Mathew Browne

For the very few of you who don’t follow me on Facebook (not Twitter, for I can spot the signs of addictivity a mile away) some brief snippets of information

Business is surviving the economic downturn - website design seems to be fairly recession-proof though the number of enquiries has dropped in recent months. Still happily working from my home office in South Wales. I have found myself missing London at times, though a well-placed rush-hour tube journey when I was last there reminded me why I wanted out so badly.

Few minutes ago, I wrote a quick post about code bloat and SEO - Cubecart is user friendly and tries hard to be SEO friendly but I do find that code bloat has a negative effect. A whistlestop tour of some minor changes I’ve made to 2 Cubecart websites - H2D Hair Straighteners UK and H2D Hair Straighteners Australia - the results of which should be self-evident in a few weeks.

On a personal note, I’m getting married in just over 6 months. They say it’s the most stressful day of your life - if preparations are an indication then I believe that. I’m also learning to drive, which is a whole different kind of stressful. Big life changes ahead!

Quality Carpets Direct, specialist in cheap carpets, launches Cubecart online retail site including Axminster, Westex, Ulster and Wilton ranges.

A redesign for London-Moscow Translations, who offer Russian translators and Russian interpreters to individuals and companies.

A brand new e-commerce website for H2D’s line of UK hair straighteners and hair straighteners in Australia.

Time for my annual festive re-written blog post.

There it was. Over and out.

Seeing as it’s September and I haven’t blogged since May, I figured it was time I updated everyone about the status quo. Some major life changes have occurred

• My fiancee Louise is now a Doctor
• We’ve moved from London to Llanelli, South Wales…
• …and bought our own house
• I get married in November next year

In addition to this, MB Web Design has acquired a number of high-value projects to keep me busy (and has kept me busy) for months.

Life is treating me very nicely. I’m busier than I anticipated, given the various DIY tasks owning a house causes, but that’s so much better than having nothing to do and pimping for business, surely?

So, what’s happening to this blog? Evidently nothing for the time being. Having a website with a decent-sized archive gives me a convenient platform on which to test some Wordpress templates I’m putting together, so the primary function of this site is to test the themes and give people a live, working demo.

That’s me over and out for now - it’s Saturday evening and I am working, of course.

Being busy and having lots of work to do for clients has obvious benefits, but what are the drawbacks? In my line of work, there’s one big drawback…

You see, I’ve been so busy over the last 6 months that I have left myself no time to work on my own websites. No fresh content and few new incoming links has meant I’ve slipped a few places for various key phrases on Google. At this point in time, it’s a blessing in disguise - between the house move and several high-value contracts on the table I’m not in a great position to take any more on. However, if I wasn’t so busy I’d have cause for concern and this is something I’m now setting aside time to work on each week. Slipping from page 1 to page 2 for the phrase “web design” on Google.com led to a 70% reduction in traffic coming from Google.com for that phrase.

The lesson to be learnt here is that SEO is ongoing, and that resting on your laurels once you’ve achieved your target is a policy that will cause you problems in the medium to long-term.

I haven’t blogged in over a month - a symptom of being busy, I’m afraid.

In 5 days I leave London for the relative calm of South Wales, so my time is consumed by box-packing and wrapping up those websites I’ve got left over from the past few weeks. At perhaps the worst possible time, I decided to revamp my MB Web Design website and this one concurrently. The latest Wordpress release has largely fuelled this change, it really is fantastic by the way.

I’m starting a web design blog via MB Web Design and letting this one be my personal venting place.  A side effect of being linked to from my business site is that this blog got a pretty large pagerank very quickly, and resultantly has been a big attraction for commenters. Sifting through the hundreds of comments to moderate is rather a drain on my time, so I’m going to relax the emphasis on this site for the time being. (And also plug the Pagerank leak from the business site*)

* For the smart arses: Pagerank doesn’t mean anything, blah blah blah. Tell that to the 440 commenters in the last week or so.

My fiancee finished her final exam yesterday, with fingers crossed I say that in a month or so she will officially be a doctor. When business success goes to my head she will always be there to remind me that I just sit at a desk all day, and that no matter how much money I make, my job doesn’t save lives. (There is a rant about people not appreciating the hard work of doctors, but that can wait for another day.)

I’ll check back in a couple of days to report on the move.

Bob, in the highly unlikely event you’re reading this: you are an insufferable, whinging, reactionary cretin.

So it looks like there is yet another tube strike on the cards. (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7354470.stm) All of life’s ills can be resolved by striking, according to Bob’s blinkered logic. “The RMT executive was left with no choice but to set strike dates” apparently.

Just you wait until the Olympic games are here - he’ll hold the city’s transport to ransom in exchange for a 500% pay rise, citing some tenuous grievance barely worth mentioning. He may be trying to drum up sympathy for his hard done by workforce, but this is hard for the average person to do when tube drivers earn £30k for doing pretty much fuck all, let’s be honest. What he’s actually doing is making himself the most hated man in London.

…was pretty good

Yesterday marked the 10th time I’ve seen WWE wrestling live. Pro wrestling is my guilty pleasure, though at least I’m not convinced it’s real unlike the moron sat behind me last night. Also, I noted a surprising amount of suited-and-booted Wharfers enjoying the show sans children.

In case you’re wondering, which you probably aren’t, these are the shows I’ve seen. Note that there is no Wrestlemania on this list. One day…

29 September 1992 - NEC, Birmingham (house show)
5 December 1993 - Cardiff International Arena (house show)
27 November 1996 - London Arena (house show)
6 December 1998 - London Arena (Capital Carnage pay-per-view)
8 October 2004 - Wembley Arena (Raw house show)
11 October 2004 - Manchester Evening News Arena (Raw taping)
25 April 2005 - NEC, Birmingham (Raw taping)
21 April 2006 - Wembley Arena (Raw taping)
22 April 2006 - Wembley Arena (Smackdown taping)
14 April 2008 - O2 Arena, London (Raw taping)

I am so very happy right now.

Up yours everyone who wants to rain on our (well-deserved, hard-earned) parade.

“It’s only Wales”
- Jean-Baptiste Ellisalde

“Looks like it’ll come down to an England, Ireland Championship decider”
- Austin Healey

“So, Andy, can Scotland really beat England?”
- John Inverdale

“The sportsdesk team could expect to beat Wales at Twickenham (laughs)”
- Ian Roberston

“It is not a matter of whether England beat Wales - that is a given - but by how much”
- Paul Ackford

“Wales are just the Ospreys, and if England can’t beat a club side at Twickenham it’s a pretty poor show”
- Ian Roberston on Radio 5Live

About half an hour ago I’m tapping away at my computer, minding my own business when it dawns on me that I’m rocking in my chair, yet my feet aren’t touching anything to propel me. And the tea in my mug is rippling, Jurassic Park-style. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me until I saw Louise seconds later (who’d gone to bed an hour earlier) who’d been woken from her sleep. Early reports from BBC say the earthquake (or earth tremor… when does a ‘tremor’ become a ‘quake’?) was in the Midlands, but it was strong here too.