Getting into the search engines

This is a new blog, so is not listed anywhere, so one of the first things I am trying to do is ensure that if someone searches for "Steve Browne" that this blog will appear somewhere on the first page!

As the software running this is not ours, we don't have a massive amount of contyrol over the HTML aspects, which can affect how the search engines see you, but we'll see if we can tweak the template a bit...

For now, we'll just monitor whether the site gets picked up due to being part of Blogger and having regular posts made to it...

So the starting positions @ 17:30, Sunday 30th April 2006:

Search: site:http://www.stevebrowne.com
Google: 1 page listed
Yahoo: 1 page listed
MSN: 1 page listed

Search: Steve Browne
Google: NOT on first page
Yahoo: NOT on first page
MSN: NOT on first page


We'll check every few days to see how this gets on...

Fulham win away from home!

Shock horror! Fulham (my team by birth) have won away from home for the first time in nearly a year! With a 2-1 win over Man City, it means that we are still able (if other results go our way for the last few games) to finish in 9th spot, which will be our joint-highest ever finish position, and earns the club a few more million quid (£1/2 million per place from the bottom upwards). Not sure if we could sneak into Europe, but if so, then this would be a completely Fulhamish end to the season.

Well done lads - shame the rest of the season has been so down at times :-(

Old Magazines

As a bit of a magazine geek, I have shelves of old magazines in the garage that I go through occasionally and pick a pile to read. This goes from old car magazines, computer mags going back to the late 70s, mens lifestyle, science, technology and just loads of general stuff.

During the next week, I'm going to select a few and see if there are any funny (in retrospect) announcements or reviews. It can be quite eye-opening to go back through these old items...

Blogger fixed itself

I tried to get this blog onto my own domain the other day, but blogger was being a bit reticent about it. I had all the settings rights, but the publish just sat at 0% the whole time. Just tried it again, and it works. Hurrah! So for the first time in many years, my real domains of stevebrowne.com and stevebrowne.co.uk are doing something useful for me. Nice one.

Magazine round-up

Well, the end of month normally means a load of magazines start arriving through my letterbox. In the last few days, the latest issues of Fortean Times, Stuff and Dr Dobbs Journal have arrived.

Fortean Times covers ghosts of the battlefields in details this month, with many stories from WWI, plus the normal eclectic mix of features and news snippets.

Stuff is highlighting TV To Go - TV on everything from PSPs and iPods to mobile phones.

DDJ focuses on testing and debugging this month.

Software patents and knock-on effects

Just spent a bit of time trying to fix some issues that have just started appearing with some of our sites that use the Dynamic HTML Edit control from Microsoft. It's a great control, and allows non-techys to enter styled content into an admin page without learning HTML.

But recently, things changed. First of all, the control had a little yellow message when it appeared on screen: press spacebar or enter to activate and use this control, but when you did this, it still refused to accept any keyboard input. Not good.

Thankfully Microsoft have a page of possible fixes, and we believe that it's now working (tested on IE6 that had that patch that causes this, and IE7 beta2 which apparently does this by default), just awaiting user-feedback.

But it seems that many smaller dev companies are going to be pushed into situations like this more and more. The reason? Software patents.

The whole reason that this issue has occurred, and caused untold hours of work fixing it around the world is because a company called EOLAS have a patent on web pages that have plug-ins. In these days of multimedia content, many sites have embedded video, flash and other controls - like the edit control we use. Microsoft's update means that any site using these methods will be effected, and will need to apply one of the different fixes to remedy their site. But it keeps them out of the patent arguments.

Of course, this is just IE for now, but expect FireFox and Safari to be targeted next...

Prescott. What a fine figure of a man.

It turns out that John Prescott, our erstwhile Deputy Prime Minister has been playing away from home. What a great example he makes for aspiring young people in this country.

It's a bit of a bad time for Labour, with expensive hair bills (as someone said, thank God it wasn't her lipstick bill), the NHS having it's "best year ever" and the release of over 1,000 prisoners who were meant to be deported, but, er, weren't.

Anyone would think that they don't know what they're doing.

Oh.

Email posting

Roving blogs. Well, with an O2 XDA Exec pda phone, with a keyboard, and Blogger email updates, it means that I can update my blog remotely. Cool, from no blog to wireless, mobile blogging in under 24 hours.

Can't be bad!

edited: I also emailed an image from the built in cam as an attachement, but it seems to have been vaped. That's a shame, but not really a problem. Saves a bit of my bandwidth I suppose ;-)

When is a kids club not a kids club?

When it's in Merry Hill shopping centre.

The kids needed some new clothes as they are going through a growth period. They grow, my wallet shrinks. Anyway, we decided on Merry Hill, as it has a good range of shops, and has a kids club where our two middle kids can play whilst we trog around the shops. The kids love it, as it has loads of activities, and even a big climbing frame thing.

So we arrived - first stop the kids club. Hoorraay say the kids. Hoorraay say Mum & Dad.

Well you'll need to go in with them, we've changed to a Pay and Play says the Funky Monkey behind the desk. Yes, a creche facility where you have to site with your kids. What a waste of time that is! We can stay at home to do that - we don't need to drive for an hour and then pay to do it! It's there so they can play whilst we shop!

In fact they do have full creche facilities from 3pm - 7pm, Monday to Saturday, but that's not much use for Saturday shoppers. From our understanding, Merry Hill staff weren't aware of the change until it happened a few weeks ago.

A waste of time, and considering the number of kids that used to be left there, I can see a lot of families with young kids deciding to shop elsewhere.

A stupid decision made by someone with no idea of what a kids club is actually there for.

Speed Cameras

I hate speed cameras. I've never been got by one (as I drive carefully and correctly), but the very thought of them annoys me. In our society, we should have real police checking for idiot drivers, not automatons that simply check whether you go fast than a preset limit.

We went to Merry Hill shopping center the other day (more of which in another post), and on the way there we saw a completely burnt out Gatso. It looked like everyone who saw it had a nice big smile on their face.

But when we got there, we saw a kids ride on toy, you know the sort,m a samll car that rocks back and forward whilst music plays and lights flash. Kids love these. But this one had a gatso camera in fornt of it. A nice cuddly gatso camera! Talk about trying to brainwash the kids.

And then today, I was pointed at this classic, which I hadn't seen before. Out of control speed checks? It'll only get worse...

Timber frame extensions to Outdoor Living

We live in a timber-framed house, which is great - it's warm and the walls don't eat drill bits. But we recently applied for planning permission to have a couples of rooms built above the garage - everyone runs away - they don't want to know! [sob] [sob] [sob]

I'm sure we will find someone eventually (even if they have to flatten the garage and start from the ground again), but for now we've redirected the funds and we're going to have the garden done. After fours years of living here, the grass is dying, we can't clear the trees (preservation orders on everything) and our outdoor table and chairs just fit onto the patio area.

What we want is a BIG patio area so we can BBQ with the best of them this summer, a nicely drained and growing grass area (for football of course) and some ground leveling and proper anchors posts in the trees for the kid's swing, slide and trampoline.

Finished off with some new patio doors off the playroom and we should be living the outdoor lifestyle which is generally not possible in the UK. I think we'll need to budget for some shelter as well.... Photos soon.

The first post

The first post. Every blog has one, but I guess most are years old now. I never really bothered about blogs in the past - read a few when I had time, but that's not very often. Running my own business and helping my wife with our 4 kids and 2 cats kind of takes any spare time I have.

But then I thought, why the hell not? It might never be read, but you never know. I'm sure it's theraputic.

A bit about me. I've been into computers since the ZX80, followed by ZX81, Spectrum (only rubber keys count!), QL, Apple II (with a Microsoft 80 column card, no less!), PC XT (10Mb hard drive - cool) and then various generations of PC ever since - but I still have a soft spot for the retro machines. In between, there were various other bits of computer machinery: BBC Micros, Honeywell mainframes, DG MV15000 mini computer, VAXStations and many other bits and pieces.

This love of retro leads me nicely into MAME, which I love on my Xbox classic. A huge two player joystick adds the authentic touch. This summer I plan to build a MAME cabinet to run these games the way they are supposed to be run. Faves of the moment: Puzzle Bobble 2 and Wonderboy. These go down well wih the kids as well - got to be better for them than GRAW on the 360!

My musical taste is also somewhat 80s (I have been refferred to as Sad 80s Bloke on more than one occasion, but Am I Bothered...? naa.). Frankie Goes to Hollywood are obviously the best band ever, so I collect their stuff with a passion (although not as passionately as some....!).

Of course, it's not just the old stuff. Current bands I like are Eels and The Streets. Bit of a mixture I guess, but it keeps me happy.

Other things I like and will go on about here at various times: cars, lego, magazines, tv, geek stuff, gadgets and technology, web development and probably other stuff that either gets me going (in a good way) or does my head in (in a bad way).