30 March 2009: Some like to drive their companies into strategic positions, which is fine for those companies and those people, but I like to follow the market (it's easier) and right now I'm helping a company that's floundering get some clarity about which direction to head in.
I previously installed Google Analytics on their website and I set up a goal which, in this case, is a sale. Now I can look back at which keywords people used when they found the site and actually bought something.
I can compare the conversion rates of different search phrases with the site average and I can see how much profit the company makes on each search, effectively scoring the relevance of the current site against each keyphrase, automatically. Or put another way, extracting the actual relevance of the site from customer behaviour. Which means we can adapt the site to the user.
Using Google's Keyword Tool External, I can see the traffic for each keyphrase.
Using another top secret hush hush tool, I can see for which of those keyphrases people have a long term, profitable, pay per click campaign .. meaning, there's money to be made.
I can see which markets are growing, and I can see our position in the search engines. When I calculate all that together, I can rank the search keyphrases in order .. with the top keyphrase being the place we'll make our easiest and biggest profits first.
Then all I have to do is make sure that whenever someone types that keyphrase into a search engine, they see a whole lot of us.
I was born to do this (and I'll do it for you if you want).
29 March 2009: I spent some of my birthday money a while back on this Drum Rudiments System course. The idea is .. learn your rudiments and you can play anything.
Now, the curious thing is .. I know I'm not a great drummer, I'm not even sure if I'm a passable one, frankly, but I seem to get away with it OK. Anyway, I've taken maybe the first five lessons (bearing in mind the first lesson is how to hold your sticks and lesson two is a basic one, two, one, two roll (not sure if that's strictly true, but you get the idea)). It's easy enough to fire up the DVD, watch the guy show the technique, then go to the kit and work on it. The lesson's maybe five minutes at most, so it's a nice way to start a practice.
Oh yes, the curious thing .. I'm improving already, even though I'm only on lesson five. And there's acres of stuff in here: two dvds full of beginner stuff, another two for intermediate, and another two for advanced. Goodness.
There's something about the word rudiments that brings me out all seaside postcard. It reminds me of Victoria Wood trapped, as I recall, in a bad B&B, saying "bum, tits, fanny. I'm so hungry I'm having all my crudities now".
Anyway, the other curious thing about the drumming DVD is that .. I've had lessons .. £20 a time things that take an hour each time plus you have to get dressed and tidy the house. So now, how come I'm learning things from these really early lessons? That bodes well, I think.
29 March 2009: Loving the Acapulco transport. Plus, I get novelty taxi pics for my low cost taxi insurance page. Hmm, wonder if I can claim the whole trip against tax? (Just joking)
29 March 2009: I did a swapsie with the masterful photographer, David Chalmers the other day. He showed me how he'd process a photograph in the 'digital darkroom' and I talked to him about Internet marketing.
The big points were .. always shoot in raw (careful now, in RAW mode (it's a camera setting), not "in the raw") because that's the camera just taking the pic. The jpg format images are the camera trying to second-guess what effects and balancing algorithms to use to make a nice looking pic. No, you want to decide that.
Secondly, it was the feeling that there isn't really a 'correct' answer to any of this. It's just .. you choose what effect you want and go for that. Which is why he says always shoot in manual mode, because it starts there, of course.
Anyway, here's what I got to bring home afterwards, two pictures that I took when I went out with Andrew Cheetham to Rosedale one morning. He has a year's residency there and we set off at 5am with cameras to catch the sunrise.
The first pic is the camera's choice. The second is David Chalmers' choice, the same pic, but starting with the raw image and spending maybe five or ten minutes on darkroom processing. I don't know if it will come through on screen, but in print Chalmer's choice is beautiful, something that engages and draws you in. The camera's choice is brash and jangly.
I've left them too big, I know it'll cock up the page format but I wanted to give you the best chance of spotting the differences, which are subtle, while not actually being bothered to provide a small pic with link.
I just realised, actually in the landscape pic, the original, in-camera jpeg is here:
So now, the first landscape is what Chalmers did in the darkroom to the jpeg image which had been processed already by the camera. The second is Chalmers on raw. I think the second, earth, pic the first image is what the camera gave us, the second is raw and Chalmers.
28 March 2009: By the way, I do hope you've seen the beautiful pics of the volcano that was erupting near Tonga a week ago. Well worth a cup of tea moment.
28 March 2009: I'm typing in the dark here, I don't know if the rules say I shouldn't have my computer on, and I guess I shouldn't have been watching Grand Designs either, but I did.
Fabulous building, fabulous project, but what I found more interesting were the couple. It's rare with anyone who wants to get on the telly to find anyone you might actually like, particularly in this genre, but here were unassuming people doing awesome things and using, crikey, niceness and knowledge and shared understanding to get something done. That makes them heroes.
But interestingly, the guy whose dream it was, Francis, came across (sorry Francis) as quite mouse-like in the start. Quietly spoken, self deprecating. But .. you know when you see an actress in a film and she's maybe a scullery maid or something and you don't notice her beauty and then the hero and her get together and her beauty blossoms until you can't believe you overlooked her at the start. I thought all of that was planned and engineered by make-up, lighting, wardrobe and so on.
But here it happened in real life. Francis mouse turned into Wayne Hemingway.
I suppose there are two possible explanations, both of which could still be true. On the one hand, I got to know and like him over the hour-long programme, so perhaps I viewed him differently once I understood his story and took the journey with him. But I think the big thing was his pride in their achievement, in him achieving a childhood dream .. his voice even broke saying that. I think he was simply so buoyed up by what they'd managed to do that he carried himself differently and appeared more confident and capable. There's a lesson in there.
25 March 2009: Can't believe I've left you a week between blogs. Things got busy. Anyway. Being a tramp in the UK you need a bagful of stuff mainly to protect yourself against the weather. Imagine being a tramp in Acapulco .. all you need is enough clothes to cover your vanity and that .. is that. Why do I find the idea of having nothing strangely attractive? I'm sure she doesn't.
We saw her walking around quite a few times. I'm not saying Mexico hasn't, but certainly a theme in some of the countries in central America is .. there's no safety net. One tour guide's phrase was what people do "to survive". No dole, no health insurance, no social housing. When you fall, you can hit bottom.
18 March 2009: I'm quite cautious and Acapulco is big and I'd no idea what to expect. But the boat is berthed near Acapulco old town so we were able to leave the ship, walk left along the dual carriageway, and then in as the bay curved left to find a church and a shaded square, you can see it here alongside Calle Independencia.
It was hot so we sat for a while in the square and a chap came up to us saying he was an official guide and did we need any help. No, we're fine thanks except, where's the market? He pointed the direction we thought.
So, this is the bandstand thing you can see just off the road in Google maps if you zoom in:
This is the church at the top end which I can't find any information about but something around here begins with an X .. I'll try to find the guidesheets and fill in this blank:
I don't think I fancy anything from Acne Facials (go on, take the p*** out of the locals, you know it makes sense):
And here's a local lady doing her thing:
The square was filled with fabulously up-tempo music and after a short while we realised it was from an exercise class a few stories up, of course with all the windows open:
18 March 2009: It seems Scarborough now has an annual Honda Goldwing Light Parade and with permission they've added a link to my webcam. They didn't need permission, you can link where you like, but it was nice of them to ask.
17 March 2009: Because of our body clocks and the direction of travel, it was easy to wake up early on the cruise. Day one was just recovery from the journey and working out where to get food on the ship, but when the next day dawned it was probably time to think about walking into Mexico.
17 March 2009: A client in a competitive area where I've been working little bits for a year or more and more intensively now for a couple of months and their site is still at page 15 of Google said he spoke to a competitor who is at position 4 on page one for the phrase we want. That competitor spends ten times what he spends per month on search engine optimisation (SEO), namely £5,000 per month and he says the company said he wouldn't get his position until after maybe 6 or 8 months. Wow, that's trust. But he trusted it because they'd done it before for a big company. I said "fabulous .. the challenge (to beat them) is what gets me up in the morning". It's true.
13 March 2009: It's time for Comic Relief. I went shopping late last night and as I walked the aisles I heard two warehouse lads talking. In a gruff voice one said "What the f***s that?", and in a slightly effeminate voice the other lad said "it's my sister's tutu". When I looked, yes, he was wearing a tutu.
13 March 2009: If you're quick (ie. you run it before nighttime tonight) and you run the 24 hour slideshow on the webcam, you'll see the full moon over the sea. It's stunning in real life.
12 March 2009: Walking around the ship to see what's at the other side, this was a bit more noisy (traffic and dockside lorries, reversing beepers, etc). We definitely had the better side that day.
11 March 2009: I don't like The Archers for two reasons. One is the introductory sentence by the announcer: "It's time to go to Ambridge now where Geoff is having trouble with his fridge". It's never "It's time to go to Ambridge now where Geoff and Gordon have decided to give their earlobes to charity". In other words, it never sounds interesting.
Along with that comfortable, armchair and slippers feeling, is the baaing. They must have a huge databank of baas. Perhaps sheep hear it and it's nonsense, sheep sampled saying random words like "nice grass", "quite nice grass" and "oooh me lice are shuffling today, Shaun".
It just feels like lazy production. "They're outside in this scene, bring on the baas". "Are the baas ready?" "OK, cue baas and action". There isn't always baaing in the countryside. I wonder if there are times on a sheep farm when there's no baaing. Maybe that's a question for Wiki Answers.
I switched on the radio at a random time the other day and there was some sort of fictional play stuff going on and I wondered if I'd accidentally fallen into a vat of The Archers. It was less than a minute, honestly, before the baaing started. I rest my case.
10 March 2009: I just went around Scarborough talking to taxi drivers. "I'm a web developer and I want to understand how taxi drivers buy their taxi insurance. I've got a questionnaire here, and I'm paying £10 for a completed one. Can I give you one?" It's a genuine offer. The £10 is just to say thank-you for your time, and since everyone I spoke to was sat on rank, it's a way to earn a tenner while sat there doing nothing else. It's not a lot of money, and since the questionnaire will probably take half an hour to complete, it's probably no better than what they would earn if they were driving around.
Most said yes, but there were quite a few who declined and it appeared they were simply wondering what the catch is. It's easy to think .. if it's worth paying us a tenner, it must be worth a whole lot more than that to him, so what's he going to do with the information, sell it to spammers?
The truth is, this is as simple as it looks. I'm only asking in the first place because I want to make a better website, something that really works for taxi drivers. Not many web developers would. And I didn't want to just ask (ie. take) without respecting their time as fellow businesspeople and paying for their time. The money thing pollutes it, I accept.
But I can't help feeling that the cynics and doubters lost out there. Some people got an additional tenner while they were sat on rank. They got a say in how a website they may actually use in the future will work .. they got to contribute to their environment. I know it's difficult to believe but some things really are quite simple and genuine. I guess in that job maybe you see all sides of life.
Here's the taxi insurance website I'm trying to improve, if I actually get any responses I'll report back on progress.
10 March 2009: This is probably one of those head shaking "John, John, John" moments when everyone realises the true depth of my ignorance of what most people get up to every day. I don't own a DVD player. And having been blown away by Moulin Rouge one day at a friends house (Hi Suzie), they started to work through the 'extras' on the DVD .. and the one I saw was a dance scene. At the end of it, everyone dropped out of character and seemingly went off to eat tea and biscuits and talk about how the A546 was blocked by an accident this morning. For me, that instantly wrecked the fantasy. I felt like if I watched anything else like that it would ruin Moulin Rouge for me. Suddenly I wouldn't be able to immerse myself in its world, it would just be actors performing under lights with technicians and wires milling around.
So, I never wanted any of that.
But here's something that is interesting. Maybe it's normal, maybe everyone's already gotten used to it, but it's the first time I've seen it. A clue about how characters are visually styled. This is from a BBC drama and shows how make-up and wardrobe work together to deliver a characters' style. There are more there, you can check out the other main characters. Inspiration for web design I think.
10 March 2009: Oceana itself is pretty breathtaking. Enormous and beautiful in many ways, 2,016 passengers, 261.22m long, 32.25m wide, 11 passenger decks and 875 crew.
The cabin corridors run the length of the ship and are served by three lifts, stand at one end and they seem to go forever. The first thing to do seems to be to go out on the top deck.
9 March 2009: I'm serious. Vulva cab. Honest. Be prepared. It's a big vulva that you climb into and are carried around Finland in. There's a big picture of it. It's rude. It's Finnish. It's a vulva, a lady's front bottom. It's a bike, but it's not Christ on it. It's a taxi. It's art. You have been warned. Crikey moses.
9 March 2009: OMG, will you look at this? An art project, taking the GPS location of San Francisco Bay area yellow cabs and creating a living map by creating a light trace of where they go. Beautiful.
9 March 2009: The view from the balcony on arrival at Acapulco really took our breath away (and we get sea views every day in Scarborough). We were moored more or less here, looking out over the bay.
8 March 2009: I've been on holiday. A big holiday. An Oceana cruise through the Panama canal. I didn't think cruises were my kinda thing. Sadly for you I took pen, paper, and three cameras. So .. wanna see my holiday snaps? Wanna hear my every thought? Actually, it's slightly interesting so you might like it. I'll try to intersperse the holiday blog with other stuff.
First off .. the outbound journey. We set off from Scarborough at about 11:30 and drove to my parents in Long Eaton (near Nottingham and J25 of the M1) where we'd booked an airport taxi to Birmingham for flight Thomson 243 to Acapulco which had us on ship by about 9:30 their time (we are 6 hours ahead, so about 15:30 ours), so the door to door journey took 28 hours. It was surprisingly bearable except for having to refuel in Miami without being allowed off the plane.
This pic is us arriving in the cabin, A546, midships.
