Are your Adsense adverts not showing up in Chrome..? Here is an unlikely fix...

As you may have noticed if you have visited Nybbles and Bytes before, we have just undergone some major cosmetic alterations.
Now a key part of blogging is often the ability to monetize the blog, which essentially means finding a way for the blog to generate revenue.
Writing about stuff is great and all, but getting money for it 'aint half bad either.

One of the most well known ways to monetize a blog is via Google's Adsense, whereby you allow Google to place contextually relevant adverts on your blog, and they in turn pay you for views or clicks of the advert on your blog.
The higher your traffic, the more ad views and clicks. Simple.

Trouble is, if your ads aren't showing up correctly in people's browsers, then they aren't reaching their audience, so you may be losing a ton of potential views or clicks.
While busy with my latest template update, I noticed that my Adsense ads were there in Internet Explorer, but were mysteriously absent in Chrome...
Oddly, they were also absent when I viewed my blog on a colleague's PC.

So after much troubleshooting, hair tugging, Googling and HTML scanning (and my HTML skills are super basic at best...), I found myself venturing into the Extensions section of my Chrome settings, and nestling in there I found this little blighter:

Lo and bloody behold, disabling this critter sorted out the issue.
Now Avast Antivirus is, and has been my default go-to security solution for many years, but this little piece of weaponry is no longer required in my arsenal, thank you very much!

Hope this helps you out if you have experienced a similar problem...

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Get a Bluetooth hands-free kit dammit...

Driving and talking on a cellphone.

Not a great combo at the best of times - your mind is actively engaged in the content of the conversation, while still having to do all of the things that it needs to do in order to keep your car on the tar and off of the pavement, or worse...

I got my Bluetooth hands-free kit a few years ago when I got fined for chatting on my phone while driving.

Thankfully I got off lightly - a R 500 fine was all it took to convince me to go Bluetooth.

What got me thinking about this, is how often I see people driving with headphones on.

Sometimes its the in-ear ones, which are better than nothing I suppose - at least you can theoretically talk "hands-free", but you still have cables dangling down which really isn't ideal.

Worse though, is when I see drivers wearing the proper huge headphones - those crazy ones that are essentially miniature boom-boxes that fit over your head, which completely cover your ears and provide incredible sound insulation (for your listening pleasure, of course).

Circumaural headphones have large pads that surround the outer ear. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Apart from making the driver look odd, the problem here is the fact that these headphones are so well insulated in the name of sound quality, that they essentially put the driver into his or her own little audio bubble.

This means that if a theoretical 10 ton truck were bearing down on said driver, and its brakes were to fail, then said driver would likely not hear the truck blasting its horn for the driver to get the hell out of the way.

In fact, all that the driver would hear are the bangin' beats in his head, and the subsequent crunching of metal (and I don't mean heavy metal)... Ouch.

While pumping loud music from a car sound system also probably cuts into a driver's awareness of their surroundings, at least their ears are not closed off from the rest of the world completely.

Bluetooth kits can be expensive though, which brings me to my final rant for today:

IF YOU DRIVE A LUXURY VEHICLE, THEN WHY THE HELL AREN'T YOU USING YOUR BUILT-IN BLUETOOTH KIT???

This is another matter altogether, but one which I see almost daily in traffic.

Luxury vehicles today are almost certainly factory fitted with Bluetooth, yet it astounds me how many executive looking types dice around in their snazzy vehicles, blissfully unaware of how idiotic they look holding their phone to their face like a walkie-talkie...

What is it - laziness? Don't know how to pair a Bluetooth device?

Google it guys, we live in the age of information!

In the name of safety people, if you must talk while driving, then use Bluetooth.

Sure, scientists in 25 years may discover how many crazy ailments are caused by wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, but at least you will be that much safer now while driving :)

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Bing's awesome image of the day - Monte da Rocha Dam, Portugal

I am so out of the blogging world at the moment - not sure exactly why, but I have found that 2014 started off with an excessively loud bang...
So this morning when I booted up and saw the Bing background that graced my desktop, I just had to share.

Pretty "dam" awesome :)

Just Google "Monte da Rocha Dam" to check out more amazing photos of this spillway.

This particular one is an example of a Bell-mouth spillway - check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spillway for more info.

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Who watched the Royal Variety Performance on New Year's Eve...?

I won't rant too much here (or maybe I will), but if you know me or my blog even a little, then you will know that one of my hugest gripes is that of "sampling" in music - i.e. the act of taking an existing track (composed by another artist), and then adding different lyrics to it.

The end result, unfortunately, is a track that is considered to be completely new and original, especially if the track that was sampled is from decades ago.
So you end up with youngsters jamming to some "cool" new track that they skeem is lekker kief (sorry guys, had to throw in some South African slang there...), not realising that the so-called artist basically just stole someone else's song and made millions off of it.

One such track that caught my attention was showcased on New Year's Eve 2013, on the Royal Variety Performance.
I usually enjoy most of the performances on the show, however this one just made me wanna be sick.
And I wasn't even drunk.

This act call themselves "Rizzle Kicks", and they are an English hip hop duo who basically pretend to be talented. And they pretty much suck at that as well.
Granted, I have not heard or seen any of their other work, but let me paint a brief outline of their performance (which was put on in front of Prince Charles no less...):

- They performed a track called "Skip to the Good bit", which unfortunately only had bad bits in it.
The real kicker is that they sample (almost entirely) from the hugely successful 90's EMF track "Unbelievable", and they do a fantastic job of destroying the original track.

- Not only was their track terrible, but even the lip-syncing they were doing was odd. One of the duo looked like he was watching what the other was lip-syncing, and then trying to keep up with vague movements of his lips. Awesome.

- Finally, when the track ended (and the audience rejoiced in relief), the duo couldn't even finish their performance gracefully and nearly fell over when the music stopped. Top notch professionals these guys.

Remind me again why plagiarists people like this make millions?

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2014 is the year of sleep...

Last year this time, I jumped onto the New Year's resolution bandwagon, and predicted that 2013 would be the year of the smoothie for me.

Thankfully, that one played out well, and I still start out nearly every single day with an ass-kicking peanut butter smoothie.

So onto 2014 - what's it going to be this year?

Well, looking back over the past few years of my life, I have learned just how incredibly important sleep is, and how often we take it for granted.

Now I don't mean taking a nap in the afternoon, or sleeping late on the weekend - sure those are great, and hey, who doesn't need a nap now and then in the context of daily life?

I am talking about a good, uninterrupted night's sleep - enough to fit in a solid 3 hours before midnight, allowing for about 7 - 9 hours sleep in total.

I am no professional on the science of sleep, however I can speak from my own experience on the subject (and lack thereof...).

For starters, I know exactly how I will feel in the morning if I get to bed late, and grumpy doesn't come close to describing it.

Looking back into 2013, I am also able to pick out the nights where I made a concious effort to be in bed early, and the positive effects on my following day were incredible.

Trying to sleep late on weekends simply doesn't cut it for me - it's all about a proper night's sleep.

I also know it can be tough if there are external factors that cut into your sleep - being a dad, I know all about interrupted sleep.

If that's you, don't lose hope - it does improve after the first year :)

I also discovered the hard way, that sleep deprivation (for me at least), can bring on epileptic seizures - I covered that in a post I wrote a few years back.

Finally, I have to say that I usually find myself catching the flu at times when I have been skimping on my sleep, or pulling late night work stints in an attempt to keep up with the workload.

Now let's face it - trying to keep up with our workloads nowadays is often pretty futile. 

We run in circles trying to get more done in less time, but all that happens is that the quality of our work suffers, we make promises that are impossible to fulfil, and ultimately we harm ourselves in the process from a health perspective, lack of sleep being only one factor of many.

The stupidity in all this (and it really is stupidity), is that all too often do we see the avoidance of sleep being held in high regard - the corporate world is a prime culprit here, where it is often expected that employees should work longer hours (often late into the night), in order to maximize company profits, but with no consideration for the well-being of the staff in question.

Prime example - the young copywriter in Indonesia who passed away in December, while pulling a 30 hour stint for her employer:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/young-woman-dies-tweeting-she-162556504.html

Nuff sed.

For me then, it makes sense to try and make proper sleep habits the norm, rather than to desperately try make up for lost sleep at every opportunity, while never actually making the problem any better.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for now, and if I am to get anywhere near keeping this resolution then I better get some sleep right about now... ;)

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Where did Apple get their logo from...?

I wonder if Steve Jobs and his Apple Inc. co-founders popped into The Apple Bite Roadhouse in Edenvale early in the 1970's for a quick bite, and saw the sign below as inspiration for the logo of their future technology behemoth...?
(What they might have been doing in Edenvale of all places, I cannot speculate over...:))

I mean how many establishments use a semi-munched apple as their logo?

After all, Apple Inc. was founded in 1976, yet the Apple Bite Roadhouse was founded in 1970... and so the plot thickens!

Oh and they make damn fine pizza as well (the Apple Bite Roadhouse that is, not Apple Inc.) :)

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Thinking of upgrading your Apple Mac to Mavericks? Better read this first...

It's crazy to think how huge corporations nowadays can affect our lives and change our behaviour, simply by changing the way their products work.
In so doing, they force their customers to break old habits and adopt new ways of doing things.

Apple has recently done exactly this, by means of the much touted "Mavericks" update to OS X - version 10.9.
In case you missed it, gone are the days of the big cats.
No longer will we have such bravado codenames as "Mountain Lion" and "Tiger", by which to refer to the various OS X versions.
Mavericks is in fact a popular surfing location in Northern California, and future updates to OS X will carry the names of locations in California that have inspired the company.

Onto the point of this post.
One of the most controversial changes in Mavericks (in my opinion anyway), is the obliteration of Sync Services.
In layman's terms, this means that you can now no longer sync your iPhone / iPad calendars, tasks and contacts to your Mac, via iTunes using USB or WIFI.
Think about that for a sec - pre-Mavericks, iTunes had a tab called "Info" when you plugged in your iDevice. That tab is now gone.
Now if you are someone who uses Microsoft Outlook within the Mac environment, and you like to keep your contacts and calendars in sync between Outlook and your iDevices, well you're clean outta luck.

Outlook used to be able to sync to iCal and Address Book using Sync Services. With Sync Services now gone, so is that sync relationship - Outlook is now dead in the water and totally isolated from your iDevices.

In terms of a fix, patch, update or resolution, nothing is forthcoming at this stage from Apple or Microsoft.
Apple forums all over the web are abuzz as Mac users continue to hit this seemingly backward move for OSX.
In terms of workarounds, they range from tedious to extreme...:

Tedious:

Point iCal (now Calendar), your iPhone and iPad to your iCloud account so that they all sync there.
With all your iDevices now talking, manual labour is required in order to keep Outlook in sync.
For EVERY new appointment created or accepted in Outlook, you have to drag that appointment from the Outlook calendar, down onto the Calendar icon in the Dock.
Calendar will then popup, asking you to confirm which category you would like to add the appointment to, and you're done.
Tedious as hell, but it's all we have right now.

Extreme:

Backup your Mac and downgrade back to Mountain Lion (10.8).
Extreme, yet it appears that some people are prepared to go this route in order to retain USB syncing of their devices with Outlook.

It all comes back to what I said at the beginning of this post - changing the way we behave as consumers.
Apple clearly want their customer base to become more reliant on iCloud, and what better way to achieve this, than to kill USB syncing in OS X. Nasty.
I am also not quite sure what message they are sending to Microsoft here - Apple seems eager to lay blame at Microsoft's door for not seeing the update coming and making Outlook more compatible, yet the counter argument is valid as well - with so many Apple customers depending on a sync partnership between Outlook and OS X, why the hell not just leave Sync Services alone?

Will Apple fix it? I doubt it.
Will Microsoft update Outlook 2011 to remedy it? Probably not - Office 2014 is likely around the corner anyway...

What will you do now that your iWorld is out of sync?

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What People Do On Smartphones To Pass Their Time?

This Infographic is produced by Coupon Audit (provides Abebooks coupons) and Nybbles And Bytes

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Relive Warcraft on the Nokia Lumia 920... or something similar anyway :)

The Nokia Lumia 920 continues to impress me on a daily basis, as I find out more about what the phone can do each day.

That's the thing about Nokia, and maybe it's to their detriment somewhat - they release awesome yet understated devices that are capable of amazing things, but they don't proclaim their devices to be "the best in the world" or make use of other similar marketing tactics a la Apple.
Good example - the Lumia 920 screen has a higher pixel density than the iPhone 5 screen, and looks easily as good (if not better), yet Apple will quickly tout their screen as being "the most advanced screen in the world", or something along those lines.

In the meantime, Nokia will carry on doing what it does so amazingly well - build brilliant devices, but minus the over-the-top in-your-face arrogant marketing.

Bit of a deviation there from the topic at hand, and indeed the title of this post, which is the awesome game "Royal Revolt!", available for free at the Windows Mobile Store.
Royal Revolt! revives fond memories of days (and nights) spent waging medieval war upon Orcs, slaying peons, mining gold, harvesting lumber, building foundries and barracks, casting Bloodlust spells... well you get where this is going (at least if you ever played Warcraft, that is).

While the gameplay is somewhat different to Warcraft (you are the Hero, around whom soldiers, archers, mages etc. fight), a lot of the game bears a striking resemblance to the original Blizzard masterpiece.
The game is a "reverse tower defense" game, meaning that you control an army who is launching an attack on an enemy castle, meeting enemy soldiers, archers and towers along the way.

The graphics are also a treat, and the hardware of the Lumia 920 ensures fluidity all the way.
Check out these screenshots to see what I mean:

The game is available for several platforms, namely Windows Phone 8, iPhone, iPad, Android and more - check out the website to download - www.royalrevolt.com.

Get it while its free!

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Today's Bing photo kinda bent my mind a bit...

Bing usually put up an awesome photo on their search page each day.
Generally one can expect to see amazing natural sites, beautiful places, weird and wonderful creatures and other such things.

Today's photo however, is truly something to behold.
I give you, the world's largest cave - Hang Son Doong, in Vietnam:

Just try get your head around these dimensions - the biggest chamber of the cave is 200m high, 150 wide, and more than 5km long!

For more facts, photos, and info about this incredible natural wonder, click here.

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