Blogger Template Change Kills Google Analytics Script

For some reason, several categories of Google Analytics tracking my Blogger blog stats have flatlined within the last month or so.

I just realized why, I'd made some template changes, including choosing a different template from among Blogger's selections, and this clobbered the analytics script! 

Strangely, even though the tracking code was nonexistent, the Tracking Status indicator in Analytics still says that it's "Receiving Data" even though statistics like New Visits, Avg. Time on Site, and Bounce Rate have been flat.

Anyway, you can visit this Google Analytics help page to find out how to enter the necessary tracking code (the preferred one to use is asynchronous).

Block Reddit Gold on User Pages

Recently, Reddit added a new link beneath users' overview section of their page:

treat yourself to reddit gold

Also if you happen to be checking out another user's profile, you'll see:

buy (another user) a month of reddit gold

I enjoy Reddit a great deal, and I don't block their sponsored ad banners even though I otherwise have AdBlock Plus enabled, but I found this linkage a bit annoying.

ಠ_ಠ

To remove it from your own Reddit user page, you can copy and paste the following Element rule to your AdBlock Plus filter list:

reddit.com##A[href="/gold"]

To prevent the link from appearing on other users' pages, add another rule with the following slightly different syntax:

reddit.com##A[href*="/gold?goldtype=gift"]

Here's a screenshot showing how the rules appear:

Random Numbers in SQL

I needed a SQL query to insert a range of values randomly into each record of a table variable.

The SELECT statement would use the random number in conjunction with a CASE statement to pick from two different values to insert into a field, in effect tagging records randomly with one value or the other. 

My first attempt involved trying to grab the one's digit of the second of today's date via the getdate() function, and based on whether this value is even or odd, pick one or another of the values to assign to a field for the record I insert.

INSERT INTO @MyTableVariable (MyField)
SELECT

    CASE
        WHEN RIGHT(DATEPART(s, getdate()), 1) IN (0, 2, 4, 6, 8) THEN 32
        WHEN RIGHT(DATEPART(s, getdate()), 1) IN (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) THEN 39
    END AS MyField

FROM dbo.MyTable t

The result wasn't quite what I expected. Instead of one of each inserted value appearing randomly in the resulting table variable for MyField, the same value appeared each and every time.

As it turns out, I didn't realize that in the CASE statement, the seconds portion of the current time, the "seed" if you will, only got set once at the beginning of the SELECT. There is nothing in the statement to prompt the function to update the current time with every iteration, every record examined from MyTable, it only performs a one-off examination of the seconds and goes with that for the rest of the operation.


My solution involved using instead the one's digit of the integer primary key of the source table, like so.

INSERT INTO @MyTableVariable (MyField)
SELECT
    CASE                  
        WHEN RIGHT(t.ID, 1) IN (0, 2, 4, 6, 8) THEN 32        -- Even
        WHEN RIGHT(t.ID, 1) IN (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) THEN 39        -- Odd            
    END AS MyField

FROM dbo.MyTable t

In this case, the subset of data that I'm querying from MyTable is just that, a subset, which means that the primary key (ID) won't be in any particular order; there are plenty of opportunities for the one's digit to be odd or even. This provides a reasonably random sampling of records in the resulting table variable.

Improve Firefox Performance with Processor Affinity

Firefox seems to frequently stutter or lag while doing seemingly trivial tasks like scrolling or even typing following the most recent Firefox 3 update.

 

Enter the concept of processor affinity, which enables you to direct applications to utilize one or more specific CPU cores in your multicore system. I discovered a blog post where the author describes creating a shortcut in Windows Vista or Windows 7 which will execute a given application with a specific processor affinity configuration.

PROCEDURE

1. Copy and paste to create a copy of your current shortcut to Firefox on the Desktop.

2. Pick a single CPU core, in decimal, to dedicate to Firefox, according to the chart below. I chose CPU 3 on my quad-core system.

0001 = 1 (CPU 0)

0010 = 2 (CPU 1)

0100 = 4 (CPU 2)

1000 = 8 (CPU 3)

3. In the Target box, copy and paste one of the following lines (the first for 32-bit Windows, the second for 64-bit), and change x to match the value you chose in the above step (change the paths as necessary if your Firefox lives in a different location).

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\" /affinity x firefox.exe

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\" /affinity x firefox.exe

4. Click OK to accept the changes, then close and reopen Firefox using the modified shortcut.

Windows XP also allows for changing the processor affinity setting for a given process via the Processes tab in Task Manager, but this setting is applied only for that instance of the application, so you can't use the above method to have a shortcut which automatically sets the affinity every time. If you try it, you'll get this error message:

Invalid switch - "/affinity"

Fortunately, a freeware utility called RunFirst exists which will perform in a similar manner, except it will by default assign only the first CPU core in the system to have affinity with the application you're running it with. To use it, create a batch file to execute firefox.exe like this:

      RunFirst.EXE "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"

Now, Firefox has its very own CPU core to use on my Windows 7 system, which is advantageous in that the other applications running on my system need only contend with one core being potentially monopolized by some CPU-expensive operations which Firefox initiates.

I tend to browse with many (read: dozens) of tabs open simultaneously, as well as a plethora of add-ons installed such as AdBlock Plus, DownThemAll, FireBug, GreaseMonkey, FoxyTunes, Stylish, FiddlerSwitch, and more. Mine is hardly a “vanilla” setup, and given that these various add-ons let alone Firefox itself are developed by a variety of developers with a variety of coding styles, even bugs, it’s entirely likely that I’m a victim of chaos, that an unfortunate confluence of events are conspiring to kick my browsing experience in the teeth. 

At least this way, I'm letting Firefox do it's thing on just a single core, rather than having it bleed over onto the others and potentially making my other running processes unhappy.

So far, Firefox seems to be significantly more responsive than before!