John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

Spam, again: 28 February 2007: I really have got a lot more spam and it's not my spam filter that's the problem. The spam emails I'm getting are the ones with nonsense titles that, in the end, are hot-housing (is that the term?) shares, another with a nonsense title and content but that opens a graphic urging you to buy viagra, buy shares, or whatever, a new one "I have redesigned your website", and the disguised ones: Pfornstar Nfakita Kash HOTLPITTLE Sbtripping (Hot Pittle, eh? I'm up for a bit of that) and Ceute Sxmoking CWUTEGIRLS Brunette Siqueezing Ndipples (obviously from a woman supplementing her day job at the Oxford English Dictionary). I got a great phishing email purportedly from Paypal too that wanted to take me to an IP address.; Anyway, the reason for me mentioning all that is to ask you, my warm and fragrant reader, whether you, too, have experienced a new level of spam recently (in the last few weeks). Looking here it looks like absolute volume has gone up over 60% in the last six months.; Either my more recent increase is because my email's found its way onto another database (which would be a surprise because my email's been freely available on the Internet for about five years now), I've a feeling most spam comes from super-spammers such as the beautiful Jeremy here so if a super-spammer changes their technique one day it makes sense we'd see an upsurge before the anti-spam catches up, or is it none of that but actually linked in some way unknown to me to the email problems I was having before.; Dunno, but those shirtless midget disciplinarians are becoming irritating.; Incidentally, when I used to bunk off school to avoid games on a Wednesday afternoon and take the bus into Nottingham (actually, I then spent the time with my head in various Nottingham library books, so it's not as bad as it sounds), I used to note the titles of the films appearing in an adult cinema just because I thought they were corny and funny. I remember the cinema being just off Slab Square (the central piazza) but I can't think where that would be because I don't think it was the Odeon, I'm sure it was up Market Street but there's no cinema there now. I never went in there .. far too scary. Anyway, I still remember my favourite double entendre title: "What's up nurse?". So noting interesting titles like the midgets and the nurse things must be in my blood, I've always done it.; 1977, eh? O level year. Must have been in my punk-discovery-just-growing-up era, wandering into Virgin Records at the bottom of Queen Street when all the singles were in red jackets, passing a punk (us being suburban soft punks without the nerve actually to spike or dye our hair), my mate (now a headmaster) asking for a Buzzcocks single and the punk calling him a wanker, adding a certain frisson to the moment. Which put The Buzzcocks into perspective at the time versus, say, The Pistols, The Clash, or even The Drones or Slaughter and the Dogs. Were The Buzzcocks some sort of pop punk? Were we not actually listening to the real thing? Well at least they weren't The Boomtown Rats.; Anarchy in the UK, eh? Who'd have thought all those bands would have found, thirty years on, that their best chance of an income and personal fulfilment was to keep alive those times. And here's me, too, in a band that's contemplating playing some Clash tunes.
Like lying: 27 February 2007:
How Old?: 26 February 2007: I went to Pickering on the bus the other day, and a couple sat near me with a, well a noteworthy conversational style that they seem to have evolved together. I drew a cartoon:; I actually think they were quite close, as a couple, because they both did the same sort of thing, so it was quite cute. But I was thinking: just tell me the story and let me nod away vaguely while actually thinking about cars or football or why double decker buses don't fall over when cornering or something, anything else, just don't make me guess.
Spam: 24 February 2007: My web hosts have been messing around with my email system and appear to have stopped the spam filter working. My favourite one so far was headed "shirtless midgets discipline".; Now I'm good at working out markets, but I'm not sure I know what sort of person is going to rub their chin and go "hmmm, now that sounds interesting". Oh. No. Hang on. I actually do know someone who has a thing about midgets!
Photo retouching: 22 February 2007: A while ago I had the need to retouch a client photograph to correct some problems and that all went fairly well so I've been looking for an opportunity to work on that skill a little more. I looked into it, yes OK I bought a book, and I've been working on another project recently that calls for it.; Here's a photograph of some ugly bugger I know.; The photograph was taken quite early in the morning, you can tell can't you? He hadn't had much sleep the night before. Anyway, here's the photo after some retouching.; All sorts of things have been 'corrected'. I've cured skin diseases, old age .. all sorts of stuff, I even gave the chap a virtual shave.; Putting the pics side by side I felt I'd gone a little over the top, so (update) I've knocked the alterations back a little. That reminds me of audio production .. it all sounds fine, you sleep on it, and everything needs knocking back 15%. Anyway, we'll see what it looks like in the magazine. No-one wants to buy websites from someone who looks like they won't last the project. But then who wants to buy from someone who blogs about wanting to touch themselves up*? Damned if you do ....; * speaking of which, one wag reckons I look like I'm doing a 'wanker' gesture. I'm simply putting my point forward the best way I know how. Eeeh, it's tough at the top. But now you mention it ..
Logo design awards: 19 February 2007: Just in case you find graphic design as inspiring as I do, here's a lovely thing: Eulda, "the high-profile graphic design award scheme that rewards the best logos and trademarks designed in Europe".
Miserable kids: 18 February 2007: Apparently the UK isn't creating happy kids. I don't really know what I want to add to that, but I did want to bookmark it for future reference as it seems to have just wandered past us without sticking.
All for you: 18 February 2007: I've another case study for you, but this one's not for the faint-hearted. It's an online sex shop, basically. Here's the link to the case study. Don't worry, it won't bite and there are no images on that page unless you click for them.; A colleague said I should be very careful, that clients, if they find out I've done such a site, would "sack me".; I pondered on that for a while and I spoke to a few friends and the most common reaction was along the lines of "mate, with what you write on your blog, I think you're beyond that".; Personally, I think the rules are these. Money is like a filter. It enables one person, company, or country to buy from another whose values we may not agree with. We bought Iraqi oil for long enough. That's the whole basis of (international) trade, we just deal with the money, we don't make judgments. Who knows what the people who sell us food, newspapers, wireless connectivity and so on get up to in their spare time? Shootin' bears? Whatever, we can't know and we don't factor it into our decisions.; That's the rule, but we don't actually do that. We do make judgments based on what we know. It's just that we don't have to know everything.; But I think I prefer to have this out and considered equally alongside the rest of my work. It is my first osCommerce site to go public (and probably pubic at the same time) so for me it is a good case study. And I have absolutely no moral issues with it whatsoever. My sex-industry morals kick in when someone is being oppressed, and I see none of that here. This site is doing no-one any harm, so no problem.; I see issues in the future though. If the rule is "no oppression", at what point is a woman in the sex industry oppressed? Trafficking women is a clear case of oppression, but what if a woman seemingly voluntarily works as a prostitute or porn actress. Is she still oppressed? I've read feminist works that would strongly suggest that she may have found that to be her most lucrative activity because of a lack of equal opportunities in the normal job market and the ability men have to pay based on them taking the best jobs, and that's system-wide oppression. If I take a request from such a woman and deny her my online marketing skills because I think she's oppressed, what warped world would that place her in? And would that actually be legal .. if I accepted payment is there a law against pimping that would stop me receiving payment for a website because the money is from, I seem to remember the term 'immoral earnings' (and if so, would her local papershop also have to reject her money)? If that ever comes up, I'll be in knots.; I did have a call the other day from a publisher of children's books who wanted a website. Now that's interesting. One might imagine she might have an issue when she sees this site at the top of my case studies. But what's the issue? Am I somehow tainted?; I'm not Coca Cola. I don't have to appeal to everyone. If I appeal to some people, that's good enough, there's only my time to fill. Being me means I appeal to people worldwide who run marathons, drum, and like butterflies. I appeal to those people more than the bland companies who want to appeal to everyone. The strategy is that as the Internet connects people with people, being human is on the up. We are not grey or bland or one-size fits all. We are who we are, and we should celebrate that.; That isn't to say that's a huge issue that I will dangle in your face as soon as I meet you .. I'm not some sort of Russell Brand character. This blog is not me in your face. You choose to come here, I don't send it to you. I'm perfectly personable and professional, but if you want to talk about other stuff, there's depth here too and so there should be. I'm building websites for people. I'm supposed to understand how this world ticks.; Ultimately, there are still people out there who are one person businesses but try to make it appear they are larger companies than they really are. They have proper office addresses, impressive titles and business names. Back in the eighties these are the people who bought tapes of office noise so they could convince callers they had a fully staffed office. They probably would do or have done controversial work too, but wouldn't tell you about it.; I have an acquaintance who thinks honesty is the big deal and uses it to give him an excuse to be irritating. It's not honesty, particularly with me. I'm more into politeness and sensitivity and awareness of others .. no really, stop sniggering at the back, I'm trying to make a serious point. I just think, I'm a freelancer and I'm proud of that and proud of my work. If you find something to be bothered about in what I do, that's OK. I don't set out to upset people, though. I'm currently fielding a couple of enquiries a day, so something's working right and if it turns out half of them would prefer bland-o-corp, that's not a problem either. I would end up with the more interesting work though, and more interesting work begets more interesting work: yippee :-); So. You wanna be boring? Or interesting?
The View: 17 February 2007: "I've had the same jeans on for four days now". Ah, they're fresh on. Weeks of life left in them yet. What are you moaning about you big girl's blouse!
A blog test: 17 February 2007: I had a call from a chap who has a blog of his travels and he wanted advice about search engine optimisation. While on the phone I checked a few phrases from the site in Google and got no results, which means Google doesn't know about the site. The counter on the home page today says 240 visits, which is a pity because it's an interesting blog, particularly the photographs.; So I said I'd link to him and see what that did to his traffic. The search engines certainly know about my site, and their software (spiders or robots) will visit here, follow the link, discover his site, index it, and follow all the links in that.; Otherwise the site's OK, at a brief glance there's nothing huge stopping traffic. I'd improve the menu links to something like "irrigation project at Labadi beach, Ghana" because it looks like whatever software is managing his blog uses that for a page title too, so it'll improve things to have some half decent keywords in there.; I advised writing a little more text, too. Search engines read text. No text, no ranking.; All this is on the basis that the site is done on a hobby basis and therefore there's little or no money available to sort it out. If I were to set up a site to properly sell someone who wanted to travel and teach English as a foreign language, well that's a completely different thing. I'd love to do that. If, for instance, you wanted to teach EFL in China, we'd better write your website in Chinese hadn't we? Sounds like jolly fun to me.; Incidentally, there's so much rubbish written about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and things move so quickly that the only way to proceed with any authority seems to be by empiricism. So we'll do this and see what happens.
AntiVirus et al: 16 February 2007: I hear from so many people with virus and malware problems on their computer .. one client had EUR30,000 taken from his Amex card, he got the money back but they wouldn't renew his card .. another had quite disturbing violent porn appearing on his customer facing machine .. that I thought I'd pass on the name of the PC Pro lab winning security suite: Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite.; Although I know what I'm doing and haven't had a computer virus or malware problem for about a decade, I do run Windows without any anti-virus and just thought I'd better check. At just over £25 there seemed to be little excuse not to, so I just downloaded and installed it, all fairly painlessly.; It doesn't sound like it plays nicely with other anti-virus products so it seems you have to choose. The only thing wrong with it, in the review, is that they say you can't set different parental controls for different accounts. I'm sure they'll remedy that in due course.
Bernard Matthews 2: 14 February 2007: Watching those lorries come and go at the Bernard Matthews factory on the news, don't you feel a chill? It's like some sort of futurist horror film. Imagine what pain and suffering goes on in those sheds all day, every day, and what unhealthy, chemical laden food comes out of it. And it's marketed as if chubby cheeked, healthy looking Matthews is yer regular local muddyboot farmer. That, much more than anything else, is why I don't eat meat. No-one with any conscience could condone it. We ignore it in order to manage it. And I'm not being all wide-eyed puppy about it. I recognise animals don't necessarily have the higher consciousness that we have. But it isn't black and white (unless it's a dalmation, obviously). They do suffer, and they do feel emotion.; Someone being interviewed on the news said the virus could only have created itself in the first place in these intensive rearing units.; And did you notice the PR machine in the first few days? The blame was wild birds. Funny how wild birds can't defend themselves. Anything but the truth, any target that won't peck back. The truth is the reverse, H5N1 could get out of intensive agriculture where it was created, and create havoc in wild bird populations. I feel sick.; And yes, whenever I mentioned this story people said "isn't that where they played baseball with live turkeys?" Yep. But it's not those headline bad apples that get me, they're not so bad, the company can fire those people and come out clean. It's the everyday, routine suffering, animals that have evolved for a particular environment and then never ever even breathe fresh air, and for what? If you're going to eat meat, eat meat (they'll deliver locally), not this little lot. The difference in price is there in taste and nutritional value: it's better value. Have less, better quality meat and spend the same. Pay a little, because your conscience says that for a few pence here and there so you can buy a CD every now and then or an extra pint, you're condemning animals as sentient as your pets to a life of pain and confusion. Face it, then do something.
People are finding me: 14 February 2007: Morning. Happy valentine's day. I got a mailshot from Capital One, how about you?; I just wanted to report on something that's happening more and more. People who know me are stumbling over my website while searching for something else.; I can remember two examples, but there are more. A DJ friend was searching for (I think) The Hip Hop Years to see if it had come out on DVD yet and came across this on my site.; Another friend was looking for a boat moored at Scarborough called "The Provider" and found my website (I'm an Internet provider, in Scarborough).; Clearly these are not website enquirers, but one day someone will turn. What's blowing my mind a little is that they stumbled across my site in searching for something else, but knew me, and let me know what had happened. Considering the whole world's use of search, that does suggest I'm doing something right. Cor!
Diminishing returns and SEO: 13 February 2007: I had an enquiry from my website (that is becoming more frequent, I got two in one day recently) about search engine optimisation (SEO) yesterday. He wanted to move from another provider because they wanted to charge 'hundreds and hundreds of pounds' for SEO.; I wrote back to him about the law of diminishing returns. Perhaps the first and simplest thing to do for someone is to make sure their page titles contain relevant keywords. I did this for a client recently who had blank page titles and his traffic, from being just short of 2,000 unique visitors per month every month for two years suddenly jumped to just short of 10,000 with nothing else being changed. As a practitioner I prioritise what I do, so if you buy me for an hour, I'll do my key thing. If you buy me for ten hours you'll get my best ten hours, etc. Perhaps it's Pareto, what you want to do is to pay me for the 20% of what I could do that will bring 80% of the results.; But it's not at all that simple. I think there's an equal and opposite effect going on, take a look (scroll down to the pie chart). Before we get into this, let me say that monitoring and fretting about your position in the search engines is a great way to slide gently and slowly into the funny farm, so we won't be doing that. The way to monitor success is to watch how many visitors ('sales', preferably, but I haven't met any clients willing to be that sophisticated, yet) come from search engines overall, and try to improve that. The reason is that the web keeps growing and there are many sites that can help a user with their problem. Users tend to start with a general term, eg. "lawn care" and when they find 30 million results mostly from America, they start to hone it down until they end up with a search that's more like "lawn specialist gardener Scarborough Yorkshire -cricket" (that '-cricket', btw, if you're not familiar with it, means "exclude the word 'cricket'"). Because that's so specialised to the users needs each user finds you with a different term and it's pretty much nonsense to try to manage the rankings for such a wide variety of successful search terms. The trick is to write well, include lots of key words and phrases, then relax and let matching enquirers find you.; It also means, incidentally, that while 'lawn care' may look like it's the most popular search term when you look at what is being searched for in the search engines, that's just because it's at the top of that search process. People don't buy from those terms, they buy after a few increasingly specific searches. So those convoluted and near unique search phrases are the ones that lead to sales. So search engine position for headline phrases, unless you really are a global brand with resources to match, isn't the key goal.; Back to that link. According to that, 80% of clicks are given to the first 7 search engine results.; So my question is this: Does that cancel out my 'law of diminished returns'? If you are at position, say, 5 for a particular key phrase in a particular search engine and you've got there by doing 80% of the things we know how to do .. in other words you've already spent a load of money and time and heartache to get there, does spending another tranche of money on something that seems really minor, peripheral and likely to provide only marginal benefit .. does the fact that you're willing to do that place you above the competition? If you do manage to creep up a position by doing that one minor thing that others haven't, position 5 gets 5.5% of all clicks, position 4 gets 6.41%, so you just increased your clicks by 16.5%. A move from 2nd position (11.9%) to 1st (43.07%) is a 361% increase in clicks. So as you get nearer the top for a particular keyphrase, it is worth putting in that last SEO effort.; It's not even that simple. As I demonstrated in this previous blog it's easy to get a decent position for an obscure phrase which no-one searches on. So an un-optimised site probably has a mixture of good and non-existent positions for a huge number of search phrases. The key, obviously, is you want a good position for high demand keyphrases that match what you do. But my point is that as you spend more money on SEO, more of your key phrases reach those top positions and return those huge increases in clicks.; I'm going to propose, then, that spending on SEO is always worthwhile (so long as the techniques being used are soundly based .. bad techniques can hurt your position) and that actually the return on investment is the same whatever stage you are at. Early techniques enable people to find your site and can have a great effect on your traffic. Later techniques that enable you to get high positions for key phrases (and that is always possible, it's just that early on the phrases may be quite obscure), get you into the high response areas and can have an equally great effect on traffic.; One caveat. No-one can guarantee you top (or any) position in the search engine results. Because if I do, and someone else in the world does the same with their competing client, one of us is going to fail. It's a catfight. A campaign is based on a finely balanced judgment. All we can do is promise to apply ourselves to improving your traffic from search engines.; So, as a business person, how do you manage your SEO investment? I think it's equivalent to press relations. I used to do press relations for companies and all those years ago a smallish company might spend, say, £6,000 over a year on press relations, writing press releases and working with the press to provide newsworthy material (if you don't spend anything, maybe you spend time on it, work that out as an hourly rate, and if you don't even do that, maybe you're missing out). I think search engines can be thought of as equal to 'the press'. They both stand between the customer and you, they both direct traffic to you or your competitors, and, in different ways of course, they both attempt to be authoritative. Plus, in the same way as a good press campaign will come up with ideas to entice an editor, a good SEO campaign will transform your website with new content and functionality that will entice traffic and search engines. Just look at how much that could be done and tell me you can get that for a few hundred pounds. I think you should spend the same amount as you do on press relations on SEO. That is how I recommend you manage it. Want some? Get in touch.
Fat cat: 13 February 2007: Our cat is fat, it's official. We knew this and had raised it with many of the vets at our practice who had dismissed the idea. Perhaps she's fatter now than she was when I raised it previously. But we'd accepted the vet's say so because there was very little fat under her skin, just a huge belly that seemed like a fully pumped up balloon.; The other day, though, a locum vet said "your cat is fat". "Thank Christ for that", I protested and told her what I've just told you. "Well maybe", she said "I'm a little less subtle than they are. If your cat's fat I'll tell you." No, that's irritating. What she's saying is that I am stupid and don't listen when a vet tells me something gently. Actually, she hadn't listened to what I'd said .. that we'd raised the issue many times and been dismissed. We discussed it a little more, and she said our cat is storing fat around her organs, which is the dangerous place for it.; So, the new rules are: don't leave food down for carnivores, they don't self regulate, their drive for food is too great. Feed them all the correct quantities. Feed them twice a day. And for our fat cat who weighs 5.2Kg (the other, 4Kg), feed her what she would get if she was a 3Kg cat.
Green: 10 February 2007: I have a strange relationship with Green politics. On the one hand, I'm basically green. I've voted Green many times. Consequently I keep thinking I'll join in, get closer to it. I know some of the people involved in the local party. So I take the first few steps and, the closer I get, the more repelled I am.; Now that might happen with David Cameron too ... the closer I got to him perhaps the more repelled I'd be ... perhaps it's politics, or politicians. But that's an easy target. Actually, I think there's something in the green movement that repells me.; Some of it's imaginary. I imagine I'm being judged. Is what I'm wearing built from sustainable woodlands and fair traded? Was my toothpaste tested on animals? Did I walk here or (quick, fetch the smelling salts) did I come by car?; I come back time and again to something a friend said about the key feminists dying early, the thinking goes, because they were stressed about everything they saw. If I were to fret about even just those three things I just mentioned, I'd never leave the house. We need to focus on our goals and make strong progress towards them without distraction. A male view, I've no doubt, and I welcome green politics for, hopefully, being much more female.; I spoke to someone, who is definitely deeper into this than I am, about this just recently. They said they hadn't quite felt that, but they had stood and looked at the people participating in the Green Party Conference at the Spa one year and thought "what a load of freaks, no-one in their right mind would elect them".; I have my own experience of the Green Party Conference. I was part of the local anti GM protest group at the time and my g/f made, along with a friend of ours, some home made chocolates using all organic ingredients, made cardboard buckets and spades, decorated them (this friend is an artist), and we set up a stall to sell them at cost at the conference in aid of the anti GM group. The idea being that if you've travelled to Scarborough to spend the weekend at this conference, you could take back some chocolates to your significant other. We didn't well one. Maybe we missed something. But not one? So we decided greens are tight. And misherable. And unfeeshlingsh .. as our mouths filled with lovely chocolates. We judged unfairly, but one has to base ones opinions on the evidence if one is not to be led by the nose by Murdoch et al. I thought green politics was about community and was disappointed to discover we hadn't been supported, despite our efforts for them. This has left a long lasting scar. It could be .. this is our next hypothesis .. that greens don't care so much about people, they care more about the environment and animals. If that's true, don't expect them in number 10 anytime soon.; When you actually read the green party manifesto, it's full of major vote losers. They may be right, but no-one will vote for them. Open the borders to anyone who wants to come here, that was one I remember. Not having a leader, is another. Like I say, it might well be right, beautiful even, but imagine trying to explain that on the doorstep. It reminds me of the American politician who moaned that there was no one person to talk to when you want to deal with Europe. Imagine their reaction if we all went green. Now that's worth a green vote if nothing else.; So there's a lot of repulsion going on. But at the same time, green politics appears to be the only one with any future.; I spoke to a friend the other day who I don't know to have green politics and whose partner was whisking them away for the weekend. They said they'd requested no flights because they care about animals and don't want to wreck the planet. With all that's gone on recently, it's starting to feel like the people are ahead of the politicians again. Perhaps everyday people have started to really take on board their responsibilities.; Anyway, I went, today, to a meeting to support Jason Mullen who intends to stand in the forthcoming Borough Council elections in May for Castle Ward. I've been introduced to him previously and we're on nodding acquaintance and he lives just a few doors down from me so it seemed right. He's a nice chap. Not freakish at all.; But I have to say, I also met Jonathan Dixon, our local Green Party councillor, and I was impressed. He seems lively, focussed, practical, interesting, real, grounded .. he has a full set of interpersonal skills. I liked him. No wonder he won his election. So I'm buoyed by that. Perhaps there are those in every party who set the pace and make things happen. So that was good. I support. Let's give Scarborough more than one Green councillor.; The local green party website leaves, for me, something to be desired. I don't actually know what a councillor is, what they do, whether they work for the borough council or the county one, whether they are paid, what they can make decisions on versus national decision making, anon. What's a councillor? I'm 45 years old .. how long will I go on voting without having a clue what I'm voting for? Maybe there are others like me. I'd like to see a page explaining that.
Broadband reminder: 9 February 2007: I just called my broadband provider to, and it goes completely against the grain for me to say these words, check I was getting the best deal for me. Ugghhh, it's absolutely vile.; But anyway, look how much I saved! God I'm going to need a shower after this. One time we were wandering around Hopewells in Nottingham which, seen from our position in the pecking order, is rather a posh, upmarket furniture shop (couldn't afford it now) and there was a smartly dressed young/middle aged bloke haggling with the shop assistant, loudly, in the middle of the downstairs main showroom. Discount for cash, all that. He kept going, and the sales assistant just held his ground. Whereas I suppose his loudness was showing off, the assistant knew that the outcome, if he held his ground, would be that the customer would look cheap, and that's exactly how it turned out.; I, personally, don't want to be driven by saving money, because marketing uses that as a driver to get us to behave how they want us to behave. I still buy electricity from one place and gas from another because, well partly because my electricity comes from Good Energy. But also, how long does it take for you to save .. even say £50 or £100 a year on your gas and electricity? These things are always deliberately complicated. If your time is money, as mine is, that time would be better spent elsewhere.; Basically, I want control of my own mind, to make my own decisions when and where and how I buy things, and I don't want anyone else thinking I'm motivated by saving a few measly pounds.; So I don't buy into any of it. I've paid the price, over the years, so I'm not saying I'm right. Just, that's how it is. Plus, that's not how I am with you, my pretty, scented clients. I act for you, and in your best interests, and if that is judged to involve getting the best price, no problem.; Anyway, with broadband provision I feel differently. Broadband increases in speed, prices drop, and if you don't regularly review your service you'll be left paying an old, high price, for an old, slow, service. Often you can get a faster connection for less money.; Last night, I was uploading large files and while that was happening my broadband slowed to a crawl so I started to investigate. Using this broadband speed tester I was getting 78kbps. Luckily by the morning I was on anything from 737 to 845kbps, and while continuing that upload 360-622kbps. When I looked up my broadband account, I'm on a 1mbps service.; With a bit of shimmying around, I'm about to upgrade with the same provider (Biscit). I'm absolutely sure there will be cheaper packages out there, but I need an always on connection with support, and that's what Biscit provide. We have had our ups and downs, but I think what happened with me was a phase they went through, and my connection has never gone down in maybe four years.; I should be getting 8mbps download speed, unlimited connection, 2,400 minutes per month of free calls to UK 01 and 02 prefix landlines, no landline charge or anything else from BT, and an itemised bill for £29.99/mth. I was paying £24.99/mth, so I'm paying more (and getting more), but ditching my BT bill, so overall there's about a £40 saving in the first year, and £70 in year two. As I said, it's not the saving, it's the quality and type of service that's my motivator. I started looking because my broadband wasn't working properly last night, and I'm changing to see whether 8mbps makes any difference or not.; And, as if to illustrate the point, I probably wasted £100 of billable time trying to work out what to do.; The moral of this tale is: check your broadband provision regularly. You could get more for less. Grab it now while stocks last! You don't want to be the speccy red haired spotted midget who can't get girls do you? Change your life. Do it!
Running stats: 8 February 2007: So here's my position at the start of training. My resting heart rate is 53, which is up a little from the 51 last summer midway through training. I ran at 142 heart beats per minute and was running at 5.1 mph, which is down from 6 which seems to be the ceiling I'm reaching in training atm. Wierdly, my pace length was longer on that test than ever at 3.88 feet. No idea why that is, normally pace length increases with speed.; My weight is 207lbs (14st 11lb), which is where I got to soon after the half marathon last year .. I put on 5lbs in 3 weeks after injuring myself and stopping running. While running I was about 202lbs (14st 6lbs). That seems to support the obvious, which never seems to come up in diet publicity: yes running can help you lose weight, but if, say, it helped you lose 1lb a week which is what was happening to me, clearly that doesn't go on forever or you'd end up weighing nothing. Add running to your life and your body slims down a bit to reach a new equilibrium point. Take it out of your life and it goes back to the old equilibrium point.; There's also muscle weighing more than fat to consider. Perhaps over that period I've lost muscle, since I haven't really been going to the gym. If, for instance, I lost 5lb of muscle, that would mean I'd actually gained 10lbs of fat. I've no idea, though, what the proportion would be and I seemed to still be able to do the same weights when I did go to the gym the other day, so perhaps I didn't lose much muscle at all.; An interesting final point. I tried on a pair of trousers today, 34" waist, and they were quite loose on me. When I first went shopping for my own clothes, perhaps at 18 years old or so, I was 36" waist, 36" leg. 34" waist was possible to wear, but on the verge of being painful. So I've less belly now than when I was 18. Result! Thanks, running :-)
Appreciate stuff: 6 February 2007: Much as this article about upgrading to Vista is jolly fun and represents how many people feel about their computer, it's unfair.; People wanted a way easily to upgrade their computers. The imperative also came from virus and malware infections. Computers needed to be patched against the latest exploits. The industry provided a system. Now it takes a few moments to install an upgrade. To moan about it is, well it's a little ungrateful. It doesn't recognise the huge effort that went into developing that system, in response to market demand, and in developing upgrades that work relatively reliably. Back in the day, I'd refuse to install upgrades because they always came with unexpected fallout, other things stopped working or also required an upgrade.; In this new world in which change is the norm and everyone's playing real-life frogger, what seems to have been lost is an appreciation of what we've got. When we decide to move house, job, partner, computer, car, etc. we are in the habit of considering what we will gain, but not what we will lose, in the move. Perhaps it's part of not having the time to appreciate where we are, so we live in a virtual world of future imagined satisfaction.; As I went for my first training run along the front, the sun was setting in the west and lighting up the clouds, which were storm-building anvils over the horizon, three huge ones, underlit with orange while the fading light formed EverReady blue on the sea. Yes it was cold. Yes I got rained on. But it was beautiful.; We played a gig last night at the Grosvenor in Robin Hood's Bay along with Coldshot who were just brilliant and as I sat supping and listening and watching, surrounded by good people from a solid community I knew that moment was special.; I know I can moan with the best of them, and nothing good ever happened but for the unreasonable man (or whatever that saying is), but there are some very beautiful things too, right where you are now.
Marathon: 5 February 2007: This year is the year I planned to run a marathon, and today is the first day of the training programme for that, which is in mid September. In truth I've not actually run for about a couple of months because I injured myself soon after the last run, which got me out of the habit, and then if there's no goal to aim for it's difficult to do it just to do it, and I needed the time to get lots of business work done. So wish me luck. Ooerr, if I look down, I've got legs.
Bernard: 5 February 2007: How come we spent well over a year being urged by the news media to run around like headless chickens in fear of a bird flu pandemic. Now cuddly Bernard Matthews, purveyor of various items deserved of the exclamation "what the fuck is this on my plate? Have you gone mad?", has 160,000 headless turkeys the news media isn't getting that excited and "everything's under control". I want news that tells me what's going on, not news that tells me how to feel. The number of people telling me to calm down suggests someone or something exerts a serious amount of control over what we see on the news. Who is doing the controlling?; The Bernard Matthews website home page is a "don't worry" FAQ about the outbreak.
Global warming: 5 February 2007: Regardless of the scientist's recently published consensus, it has been quite scary to be wandering around outside, in Scarborough, in January and February, wearing a t-shirt, then thinking that's stupid, putting on a light jacket to walk into town, and being hot and sweaty. Something's definitely amiss.; Finally, though, we have incontrovertible (that's a car with a hard roof isn't it?) evidence that global warming is really happening. Yesterday, that's the 4th of February, there were people, lots of people, on the beach, doing beach things like laying down, eating stuff, and playing ball games. They should be indoors drying their socks on the fire for chrissakes!
Blue Tree Services: 3 February 2007: Another case study for you.