Suppose I should say this in the first sentence: I use AdBlock. I like using AdBlock since it blocks and removes the annoying flash ads, animated ads, music playing or other noise-making ads, most video pre-roll ads etc.

This is especially true for websites which add a huge leaderboard ad to the very top of the website before their head content, thus pushing their entire website down by about 100 pixels. Or those that have an annoying ad placed right in the middle of their site’s main content, like halfway through a news post, breaking up the flow of the article.

The main unfortunate side-effect of this mass-blocking is that non-intrusive advertising gets blacked out also. Now I’m not a complete Nazi towards online advertising, I don’t mind the banner ads, small boxes etc. that sit off to the side or the bottom of the site, especially when the site owner puts them there knowing full well that they are most likely to only get revenue from impressions as opposed to clicks.

Nor do I mind advertising that isn’t completely corporate driven, this particular example being Project Wonderful. They are one ad network I’ve expressly allowed to show in my filters, along with a bunch of other sites I either don’t mind supporting, that I know don’t have intrusive advertising, or (unfortunately) that don’t work when you turn off the ads – several site video players are notorious for that.

I know several site owners who do expressly ask – and always in an off-the-cuff sort of passing mention, never specifically pushing people to do so – to whitelist their site in AdBlock for the revenue, and in most cases I’m cool with that particularly if I’m an avid reader and like what they’re doing. Sites/comics like Real Life Comics, Nerd Junkies, Manly Guys Doing Manly Things I keep AdBlock off as I both enjoy their content and they don’t run intrusive advertising.

One aspect that I really hate though, is when people specifically ask for ad clicks. Especially when it’s always against the ToS of whatever ad network you’re in to game the system in any way or to ask people to submit invalid clicks.

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My resolution for this year is…

3840×1080

Alright, in all seriousness I’m not one for having New Year resolutions. That and the screen resolution joke is made way too much. Although it would be nice to have a second 1080p monitor just so that my secondary can match the size of my primary…

Anyway, I’m not going to label this as a resolution as such, but I will try to make sure that I blog just a bit more this year. I will also look into streaming a lot more on Twitch, I’ve been lacking in that aspect a fair bit.

Some of the things I hope to achieve this year, in no particular order:

• Get a YouTube partnership.
• Upgrade my PC rig – ideally once the LGA-2011 components start coming out.
• Attend almost all the anime cons, depending on timeframe.
• Get a smartphone and start posting tweets and pictures on-the-go.

Not much else I can really think of at present. I suppose that’s good because if I do think or anything else after this, it just goes to show that it really doesn’t work as a resolution at all if I can’t remember it after only two days!