Twitter: Why I Choose To Follow You

Every so often I will dedicate an hour or two to go through all my "[Name] is now following you" emails I receive from Twitter. Whilst I do not care if you follow me, I am actually quite picky as to whom I will choose to follow back. Here are some of the reasons I have decided to follow you:

1. You are over 18
When I went to check in on the twitter web profile of someone following me, I got the surprise it was a 13 year old girl! Hell no! My @goldcoastgirl twitter account is for adults only and is not even SFW (Safe For Work) at times. If you are under 18, please do not follow me on Twitter and do not expect me to follow back. Actually, you'll probably get a @reply from me asking you to stop following me til you are "of age". Please feel free to follow @gcpets instead as it is VERY Safe For Work and All Ages.

2. You have a nice mixture of links, 1-on-1 conversations and content
When I look at your twitter web profile, if all I see is @replies or links and nothing about you/your life then bye bye! Only very rarely will I follow a twitter user who is all links or all @replies. Very rarely. I do actually want to know what you are doing, thinking, what has your attention, etc. I do want to get to know you !

3. We have shared interests
I will follow back those who are into personal development, business development, entreprenurship, SEO, web page design/maintenance, animals, affliate marketing, parenting (in other words, if you are a parent or step parent I will follow back) ..... this list of what I find "interesting" (thus have an interest in) is always expanding and changing as my interests expand/change.

4. You are located in Brisbane or Gold Coast
I'm a big supporter of networking within my "community" which for me is Brisbane - Gold Coast. If you are located Gold Coast, I'm guaranteed to follow you back irregardless of whether we do actually have anything more than just being a Gold Coaster in common. After being part of the Brisbane Twestival, I believe in this more than ever now.

5. I know from somewhere else on the Internet
I know you from elsewhere on the internet: facebook, myspace, various forums and websites or I know one of your friends and thought you were interesting enough to follow as well. Or even better, I actually know YOU and have met YOU in real life.


For now, this is what it takes for me to follow you back on Twitter.

Paid Downloads are Coming to YouTube

Click on my "title" to be taken to the article that prompted my blog post.

How do you feel about this new development with YouTube?

My Reply... Go for it YouTube! As long as I can still view videos without incurring any fees I am fine with you charging to download the actual videos. I'm even ok with advertisements in the videos as I've been on the internet a loooooooooong time now and pretty much feel advertisements are "part" of the internet experience.

How to speed up Mozilla Firefox!

These tricks really work! After I tried this, my surfing speed increased dramatically!

Oh, when you type in about:config, it will warn you about voiding warranty. This is a programmer joke. Firefox is freeware, and there is no warranty!

Firefox users take note: You need to do this. Now. As in, this instant. More savvy users are probably already familiar with editing Firefox’s configuration file but whether you’re a computer rookie or a seasoned veteran, Gnoted has issued a handful of tweaks that really get Firefox cooking. As much as we all love the fox, it can get a bit slow on occasion - especially if you’re like us and have 35 open tabs spread across four windows at any given time. By tweaking the way Firefox handles some caching functions, you can dramatically improve page load speed and even prevent Firefox from hogging your system resources while minimized. If you don’t currently have any experience playing with your configuration file, don’t be scared. Just follow the simple instructions, take your time and if you want a security blanket to squeeze, jot down each setting before you change it so you can always restore the default configuration if need be. So without further ado, hit the jump and get tweaking - just remember to restart Firefox when you’re done.

Reduce the amount of RAM Firefox uses for its cache feature
1. Type “about:config” (no quotes) in the adress bar in the browser.
2. Find “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer”
3. Set it’s value to “0“;(Zero)


Increase the Speed at Which Firefox loads pages
1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit Enter.
(Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.)

2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 10.

This means it will make 10 requests at once.

3. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0“;.(Zero)

This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages faster now.
Optionally (for even faster web browsing) here are some more options for your about:config (you might have to create some of these entries by Right Click –> New– > Interger or String

network.dns.disableIPv6: set “false”
“content.notify.backoffcount”: set “5“; (Five)
“plugin.expose_full_path”: set “true”.
“ui.submenuDelay”: set “0; (zero)


Reduce RAM usage to 10MB when Firefox is minimized:

This little hack will drop Firefox’s RAM usage down to 10 Mb when minimized:

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter “config.trim_on_minimize”. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.