Firetop

A couple of years ago somebody telephoned Firetop and claimed that the children’s books I’d allegedly sponsored were now ready for collection and they wanted payment. When I confronted them with the fact that I hadn’t ordered them, they said somebody else at Firetop must have done… to which I was able to reply - ‘there isn’t anybody else at Firetop’. The lady on the phone threatened to take legal action and I wished her the best of luck after she said that she was from Child Protection UK Ltd of Denton, Manchester (she even phoned back to say she’d made a mistake and they weren’t a registered company - hanging up and swearing when I started reading out the address). Since then I have gone on to blog about this experience and it led to a lot of feedback from other victims of similar bogus calls involving ‘sponsored books’ for schools. (more…)

Whilst searching for an SVGA cable supplier today, I saw my first live ‘Google Checkout’ button below a Google Adwords advertiser message. This new service, launched in the UK in April, is Google’s attempt to rival Paypal as a common secure payment processing facility. Google Checkout is being given away free to web merchants until 2007, and then from January 1st 2008, for every £1 spent on AdWords, the merchant can process £10 in sales for free through Google Checkout. Google claim that the service improves conversions and generates more leads too. Even for merchants who are not regular Adwords spenders, it’s very tempting to switch e-commerce suppliers immediately; commission charges are by no means small for high volume sellers using Paypal or Worldpay etc. But why would Google be interested in taking on this new service offering? (more…)

These past two days are special celebrations in the film world; today would have been the one hundredth birthday of John Wayne (born May 26, 1907), and yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of the first Star Wars film release. Had I given it more thought I might have arranged a Star Wars weekend, complete with films and Star Wars Trivial Pursuit – the problem is I don’t know any other Star Wars geeks like me so it’d be a lonely weekend. It might have been a better bet to have a John Wayne weekend as I know a few more fans of ‘The Duke’. (more…)

For seasoned SEO experts like myself this article won’t blow you away, however, I recently came across a few forum comments from people still in the dark on the subject of SEO and server IP addresses… In order to decide which search results index a website will be listed in i.e. google.com, google.co.uk or google.de, the country code top level domain (or ccTLD) comes into play. For example, if your website is hosted on a .co.uk domain, Google should assume that your content is relevant to the UK. However, what happens if you’re the UK owner of a .com TLD which by rights should me matched to the US, along with any .net or .org domains? (more…)

On Sunday evening, whilst collapsed in the sofa following the exhaustion of steam-cleaning the carpets AND relocating household furniture (again), I came across something to take me way back to my childhood. There on ITV3 was Michael Praed as Robin of Sherwood - complete with that absolute classic sound track by Clannad ‘Rooooobin…. the hooded man‘. It wasn’t that long ago I watched an episode of the BBC’s latest attempt at a Robin Hood series and switched it over moaning about it not being as good as it was in my day. To my absolute joy I was able to put that theory to the test and see that I was indeed quite correct, Robin of Sherwood was better by a million miles (if now a little worn around the edges and featuring some very ’80s’ scene transitions). (more…)

One for the pub quiz specialists - the first team to win a cup at the new Wembley stadium was… Stevenage Borough FC in the FA Trophy 2007! The cup raised aloft in celebration yesterday by Stevenage defender Ronnie Henry. My ‘red army’ came back from being two goals down, to win 3-2 after ninety minutes against Kidderminster. This was a match I desperately wanted to watch either at Wembley or on television but missed by attending a wedding. The good news being that this time my home town won (unlike the last time I watched in 2002 when they lost then 2-0 to Yeovil). A shame I don’t still run my Nationwide Conference website ConferenceLeague.com, this blog will have to do for a celebratory report instead (more…)

This week I finally managed to find a moment to explore Linden Labs’ ‘Second Life‘ - a virtual world in which you create and clothe an animated character (avatar) before interracting with everybody else and the environment of this virtual world. With $1.5 million spent in ‘real’ money in this economy each day I had high hopes for its appeal. Unfortunately, having created ‘Flash Rehula’ a punk rocker with green hair, I managed to get about 1/4 of the way through the tutorial before I became frustrated at the clunkiness of the movement and slow graphics. Then it got worse; the tutorial kept undoing itself as I completed required tasks, now I’ve given up as the tutorial guide has vanished without trace. (more…)

Whilst chatting about last night’s semi finals in the official Eurovision chat room (sad I know), a French guy ‘FrenchFrog’ (he had a sense of humour) told me my surname was an old Celtic Britanny word for ‘fish’. That’s not an explanation I’d ever heard before, usually the genealogy books trace it back to ‘pescod’ - a seller of peas - a street being named Pescod Street in Windsor. However, ‘FrenchFrog’ pointed me in the direction of a book called ‘Les Aventures Extraordinaires de Peskett‘ by Pierre Péron. (more…)

So it’s time for the 2007 Eurovision song contest already; in my family the annual ‘Sit around the telly with a score card’ bonding session. Unfortunately I’m going to miss the finals again this year attending a wedding – so that’s two finals I’m missing on Saturday (my beloved Stevenage Borough FC are in the FA Trophy Final at Wembley). My mother remarked to me this week that she’d read an article saying that the United Kingdom would never win the Song Contest again because of the geographic break up of Eastern Europe and subsequent social voting collusion. As I’m putting a cash spread bet on Eurovision this year I looked for a method of winner prediction similar to that which I use successfully for the Grand National. I found some extremely useful information… (more…)

Hot on the heels of the global warming cause debate, today I discovered Neal Adams’ animations of planetary surface expansion. These animations demonstrate his theory that all the continents of the Earth were once joined in a land mass which covered the entire surface of a much smaller Earth (1/4 of the current size in fact). Water existed in shallow pools over much of the Earth, but it’s only the expansion of the Earth’s size over millions of years, and the subsequent creation of new surfaces, which has caused there to be any oceans. Adams hypothesises that the bottom of the ocean is only between 70 to 180 million years old. He also expands his theory to apply to all planets of the universe, including their moons. If you’re interested in that sort of thing take a look at Neal’s ‘New Model of the Universe‘ online videos; they’ll certainly challenge the geology theories you were taught at school! (more…)