Google, Internet

Who said cheaters never prosper?

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Finally I have a data pack with my phone! This means at long last I can access my email wherever I am, and more importantly I can access Google from anywhere. What does this mean? It means I can cheat my tits off in pub quizzes, and how.

As a test last night during a quiz I wasn’t playing in I accessed the big G just to check an answer to a question. Sure enough, in less than 20 seconds I had the answer on my HP Smartphone. Awesome.

I shall be putting the plan into operation this week sometime and will let you know how it turns out. Go go Team Internet!

Affiliate Marketing, Google, Internet

Increased Adsense Earnings

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I’m going to be posting a video about this in coming few days as part of Google’s Adsense contest, but I wanted to mention it now as it’s got me really excited. Last week I switched on my computer for the first time in a few days to see I’d had my best ever day on Wednesday for Adsense earnings, then again Saturday I had my second best ever day.

The reason for this sudden and welcome increase in earnings? Well, there’s two reasons. Firstly I changed one of websites last week to go from using ASP to WordPress, meaning it was faster and all of the pages were search engine friendly. The main reason though was I changed my highest traffic website from having a dynamic ASP front page to being a static HTML page that I update every few days with the latest content.

This means that the page loads far quicker, increasing page views, ad views, clicks and of course earnings.

That’s one of the things I like about Adsense, as I’ll talk about in the video this coming week, you can increase your earnings dramatically with minor tweaks to your websites.

General

That’s real racin’

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Yesterday I drove my friend to his mother’s funeral from Leeds to Hereford. The trip itself should have taken around 3 hours and he was to give one of the opening prayers, so with the funeral beginning at 2:30pm we set off just before 10:00am to give ourselves plenty of time.

With the course successfully plotted into the satnav we set off, expecting to get there nice and early. However, as we travelled down the M6 I was all set to pull of onto the M5 when the satnav disagreed with me. Hmm, Maybe Hereford is a little more Eastern than I though and it knows a shortcut. I Gave it the benefit of the doubt.

Then we passed Coventry. That’s odd, I thought. It wasn’t until I saw a sign for London that said 80 miles, and then glanced at the satnav that also said 80 miles to the destination that I thought ‘hang on, something’s up’.

Insistent that the correct address had been entered we nonetheless pulled into the services to get some petrol and to ‘double check’ the destination. The fact that these services were at Watford Gap should give away the next part of the story.

Sure enough, Hereford was not our destination. In truth, we were quite literally on our way to Wembley. Wembley stadium in fact.

Oh shit.

Quickly entering the correct postcode found we’d been travelling in the exact opposite direction for some time, and our trip was now estimated by the satnav to take a further 2 hours 20 minutes. The funeral was at 2:30pm, it was now 12:40pm.

Ah… this posed a problem. There was a very real chance we going to miss the funeral.

Not bloody likely. What I am about to say does not in anyway constitute a confession as times and speeds may be exaggerated for the purpose of a good story 😉

… that said, I set off with what I considered the first genuine excuse to drive like I often drive, only this time with interest. I had to make up 30 minutes of a 1 hour 50 minute drive. I have never driven so fast, or so aggressively in my life. Again I stress these numbers may be made up so as not to incriminate myself, but with my friend’s family receiving distressing calls about our ETA suggesting we would miss the funeral by some margin I managed to get my car upto and beyond 120mph on the M6, rising to 135mph on the M5 and M50.

Remember my disclaimer about the speeds. This is not a confession.

With the seemingly impossible target of 2:30pm and an initial ETA of 3:00pm we tore up the road the likes of which I’ve never done before. I even got stuck behind a tractor as we approached Hereford.

Suffice to say we arrived at 2:29pm, just enough time to run into the Abbey before the start.

It was dramatic to say the least, but there was no way in hell I was going to be late for Maria’s funeral. Not a chance.

Of course if I’d had the BMW Z3 instead of the Celica T-Sport we wouldn’t have made it. The Z3 won’t do 135mph. Thanks to Toyota for making that all possible!

Internet

Fasthosts servers hacked

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I just received an email from Fasthosts saying they’d been hacked and I should change my password. Luckily I don’t use Fasthosts anymore due to their really piss poor customer service, so as far as them being hacked goes… good. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of tossers.

Fasthosts once switched off one of my websites on a Friday saying I had to email their abuse department to find out why and when I asked to speak to someone they said the abuse department didn’t have any phones. I shit you not.

Whoever hacked Fasthosts, well done.

Important information about your UKreg account

Dear Darren

We are writing to inform you that we have recently discovered evidence of a network intrusion involving a Fasthosts server. We have reason to believe that the intruder has gained access to our internal systems, and that this may have in turn given them access to your username and some service passwords.

We have since closed the vulnerability through which access was gained, and have taken steps to ensure that this cannot happen again.

We therefore recommend, as a precaution, that you now change the control panel login password on your account.

This can be changed within your control panel and further details on how to change your password can also be found in the support section of our website.

We strongly recommend that you choose a secure password so that it cannot easily be guessed. The password should include the following:

  • It should be a minimum of 8 characters long
  • It should contain an upper case and a lower case letter
  • It should also contain at least one number (numeric)

We recognise that this may cause some inconvenience and concern, and for that we sincerely apologise. Please be assured that your account security is extremely important to us, and we have taken every step possible to secure your information against any future intrusion attempts.

If you have any questions relating to this, please contact our Customer Support team on 0870 888 3600 or customersupport@fasthosts.co.uk who will be happy to help you.

Yours sincerely,

The Fasthosts Internet team

Google, SEO, Transformers

#1 in Google for Transformers

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Less that 48 hours ago I put a new Transformers website live (www.thetransformers.net) as I finally made the switch from ASP to WordPress. This meant changing the hosting from 1and1 Internet, who are located in Germany to the new host United Hosting, who are located in the UK.

The change went smoothly, and the new site has already been indexed. What is incredible though is that the new UK hosted site has immediately shown up #1 in Google.co.uk for sites located in the UK under the keyword ‘Transformers’.

Previously being hosted in Germany with a .Net extension had excluded it from UK only searches, and it is ranked 1st page for ‘Transformers’ in a non country specific search, but now it has a UK home it’s #1.

Beat that!

Humour

Woman seeks man with lots of money

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We all know women are only after men with cash, it’s the way of the world, but most try to hide that fact. How refreshing then that a 25 year old New York woman posted an ad for a man with a $500,000 income. The woman described herself as ‘spectacularly beautiful’ and was looking for someone who could offer her a Central Park West address.

You can read the full story here.

Now if she’s looking for a highly fertile guy with a large collection of comics and Transformers, I think I can help. As for a $500,000 income? With the current value of the dollar, that ain’t that much sweetheart.

Affiliate Marketing, Rants

Lloyds TSB always shut, what gives?

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For those of us that work, and I realise we’re becoming a thinning minority in the UK, chances to get to the bank are becoming slimmer and slimmer. Luckily we have the Interweb where we can do all of our banking online, except for the small matter of paying in foreign currency cheques.

I get these from, among others, Amazon.com. With these foreign cheques I cannot drop into the overnight deposit as I need to fill out a mammoth form, complete with my life story and contact details of everyone I’ve ever met. I have to physically go into the bank, and Amazon.com still do not offer direct deposit for UK based affiliates.

Now, these are the opening hours of my local branch of Lloyds TSB.

Mon: 09:30 – 16:30
Tue: 09:30 – 16:30
Wed: 10:00 – 16:30
Thu: 09:30 – 16:30
Fri: 09:30 – 16:30
Sat: Closed
Sun: Closed

Please tell me when the sodding hell can I actually go into the bank? I start work at 8:30 and I finish at 5:30, the lazy arsed Lloyds crew start after me and finish before me, and of course don’t even bother on a Saturday. I’m sitting on an affiliate cheque from Amazon.com and can’t pay the bastard in anywhere.

The solution? It could be to find another bank.

The real comedy here comes from the fact that one of my RSS subscribers is my sister, who currently works for Lloyds TSB and will be receiving this blog in her inbox. Any ideas Karen?

So much anger, so little time