General

My car is very poorly, poor little thing

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I took my car into BMW Bluebell today for a service, and to look at the damage caused when I ploughed through the roundabout last Friday. I wasn’t expecting good news, but when they call you to come through to the garage to see the car up on the ramp; you know that’s gonna be bad.

Seems my wishbone is bent and the shocks are busted. There could be more, they haven’t taken it apart yet.

I’m now driving around in a Mitsubishi Colt with the body shop branding on the side which tells everyone that the person driving has already knackered one car, stay well away!

That car is cursed I tell you, cursed.

CSA, Movies

Michael Cox against the Child Support Agency

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My problems with the child support agency are legendary and well documented here on mrdaz.com. How they’ve overcharged me, lost my correspondence, sent my mail to the wrong address and to complete strangers, lied to me, refused to speak to me and generally been unbelievably incompetent.

Obviously I’m not the only one who’s been mistreated by these British Nazis, Michael Cox is a famed victim of the CSA’s callous and incompetent nature. This interview is from GMTV.

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And the second part of the interview:

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Cardiff Devils, Google, Internet, Transformers

MrDaz.com now has Google site links

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You may have seen Google’s site links? They’re detailed page links that appear underneath the #1 listing for some websites when you make a search. For example, Just Search have had site links for about a year now, which you can see here. Google picks sites it thinks are worthy enough and generates these links, which you can have some control over using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Now I’m pleased to say that MrDaz.com has attained some site links from Google.

Mr Daz Site Links

This means that Google considers this website important enough to have site links, which is nice. Shame they still have a PageRank penalty on me then eh?

It’s not my only site to have site links either, my Transformers website and the Cardiff Devils site have also attained the prestige of site links.

Thanks Google!

If you’re wondering how your site can get site links such as this, you’ll need to keep adding your content and building up those back links naturally. Google only rewards high quality sites that are updated regularly with site links.

Humour

Yes it’s true, I crashed my car on Friday

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Anyone who’s seen my Facebook status or has seen me in person since Friday will know that yes, on Friday night I managed to plough my car into a roundabout at something approaching 70mph.

When I say plough into, it was more hit, catch some serious air and then smack into the curb the other side. It was dark, it was very wet and I was… going too fast. I managed to blow out ALL FOUR tyres at the same time, wreck two of my alloys, damage my bumper, lose a light and dislodge some bodywork.

Probably shouldn’t have tried to take the roundabout at that speed then. To those who said my Z3 was cursed, yeah, it is.

I had three new tyres and the spare put on the next morning, but the front drivers side wheel scrapes the wheel arch when it turns full lock. This is bad. It could be because the garage have fitted the wrong tyres, which I hope is the case. It could be the bodywork is a little out of place, which would be bad. It could be because the chassis or the axle is bent, which would be very bad.

I’ll find out this weekend when I take my car for a service.

Oh the joys of driving too fast in the rain.

Google, Internet, Just Search, Magazine Articles, SEO

Interview with Revolution Magazine

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Following on from the piece in Precision Marketing, I also did this quick interview with Revolution Magazine about the trends of search and the importance of content.

Though Google denies it, for instance, there is a widespread suspicion that investing in paid search will improve a company’s organic ranking. Easier to prove is the notion that frequent content updates represent one of the most powerful ways to promote a site.

Fresh and new
“It has become apparent lately that Google is favouring new sites a lot, and sites with new content,” says Darren Jamieson, content editor at Manchester-based Just Search. “If you have got a site that does car leasing, and someone is looking for something on the new Audi R8, a site that hasn’t been updated for three months won’t come up, even if it has a page on the R8.”

Google itself, while cagey about its methods, is happy to confirm this much. “We always say, build things for the people you want visiting your site, and that is what we try to reflect with our ranking,” says Google spokesman Anthony House. “It is not about trying to trick your way into the highest results.”

Indeed, Google’s advice for improving a company’s organic ranking all relates to the kind of housekeeping that makes a website visitable in the first place.

You can see the excerpt from the magazine here.

Rants

Public Transport fails me for the last time

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Right, Saturday night I left my car at the pub and intended to get the train back to pick it up Sunday morning. I even checked the times online the night before to make sure there was a train. Sure enough, every hour and roughly 20 minutes past the hour there’s a train due from Heald Green to East Didsbury.

Sorted. I’ll do that then.

Naturally you can’t trust public transport, and my first foray into using it for some months proved my suspicions correct. The train never showed up. It wasn’t late, it just didn’t turn up.

I gave public transport one chance, one chance to prove it could work. One chance to show that I can use it as a viable alternative to my car… and it failed. It failed by not even showing up.

I’ve later learned that other people know about this. Seems the timetable at the train station, and the timetable online are both wrong. There are no trains on the Sunday, at all.

This has seriously pissed me off. What’s the point in public transport? The timetables are bollocks and public transport doesn’t work. So Mr Brown, rather than pissing on the motorist by increasing fuel tax, road tax, congestion charges and any other fucking charges you can think of to get motorists to leave their cars behind and consider using public transport, why not actually make some fucking public transport that works?

I tried your trains and they didn’t fucking show up.

Stick your fucking trains up your fat Scottish arse you twat.

So much anger, so little time