Blog Archive for 08/2006
>> Dr Quincy's Blog Archive for 08/2006
Flash websites are everywhere. I'll admit it now - I hate Flash-only websites. I reckon I close down over 90% of Flash-only website before the preloader has finished.
Paradoxically, I love Flash - I think it's a great way to bring extra life and interaction to a web page. So, what am I saying? Do I love Flash or hate it?
As with all great things Flash has a use and an abuse. I (and millions of others) believe Flash-only websites are an abuse. I've written an article, Should you make your website in Flash to help those of you designing a new website to decide whether or not a Flash-only website is the answer.
Read the article Should you make your website in Flash here.
I've added some more sites to my Where to Submit your Photoshop tutorials article. There are now over fifty websites to keep you busy.
If you need help writing your tutorials read my article entitled Tutorial Writing Guide: writing the right tutorials.
Remember what a superb way Photoshop tutorials are to get traffic to your website!
Happy Photoshopping!
It's what us fans have been waiting months for - Seasons 3 of the Ricky Gervais podcast. I'm downloading the episode from Audible as we speak. There is going to be a new episode every Tuesday until 26 September (so six episodes in the series).
I'm so excited about this - will there be more Monkey News?
You can get season 3 for £3.75 and series one to three for £6.99. Believe me - this is some of the funniest comedy EVER!
I'll blog my review later on. Right now I've got half an hour of comedy genius to listen to . . .
At one side of the Corran Ferry crossing by Loch Linnhe resides a white Inn by the name of Inn at Ardgour. Places to eat in the Scottish Highlands are few and far between. So, when you stumble across a place that looks reasonable from the outside you really hope the food and drink is going to be nice on the inside. On my recent holiday this particular Inn was one of the few places within an acceptable driving distance from our cabin. And given its close proximity to the ferry (which we used several times) it was definitely one of the most convenient places to eat.
We went there twice and we were disappointed both times.
The Inn looks quaint from the outside - it's nothing special from the on but it seemed pleasant enough.
The first time we were told we would have to wait 45 minutes before entering the restaurant (even though there were hardly any other customers there). Presumably, that's to get up to buy drinks; we were going to drink there anyway so if that was the reason it was pretty pointless. We were made to order from a standard menu in the empty bar area and were later marched into the half-empty restaurant exactly 45 minutes later. At that point it felt more like an army training camp than an enjoyable meal out but we'd yet to taste the food. The restaurant itself was fairly attractive and well-maintained. The real disappointment came when the food arrived. Between us we'd ordered a good variety of meals. Other than the mediocre haggis the rest of it was sub-standard. The venison burgers were dry and overcooked, the pie was stodgy and tasteless and the scampi was clearly deep-fried from a supermarket frozen packet. What was truly pathetic was the fact the small portions were served on such big plates. It was laughable that this restaurant tried to give off the image it was of Michelin Star stock yet it served up third-rate pub grub.
One of the barman then regaled us with a story of how he’d taken a couple to court for not paying for a meal. This isn’t the kind of thing I want to talk about when having a meal in the Scottish Highlands. I want to talk about the beautiful rolling glens and the vast array of Scotch whiskeys. I wondered, was I eating in Guantanamo Bay or an Highland Inn?
You might ask – why did we go there a second time?
As mentioned earlier, places to eat are few and far between; most places seem to stop serving at half past eight. We’d been for an excursion to the Isle of Mull and had left it dangerously close to the half eight mark before going out for food. Our favourite place was fully booked so we had to return to the Inn at Ardgour. This was better than not eating (only just).
The second time was even worse than the first time. They would not seat us in the restaurant as they were too busy. What ever happened to hospitality? Failing that what ever happened to running a good business? Why turn down customers? The patronising waitress told us we could feast on nuts and crisps instead. Having traveled so far we stayed for a couple of drinks and went home unfed.
I had a Pot Noodle when I got in – it was a lot better than the scampi I’d had at the Inn at Ardgour – you know you’re doing something wrong when you’re beaten by a plastic cup full of flavourings and MSG!
My advice is if you’re in the area go elsewhere. I have nothing but utter contempt for this place at their low quality of food and service. Hopefully, when this gets to the top of Google (above the Inn at Ardgour official site) the owners will read this.
When you do take this cooking tip from me: revenge is a dish best served cold.
To blog or to article write? That is the question.
My site contains a blog and an articles section. What's the difference? Should you write blogs or articles? Are they the same thing?
To a certain extent it's a matter of opinion and there is certainly some crossover between the term blog and the term article. Both generic terms themselves, blogs can be articles and articles can be blogs.
In my opinion, for the ethos of my website and for the scope of this blog entry I class blogs as personal and opinionated whereas articles are closer towards neutral and are very much formally written. Put simply, I try to get my viewpoints made clear in blogs and the facts made clear in articles. Even this doesn't serve as a hard-and-fast rule - I often spend time wondering whether a blog should be written as an article and vice versa.
Here are four questions I ask myself before deciding whether or not I'm writing a blog or an article:
What's the longevity? How well does the entry age? A lot of us blog about the ever-changing world of technology. Let’s face it – some things start going out of date the moment we publish them. Since blog entries have a date and time attached to them such transient subject matter lends itself to blogging more so than articles.
First person or third person? My days at university told me that first person (I said this, I said that) is not appropriate for credible articles. Rather, the third person (It is this, it is that) should be used. I always write blogs in the first person viewpoint and articles in the third.
Personal or professional? What kind of image do I want to project? I find a blog is more about me and my personal experiences; an article is much more neutral and unbiased. If you want sympathy and feeling from the reader you’re far more likely to achieve that with a blog than an article. Conversely, if you’re going for academic credibility a researcher will never cite a blog entry whereas they may do a well-written article.
How much of it is your viewpoint? If there’s anything more than a slight tinge of my personal opinion then I make it a blog rather than an article. Any points made in a blog should be on your own outlook – an article should be based on cited facts.
You may think, so what? As long as I write something on the subject it doesn’t really matter. In some cases that may be so but is it possible to have the best of both worlds? Can you use blogging and article writing to your benefit?
Yes, you can. Read on.
Generally, I favour the use of "Blarticles" - this is a word (that I made up for this blog entry and) I use for writing an article and then blogging about it on its release. When I say Blarticles, I mean a blog AND an article, not a blog and an article mixed together.
My approach to Blarticles is this: research and write quality articles in the third person view point; base it on factual information and cite facts. Then, blog about it. Blog about your own article! You write a blog about your neutral, unbiased article and give your own opinion on it. There are several benefits:
The ability to perform resurrections. Sometimes your blogs may be dismissed by readers who stumble across them at a later date as being too old. That’s a problem with blogs – they’re time-centric – they appear to date even though the ideas in them may be as fresh as the day they were written. Articles aren’t like this. You can use your blog to resurrect articles; let’s say you write a timeless article one month and blog about it. A week, a month, a year or ten years later (as often as you see fit) you can blog about it again from a fresh angle. You can re-drive people to your content in a way that is harder to do through standard blogging.
Good for search engines. If you choose your keywords carefully writing a Blarticle means twice as much content for the search engines to index. For each new idea you have a blog entry and an article for the search engines to pick up on. It doesn’t matter that they’re on the same subject. Remember, one is factual and the other is opinionated so as far as the search engines are concerned it’s twice as much new content.
Make the right impression to the right people. Academics can read your article and bloggers and friends can read your blog. It’s so simple - you can be a friend and a professional at the same time.
Of course, some bloggers may not have much of a choice. Whatever they write will look like a blog entry due to the nature of their website (i.e. it uses commercial blogging software on a site that is primarily or exclusively blogging). I'm lucky, this blog is just a facet of my own hand-coded site so I can integrate non-blog elements as little or as much as I like.
If you can start "Blarticling" then to blog or to article write will never be the question!
Looking over my web stats I get over 80% of my traffic from Photoshop tutorials. I thought I would take the oppurtunity to plug my Where to Submit your Photoshop Tutorials article.
At the time of writing there are over 40 sites to submit to (and it gets updated all the time)! So, if you want a lot of extra traffic and some quality, relevant backlinks start writing your tutorials now and get submitting! My hot picks for some seriously high traffic are Pixel2Life, Good-Tutorials and Tutorialized.
If you need some pointers on how to write a tutorial read my guide on tutorial writing.
There are so many sites to submit to now the problem is not finding the time to write tutorials - the problem is finding time to submit them!
No one can ever spend their time perfectly - that's a fact! Each day you're given 24 hours and it's up to you to use them the best you can. Time is fixed - when we say we "save time" that's not at all true; in fact, that's impossible. Time will pass at the same rate come rain, wind or shine thus all we can do is make better use of it. We all fool ourselves that productivity equates to the amount of hours spent in the workplace. We reason: the more time spent in our place of work the higher the productivity. To get more done we need to get out of this mindset and rather than strive to spend more time working we should aim to improve the quality of the time we spend working. The six tips below can help you to do just that. I'm no expert on the matter, these are just things I've tried and tested myself and have helped me get more out fo the day. Not how each point contains the word little. I'm stressing that you only need to make small changes to get really big improvements.
1. Go to bed a little earlier. Your mind is sharper and more productive first thing in the morning; it is much more alert and is a better frame to concentrate. This won't cost you any time and it's so simple; all you're doing is trading some lower quality time for some higher quality time. Even half an hour can make all the difference. Don't worry if you're not a morning person - your body is quick to adapt. A shower, hot drink and light breakfast are the perfect way to get the physical and mental juices flow.
2. Exercise a little more. Never exercising is like never servicing a car. True, none of us NEVER exercise - even walking up the stairs to your bedroom is exercise albeit not a lot. Along with eating (see point 4), drinking (see point 3) and sleeping (see point 1) these are the main factors that determine your productivity potential. When people think of exercise they think of signing up to an expensive gym and spending two hours a day lifting weights and using running machines. This isn't true - people unnecessarily spend pots of money each month for gym membership. Some people will get in their car, drive it to the gym and spend £100 per month so they can use the gym's running machine (okay - I admit there's more to gyms than running machines, I'm just making a point) when they could have saved a lot of time and money going for a run in their own neighborhood. The best way to exercise is to go for brisk walks - this is good for your all-round health, especially your heart, and it's free and enjoyable. You can be super efficient and combine exercise with taking breaks (see point 3).
3. Drink a little less caffeine, drink a little more water. Caffeine will seriously affect your ability to concentrate, especially if your body is relying on it to maintain alertness. Ironically, if you rely too heavily on caffeine as a stimulant it will slow you down. If you're really tired rather than battling on, rest or take an early night - remember, you're swapping poor quality time for good quality time (see point 1). Swap all (or as many as you're comfortable with) your drinks from tea or coffee to water. There are many benefits to drinking water (too numerous to mention) but suffice to say it is utilised by your entire body. Your brain is 90% water and water consumption has been linked to improved concentration. Don't believe the energy drink blurb of improving concentration by n% - these drinks contain drugs - for every high, there is a low. Furthermore, fatigue is a symptom of dehydration. If you find yourself feeling tired take a break (see point 5) and drink a large glass of water. If you are deterred by the blandness of water (I personally find it refreshing) add some fresh juice and ice to it (lemon and / or lime taste the best) for a nice cold drink or try one of the many varieties of caffeine-free fruit teas available at any good supermarket.
4. Eat a little more balanced. People erroneously eat "brain food" such as fish to improve their productivity and concentration. Whether or not fish is actually good for the brain remains to be adequately proved and what food actually improves concentration is a much-debated topic (although proteins generally seem to be used by the brain). Rather than succumbing to the fads of high-protein diets and detoxes always eat a balanced meal three times a day at regular intervals - this will ensure good all-round nourishment for your body.
5. Relax a little more. Break the working day with small periods of relaxation. Work for periods of between one and one and a half hours at a time. Then take a small break of ten to fifteen minutes. In that time do something completely detached from your work. If you work at a computer all day don't spend your breaks on the Internet. Have a drink and read a chapter of a book, listen to some music or go for a short walk. If work-related thoughts creep into your mind in this time quickly think of something non-work related. This gives your mind a break and means that when you go back to your work it will be firing on all cylinders. As a computer programmer I can testify to the effectiveness of this. On many occasions I have agonised over a programming problem for hours and hours without taking a break. Frustrated and disappointed I have left my computer and gone for a drink or played some computer games and the solution to my problem has just come to me in a flash. Your brain is very clever and can solve problems while your conscious mind is thinking of other things. However, this will only happen if you give your brain the relaxation it deserves.
6. Waste a little less time. Don't think you're a time waster? Even the most efficient of us waste time - it's easy to prove. Tomorrow make sure you carry a pen and a piece of paper around with you from the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed. Each time you do something, however trivial, jot it down and make a note of time time. When you have documented an entire day's activity take a look down it and put a star against anything that wasn't productive or indirectly productive (breaks are indirectly productive). Now using the times you've jotted down add up everything that has a star next to it. You'll be frightened at how unproductive you've been. Don't despair though this is human nature. Look to improve you productivity a little each day. No one can or even will work a 100% productive day but if you can go from 10% productivity to 20% you'll be getting twice as much done in a day as you used to. You may think you work a busy day but it is possible to be busy doing nothing! You can save time by shaving ten minutes here and ten minutes there of various daily activities such as making lunch, taking a bath, surfing forums, et cetera.
This blog entry was created for the Lists Group Writing Project.
I was on my way home the other day after enjoying a couple of beers and instinctively went into my local takeaway to get a doner kebab. I eat them fairly regularly and they are my all-time favourite takeaway. Someone had told me earlier in the week that if I knew what was in them I wouldn't eat them. Considering some of the things I've eaten in the past, I thought, that wouldn't bother me.
It did however get me curious as to what exactly goes into doner meat. The next day I Googled for about half an hour but couldn't find anything. This got me even more intrigued - is there a takeaway doner meat conspiracy going on in the UK?
That evening I rang up to get another kebab delivered but this time I asked one of the chefs if he could give me a rundown of the ingredients for a "project" I was working on. He said they bought them in frozen on a skewer and all it said on the plastic packet it came in was "Lamb". That wasn't exactly helpful. I wondered though in today's health conscious society - is there a legal obligation on the takeaways' part to disclose the ingredients?
That night I emailed the Food Standard's Agency who basically said, no, there is no obligation since they are caterers and not in food retails.
Now I was even more curious - even the chefs don't know what they're cooking! I went back to my good friend the Internet and changed my search strategy. This time I searched for the manufacturers rather than the takeaways. I got a handful of emails and sent them all the same request (asking for a recipe). I did get one reply though it was very unspecific. With hindsight I should have expected such a reply. After all, I could have been competition trying to steal their secret recipe. Given that, the company that did reply were kind to do so.
So, the Doner Kebab Meat Mystery continues. If you should unearth more than I do, please get in touch.
I've documented my experience in a new article entitled, What are the Ingredients of Takeaway Doner Meat?
You can read the article here.
Anyway, I think I'll celebrate my limited success with a doner kebab. Enjoy . . .
I rarely watch TV (I mostly watch DVDs) but I happened to view quite a bit of it last night. The 1957 classic 12 Angry Men starring Henry Fonda was on early evening so I decided to watch it. I've been told by people of various generations that this is a classic film; I can't believed I've not watched it before since it stars the Quincy legend Jack Klugman (I think this film launched his acting career so without it there would be no Quincy ME!).
The entire film takes place in a jury room - the jurors discuss what seems to be an open-and-shut case of First Degree Murder. However, protagonist Mr Davis (Fonda) votes not guilty, preventing the jury from coming to a quick and unanimous verdict. As time goes on the jurors question whether they can judge the accused guilty "beyond reasonable doubt" and thus send him to the electric chair.
This is one of the most entertaining films I've seen for a long time. The acting and the screenplay are first class - it just goes to show how much scope there is for 12 actors sat around a table (other than a few minutes at the start and at the end it's all set in one room). As well as this it is a clever expose of the democratic legal system.
I'm not the kind of person that will automatically praise a classic just because everyone else does but this really does deserve to be flagged as a classic . . . and best of all it features Jack Klugman!
Although this was my first time watching it the story was very familiar as I've seen the Hancock's Half Hour episode, 12 Angry Men, lots of times. If you've seen both you will realise how good a pardoy Galton and Simpson created. The Hancock version is one of my all-time favourite episodes of sitcom and I'm pleased to say the original is now one of my all-time favourite bits if cinema.
12 Angry men = 1 happy man!
Learn more about the film here.
The div tags on my site always wrapped when the browser was too thin (around less than 800 pixels wide). It was not too much of a problem as according to my web stats there are hardly any users that would view the site at such a resolution. The problem came, however, when software such as that used by snap.com and Alexa would take an image snapshot of the site; it would break up most of the top menu.
I searched Google for a solution but didn't find anything. However, I found out how to fix it and it's very easy.
Simply create another div around the wrapping div (make sure it doesn't contain anything else other than wrapping div) and in your CSS specify the width absolutely. I'm not sure how this works for relatively sized sites but for absolute sized sites like mine it works great.
I tested it with Firefox, IE and Opera and it renders correctly.
I recently came across a forum post where the original poster was recommending that webmasters add as many external links to Wikipedia as possible to get quality backlinks and better search engine rankings. I've also seen posts of webmasters who have seen a sudden dip in page ranking for particular pages only to find it's down to the fact that a link to their site has been removed from Wikipedia.
Clearly there is some erroneous information out there and some confusion as to whether or not you should use Wikipedia for backlinking. The answer is yes and no.
Yes, Wikipedia can provide quality backlinks but no, you shouldn't just add as many as you like.
I took the liberty of writing an article entitled, Can you use Wikipedia to Build Backlinks?
The article invites you to think carefully before adding external links to Wikipedia and details eight points for webmasters to consider.
I recently came across this . . .
Open up the shell in your operating system (Start > Run > cmd for Windows users) and enter this into the command line and press return:
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
If everything works okay (if it doesn't it probably means your firewall is blocking the port 23) you will seen Star Wars the movie in ASCII (text) delivered through Telnet (a remote shell access protocol).
Being a very busy person and not much of a Star Wars fan I only watched a minutes ot two so I don't know how long it goes on for. It's hard to decide whther I should be impressed or feel pity at this. It's impressive that someone has taken the time to put this together (it must have taken hours upon hours) but at the same time I can't help feeling pity that whoever has put it together has wasted their time.
Is this the geekiest thing ever?
DISCLAIMER: This is my review of the company 4UHosting. It is based purely on my own experience with the company over the last four months. This is an independent review: I am in no way affiliated with 4UHosting nor was I asked / paid / told to write this review.
I wouldn't normally plug a hosting company like this but . . . I switched over to 4UHosting earlier in the year after a bad experience with another company. I had found 4UHosting through Google or a web ad (I can't remember which). The price was very low considering the huge amounts of features (more on this later); under the Advanced Plan I could host a handful of my client's websites all under one control panel.
The reason for the blog is because I came across some reviews on reviewcentre.com that really slated 4UHosting. So, I thought it was worth me sharing my experiences as it might redress the balance a little.
Features. Features-wise 4U offer everything you would expect (PHP, MySQL, plenty of webspace and bandwidth, complete domain and email management and so on) all accessed through an easy-to-use Control Panel. I've found some hosters let themselves down on their choice of Control Panel. For me one of the greatest feature was unlimited parked domains. Take a more detailed look at the features here.
Support. I've made several requests for support via email and have had, at latest, a same-day reply although usually I didn't have to wait longer than two to three hours and my queries / problems were solved to satisfaction each time.
Downtime. I've only noted one bit of downtime in four months which is pretty good and it wasn't down for too long - their stats speak for themselves.
To my knowledge 4UHosting don't do virtual server hosting or dedicated hosting so if you're after that then obviously look else where. However, if you want great features, outstanding value and reliable service for shared hosting then I recommend 4UHosting.
Visit the 4UHosting website here.
Compare the 4UHosting Plans here.
And that's my view on it all . . . oh, and if someone from 4UHosting reads this review and is in a philanthropist mood they may want to give me a discount on next year's hosting . . . only joking. : )
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