John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

Littlebeck: 31 May 2008: Earlier this month I got the chance to wander for a moment around Littlebeck near Whitby on the North Yorkshire Moors.
A hotel case study: 30 May 2008: Another Scarborough hotel, this one is, according to an email I just received, having their best ever year, partly (I'd hope) as a result of the Internet marketing things I've been doing for them. Anyway, here is them.
Help! Our Google position has dropped: 28 May 2008: I just got this from a brand new client: "We've just moved back down to position 17 for 'our keyword phrase'. Do you have any idea why we'd move up like this for such a short period? I've seen this happen before with other keywords."; I answered: "You'll go mad watching search engine positions, it's like trying to imagine infinity. Positions change for all sorts of reasons we are not in control of. The metric to watch, imho, is overall traffic from the search engines. If that's going up, and your conversion doesn't drop, all's well."; "Obviously that doesn't stop us watching positions and trying to get to be number one, and feeling great when we do, but there's no point getting stressed about the way it wavers when it's all down to background programming shenanigans at Google. You can wake up one morning and all your positions have changed. It can have a serious impact on businesses. But the only thing you can do about it is to never stop building a great website and business. The good will win the long game."; A bit of background. Search engines calculate your position for a search term based on lots of things. They keep their formula secret and they change it often. They do that because if they stand still, some bright spark in Internet marketing somewhere works out what is required to get a number one position, then either sells a course on it or at least tells all their mates, and suddenly loads of low quality salesy sites are getting the top slots. Google wants proper, informative, well built sites to be top, so it is engaged in a constant battle. That's a good thing. We want Google to keep doing that. If the Internet were full of sales rubbish we'd never use it.; So, accept that your results positions are going to change from time to time, and don't worry about it.; Now. A technique that exploits Google like that would generally be regarded as a black hat technique (apparently all the baddies in the cowboy films wore black hats, the goodies white ones). Black hat techniques can provide short term gains, sometimes spectacular ones. But they typically have a specific pattern to them and Google learns those patterns and when they recognise what's going on, they knock your position down. Practitioners call this the Google Slap. If you build your business around black hat techniques, you can wake up one morning and find your traffic has disappeared.; I know one chap who bought a guaranteed system that automatically generated websites using 'content' found on the web for popular keywords. The idea is to populate those sites with Adsense ads where you get paid whenever someone clicks on the ads. It's the Internet dream .. a regular income that gives you freedom, for next to no effort. He worked day and night for months, created thousands of websites all arranged in a special structure that did all sorts of magical things. He made a few hundred pounds a month and then, wham, nothing else forever. A waste of time.; Even worse .. watch who you use for search engine optimisation. If an SEO practitioner uses a black hat technique they may create a vulnerability for you.; So the way it really works is this. Be the best (really). Be genuine ( ... no no, you didn't hear that .. drink this one in deep ... **** be genuine ****). Be fantastic (but don't oversell). Be imaginative and innovative. Be genuinely worthy of the top slot. And yes, you need to do some search engine optimisation stuff, but the right stuff. If you're that good, you'll get the top slot. And in the long game, traffic from the search engines will grow and be relatively stable and you'll have a good business.
An old school friend: 27 May 2008: An old school friend found me through Friends Reunited. She now lives here. Wow.; Apparently the president recently told all gay people to leave the country or he'd cut off their heads. Wow. Here's what a Gambian newspaper looks like. Wow.; Here are some photographs from around and about. Wow .. monkeys .. wow.; It was probably 32C scorchio today. It's in the same time zone as us. Wow.; Gambia doesn't have a postal system. Wow.
Cash: 27 May 2008: I must admit .. two things actually. One, I knew nothing about Johnny Cash. I thought he was a country singer, and I tend to avoid those (now he seems, at least in his early work, to deliver what I was looking for, and failed to find, in skiffle). Two, after watching Walk The Line, I'm rather haunted by the whole thing.; This seems to say everything I feel like saying, so I may as well pass you over.; Dunno what this is. I can't tell what's real and what's fake any more. Is that Johnny Cash playing a gig in a jail? Or an actor acting Johnny Cash playing a real gig to acting inmates in a pretend jail that's really made of cornflake packets? Or is it all just CGI? Who the hell knows nowadays? More worryingly, who the hell cares? When the news showed the recent Mars landing, they apparently had a camera crew outside the probe watching it land. Imagine the overtime those guys were on! Waste of licence payers money, they coulda just made the whole thing up.; Apart from all that, he seems like a musical Bill Hicks.
Ideal: 27 May 2008: This series of Ideal has really been exceptionally well written. Great characters, fabulous lines. Get into it.
Eurovision: 25 May 2008: I'm concerned that Europe hates us. We came last in Eurovision last night, yet Andy Abrahams did a cracking job. Mind you the song wasn't up to a whole lot, and I guess it was a song contest. But I only remember San Marino voting for us (but I see someone else did). San Marino? We had to look it up.; So, given that populations vote as a matter of course for other peoples they like, I have to conclude that no-one, that's no-one, at all, likes us.; Iraq? Our special relationship with the US? Are we going to end up for decades like the Germans, wandering around Europe apologising for our past? I'd rather be liked in Europe than liked in the US.
Crewe: 25 May 2008: I know it doesn't make good press, and I know it ignores pertinent issues, but not once have I read that a contributor to the loss of Crewe might have been the death of Gwyneth Dunwoody, by all accounts someone with a great following. Surely when someone like that dies, there's a swing away regardless of how the parties are doing. Suddenly the seat is unlocked.
Doggy do: 21 May 2008: So there I was driving back from interviewing the Organic Farm shop about Fair Trade goods and Pickering being a Fair Trade town (whatever that is), Crystal Method on the CD, and heading towards Bar2B where I owed the owner a poster or two of my band for a forthcoming gig when I passed a dog.; This dog was a rather lost, forlorn and unkempt looking West Highland Terrier, sat on the kerbside, with big lorries and buses thundering past. And no owner in sight.; People looked at the dog, clocked that it was on its own, and did nothing.; I've blogged this before, but since a lecture on Bystander Apathy in the psychology module I undertook at Leeds University in 1981 or thereabouts (the only thing I actually passed there first time, I also took a management option but was too scared to turn up to any lectures because I heard they made you stand up and make presentations and I had, I think, a full blown fear of that, and I chose psychology because when I asked the philosophy lecturers why I should choose them, they said "I don't know, why should you choose us?") I resolved to act in such situations. That was turned into an imperative the day I discovered a man who'd jumped or fallen or been pushed from the top of a multi-storey car park and I discovered I was capable of considering the possibility of ignoring him.; Sometimes it takes a moment for all that to kick in. So I drove through a set of traffic lights and turned around at the next traffic island, back through the lights again, and pulled up opposite the dog. I got out of the car, and crossed the road. The dog hadn't really noticed me. So when I crouched down about six feet away from it and said, in my friendliest voice, "hello", it started, rounded and barked at me. It was wearing a worn pink collar with "Bitch" in white letters. It didn't appear to have a nametag. I was rather hoping for a nametag, because I'd have phoned the owner. Given the lack of one, I felt I couldn't do any more. And anyway, the dog didn't seem to want me around, so that was that.; As I got back in the car, the dog went to a doorway out of which came a chap with another Westie, and off they trotted.; So now I'm trying to understand what knowledge you have to have in your head to think that your dog, that wants a walk, would be fine let out onto the pavement of a busy road for five or ten minutes on its own. I'm not saying he was wrong. I think he was wrong. But I don't know everything.; The last time I let a dog roam on its own it followed a scent trail and by some miracle I spotted him several fields away following a fox. He'd crossed the A6. He wasn't my dog. I was, err, looking after him for my in-laws. I'm guessing if I hadn't spotted him, he wouldn't have found his way back.; To finish the day's doggy stories. A client sent me a rather touching message today. It's a regular thing where she lives that the ice cream van turns up playing the match of the day theme, and her dog goes mad. Because when that happens, he goes out and gets a free ice cream, because the kids love to see him with his paws up against the counter.; I haven't blogged much because I'm busy. Very busy. Pulling my hair out about publicising a hair loss clinic.
Paleo update: 5 May 2008: For the record, I'm still on the Paleo diet, but the holding pattern allows for a few meals 'off' and I've been rather taking advantage of that of late. And I started to get a floppiness problem in that yes I could go for a run and I'd run just as well as normal, but I didn't want to. I couldn't be bothered. I felt .. floppy. Whereas before Paleo I'd have verve and whizz, now I didn't.; I put that down to my body having to work at keeping my blood sugar right since there are no carbs in the Paleo diet, and I was losing weight. If I'm losing weight, I think floppiness is probably a reasonable symptom.; So I tried to balance my weight loss by ingesting lots of bananas, dried fruit and nuts, and roasted squash .. things that provided at least some sugars. That seemed OK, but on longer runs I felt I needed my lucozade drink, and took that too. That seemed to help.; But then I started to include some carbs in my diet, too, as a trial. I'm not going back to big slabs of bread and butter with a hunk of cheese, but a bit of potato or a little rice.; Probably over the last couple of weeks though, we've eaten with friends and I've been away a couple of times and, basically, over the last 2 months I've put back on 12lbs, so I'm now 4lbs off where I started. And I'm still feeling floppy, so I'm no longer sure it's the diet. I may have something underlying.; Plus, I appear to have knackered my knee, so I need to rest up, see the podiatrist (interesting wear pattern on all my shoes), and buy new trainers. So it's not looking good for a marathon attempt this year, but we'll see.; Here's a strange one. My main weight loss appeared over a time when I had a stomach bug that lasted over a week, and since then I've felt floppy. It's kinda like mini Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which often kicks off with a major alimentary bug followed by being bedridden. I feel like I've got 10% CFS. Can you catch CFS? If it's a virus ... dunno. I often get mini colds where I'll get the start of something but then just fight it off and it doesn't fully appear in me while others fall down with it, so I think my immune system's fairly strong. So could it possibly be I'm fighting CFS? I've never heard that, but it's how it feels. Somehow, I'm not on top form. It's not a major thing, I'm still working all the hours and so on. Perhaps I just need a break.; Update: I do find this: if I retrospectively check my biorhythms, there's often a correlation between how I feel and how they are. Guess what? My physical cycle is at its lowest today. Here's a link but there are a few popups to negotiate.
Organic price comparison: 4 May 2008: Price comparisons between shops are meaningless to me because they always compare a 'normal family shop' and I don't buy normal family things. Coco Pops no, pine nuts yes.; So given my new found fun with The Organic Farm Shop, I thought I'd give it a go.; Firstly, it's a complicated thing. One of my big issues is the unfairness of the battle between big companies and us as individuals. Big companies employ people for whom it is their life's work to find ways to maximise profit. Lots of those people. Skilled, professional people, whether they are number crunchers or retail designers or packaging designers or shop managers. And they are pitted against us as individuals .. just trying to buy dinner. Shopping at the Organic Farm Shop doesn't feel like that.; So in trying to compare the Organic Farm Shop with Sainsbury's I came across a number of issues. For instance, in Sainsbury's I could buy shelled brazil nuts for £1.39/100g, £2.69/200g or £3.99/400g. The last two were in different parts of the shop. Basically, it turns out, the stand near the greengrocery is cheaper for nuts but more expensive for dried fruit, whereas the stand near home baking is cheaper for dried fruit and more expensive for nuts. Unless you turn up with a calculator and spend your own time to work it out every week, you're unlikely to spot that. But in my price comparison, I chose to use the lowest price at the supermarket to use for comparison, because I suppose that's the only fair thing to do. But that's not the average price you'll pay, because you'll be fooled some of the time. The supermarket can even claim not to be fooling you, they are simply providing customer choice.; Another issue is that I may not be comparing like with like, although I did my best. Tomatoes and potatoes, for instance, come in a number of different varieties that may not be inter-comparable.; Organic isn't necessarily more expensive, either. Sainsbury's walnuts were cheaper organic (as opposed to 'normal'), as were the dried apricots and garlic bulbs.; There's the common issue of having to buy a lot of something you only wanted a little of. In practice this seems to be less of a problem than I thought it was. One of the things I love about The Organic Farm Shop is, if I want a lemon I can get a lemon, not a bag of three. If I want 200g of parsnips for a recipe, that's all I have to buy, not a 500g bag. For me, that cuts down on waste. However that was less of a problem than I thought it would be. I ended up with three garlic bulbs. If I wanted an avocado I could actually eat (rather than sit and watch for a week before eating), I had to buy three. Apples and pears were bagged in fives. Lettuces in twos. Leeks in fives. Lemons in threes. But all in all, it wasn't so bad and, when moaning about this to my g/f, she pointed out that there had to be a way of differentiating between organic and non-organic at the checkout, and bagging the organic pears would differentiate them from loose non-organic ones.; I'm unusual in that I cook recipes and work out a menu plan each week. I'm guessing few others do that. You may argue that buying more leeks than you want just means you'll do something else with leeks later on, which is fine. But I think that approach is better through The Organic Farm Shop because there you're more likely to be connected to the seasons. You know when something is available home-grown off their farm, and you can use it while it's in season.; Packaging was an issue. With the Organic Farm Shop everything comes in paper bags, and then in either cardboard boxes or crates. The bags and boxes go in our blue bins for recycling, the crates go as kindling for our log burning stove, but they'll take back the empties if you like. With Sainsbury's I got 7 carriers (sorry, every single time I forget to take the re-usable bags, but I do re-use these bags for used cat litter), 6 plastic trays, 3 lots of cling film, 1 clear plastic container, 3 nylon net bags, 8 plastic compostable bags and 7 plastic non-compostable bags. There's pressure on space in our bins and I didn't like receiving all this extra stuff.; Sainsbury's is 1 mile from where I live. So using the Inland Revenue's mileage rates I reckon it cost me 80p to drive to Sainsbury's and back.; But here's an interesting thing. It took 2.5 hours to do this shop. Now, granted, I spent some time working out the different prices for this study. But still. I used to bank on 2 hours for a shop. With the Organic Farm Shop, you place your order by email and it arrives and you put the stuff away. So it depends how much you value your time whether you take this into account, but to my mind, time is our most precious asset and I don't want to be giving it to Sainsbury's.; When I used to do both Sainsbury's and an occasional treat shop in The Organic Farm Shop, I informally worked out that although it was an 18 mile, 30 minute drive to the Organic Farm Shop, I'd still be back in the time it would have taken me to shop in Sainsbury's. And whereas Sainsbury's drained my soul, whenever we arrived at the Organic Farm Shop we'd open the car door and just drink in the birdsong, the butterflies, the chickens clucking. That was worth the drive alone.; There's the 'local' issue too. When I spend my money with the Organic Farm Shop it goes to Mike and Pam Sellers who presumably buy stuff locally, so it helps the local economy. I don't know if that really matters that much because if I spend it with Sainsbury's the argument is the money goes out of the area, but some of it goes into the wages of the staff, who are local, and the money ultimately goes to shareholders, who could be anywhere, local included. Perhaps more important is that it's going to people you know rather than just anyone, and it's easing the pressure on farmers rather than increasing it .. we've all heard of the way the supermarkets use their buying power to drive the price to farmers down.; Supermarkets sell themselves as being convenient because everything's under one roof. I never found that. In fact, with a promise like that I found myself being irritated every single week by two or three items the shop didn't stock, meaning I had to seek those things out elsewhere, further wasting my time. Sainsbury's was missing 8 organic items and 2 non-organic items, and The Organic Farm Shop was missing 4 items.; So, for a week's shop, which for me is basically fruit, vegetables, nuts, dried fruit, honey, and eggs, and including only those things that were available both 'normal' and organic from Sainsbury's and organic from the Organic Farm Shop, were I to buy 'normal' I'd have spent £63.67. The same stuff, but organic, from Sainsbury's cost £90.38, so half as much again. From the Organic Farm Shop, and bearing in mind nothing at this time of year was at its cheapest (straight from their farm) .. £79.43, so a quarter as much again as 'normal' (or 12% cheaper than organic from Sainsbury's) (but .. read on).; So, I spent an extra £15.76 buying organic, I got free delivery, I saved 2 hours of time, and I didn't get 35 extra bits of packaging to throw away. Plus, I didn't really spend £15.76 extra because I also bought at least £2.88 of stuff in larger quantities than I wanted, and if I hadn't had pen and paper, I'd have spent an extra 90p on buying nuts from the more expensive aisle. Add all that with the mileage too and I only spent an extra £11.18, which is only 18% more, and I got beautiful, wholesome organic food. Plus, I saved two hours: I swapped £11.18 for 2 hours of freedom.; I almost forgot. You know the two things that happen when you walk around a supermarket? The first thing happens as soon as you walk through the door, and I think it's by deliberate design: you forget entirely what you came shopping to buy. The second thing is, you come out of the shop with a load of stuff you never intended to buy.; With The Organic Farm Shop you can discover great new things to try, too, if you visit the shop. But if you order online, there's no opportunity for them to persuade you to buy anything else. So you can decide what you want, and buy it, without any distractions. If I'm trying to give something up, like beer, cake or chocolate, I'm much happier simply not buying it than having it sat around in the fridge, taunting me. I'll bet I'm saving more than £11.18 each week on not buying super new chocolate coated special fairy biscuits that I never knew I wanted (or knew existed) but now can't live without.; I've a feeling, too, that the produce from the Organic Farm Shop tastes better. I can't quantify that, but I wonder if a supermarket is mostly interested in being able to label something organic, while The Organic Farm Shop is more interested in living to the spirit of the organic movement.; The conclusion? If you're buying organic, ordering from The Organic Farm Shop is cheaper, more convenient, and more fulfilling than going to the supermarket. If you currently buy non-organic, you'll spend a little more, but it'll be nicer food that will encourage you to eat more healthily. But it's a lifestyle thing. This all works for people who cook vegetarian food. Most people don't. I know The Organic Farm Shop stocks quick food such as beans, bread, cheese, eggs, butter and so on and probably also stocks some sort of ready meals, but I'm sure they won't compare in variety with what's available from a supermarket. There's nothing to stop you mixing it up, though. Try ordering a few fresh things from The Organic Farm Shop and cut your supermarket visits down to once every other week.; If you want the full details, you can download the spreadsheet. Let me know what you think.
And if you complain once more, you'll meet an army of me: 3 May 2008: A few years ago we really wanted to see Björk do her tour of the world's opera houses but tickets were sold out in a millisecond and then re-appeared on eBay for £300, so we decided not.; Her current tour gave us the chance to see her, and you still have two more UK chances before she melts into the rest of the world.; At around 7pm, Blackpool seemed strangely closed and it took us a while to find La Piazza, a non-chain restaurant which is conveniently near the Winter Gardens and contained mostly couples going to Björk.; The waiter asked us if there was a show on, because his clientelle for the evening seemed unusual. "Yes", we said "Björk". He'd never heard of her. We had to explain Björk, and very nearly came away with a signed photograph of an Icelandic dancer.; About halfway through the gig I started to think that, while this was all very nice, and there very definitely was Björk, I was in danger of ending the night unmoved.; There's a military feeling to this tour. The stage is decked out with flags containing images of reptiles, suggesting militarism and nationalism and also ancient earth, and the Icelandic brass section wore quasi military outfits. I wondered about her recent move to New York and how that might have fed into her thoughts .. I understand that while New York was the target of the 9/11 bombing, it's a liberal place and doesn't wholly support Bush's international interventions.; My ears need sorting, so I might have been missing some of the sound, but to me and my partner it sounded a tad confused at times. I do think that's the Winter Gardens though. That's where we saw The Chemical Brothers twice .. almost simultaneously. We were only present once, but we got them once from the speakers, and once again a very short time later when the sound bounced off the back wall and came back at us again. It's a very reflective venue.; Another thing I noticed. This is rubbish of me, I know, but I'd never appreciated Björk for her singing, it was always because of her unique approach, her individuality, her songwriting. I appreciated her as an artist. But here was an apparently normal looking mostly mancunian rock audience cheering mostly for her singing. And wow, she does do singing.; "Finchew". It's Björk for "thank-you". Every song ends "finchew".; I wonder how Björk laughs. Is it a tinkle? Does she rock back in her chair, her little legs rising off the ground? If anyone can find any youTube footage of that, I'd appreciate it.; Now, I generally dislike the idea of going to a gig and wanting the band to play all their hits (if you want to hear your favourite tunes, listen to local radio), and Björk doesn't do that anyway. But her latest album is more unconventional than even her other work, so it could have been that that was passing me by.; Then she played Army of Me (iTunes link).; And the bass kicked in. Words should go here to describe that, but there aren't any.; For what it's worth, it's my favourite Björk tune.; So now, she'd got my brain and my soul.; I doubt there are many times a band has gotten an audience to sing about cutlery, but a reworked Hyper-Ballad turned into a wall of dance percussion. Crikey moses.; Checkout Earth Intruders too.; When the end came, we called for quite a while for an encore. I looked around. The Empire Theatre was full to the back, and every single person was calling for more. She had us. Amazing.; When she came back, she introduced the band and then got ready to play the next tune, The Anchor Song "from one ocean town to another", but somehow we got her. A slight pause in her voice? Something to do with our calls for more? A glitch in her voice, some emotion? The crowd just cheered from front to back. We'd connected with her. This wasn't just a n other gig.; Anchor Song is what motivated my partner to come and live in Scarborough, and me to follow.; And, a strange thing but I liked it, almost at the end of Anchor Song, which is a quiet voice and brass piece, a ticker tape machine fired off momentarily. No big deal, it wasn't wholly inappropriate, but I knew it was a cockup because Björk scratched her neck .. almost a gesture of denial, putting her arm up between her and the error. Another 'human' moment. Real.; So what is it about Björk that makes her so popular when so many people will say her music irritates, and she follows her own path so doggedly? I think it's love. It's closeness. This is not Kylie .. you can't get close to Kylie. Is there a Kylie to get close too? Nice enough, but hollow. Björk's like the sister you've always known, but also an intimate girlfriend. She's all there before us: Cocoon I think is possibly the horniest song I've ever heard. So, we know her as much as a friend we spend long nights talking with. It's a deep love. It exposes 'fancying'. It's the real thing.; I don't think the Italian waiter would have understood even if he'd come to the gig.; The next day we went to Southport. What a God forsaken place that is. OK, we only visited part of it, I'm sure there are nicer bits. But if you give over the focus of your seafront (the base of the pier) to an assortment of retail sheds, that has to be an indicator of your approach. Genuinely, I would rather die.; From Björk to this soul desolation. Two extremes.; At the end of the pier is a collection of old penny slots (in both senses). Someone had knitted new kit for the footballers.; The point of our drive, however, was to visit Anthony Gormley's Another Place.; We expected it to be curious. But we didn't expect this.; It's beautiful.; The location is something else. To the occasional deep boom of huge chunks of metal being moved around in Liverpool docks, you can see the Liver building, what must be Snowdonia and the huge wind turbines and gas flare on the horizon .. this is spectacular.; The statues give a reason to walk on. They face the sea as Liverpool does. They are playful (people dress and paint them) yet immutable. I expected them to be hollow and to be designed to decay. They are not, they are solid metal.; I'll let the images talk.; Of course it helps if the weather's good and the tide's out.; Declare Independence, don't let them do that to you.