I was checking out this article which contained a video interview with Matt Cutt’s. In the video (worth watching) they talk about site speed becoming a ranking factor in 2010. Matt mentions a page called code.google.com/speed. This is pretty much a big resource for making your site faster for Google. The firefox page speed add on is pretty helpful in determining how fast or slow your pages are loading. It’s worth a shot to download it and check your sites, one thing I noticed I wasn’t doing was browser side caching. It pretty much allows a visitor’s browser to cache all the images on your site until their set expiration date. This cuts down your bandwidth and also doesn’t make the user reload every image for every page view, thus drastically increasing the page load speed.

I have found that almost none of the affiliate sites I checked are leveraging browser caching, and many of them have a slew of other factors slowing down their pages. Anything from not using gzip compression to unused css to bulky javascript to not specifying image sizes etc etc the list goes on. Chances are your pages don’t have any drastic mistakes slowing them down, but a bunch of small factors can have a big impact. My pages on my online poker site are ripping fast, are yours?

Costa Rica Trip

Since last Wednesday I have been down in Costa Rica with affiliate extraordinaire Mike Wittmeyer. We flew down here Wednesday night, and we spent the night at my good friend Chip’s house in San Isidro. His house was about twenty minutes northeast of San Jose. It was dark when we drove in, so needless to say I was a little stunned when I awoke in the morning to roosters screaming in the backyard. Chip had to work all day, so we hung out with his roomate, Gestapo, who didn’t speak any english whatsoever. He took us down to San Jose to purchase bus tickets to Jaco Beach.

San Jose is a shady city to say the least. I didn’t even have the balls to snap a picture, and I certainly didn’t want to look like a disrespectful tourist taking pictures of their poverty. We saw some pretty “3rd world” scenes unfolding in front of us, from people peddiling various goods, to bizarres, to homeless women washing their feet on the sidewalk. It was a culture shock for sure. After about an hour downtown we returned to San Isidro and watched some Spanish sitcoms. At 5pm we were dropped off at the bus stop across from my friends work where we waited an hour in the rain until he got off. By this point, our American culture had kicked in and we said fuck the bus and we decided to take a $80 taxi ride over our $6 bus tickets.

Jaco Beach

We got to Jaco around 10:30 and quickly checked into our hostel, Hotel De Haan, and walked to the nearest watering hole. It was night time, and hookers covered the streets. We got fit shaced and stumbled home to sleep before the morning surf sesh. If you are planning a trip to Jaco Beach, just be warned that it’s not a nice resort town. It’s a bare bones surf town. There is some decent food though, and it’s always fun to watch the hookers walk around looking for some marks.

Surfing

We shredded the gnar the very next day, and the day after that. The waves are nice, ranging from 3-4ft up to 6ft at some times. I had the luxury of wiping out on a 6ft wave, and I came within seconds of drowning(i think). There really isn’t a way to describe the panic feeling you get when you are out of air, and you are looking for the surface, yet it’s just impossible to find. Other than that, surfing is one of the funnest activities I have ever attempted.

The Picture

Oh yea, I bet you are wondering why there is a shitty pic of a toilet at the top of this post. In Costa Rica, most toilets cannot handle the flushing of toilet paper down the drain. Instead, you are supposed to toss your used toilet paper into a trash can. Well, Mike and I just couldn’t bring ourselves to follow this rule… and we paid the price. Chip awoke the 2nd morning with an explosive hangover dump, and the toilet wouldn’t flush. So it stayed clogged and full of shit for two days. The room smelled like jenkem, to the point where we just checked out and then checked into the best western. It reminded me of my stay in an Amsterdam hostel, where we had this amazing toilet that resembled a dinner plate, that would only flush every 3-4 times it was used.

Anyways, Mike and I still have two full days before we head home. It’s time to shred the gnar.

Go huff some jenkem.

So I just came back from New Orleans for Halloween weekend. All I can say is wow. That place is a cess pool of drinking and debauchery. All in all it was a great weekend. I think this picture sums it up nicely.

My first wave ever. EVER.

Every rednecks dream. You should see it with dirtbikes in the back.

Del Mar beach, an awesome place