Ronda, Spain, Spanish, Themes, and Everything Else

Have you heard about an organization called Full Moon Investigations? They've recently come my attention because of a petition they've presented to the parliament at Holyrood, which for those who don't know, is the Parliament of Scotland, one of the currently constituent parts of the UK.

The story goes like this, way back in 1735 George II, agreed to repeal the previous witchcraft act and replace it with this one which no longer made it an offense to practice witchcraft, oh no this was a more enlightened act that charged people with pretending to be witches; Huh? OK, here's how it worked, after 1735 anyone could run seances, dance naked under a full moon, all of that was OK, but actually communicating with the devil, spirits, ghosts, whatever, was considered to be impossible so anyone who claimed to be a medium was automatically charged with pretending to be in touch with spirits and this offense incurred the death penalty or lengthy stays in prison. Read More

You are no doubt familiar with the holy grail of SEO, the search for backlinks with relevant anchor text since they are the key to successful off-site optimization of your website or blog. Let me give you a specific example of how this works, here is a Google SERP for the keyword Carl, notice this very blog appears on the first page. I'm sure you could easily find a keyword or phrase that places your blog or site in the first page of the SERPs as well so you might wonder what the point is.

Great question, and I've struggled to answer it myself, but ultimately it comes down to this. If anyone in the world was search for "Carl" they would surely find my blog yet hardly anyone ever does, in fact it only produces one or two visitors per day, so you should assume this isn't a relevant keyword. By contrast, search engine optimization tips, which is more relevant to at least one of my chosen categories sees me in the top 10 SERP for some of Google's datacenters. On others my blog appears on the second page. Read More

This is it, this is the post where people who have something to say about the US presidential elections can do so. I'm making this post available to anyone, whether a US citizen, an illegal immigrant or an interested foreigner. Why? Well, two of the US Presidential candidates are using Serendipity and in fact, the template that I produced, so both are linking to me, and as you would imagine, my traffic is increasing as their visitors obviously have something to say. The two candidates are both independents, Ralph Nader and Christine Smith.

So, here are the rules. I'm going to be really tough and delete any message that is inappropriate or offensive. Don't ask me to contact either of these candidates, I don't have their contact details, visit their website for that. Do not post comments about the US Presidential campaign or candidates on any other entry in my blog, this is the appropriate place.

My views are that being a non-US citizen my hope is that whichever candidate is elected President will change US foreign policy and actively work for peace and peaceful relations between peoples, the elimination of global poverty, and will firmly promote a tougher, more stringent successor to the Kyoto protocol, perhaps even adopt the same policies as the EU Commission. That's it, what say you?

Yesterday was the first day in a week where the sun was shining (not raining), so we took a drive into Ronda to get some more photographs. Today, and that also means this long weekend, is also a bank holiday in Andalucia so we needed to get some groceries organized, go to the bank, stuff like that.

First stop was the bank where I flirted in bad Spanish with the lady behind the counter while she deposited some cash into our account. That was fun, harmless, but fun nevertheless. I was even complimented on using Spanish without a dictionary and that gave me a warm glow for the rest of the day. "Quiero deposito es me cuenta, por favor", she brightly smiled at my stumbling Spanish and replied "Cuatrocientos" after she'd counted the money, "Si, Cuatrocientos" said I with a big beaming smile. Gee, banking is so much fun!

Once we actually got into town our first stop was the lottery man. We really want to win lotto, and the Euro-millions is one of the biggest, although this week its only $14.7 million Euros, which for my US based readers is about US$21.5 million. Even so, I could still find ways of spending it, I'd just have to live a little less luxuriously than I would want to. Read More

A blonde fisherman painted an X on the deck of his boat. His friend looked confused and asked what he was doing. "This way we'll be able to find the same fishing spot again."

A friend told me this joke yesterday when we were doing what guys do, swapping stories, reminiscing about jetskiing, women we've... anyway, enough about that. The funny thing is I had a dream last night about being towed along behind a jetboat stuck in a ski biscuit (that's what we call inflatable tube that gets towed) and since it had come up in conversation and in my dream I figured it was a sign, spooky heh?

Downunder, water sports are incredibly popular, almost everyone I know has a boat or jetski, a big group of us would pack up our cars with tents, food, swimming gear all the great stuff you need for a long weekend at the beach or down by the lakes. Then we'd get royally sunburnt flipping about on the water. Read More

If you haven't heard of it, the Encyclopedia of Life is the one to watch! This is the project to that aims to categorize every single living organism on the planet all 1.8 million known organisms, and make this information available free to every single person on the planet with access to the Internet.

I'm excited about this project because for the first time ever, a catalogue is being put together that doesn't require specialist access to private databases, and is being written specifically to appeal to scientists and non-scientists alike. This means the children of the future will be able to access the data for school projects or homework; parents will be able to interest their children in biology, biodiversity and man's impact on other organisms.

Government officials will be able to compare species distribution and growth cycles against their observations, thus allowing proper planning at local level. Scientists with Internet access, and how many of them don't have this nowadays, will be able to research organisms, upload new data including images, and in time, directly access DNA markers for all species.

Think of the impact a resource like this will have on human society. No more searching through book after book for the information you need. No more waiting for books to arrive in the mail, no more out of date information simply because it's the only book on your bookshelf. I'm particularly excited about how this will impact on scientist and school children in developing countries. Many of books in their libraries, even in research institutes, are 40 or 50 years old, but with the EOL, they'll have access to information that is as current as anyone in the developed world, and with access to DNA markers as well.

Intended as a tool for scientists and policymakers and a fascinating resource for anyone interested in the living world, the EOL is being developed by a unique collaboration between scientists and the general public.

By making it easy to compare and contrast information about life on Earth, the resulting compendium has the potential to provide new insights into many of life’s secrets.

Broadband Internet is something you kinda take for granted in many parts of the world, but being relatively new to it myself, at least in the home, I am still amazed at the different speeds available and other services that come with it from your ISP.

Before we came to Europe oh so long ago, hmm, about 10 months ago, we were only on dial-up, 56 Kbs which is so painful especially when you want to upload photos to flickr, watch videos, or even just chat with family using Skype. In Germany we had ADSL with about 8 Mbs, and here in Spain we have to make do with 512 Kbs. Now that I've got broadband I doubt I could ever go back to slow dial-up, and it means we can share our connection across three laptops with no problems.

Anyway I raise the subject because I was reading about broadband in the UK, if you haven't heard the government wants to increase broadband uptake to compete into the future against other developed countries. It seems despite the relative affluence of the UK they are falling behind in the technology stakes, or so some would have you believe. I don't know where ESA would be if it weren't for British satellite designers but that's another story. Read More

A while back I wrote about SEO using social bookmarking and blog communities and since nearly a month has passed I thought I'd update my notes on the subject

I've been most happy with Blogcatalog this month, it really seems to have powered ahead to the extent that I am now actively working my Blogcatalog profile. I think the very fact of mentioning it in my last post attracted a lot of visitors who then added me as a friend, and the widget helps too. You may have noticed I've been more active in the Blogcatalog forums and I've updated my profile and joined a couple of groups.

Next month I'll be keen to see how Blogcatalog continues to develop for me so I think I'll be making use of the friend feature more to drive more traffic and increase subscriber numbers. Strangely though, Blogcatalog traffic increases haven't increased the number of comments, and commenting is something I'm really monitoring, BTW thanks to Paul and Jillian for taking an interest. Read More