Edinburgh Festival & Fringe 2009

Absolutely loved my holiday in Edinburgh, enjoying the sites and sounds of the various festivals. It truly is a fascinating and beautiful city, vividly brought to life in August by the thousands of shows and their lively promoters.

I was a festival/fringe virgin until now and absolutely loved the heady mix of booze, comedy and music. It brings back those lovely, lazy student years.

Well, my highlights of Edinburgh -

• The National Museum of Scotland - great interactive as well as historical stuff (plus see Dolly the Sheep).
• A-team the musical, really.
• Bec Hill - cutesy but fun stand up exploring the nature of super heroes. With free cheese on toast.
• John Robins - excellent stand up, with great observations on relationship breakdown. Warning - your girlfriend will want to take him home and look after him
• Book Festival - meet authors, buy books, listen to readings - great!!!

Also found out they give awards for the funniest jokes at the fringe. My fave:

Marcus Brigstocke - "To the people who've got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn't invent it!"

The best (and worst) fringe gags are here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8216991.stm

Why search engines are like buses

What is it with search engines? You wait ages for one then 3 turn up at once.

• Bing - Microsoft's (reportedly) last stab at getting search right. It boasts improved search results (don't they all), a range of innovative features and a shiny look and feel. Mmm, nice picture though.
• Wolfram Alpha - described as a "computational knowledge engine". Oooh get her. Anyway the brainchild of an English academic, Wolfram alpha attempts to fully answer simple or complex requests using jazzy algorithms and huuuge data sets. Not so good for finding a local restaurant.
• Google Squared - always on the prowl, Google released this cross between search and spreadsheet, spreadengine? searchsheet? Any good? You decide.
• Not really a search engine at all but one to note for the future is Google Wave, which purports to be the time saving collaboration solution we've all apparently been looking for. A mash up of email, chat, twitter and facebook. It aims to consolidate these disparate means of communication into one easy to use interface. Lots of hype around this one...
  

Google Balls

Google Bad

Google made a mistake! Really. Well one of their junior engineers did apparently.

For a brief period of a time every search result returned in the SERPS was marked with their infamous "This site may harm your computer" tag, usually reserved for only the most scurrilous and scummy of malware purveyors.

Where did it all go wrong? Someone entered a slash where there shouldn't have been, basically - thus adding all SERPS results to the scum file. Read more.

Its comforting to know that a human hand still steers the tiller over at Cyberdine though isn't it?

Google Good

On a related note Google have announced a few new toys:

• Tasks in Gmail - a handy to do list which pops up a la Google chat.
  
• New and improved Google Earth - it now includes detailed ocean info. Yep, really. You can splash into the Marianas trench and have alook around. If you really want.
• Google Lattitude - this is quite interesting. You can advertise your geographic location to friends and family via your smartphone or laptop. Clearly this has some intense privacy ramifications and G are quick to point out that everything is opt in. So if you are playing away make sure your phone is off...

Not bad, I think we can forgive them their boo boo, don't you?

Stephen Fry, Twitter and a move

Hellooo! I know, I know so much time has passed since my last meaningful post dear reader, but things have been afoot.

Love bites

First of all news: I am quitting Spain for a possibly ill advised attempt at re-integrating myself into the arctic conditions of the UK. The move comes about not, I hasten to add, because I have fallen out of love with Spain, but rather because I have fallen in love with a girl. [Vomiting noises off....]

Yes I know it sounds a little saccharine and twee but its true and there it is. 

Interestingly I have been looking at the UK jobs market and find myself a bit adrift. Yes there is a recession on, but there also appear to be plenty of IT posts kicking around (hundreds everyday on jobserve for example). 

My problem is I am not sure of my value and how up to date my skillset is compared with the demands of the UK jobs scene. One thing I have noted is that SEO/SEM positions appear to pay more handsomely than straight coding jobs and that there are more .NET than open source jobs. 

I am actually looking forward to getting back into the fray, I think my time spent working freelance has somewhat blunted my inquisitive/acquisitive bent. Translation: I've become lazy.

Twittering On

Anyway enough of my personal drivel, time it seems for everyone else's:  two things have caught my attention recently. One is the rise of twitter. I still am not sure of the value of this message vomit. 

The whole world from celebs through to my gurus and even my girlfriend appears to be tweeting. The constant stream of consciousness from millions proves addictive to many, I am not sure yet whether I will become such an addict. Perhaps I need to be more selective.

Ironically the second thing I wanted to share comes from following a Stephen Fry tweet to his blog where he muses excellently on the iPhone for example. The joy is to find a great wordsmith such as Fry is also an avid techie and keen early adopter. His blog is now on my reading list. Highly recommended.

Man babies. Erm...

This is odd, but funny. And I'm sure there's a message in there somewhere about men are just little boys with more disposable income.



Anyway have a look at Manbabies. Even the name sounds a bit unsettling doesn't it?

Merry Xmas from Millsbomb

Have a great xmas Millsbomb readers, don't end up like this lot though!! [Thanks to Swiss]



On a more festive note check out this guy's house - I bet his neighbours love him. [Thanks Dave]



Merry Christmas!!!

Puzzle Game

Here's a great locked room style puzzle game.

It drove me mad for several hours...

http://neutralxe.net/esc/vision_play.html

For those of you with no patience there are hints and even a walkthrough here: http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/02/vision.php

Enjoy!

Stupid Web 2.0 Names

This blogger identifies a disturbing trend - web 2.0 startups with particularly dumb names. Who is going to invest in anything called Thoof, which he compares to a fart sound. Good point.

I like the sound of Weebly though...

http://thenextweb.org/2008/10/13/the-15-dumbest-names-for-web-20-startups/

Take on me, literally

Here is a very literal reworking of the famous a-ha video. Silly but good.



STOP PRESS!! Now tears for fears are at it too!

The power of slap and a daft video

Check out the transformative ability of a bit of makeup:

There's loads more here: http://forums.pebblesonthebeach.com/viewtopic.php?t=285

Oh and here's that daft video I also mentioned, can you work out what they are playing?

Local News - drug bust

Check out what the guy behind the reporter is taking out of the house...

Google 2001

Google recently celebrated its 10th birthday. To mark the occasion amongst other interesting titbits such as a timeline, they also produced a searchable version of their oldest index (2001).

If only I knew then what I do now...

Anyway, check out who was top of the pops back then: http://www.google.com/search2001.html

Competitive Intelligence - Google gives you the goods!

There's one born every minute...

If you own a small business (say a real estate company in southern Spain, for example) then you will probably have received a phone call similar to the following:

You: Hello

Them: Hi I'm calling to ask if you'd like more customers.

You: Really?

Them: Yes.

You: Well.. business has been a bit slack recently, so err.. yes please.

Them: Great. You need to advertise on our forum*/portal*/Armenian property bazaar*/website about my cat* [*delete as applicable]

You: Err, how much is it?

Them: Arm and a leg. But its worth it because we're the busiest. Honest.

You: Really?

Them: Yep. Got your Visa card there?

[etc, etc...]

Suck it and see

It has always been notoriously tricky to decide where you should spend your online advertising dollar.

Most agents are too busy keeping the wolf from the door to learn enough about the various sites in their niche that might benefit them. They are even less likely to be aware of the different measures of site traffic, visitors, impressions, uniques and so forth.

Plus (believe it or not) certain sites will exaggerate or be selective with their stats in the hope of signing you up.

So (and I'm only theorising here) for most small business owners, online advertising has pretty much been a trial and error affair, more often ending up with disappointment and 3 months ad budget pissed away, with little or no decent enquiries to show for the time and money and effort.

How can you guard against this?

Well the really short answer is you probably can't. There are stats and analytics, and things like Alexa, that can give you an idea of a site's popularity, but as I said before these can be manipulated.

Everyone knows that salesmen are the easiest people to close - and hate to admit their ignorance on any topic! Combine that with an advertising telemarketer (on no basic) trying to hit his monthly target and bob's your uncle.

Competitive Intelligence

But it doesn't have to be a blind leap. There are certain things you can do to find out if a site justifies its advertising fees. The best of these, by far, is Google trends. By signing in with a Google account you can compare numerous sites' traffic stats and also see where the visitors come from as well as other popular sites they have visited.

The following screenshot shows 3 popular Spanish property portals I compared using the system:

(click image to enlarge)

From this at least one can glean if a site is worth its price by comparing it with similar sites in the same sector. Previously, this kind of competitive intelligence was only available from certain ISPs to companies with deep pockets. Now its yours for free! Not bad at all.

NB to see figures and projections, you will need to sign in first.

Use your powers wisely

It still remains a fact though that large volumes of traffic do not necessarily equate to lots of lovely leads. For example, the site with the most traffic may also have the most subscribers, therefore reducing the average number of enquiries per subscriber.

Neither does volume equate to quality - a small number of niche, "on target" leads is far better than an inbox full of dross to wade through.

So it probably is still the case of "suck it and see" in terms of finding a good source of reasonably priced leads. But at least you can wade in armed with a little more knowledge. All free of charge.

The Wealth of Croesus

This article gives you an insight into the crazy, wonderful life of a billionaire. The chap in question is the co-founder of some microchip company, whose private details are unravelling in court following a series of lawsuits.

The pick of the vignettes that are titillating the court include:

• He had a secret underground party room, that even his wife was unaware of,
• He smoked so much dope on his private jet that the pilot was forced to wear an oxygen mask,
• He set up a drugs warehouse and dressed it up with fine art and top end audio-visual kit,
• He would invoice friends and employees for drugs and hookers, for tax purposes, itemising these as "party favours".

Work hard, play hard.

Jim Carrey, I did see a putty tat

Funnier than material, is timing and here is the best:

Gran Scala - Spain's Las Vegas?

I note that the much touted Gran Scala project is now looking much like an outside bet. The developement set to invigorate Zaragoza as a Spanish Las Vegas style gambling and golf resort, now looks highly unlikely. A mixture of hyperbole and underfunding seems to be the cause.

Mark Stucklin notes in his blog:

The problem with ambitious plans like these, is they go nowhere without serious money and serious backers. It now looks as if the government of Aragon might have fallen for a bluff.

He continues:

...the company due to create and run two of the theme parks in the resort was only set up in Reno in September with capital of just 950 Euros.

Ehhh? 950 Euros! I think they need to spend a little more time at the roulette table. Or maybe they've spent too much there. Read more in Mark's blog.

On an unrelated note, Turkey's authorities have apparently suspended foreign property purchases. Read more here.

Anyone got any good news?

Out for a stroll - Caminito del Rey

For those of you who enjoy adventurous walking holidays, check out this chap's video. This is filmed at Caminito del Rey, a spectacular Spanish gorge.

It is supposedly closed to the general public following several deaths from falls, though that doesn't seem to bother our intrepid cameraman. The build quality of the footpath will be familiar to anyone who has bought an off plan property in Spain.

Lion, Motorbike, Wall of Death

Now that's a picture.

Funny F*ckers

I like funny pictures, like this one:

And this one:


And this one:


There's tons of them here: http://www.serious-internet.biz/

Rocky is back!

Probably more thrilling than the Amazing Magic of David Chesterfield is this inspirational new training montage from Rocky: