way they haven’t stuck to the formula as stringently as Zazz, and they have a few extra products or “Small Fish” that appear along the side of the page.

The second “Contender” is SnapItUp but they have yet to really shine, woing to stiff competition and the fact that they have had atleast 2 protracted outtages.

The Alexa traffic for all three is shown below:

Comparing these however, to the king of One-Item-A-Day sites Woot! tells a story of how far they all have to go…

technorati tags:Zazz, CatchOfTheDay, Woot, SnapItUp, One-Item-A-Day, Alexa

After neglecting this blog for a while (read 6 months), it became quite a haven for SPAM. A decent pagerank + SPAM filter = Spammer Hard-on territory…. atleast that’s what their messages were telling me. Will she really want me more if I get an extra 3 inches? Probably. But If someone were to buy v14gra or c1al1s or b1g diCk Pi11s from someone, would they really do it from these guys? They must work but who the hell buys them? I guess guys that need an extra 3 inches or a rush of blood on the cheap. Anyway, it’s neither here nor there.

The real reason I have you all here, Imaginary Friends (™) is to discuss the wonders of Akismet. Since rediscovering this long-lost web site, I have installed Akismet using my trusty Wordpress Key, and it has already caught 30-40 of the dodgy pill vendors. It is a great piece of technology and an example of something that just works the way that it should and the way you want it to. Too often there are extra steps required that muddy an app and make it more complicated than necessary. In this case I am very impressed, and would like to send out a big dollop of Kudos to the Akismet team…wherever you are.

Now, if Akismet tried to sell me pills…..

technorati tags:Akismet, Wordpress, Spam, Spammers

After finally getting around to investigating this error:

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet Site bla

When running Google Maps in IE6/7. I had a quick search, and a very helpful site popped up. Pretty simple fix, and I am sure that eventually this would have worked out, but this guy - Ryan Grant - has already done all the work. I post it here for people who are interested and to remind myself. Thanks Ryan and top work.