Archives for June 2006
Come together in our British Way
On the eve of England’s potential elimination from the World Cup, I’ll leave it to a Japanese language student to sum up our national culture: beer and royalty.
Self-censorship: an update
A couple of months ago I wrote about how there’s been a sudden jump in hits on this website, almost completely due to unwelcome search terms that led to a particular picture from Nepal. After feedback from various people (thanks for that), I decided to remove the photo and leave some rude words for those who came to my site, rather than continue pleasing their questionable motivations.
Yet there was no let-up, indeed by the start of this month I was the number one result in Yahoo Images for these particular searches:
This was accounting for more than 90% of my visitors. The frustration was that Yahoo had cached the picture, thus it still appeared in search results long after I’d dropped it.
It was time to try a different tack. Firstly, I’ve tried to use a robots.txt file to hide that particular page from search engines. Secondly, I eventually found a way to write to Yahoo to raise the problem (and got a surprisingly prompt response). This quick response may have been helped by my third action, posting a different image with the same file name, which meant searchers would have seen this result (look in the blue box):
It’s too early to tell whether this will make a difference, but my image has disappeared from the search results and there has been a drop in traffic. I’ll know better next month. But, in summary, if you want to get an image removed from Yahoo – it seems best to actually let them know. And swear.
Another demonstration that one should never underestimate the power of search engines to turn up unexpected results…
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Google Earth imagery giggery pokery
Google Earth’s a wonderful application. Once beyond the initial novelty of spot-your-own-home, it has some practical uses. For example, I used it last week to pre-fly my flight from Headcorn to Goodwood and identify the exact GIS co-ordinates of the waypoints I planned to use. If you like maps and aerial imagery, let me round up some recent improvements you might have missed.
Earlier this month masses of new high resolution imagery was made available as well as a new version of Google Earth, which is easier to navigate (but also seems to serve up adverts). The imagery is good enough, and the circumstantial evidence strong enough, to confirm that The Turd can be spotted in Queenstown.
Microsoft is playing catch-up with Windows Live Local, and now provides some higher resolution imagery than available on Google Earth – see the Nimrod Farm example below – although the Microsoft data is definitely out-of-date (it seems to come from Getmapping).
If you have a spare few minutes, play spot the difference with these two images of the neighbourhood.
Elsewhere, clever things are being done with Google Earth and its ability to integrate data from different sources. See, for example, overlaying a 1690 map of London (via The Map Room)…
…or introducing 3D models onto the landscape (from Digitally Distributed Environments)…
…and how about showing the Tour de France mountain stages (from the TdF Blog)? That climb looks terrifying.
Spider
This is a picture of my website apparently. Pretty, no?
For the love of life!
It was such a nice feeling as we were picked up by the boys in their launch, coasting across the beautiful sun kissed Opua Harbour. It was times like these when I was reminded of my reason for leaving England for New Zealand. I was on a working holiday, and I did work a lot, often two jobs. But this feeling of freedom, and adventure appeased any frustrations built up during the working week. This is the opposite of how it feels in this country, where we are too unimaginative when it comes to enjoyment. Our children are numbed by television, and computer games, whilst our adults are retarded by alcohol. The get up and go spirit seems to have been forgotten. Our government seems too wrapped up in bureaucratic White Elephants to constructively deal with social problems. This is the joy of a democratically governed population of over 50 million. Trying to please everyone all of the time does not work, so instead we all live in this constant state of mediocrity. Where are the Neil’s of this country? Why can’t we be rash and irresponsible?
Coronet Peak chef extraordinaire Rob has started a blog, For the love of life, which combines food, travel, recipes and vitriolic political comment in one melting pot. His ‘put the fork down you far f***’ diet merits further discussion. More please, Roberto.
Back, to the dinner table
It’s been a while since I was last in these parts – a month-long CELTA course plus lack of telephone and broadband back in London (should it really take six weeks to get a telephone line reconnected?) explains my absence. So a few things to catch up on.
How did I miss this Guardian list of the best curry in South London? I don’t completely agree with the entries: Kastoori has been over-rated on each of my veggie visits (although the little flower bombs are quite impressive). On the other hand, the Masaledar is always reliable and offers great value take-aways.
But, thanks to N&B, I’m grateful to have been introduced to the Apollo Banana Leaf. Interesting to see it’s slipped into the Time Out guide this year. Their dhosas are delightful, service bemused, and prices low, low, low – where else can a table of four eat their fill and still leave with a bill of less than twenty quid, total.
Stick that in yer magazine, Guardian editors.
IKEA stock check
It’s a common feeling – having chosen a perfect piece of flat pack furniture, booked the van, checked on the IKEA website to see whether it’s in stock, you finally arrive at the store.
And that coffee table/ironing board/kitchen sink is not there.
After a recent frustrating visit, during which a member of staff actually wandered the whole warehouse to try and find the missing items and introduced me to the complexities of the stock control system (lesson: never trust the website), I was given a handy piece of advice. In Croydon, for example, call the store beforehand, ask for extension 8811 (I think), and ask for a physical stock check. If you’re lucky, someone will go into the warehouse, look at what’s there and tell you if it’s worth the trip.
Worth knowing, I think.
