Andy Blackburn – SEO Consultant A collection of SEO, tech and other thoughts…

Olympic medal table

Although not very interested in the day to day activities over in Beijing I am interested by the medal table. After seeing us (Great Britain) at around position 7 earier in the week I checked again earlier today. We are currently in 3rd Place.

I wondered if I could skew this by playing with statistics. I figured our population may be a strength, so I went for Medals per Capita.
The good news is that we beat USA and China. Unfortunately we're now beaten by Jamaica among others.

If anyone has any other ideas that put us near the top of the table, let me know!

I've already tried useing GDP per Capita though that swings it back the other way..

Call for computer parts

A few months ago I built a nice machine and gave it to a mate thinking that would help me run down all my boxes. Well now I'm setting up an office in my spare room so I dug it all out again. It turns out there's almost nothing worth having left :(.

I currenly have a 1333 MHz Athlon, a motherboard to match with 256MB of RAM (2*64 + 1*128). If anyone has anything spare that can bring me into the 21st century that would be great! I'm looking for a Motherboard, CPU, RAM and sound and graphics cards. I've got everything else. Let me know in the comments or email!

Happy friday!

Rob

Save Bletchley Park!

From El Reg; this is a worthwhile cause!

As has been reported elsewhere, Bletchley Park "have two to three more years of survival".

The Bletchley Park Trust receives no external funding. It has been deemed ineligible for funding by the National Lottery, and turned down by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Please do not allow this crucial piece of both British and World culture to disappear. If ever an example were needed of Britain leading the world, this surely would be it. To allow it to fall into the hands of developers would be simply unconscionable.

The e-petition is here. I don't think I need to say anything else other than this is the first e-petition I've signed!

Sys admin day!

Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day! I haven't seen any appreciation yet, but I have only been at work for an hour. Perhaps later:)

Does this mean the BOFH will have a day off? :(

Rob’s Catch Up

In February I had a call out of the blue from our rental agents. They told me that our landlord would be selling the house we live it. They decided not to give us our two months notice immediately, instead waiting for an offer on the house and then give us notice. That suited us. Slowly I began thinking about finding somewhere else to live - not too bad, then about having to actually physically move - not so much fun. My original plan was to live there for a couple more years, then think about buying somewhere. In the end we decided that the 20K we might spend on rent in the next couple of years was probably enough to absorb any potential savings we might make by leaving it a couple of years and buying when the housing market has fallen a little more. Rather than having to move twice in the next couple of years we decided to start looking for a house to buy.

... Boring house hunting paragraph ...

Anyway we made an offer around month or two ago which was accepted. There are so many things that can go wrong with all the surveys, the mortgage offer and all that stuff to be sorted out that I've been holding out on posting this catch up. Since everything seems like it's going well, I decided to share the news.

Yesterday we exchanged contracts and we'll be moving in mid-July. I won't have to pay someone else's mortgage anymore, but instead I'll have to fix my own boiler - It sounds like a reasonable compromise. Of course I'll probably change my view when the washing machine and the fridge break in the same month!

The place is an ex-rental, so it's all very neutral and in good condition with not a lot of work required on it. However no one's been living there for a couple of months, so I guess the garden will take a while to sort out! The previous owner is emigrating, so he's leaving all the kitchen goods normally provided in rental houses. That means we don't have to buy anything! It's a 2 bedroom mid-terrace in the same estate as we are now. So there will, as always, be space for people to visit:).

I'm really looking forward to the simple things like being able to put up spice rack and a picture without having to remember to pollyfiller the holes before we move out! Of course there are bigger things too, maybe an apple tree and a conservatory, but there's no rush for all that. Unfortunately there has been some muttering about cat flaps and such nonsense. I can only assume that this is leading toward getting a cat.. Any compelling reasons not to do this are more than welcome;)

Well, I've said enough for now. I'll leave you with this thought:

Strangely, I still feel more grown up when I think about the Tesco Clubcard in my wallet than I do about the house I've just bought!