It’s Snow Joke

See what I’ve done there? Eh? Snow/no. Brilliant. Anyway, after the high winds we had last week, now apparently there’s chaos after an inch of snow. To be fair it was more than an inch in a lot of places, but it made quite a nice wintery scene here in London. Scant consolation for the people stuck on a train station platform in below zero conditions of course.

Let’s Get Angry Together

So it turns out I’m not the only angry one (see I miss my tikka). Turns out there’s a self-proclaimed Mr Angry on the web who’s slowly becoming my hero. The more I read, the more I like him.

Mr Angry gets annoyed with most things as far as I can tell, and he likes to tell people about it. In a very funny way. Not many websites or blogs make me laugh out loud (newsbiscuit is the only other that springs to mind) but this one does.

A lot of the stuff isn’t anything new but he manages to capture the aggravation of everyday life in a new way. He may moan, you may think “well that’s life, he should get on with it” but as long as he’s having problems and getting angry, he’ll keep brightening my day.

Fat Jim sounds a lot of fun.

How to find the best holiday flight

Wingmap is a new way to search for holiday flights by simply pointing and clicking. Simply click on the date you wish to leave on and the date you wish to return. Then click on the city you wish to depart from, cross off any airports you don’t want to use, then click on the city you wish to visit.

Reducing the need to spell places correctly or even know the name of the place, you just need to know where in the world in is. The site then searches for “the best” deals on those dates and places and lists them for you. Once clicking “Book it” it claims to have one of the easiest booking processes available by forwarding you to the relevant website. Currently only available for Europe it has plans to add more cities and countries in the future.

Originally found via: TechCrunch

PageRank and AlexaRank

This is Part 7 in our series “How To Make Money From Your Blog”.

Google PageRank and AlexaRank are two ways of measuring the popularity of your website.

PageRank

PageRank is what enabled Google to become the #1 search engine and be thrust into the limelight. In essence, each website is ranked on a scale of 0 to 10 based on a certain number of factors, mainly how important the sites are that are linked to that site. Google says:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

Simply, the higher the PageRank of your site, the more incoming links you have from higher ranked (relevant) websites (with useful keywords), and the “better” your site is performing. However PageRank is only updated about once every three monts, so is often an unreliable method.

For a more technical explanation of how it works, try Wikipedia and an overview from Entrepreneurs-Journey.

AlexaRank

Alexa is a website that, among other things, tries to measure the amount of traffic a site receives by gathering data from the Alexa toolbar that a lot of people have installed. It’s a combined measure of the reach of a website (number of users) and page views.

Entrepreneurs-Journey does a great job of explaining AlexaRank.

SearchStatus Firefox Extension

SearchStatus is an extension for Firefox (and Mozilla) that provides useful information about the site you’re visiting and your own sites:

For every site you visit using, SearchStatus lets you view its Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site (according to Google), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy.

The two little ranking bars (above) provide a snapshot of a site’s importance, but with dubious accuracy (the toolbar is accurate, whether PageRank and AlexaRank are is a different matter). Much more information can be gathered using the context menu (below), with backward links always being interesting.

Overall, whilst these tools are useful and interesting, they shouldn’t be taken as gospel. Your own server stats are usually much more interesting especially in conjunction with an analytics package (such as the free Google Analytics).

A Rocky Balboa Treat

As promised, here’s a treat for Rocky fans - Sylvester Stallone in conversation with himself!!

I Miss My Tikka

I’m angry today, I feel like I’ve lost a friend and just realised he’s never coming back.

It began with Asda. Now as supermarket’s go, I quite like Asda. Yes, it’s the shopping choice of the chavs and part of Wal-Mart but the reason I would get my backpack together and get on the train to go there was for the curry. Yes, there are a lot of curries and curry houses about that offer fine fare, but the Prawn Tikka Masala from Asda was my favourite of them all. Even though I was carrying lots of other stuff, I’d throw out the essentials to make way for three or four portions of that curry. I would freeze it and limit myself to one portion a week with a naan and poppadums. My eyes are misting over just thinking of it. Why? Because they stopped making it around a month ago.

At first I thought it was just because they closed those sections that have big pots and they give you a serving and instead had the chiller cabinets. But no, it’s gone forever. And not just in the one store - I challenge anyone to find it (if you do, let me know I’ll be there in a flash).

Still reeling from that news I made it through Christmas having inferior takeaways and allegedly superior ready meals. I found one I quite liked in Marks & Spencer but I’m going to have to boycott them. They’ve stopped making apples. Well, selling Braeburn apples to be precise. I used to like Golden Delicious but I changed to Red Delicious (the “glitzy American apple”) until I realise they were 50p each which is expensive for a piece of fruit. And then I found the joy of a Braeburn. They keep for weeks and never disappoint, until they’re not there anymore. Why? Who knows. Yes, I could go back to the Red Delicious, or even break the bank and go for a Pink Lady, but it seems I’ll have to settle on a Gala or a Cox until the Braeburn returns. Oh well.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so lazy and try a proper greengrocers or even Tesco’s, but my heart’s not in it. Anytime I start liking something they seem to stop making/selling them. I should write a letter or two. Maybe my purchases weren’t enough to justify the making/delivering/selling of them. So now I’m planning to buy as much as possible of things I like just in case they stop making them. These include:

• Strawberry Crisp cereal - I have room for 15 boxes in the cupboard and by gosh I’m going to use it.
• Advocaat - been around years and have a feeling they won’t stop making it, but I’m partial to a snowball now and then so might stock up.
• Corona/Brahma/Sol - just an excuse to get a quality beer in.
• Those nice trainers - next time I buy a pair of trainers I like I’m getting two pairs as they stop selling them when I want a new pair (admittedly ten years could have passed).

I’ve stopped being angry now and am a little depressed. Crossing my mind are loads of things they’ve stopped making now. Need to go and write a letter to see why they stopped making…..

It’s Not Only Windy in England!

Taken from a football/soccer match in South Africa. Thanks to Dan S for the link.

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