Major Aaron Cook Dot Com Updates!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm in the midst of doing a few major site updates here on the Aaron Cook Dot Com™ blog. So if you see a few things that look different, new or not quite finished yet, well, that's why!

Basically, I'm updating the entire structure of the site so I can incorporate a brand new commenting system - a commenting system that is worlds better than Blogger's (ahem) new commenting system - Intense Debate.

Bottom line, Blogger's new commenting system (if you can actually call it that!) simply doesn't cut the mustard with me...at all! And I'm quite sure that many of you agree!

I'll elaborate much more on this later, but right now I'm knee-deep in HTML. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know what was going on in case you were wondering. :)

Update: (12-27-2007) I decided to reinstalled the Intense Debate comment system so that all comments from all posts would have it. Originally, I had only installed it on new posts that didn't have any comments. But after thinking more about it, I decided to try out the Import Comments function and put Intense Debate on all my blog posts, old and new.

Overall, the comment import process went OK. But I did encounter a problem - not all comments were imported successfully. For example, there were 10 comments for the Happy Holidays From Aaron! post, but they've ALL disappeared. The 9 comments that are there now actually belong to THIS post!

Also, it seems that anonymous comments didn't make it through the import process either, so I've lost some past comments. Something to think about it you plan to use Intense Debate and import your comments.

All in all I definitely recommend Instant Debate. I think it's a pretty awesome comment system. I'm just not entirely happy with the Import Comments function as it stands now. Obviously, there are still a few bugs to work out. But hey, that's why that part is still in beta!

Related Blog Posts

• Intense Debate Comment System - The Review (Part 1)

Speed Painting - Bumblebee (Transformers)

Since everyone enjoyed the last post on speed painting, here's another one for you! This particular time-lapse video is of a digital painting (done in Photoshop) of Bumblebee, the well-known and well-liked Autobot from the Transformers.

It's a total of 16 layers in Photoshop, and it took the artist Nico Di Mattia a total of 19 hours to complete it. The songs in the video are "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" from Kill Bill OST, and "Autobot/Decepticon Battle" (Performed by Vince DiCola) from The Transformers The Movie: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Enjoy!

Speed Painting - Bumblebee (Transformers)

Related Blog Posts

• Speed Painting - Jack Sparrow and Optimus Prime
• Speed Painting With ketchup and French Fries
• New Transformers Trailer Yields Secret Pasword
• The Transformers Movie - Will It Kick Some Butt?

New Scrolling Ads in Google AdSense!

I just saw the following two Google AdSense ads displayed here on my blog. The ads themselves appear the same as any other AdSense ad, except for one tiny difference - two colored arrows that your site visitors can click in order to actually scroll their way through the ads. Pretty nifty!

Here's the first version (with small arrows):


And here's the second version (with larger arrows):


You'll notice that each AdSense ad has a set of arrows located at the bottom, on left-hand side of the ad. By clicking these arrows, your site visitors can "actively scroll" back-and-forth through the ads to see more AdSense ads that they may be interested in.

Obviously, no word yet on how this actually affects AdSense CTR (click-through rate), but I must say that it's an enhancement that may very well help to increase your AdSense earnings. Guess we'll just have to wait and see!

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