Mathew Browne

Gizmodo has published a few shots of a plane in Osaka getting hit by lightning. No more description required, just go over there and check it out.

After the Future of Web Apps conference at Excel London there’s supposed to be a Wordpress meetup but the choice of bar yet to be decided. I decided to wade in on the discussion and volunteer my knowledge of the area in finding such a bar. ExCeL’s own site lists a few such places but omits The Fox which is practically on ExCeL’s doorstep. (In fact, it’s called The Fox @ Excel which makes their omission even more intriguing.)

Above: the view from my window (Excel is the big white building in the background)

Here are some of the nearest pubs/bars, along with some relevant links.

• The Fox About a 20 second walk from Excel’s main entrance. HUGE bar but it has to be seeing as most visitors to Excel try this bar first. Can get very busy on event days (or rather, after the event has finished for the day).
• So Over the footbridge from Excel - which is a pleasant walk in itself. Outdoor seating if it’s decent weather. Likely to be less busy than The Fox on an event day.
• Caribbean Scene (highly recommended if it’s sunny)
• Failing the above, the hotels - Ibis, Crowne Plaza, Novotel - all have their own bar (though I haven’t been in so can’t vouch for quality on way or another)

I recently watched The Bourne Ultimatum (which was awesome, you should all go and see it) with Louise at Swansea Odeon cinema. As an aside, it’s so refreshing to only have to pay £5 for admission; screw you London cinemas and your DVD-priced tickets.

Back on topic - during the fantastic scene at Waterloo station Louise turned to me and exclaimed that Jason Bourne would kick James Bond’s arse. Through gritted teeth I had to agree. What do you think?

I’ve really let myself go this summer. First of all, I had a cousin stay with me for a while. All well and good except my treadmill and weights bench are in my spare room and were being used as makeshift clothes horses.

Then I went to Florida for a week. The all-you-can-eat buffets, huge portions and ridiculously cheap prices were too much temptation. I ate like a pig every single day. Though given that I was walking around the theme parks all day I’m reasonably confident that the excess was walked off.

Finally, several weeks staying with my parents back in Wales. As I’ve blogged about before, my mother loves cooking as much as I like eating. Couple that with several weeks of relative inactivity and you have a recipe for a fatty.

Does anyone know of a decent fitness/exercise/health/nutrition/whatever blog where I can pick up some good fitness and diet tips?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6940698.stm

A lot of search engine watchers have been getting twitchy because Google’s anticipated Pagerank update hasn’t surfaced. In turn, this has prompted many to speculate that Google are doing away with publicly available Pagerank data altogether.

I believe that it’s in Google’s interest to kill Pagerank, and here’s why: Google hates paid links, unless they come from Google themselves. Matt Cutts has been making a lot of noise about Google discounting the paid links they detect. (Paid links are fine of course, but only if they come from one of Google’s own programmes.)

Website owners typically pay for links for one of two reasons.

Paid links for PR. A large portion of the paid link market comprises website owners paying for high PR links in the hope that the PR will filter through to them. By killing Pagerank, the metric by which these links are bought and sold evaporates instantly, and the market with it.

Paid links for traffic. If website owners aren’t buying links for PR, then they’re buying links for traffic. Google already has this part of the market covered, under the guise of Adsense.

Call me cynical, but by neglecting their PR updates could they be scaring people away from Pay-for-PR link buying and into Adsense campaigns?

In any case, none of this matters because anyone who knows their onions realises that Pagerank is just one of many, many factors in determining one’s position in the SERPs. There’s certainly a positive correlation between PR and SERP placement but there are many exceptions to the rule. I wish website owners (and amateur SEOs) would worry about generating quality content rather than putting green pixels in a grey bar. But that’s another issue for another day.

How cheated would you feel if you’d paid for these on Pay Per View?

My attention was recently drawn to an interesting Easter Egg that Google included with their online calculator. If you input “number of horns on a unicorn” into Google, Google Calculator gives you the answer: 1.

Try some more:

Answer to life the universe and everything

10 feet in smoots