Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Google pays up!

My first ever cheque from Google in payment of Adsense credits arrived today. $125.65 in NZ dollars.

It's only taken me four and a half years to get that much - I first started collecting from Adsense way back in late 2006 after I finished up at OC Books. And because the income came in so slowly - and Google doesn't pay out to overseas customers until they've got $100US in the kitty - it's been a long time coming.

However, in recent months there have been considerable amounts coming through Triond; for instance, up to today for June, I've earned US$5.94, which is about ten times what I use to earn in a month, or three months even. So the next Google cheque may not be quite so far away...2012 rather than 2016!

On another tack, I've been using Evernote for a few months to keep track of odds and ends I come across on the Net, or other bits of info. It's great because it syncs onto a cloud, and I can pick it up on other computers. Occasionally it's a bit clunky...like when it copies something from a site, and insists on putting a box around it so that you can't insert other stuff easily...but in general it's a great storage space.

And it has a great search function. For instance, I wanted to see if I had anything that related to the phrase laminate flooring. I couldn't find that phrase exactly, but in the process of looking I found all sorts of other interesting things (that I'd forgotten about!)

A note about where the first floor plans for the house are stored, for example. The following "MIDDLE AGE TEXTING CODES:... ATD: At The Doctors. BTW: Bring the Wheelchair. BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth. FWIW: Forgot Where I Was. GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low. GHA: Got Heartburn Again. IMHO: Is My Hearing-Aid On? LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out. OMSG: Oh My! Sorry, Gas! ROFLACGU: Rolling On Floor Laughing And Can't Get Up. TTYL: Talk To You Louder".

This odd ending to an interview with N D Wilson (who is currently writing the screenplay for C S Lewis' The Great Divorce : Let's just say, I used to hate coffee, and now I don't. I've also gotten pretty good at deep breathing exercises and lying on the floor. [Don't ask me what that's got to do with the rest of the piece.]

Or this intriguing introduction to The Annual Turing Test: Since 1991, the Turing Test has been administered at the so-called Loebner Prize competition, an event sponsored by a colorful figure: the former baron of plastic roll-up portable disco dance floors, Hugh Loebner. When asked his motives for orchestrating this annual Turing Test, Loebner cites laziness, of all things: his utopian future, apparently, is one in which unemployment rates are nearly 100 percent and virtually all of human endeavor and industry is outsourced to intelligent machines.

Or from a piece on urbanisation: Once, while jogging on a treadmill on the top floor of a Sao Paulo hotel, I tried to count the many helicopters buzzing by. The city has the highest rate of private helicopter use in the world -- a literal sign of what heights people will go to in order to avoid the realities of the world below.

Okay I haven't found anything helpful in relation to 'laminate floors' but I'm having a ball going through these old files...

3 comments:

Scotty said...

You need more ads. It is a pity about the poor exchange rate too. I now get about $100 US a month, but have two blogs to maintain. It is slightly satisfying, but then you realise what a pitiful hourly rate that amounts to. I do it for the fame, not the money! You can get it put straight into your bank account, it stil takes ages to arrive though.

Scotty said...

By the way, I have bought a url and linked to heaps of other blogs and it increases numbers. The more popular you get, the higher your stuff comes up on Google searches. You should put my blog on your sidebar and I will put yours.

www.scottydonaldson.com

Mike Crowl said...

Thanks, Scotty...I'm not sure I can do more about the ads. I've got 4-6 blogs, but it depends on how many visitors you get - not many in my case. More people read the blog via facebook than directly on the blog.