Some good, some bad

Well, the good is that Google Panda roamed around on 19th August and we got a very slight uplift … well, its better than a Panda slap … apparently, according to Google, Panda updates will now be more regular and “smoother” so there should be fewer massive rises and falls from this strange creature. Unfortunately, Google have also said that future Penguin updates will have more of a “jolt” to them … still, I’m not sure we’re wildly affected by that. Well be interesting to see how the Copyright infringement penalties kick in though We get most of our news from the excellent Search Engine Land.

Meanwhile, after a beautiful week in our new holiday let at Fistral Beach, I came home to find that I had stupidly left my laptop power supply in Newquay. No problem, I thought, so I rushed to PC World as soon as it opened this morning and looked through the replacement options – in the end I decided on a Logik LNP90WD … 90w laptop power supply, compatible with Dell but also with adaptors for a whole range of laptops – seemed like a good thing to have in as a spare anyway so I bought it – shame that its £20 more in store than on-line but I needed it immediately. Got it home, plugged it in, laptop decided it was not a recognised power supply and so refused to charge the battery. Checked the box “keep your laptop charged” it said, well, it doesn’t. “Compatible” it said, well it isn’t. I can run my laptop on it but the battery will not charge at all … thanks Logik.

Ahh well, back to work, a week’s worth of email to catch up on but War Horse tomorrow and Lion King next week… hoorah!

Posters, pictures and postcards

Well, there I was on FB and I suddenly see that my sister and nephew are putting some of their pictures on RedBubble … not knowing what that was I went to see .. its great, you can upload images, paintings, drawings (even writings!) and people can order them as posters, postcards, greeting cards and more … fab idea

And so, here are some of mine

Shark 2

Shark 1

Abandoned Bench

Man Meets Crab

End of the day

Busy Day

Moray

Burma Beer Bottle

Cuttlefish

Lion Fish

Towpath wins Festival

Last week/weekend was the Avon Association of Drama annual One Act Play Festival. With three new plays competing amongst the nine on offer this is clearly an active area for new drama.

And the result? Well, my play, Towpath, had a good night thanks to the superb cast …

• Best Actress, Paula Luke
• Best New Play, Towpath by Robert Iles
• Overall Festival Winner

Not a bad outing

The Towpath script is available from StagePlays which is great for you as you can read it but it does mean we can’t go forward into the NDFA and AETF new play competitions.

WordPress update

Well, I’m glad I can post here because I sure can’t post on my business blog since the WordPress 3.3.1 update took out the editor and left an editor-shaed (but non functional) hole in the admin page … thanks guys, nice one!

The Greatest Stage Actors of All Time?

The world of theatre has produced some of the finest performers in history and many acting geniuses have graced the stage. This list consists of some the greatest actors who have lived and some who are still giving outstanding performances to this day.
Laurence Olivier
Regarded by many as the greatest actor of his time, Olivier was the ultimate master of his craft. Renowned for his superb ability to play a range of Shakespearian roles he was a star of both stage and screen. The Theatre industry’s prestigious Laurence Olivier awards are named in his honour as a testament to his great contribution to the art of acting.

Michael Gambon
The RADA trained Irish actor was dubbed “the great Gambon” by fellow actor Ralph Richardson at an early stage of his career. Known to millions today for his role as professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter saga (a role in which he replaced the late Richard Harris), Gambon has been one of the consistently outstanding stars of the stage from the 1970’s onwards.

Judi Dench
One of the greatest if not the greatest female star of the stage ever Dame Judi Dench has been acting since 1957 and is still going strong today. She became a household name to millions throughout the UK for her long running role in the television sitcom As Time Goes By and her performances as M in recent James Bond films. Despite her work outside the theatre, Dench has maintained a rich career within the theatre with roles ranging from Shakespeare to cutting edge contemporary thrillers.

John Gielgud
One of a very few actors in history to have won an Oscar, Olivier, Emmy, Tony and BAFTA awards, Gielgud was a true acting genius. His career spanned for the majority of the 20th century and he has had an extremely important influence on the world of acting. Famed for his beautiful speaking voice and outstanding performances from a young age, Gielgud was one of a kind.

Alec Guinness
Known to many modern film fans as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars trilogy, Alec Guinness was already one of the greatest living actors by that stage of his career. He is very affectionately remembered by millions for both his film and stage roles as he brought a touch of sophistication and class to every role he played.

Marlon Brando
Brando exploded into the public consciousness with his animalistic portrayal as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. His use of “method acting” in this role revolutionised the world of acting both within the theatre and film. He is famed for his role as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather for which he won an Oscar but his outstanding contribution to the theatre will never be forgotten.

Kenneth Branagh
The Northern Irish born actor has had an outstanding career within the theatre and he is still only in his early 50s. He achieved huge acclaim as a young star of the stage and became a protégé in Shakespearean performances throughout the 1980’s and 90s. He continues to perform on stage and screen today and his performances are continuing to get better with age.

Daniel Day-Lewis
One of the most intense actors of all time, Daniel Day-Lewis widely regarded as one of the greatest actors alive today. He is infamous for the extreme lengths he goes to in preparation for his roles and his determination to stay in character even off the stage or set. When playing the role of Hamlet he had an emotional breakdown live on stage as he had a vision that he was talking to the ghost of his father and he has not appeared on stage since.

Despite huge competition from Hollywood and the world of the cinema the theatre is still going strong today and there is an abundance of great shows and premier actors for audiences to enjoy. You can find discount theatre tickets easily online and theatre tickets in London which will allow you to be entertained by one of the world’s truly great art forms.

What’s your list?

Some Thoughts on the Panda Myth

Panda, the filter Google run apparently around 6-8 weekly whose job is to sift the wheat from the chaff in their huge database, is sadly not a myth … but some at least of the “quality measures” it appears to use are … in my very humble opinion.

“Every site must be chock full or all original, meaningful articles that add or else the site is of no value”.

That is to assume that all the world’s knowledge, and all the world’s serice requirements, are supported by articles.

Well, in fairness, knowledge is better when supported by articles but if I need to know what a owrd means I will look at the brief summary in a dictionary rather than reading twenty peer-reviewed thesies on the topic … note the word ‘brief’. Actually, for most people, for most topics, that’s what we want, the easily digested summary with links to deeper knowledge should we chose to take them …. I do not want some external algorithm (and I have worked with algorithms for many years) to decide on my behalf that I will not be satisfied without receiving the whole truth … even if I’m not qualified to understand it.

In the case of services this is even more likely that Panda is making a mistake. When I was at university, way back in the 1970′s, I was studying what was then called Computer and Communications Engineering – but in term 1 we had to do maths to bring us all up to speed. I remember one very long, very detailed, very obtuse lecture in which a professor proudly spent a long time labouring the proof that 0=nothing and any number +1 is bigger than the original number. Now, I can see that for pure mathameticians this is a fundamental proof that is required before higher level theories can exist. For an engineer working in the electronics world (at the time) of +/-10% components it all seemed a bit much.

I now presume, however, that if you ask Google for an on-line calculator page it will only be content to show you ones that prove all of the underyling maths of each button in major, original, articles before giving you any answers … but wait, it doesn’t it gives you this http://www.metacalc.com/ a fabulous on-line calculator with NOTHING else around it except google ads!!

The calculator is just one example. In the real world we also do not operate in a Panda-improved way. The most complex thing you are ever likely to won is a computer .. most computers are chosen in electrical stores where they are differentiated by a label with 6 bullet points and a price …. no big articles here. Most are chose by price, colour, brand and … well, in my case, keyboard feel! When you get the computer home what do you fine, a separate box for the manuals, no, just a quick start guide a small document (your computer) and a large document (your computer’s warranty) … that’s it. We do not get, nor do we expect, large amounts of articles and supporting documentation … and we do not get them because people do not want to read them .. so why is Panda obsessed with giving us sites full of something which every piece of evidence says we do not want?!

I suspect that Google people are a bit like me … they love manuals, I use them as bedtime reading, nothing I like better than browsing a good thick manual and learning what’s behind the buttons .. but I am an engineer, I am a bit OCD about information  and I am considered a freak by many

The second most complex thing you will ever own is likely to be your car … my cars manual is not a think document (it would be thinner if it wasn’t in 8 languages) and most of it is about the radio, sat nav and aircon. Another example where the thicker of the two manuals is the warranty!

I could go on …

I wont …

Win7 Pro update

Well, a new laptop for Fran which came with Windows 7 Home Premium (64Bit) … great.

A few hours spent making sure it is up to date, that I have recovery disks created and that I delete all of the games programs, Norton and MacFee (replacing them with AVG) ….

Because of some legacy stuff though I needed the excellent Windows Virtual PC/XP which meant an upgrade to Win7Pro ….no problem, even the £189 seemed ok (more than half the actual laptop cost!) and then I set about downloading it … I spent 4 hours downloading it, got to bed very very late having just finished (a) the download and (b) the creation of a dvd in case I lost the download.

So this morning I go to upgrade the laptop … “You can’t” it says, to upgrade from one version of Windows 7 to another you need to use the Windows Anytime Upgrade facility instead! So those 4 hours were completely wasted …. great

So I go to tell Microsoft support but as that will cost me £169 or so in support charges I decide not to …

Now I do the upgrade, it takes around 20 minutes and reports that it fails! It also says “Go online to try and resolve this issue” but all it says there is “Go to the support centre” … great, joy of joys, sheesh …. does “Anytime” upgrade mean that it will take any amount of time?

A little later I just tried thee update again .. worked perfectly, but I hadn’t changed anything … oh well, at least its done … now to download the 47,000 files in my LiveDrive and then use PCmover to copy over the old account and then all I have to do is fight with Access 2007 to get it to run in WindowsXP mode … yes, I know, its an old version, but it has been working since Access 95 and uses jet replication and I am working on a newer better web-based version for “soon”

I, Android

Yep, my Windows Mobile phone (HTC Touch 3G) has now been sold (£30) and replaced with a brand, spanking, shiny and new Samsung Galaxy S … Adroid is just so much better than WinMob!

I have to say, this is a fabulous phone … I am really no fan on iPhone or anything Apple (it is a mindset thing) so I wasn’t going to go down that route, and with phones like this running Android who needs iPhone Ok, so every corner shop sells cheap iPhone accessories, every sound system has iPhone adaptors, does this make it better? Being pretty and fashionable doesn’t make you good does it (if so I luck out all round!).

Transferring was easy, I had to scratch my head over pwi (Pocket Word) files held as notes on the HTC but then realised that they were synched as notes to Outlook so I could read them there and cut and paste them into plain text files … getting all my sms across was pretty easy with a couple of downloads and then there’s the annoyance of Samsung’s Keis software (the PC side of it all) which kind of works ok but seems to get in the way a lot!

Now, just get a few good apps, set up a back-up, download a few books to read and I’m away …

Urban Soundscapes

Gerry Cott, co-founder of The Boomtown Rats and virtuoso guitarist releases an album of solo acoustic guitar music. Entitled Urban Soundscapes, the album comprises twelve original guitar pieces and a unique solo guitar arrangement of Eleanor Rigby. Urban Soundscapes is now available on CD and Download.

Read, listen and buy on Gerry’s website http://www.gerrycott.com

A new Type of Exam

Here’s my idea for a new type of exam …

1. You don’t tell the candidate the date or place of the exam, just put a note on the door
2. You don’t show the candidate the questions at all, not even the subject matter … you just show them a range of previous questions that might, or might not, be similar to what you want
3. The candidate gets a blank piece of paper, writes on it what they think you want and hands it in
4. Some weeks later you send the candidate a note saying that you’ve marked their paper but you don’t tell them if they’ve passed or failed
5. The candidate then applies for jobs and tries to work out, based on their success rate, whether they passed the exam or not

Sound ok?

It’s based on the way G**gle works when it decides that one of your websites should be banned … they wont tell you you’ve been banned, they wont tell you why you’re banned and if you ask for a re-assesment they will only tell you when they’ve done it, not whether you passed or not … its all about not giving away information that would let someone work out how to cheat the system … which doesn’t help if you just accidentally fall foul …

Question is, can a naughty competitor create a link farm that will cause someone elses site to fall foul without them knowing? I wonder (NO, I am NOT going to try!)

Ho hum … just part of life’s rich tapestry