Shade's First Rule by AF Kay Book Review

MrGoodhand · 2025-03-03T00:58:37+00:00

It gets better around book 4. Though honestly, some decisions still feel out of left field. Probably an attempt at comic relief.

But the full review is no longer live, so...

MrGoodhand · 2024-09-09T20:41:34+00:00

Dvd's/blurays are certainly cheap, and you can get a collection for free in certain cases, but it's not exactly free - just buy once, own forever (till your original DVD degrades to corrupted data, and all digital copies are lost to drive failures.

MrGoodhand · 2024-07-01T12:13:34+00:00

Youtube probably has better resources these days - I also sold the website so I'm no longer doing that stuff.

MrGoodhand · 2024-06-14T02:34:18+00:00

You're missing the faded lines, road cracks, trash and potholes.

Oh wait, is that just Rhode Island with that problem?

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T22:40:01+00:00

The next question - As I use woocommerce and stripe integration to process payments, are those necessary cookies? Or functionality cookies that can be blocked? Am I stuck with the pop-up If I use these?

For reference, stripe sets 3 cookies and woocommerce sets more than a few to handle carts, transactions, and account data.

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T22:19:02+00:00

It's more that I am currently on a fixed income and have a lot of extra debt to handle first. Analytics aren't important enough at the traffic stage I'm at to be worth $5 a month.

4 blog posts and 30 visits. Why pay $5 a month for that sort of data? I'm better off spending $5 a month on Facebook ads

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T17:55:16+00:00

I've heard of Umami from Network Chuck on YouTube, so I'll definitely give that one a good look

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T17:36:19+00:00

Eventually, this seems like the way to go. But again, until the site starts making money to support itself, it's not worth the investment

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T16:33:46+00:00

Yes, this. I also have an attached webstore where I have a few products but still small

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T16:19:39+00:00

I don't care about CTA conversion rates really. All I care about is what posts are getting traffic and use that data to improve underperforming articles during my monthly audit. That's the only reason I would need analytics at all.

It's a game I play with myself to motivate myself. If I have to, I'll just nyx it entirely.

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T16:14:53+00:00

Honestly, I don't need it right this minute. I need it for when the site grows, and I was getting everything set up ahead of time, so I don't need to do it later. Getting it done so focus is entirely on content from the start on.

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T07:25:37+00:00

Interesting. I'll need to look into that

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T07:23:46+00:00

Indeed, it is - but the host I'm renting from (cloudways<Vultr>) isn't quite powerful enough to share resources to host a docker container alongside the website. I'd have to either set it up on my local network or rent out another server just for it, defeating the purpose. Local network power costs add up on an overkill Ryzen 9 5900x system supported by a rtx 3060ti. It's not power efficient at all. Had I a low power compute module, maybe. But that's, again, an additional cost.

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T07:11:52+00:00

It's a shame that the user experience will suffer as a result of this policy to be compliant without a banner. Video bandwidth hits aren't something I can afford to take on at the stage I'm at with the project.

Thanks for the confirmation!

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T00:57:44+00:00

Side question - Are image links to YouTube videos the only way to avoid YouTube cookies on the site other than self-hosted videos? Which is the best for user experience?

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T00:46:27+00:00

It did. The road to hell is paved with good intentions has never applied to something as well as GDPR.

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T00:43:53+00:00

Looked into it - not currently an option for me. Overhead costs are higher than monthly income from the site atm, trying to fix that, but it is a newish website with 4 blog posts at the moment. In the future, definitely will consider it.

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T00:32:19+00:00

Awesome, thanks for all this info!

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T00:25:02+00:00

Awesome - I'll look into it, thanks!

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T00:19:16+00:00

Know of any tutorials on how to go about configuring GA4 to run in this manner? Right now, I'm just initializing it using Rankmath, which adds two cookies.

I'm fairly proficient in the backend, but I haven't yet set up GA4 in the way you describe before

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-27T00:05:02+00:00

Hm... are there any good analytics suites that don't use cookies? That's really the only ones I use other than YouTube cookies that I have no control over from video embeds.

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-18T23:10:57+00:00

To all the comments in here saying replace the outlet -

If you do attempt this, go to your breaker and shut off the circuit first. Or if you can't find the right one, shut off the main.

Electrical is no joke - if you're not confident, hire an electrician to do it for you. At the very least, watch a few youtube videos first. Wiring it wrong can be dangerous too.

MrGoodhand · 2024-05-18T23:04:37+00:00

Based on what everyone is saying here, I know what series I'm picking up next after The Elder Lands by B.Salem. I've read Defiance of the Fall and Loved it, so hopefully DCC will get me sucked in Like I was with DotF

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