My ex is a bitch

I’ve been getting emails lately to do with a website about jilted Ex’s. Seems this is a website that allows unhappy guys with axes to grind to upload photos of their ex-girlfriends and tell the world what they think of them.

Now, for some reason this site has a link here as though I’d built it! It’s nothing to do with me; I can assure you of that. So if you’ve got some grievance with this website, I can’t help you.

Funny site though!

Bad SEO, off the couch!

Performing your own SEO on your websites isn’t difficult, all the information you need to do it effectively is already available on the Internet, for free. The real difficulty is in telling the fact from the fiction. Everyone has their own ideas, some of them good, some of them not so good and some of them that will just get your site banned.

With that in mind I’d like to present a list of some of the most prominent Internet SEO myths. If you’ve done any of these on your website you can kiss your traffic goodbye.

  1. Buying as many domain names as you can to point at your website will help get you more traffic.
  2. Adding longs lists of keywords to your website will increase your rankings for those keywords.
  3. Hide your text from your visitors because they don’t need to see it, only search engines do – hiding your text is a good way to add content to your site without compromising your design.
  4. Get as many links to your website as you can, doesn’t matter where they come from. All links are good links. Try link farms and reciprocal links, get as many links as possible, as fast as you can.
  5. Flash sites are good for SEO. If you have a flash site you’ll have no problems ranking (come on, it still amazes me when people wonder why they don’t rank with Flash sites).
  6. Create lots of doorway or landing pages filled with content that redirect to your homepage. Google likes these!
  7. Linking to important websites improves your ranking; add a link to Google, it’s sure to help.

There you have it, what not to do. Next time I might give some tips on what you should be doing.

11 year old kid kills animal

I just heard on the news that an 11 year old boy from Alabama has shot dead the world’s biggest wild boar.

I’m staggered. We have the world’s biggest something and some yank kid shoots it, then gets applauded for it! How can killing something make this kid famous? Surely he should be arrested and publicly ostracised for shooting a living creature, not least of which the world’s biggest of anything?

This is the American way though isn’t it? See something unique, marvel at it and then shoot it dead.

Now if the world’s biggest wild boar had eaten an 11 year old boy from Alabama I’d laugh, maybe next time.

Once bitten, get bitten again

Whilst delving around my old laptop this weekend I came across a letter dated December 2000 I’d sent to Direct Line insurance.

Remember them? They’re the thieves who paid out the wrong person when my car was stolen last summer, after it had been recovered, and now demand the car back from me.

It seems I really haven’t learned from my mistakes.

Direct Line House
3 Edridge Road
Croydon
CR9 1AG

Dear Mr. P Davis,

It is with some grievance that I must write to you, enclosing your cheque for the sum of GBP10.64. We were told by your customer services staff that there was no charge for cancelling a policy and by doing so we assumed our contact with Direct Line was at an end. We were then very puzzled and infuriated to find a demand for further cash arrive from Direct Line, when we had been assured that this would not happen. Either your customer services staff are not trained in the way that your company conducts its business, or you are simply liars and thieves.

Not certain which it is, as both amount to the same thing; your company cannot be trusted, rest assured that your threat of ‘prohibit you from further dealings with the Direct Line Group’ will not be necessary. I have no intention in ever dealing with your company again.

I trust this is the end of the matter and I do not wish to be contacted by you again, as I certainly will not be contacting Direct Line.

Yours, a very unsatisfied customer,

I’m infuriated I went back to them. Direct Line has done nothing but steal from me for the last seven years. You’d think after they stole from me in 2000 I’d have learned, now they’re trying to steal my car.

That’s it, I swear it. No more!

The Ultimate Banjo Warrior

So last Thursday I took a day off work, not to relax, or to organise personal affairs or to simply enjoy life, no. I took a day off work to participate in a drinking contest in Leeds University; The Ultimate Banjo Warrior no less.

Rules were simple, 25 minutes to drink each drink in a pre-determined order. 4 ‘warriors’ had special cards that could be played once during the game, giving every player 2 minutes to finish their drink. Failure to finish in the time limit led to star jumps, and the inevitable act of throwing up led to a Sambuka shot forfeit.

Naturally with such a contest I fancied my chances, but my lack of preparation became my undoing. Firstly I arrived 25 minutes late, so was forced to tackle the first two drinks in the time everyone else had for one. Luckily the first two were both lagers, San Miguel and Staropramen. These were dispatched with comparative ease, though left me with no time to line my stomach. In fact, I hadn’t eaten since the sole Jaffa Cake the preceding night following the Champions League Final.

This was destined to end badly, and my confidence was very misplaced. Some Cider, Red Wine then Malibu and Pineapple later and everything was simmering nicely. One of the warriors decided to play his card during the Kronenberg Blanc round, which he’d tipped me off in advance of – yet the bar staff had a surprise. The Blanc was off, and the carefully written rules stated that any drink unavailable had to be substituted for Snakebite. Oh crap.

Rose followed, and another warrior’s card, then I threw up. Lovely.

My forfeit played, and a Vodka and Red bull – Bacardi and Coke double later and I threw up again. Notice a theme here?

I was a beaten man. Though perhaps my defeat came at the right time as tales of the game’s conclusion carried a foreboding message; it appears one of the mighty warriors started a fight with a bouncer, and was ejected. A second warrior vomited where he sat, into his own drink, and then drank it.

The final warrior was last seen staggering towards a casino in search of his final drink. Whether he made it, we may never know.

Respect to the Banjo Warriors.

KA, KA, KRAP!

For the last week I’ve had the ignominy, nay downright dishonour of driving a Ford KA. My Celica T-Sport was in the garage for a little work and all they bloody had to give me was a KA. How embarrassing.

The KA is slow as shit, seriously uncomfortable, corners like a barge and looks like it’s been in an accident. It’s a woefully bad car, and I can’t for the life of me work out why people buy them. In fact my niece has just bought one. Good work Gemma.

I was also a little worried about my Celica, as the last time I gave my car to a garage for repairs it was stolen from them, and I’m still paying for it now.

One good thing came of driving the KA though. I tend to get bored of my cars every ten months or so and think about swapping them. Driving this lump of shit around really made me appreciate the car I have. I won’t be swapping it anytime soon.

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