The fact of the matter is that there is only one sure way of getting people to visit and read your blog:

Content is King

If you write interesting and informative articles that people actually want to read and know about then they will come. Google will do it’s job and send people your way, and if you’re lucky others may Stumpleupon it or Digg it. The truth is that a lot of what I write here is personal to me and will not interest anyone else. That is a fact and for that reason I will never have a ‘popular’ blog. I have written some interesting and useful articles before, and these do continue to get hits but these are one-off visitors and not the type who will subscribe to read the remainder of my posts.

Here are my top 3 visited posts:

• Euroferries service between Ramsgate and Boulogne
• How to degauss a TV
• Best Fancy Dress Ever

The solution for me would be to stop writing about myself and only write about subjects that may be of interest to others but I won’t be doing that for two reasons:

1. I don’t have many interesting things to write about
2. This blog is about me, and has been my online diary since May 2004. I like to sometimes through the archives and seeing what I’ve been up to.

I think this all means that I shouldn’t really be concentrating on getting more visitors and should just continue what I’ve been doing. If it happens, it happens.

This option should’ve been offered to you immediately but many haven’t done this and probably don’t know how to do it if they dismissed the original message.

The simple thing is to go to www.Facebook.com/username and you will then be given the option.

http://www.facebook.com/username

You will also see that if you administer any fan pages (with over 25 members) then you also have the option to set a unique URL for these which is probably even more helpful (See FAQs). Pages are usually used for larger organisations or groups and in the past most people would direct people to these pages by asking them to perform a search in Facebook to find them, which is actually a very poor way of going about things.

So now you can give your pages proper URLs which should help with promotion and getting more fans. Please note that there is not an option to give ‘groups’ their own URL.

Give your page a username (click to see full-size)

A few local Facebook fan pages that could benefit from this but don’t include:

Thanet Star:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-Star/146965688403

Thanet Extra:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cliftonville-United-Kingdom/Thanet-Extra/227353445191

Escape Nightclub, Margate:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Margate-United-Kingdom/ESCAPE-NIGHTCLUB-MARGATE/62834134830

and there are plenty of others too who are missing out on some easy promotion.

In short this is a cheat code that the game developers Konami first put in a game in 1986 and since then it’s cropped up in quite a few places as a nod to popular culture.

Press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Enter key then anywhere you click will create a lens flare effect. To get rid of this all you need to do is refresh (5) the page and it will disappear. You won’t get a virus or anything, it’s just something the developers put in there for some fun.

If you also go into ’settings’ > ‘ account settings’ > ‘language’ you will now be able to change your language to ‘English (Upside Down)’ which does exactly what it says on the tin and another option is English (Pirate). To remove this you will have to go back into settings and change the language back to ‘English (UK)’.

Pirate Talk - Click to see full-size

I personally (that’s the nerdy bit of me) find it pretty cool that programmers still give these little heads ups so have a little play and amaze your friends.

I suppose it’s because I want to liven the blog up and although I’ve got a few posts saved as ‘drafts’ I just haven’t got around to publishing them, and I suppose a theme change was a substitute for that. I suppose this counts as a post too and may get things rolling again after my weekend away.

I have plenty of sites that need some TLC and I will get around to them sometime but for now they are all on the back burner. One thing at a time me-laddy-o.

Selectspecs big offer.

There’s 30 types of frames available so why not give it a try. I’ve just ordered a pair and as a bonus all the specs are UV Protected, Scratch Resistant, and also have Anti-Reflection, which to me seems like a bargain so I thought I’d share.

Things are getting quite busy and hectic at work as our new students will be arriving soon and so there’s a mild panic in knowing that for the next month it will be busy busy busy and I’ll be back to working days and evenings and getting worn-out. But I have had a nice calm summer without the students and so am suitably relaxed for it.

Anyway.. that’s enough from me.

It won’t work with just any old photo but when it does work then I think the results are pretty good and really do look like snapshots of miniature model worlds.

Here’s some of my photos and I would suggest you click on them and view them full-size.

Model of Deal Pier

Model of Maritime Museum, Ramsgate

Model of boat on Vltava River, Prague, Czech Republic

Model of Canary Wharf, London

Model of Viking Bay, Broadstairs

The end of the season has happened on my online management game and I’m looking for new managers so please read the post below I wrote the last time I was looking for new managers.

Click for full-size image

For the past two and a half years (see initial post here) I’ve been immersed in an online game called Xpert Eleven and the league I run is looking for new managers. It’s quite a simple set-up and that is the beauty of it in that you can either log on twice a week for 5 minutes or you can log on every day and spend half an hour on there setting up training, setting up your team and tactics, putting out press releases, scouting for players etc.

The matches are played at 5pm on Wednesdays and Sundays and all you need to do is make sure your team is set-up by that time. You do not need to be logged in or anything for the match to happen and by about 5:04pm all the results are in. I’ve got some teams that are vacant at the moment so if you wanted to register and take over a team to see how it work then please do, or you can start a new team from scratch.

Simply go to Xperteleven.com, register, and then search for the league: 76107, more affectionately called the “Phats and Smalls League”.

Most of the managers on there are my mates and so I must warn you that there is quite a bit of banter on there, some of which isn’t always entirely PC. That’s the warning so don’t be offended, but please sign-up and have some fun!

Click for full-size image

For the past two and a half years (see initial post here) I’ve been immersed in an online game called Xpert Eleven and the league I run is looking for new managers. It’s quite a simple set-up and that is the beauty of it in that you can either log on twice a week for 5 minutes or you can log on every day and spend half an hour on there setting up training, setting up your team and tactics, putting out press releases, scouting for players etc.

The matches are played at 5pm on Wednesdays and Sundays and all you need to do is make sure your team is set-up by that time. You do not need to be logged in or anything for the match to happen and by about 5:04pm all the results are in. I’ve got some teams that are vacant at the moment so if you wanted to register and take over a team to see how it work then please do, or you can start a new team from scratch.

Simply go to Xperteleven.com, register, and then search for the league: 76107, more affectionately called the “Phats and Smalls League”.

Most of the managers on there are my mates and so I must warn you that there is quite a bit of banter on there, some of which isn’t always entirely PC. That’s the warning so don’t be offended, but please sign-up and have some fun!