Best Adsense Fail or Scary Devil Nunnery Recruiting – and a SEO Fail on jobs.guardian.co.uk September 23, 2011
Posted by Neuromancer in SEO.Tags: SEO
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Whilst perusing the Guardians job section to analyse the platform they use – I both found a number of ways to completely mess up that entire section of the site and I also found what must be the strangest Adsense advert of all time.
Having managed to create arbitrary pages on the job site I took a look at the Adsense served up at the base of the page which is show here (note the faked page I created was IT related).
Though I must say holding SEO Audits in the style of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” does appeal some times – especially when one comes across pages whose markup could be best described as “Your aving a laugh mate”. Though I suspect that HR might winge when we took people down to the basement for the “shewing of the instruments “.
HPCC – High Performance Computer Cluster Open Sourced June 28, 2011
Posted by Neuromancer in HPCC.1 comment so far
I love my Job I get to play with large amounts of data and some cool new cutting edge cloud based toys such as Map Reduce and Mahout and some interesting Web 2.0 Machine learning and AI type algorithms
Map Reduce is a software frame work developed by Google to allow processing on large datasets on clusters of commodity computers. Though in an odd coincidence the Map stage of map reduce is effectively the same approach we used at Telecom Gold to handle processing the Large logs in the Telecom Gold Billing system with a system called GLE Generic Log Extract (written in PL1).
After some hacking I have got a small test cluster up and running to try out Map reduce for some interesting work on clustering documents, in this case web pages on some well known large websites.
I was having some difficulty in getting Mahout which is an open source set of algorithms to perform clustering of documents using map reduce – when almost by chance I found that out parent company has its own system HPCC (High Performance Computing Cluster) is a massive parallel-processing computing platform that solves Big Data problems that Map Reduce is used for.
HPCC used to be just an internal system developed by Lexis Nexis and has been used for lexis nexis customers for the past decade. But recently ie last week HPCC has been open sourced. As with Hadoop there is a web based interface
ECL Watch the Web front end for HPCC
Also there is a windows IDE which directly connects to a HPCC cluster to allow you to run ECL which is the declarative non procedural language used to program jobs to be run on your HPPC cluster.
There is a test virtual machine available for down load here to allow people to test HPCC and learn ECL here binaries for Centos and Red Hat are avaible and source should be available in a few weeks.
Panda Update Hits the UK and All English Queries April 11, 2011
Posted by Neuromancer in SEO.Tags: Farmer, Panda, SEO
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It looks like the infamous Panda Google update has arrived outside of the USA. According to Google the Panda update (some times called Farmer/Panda) is meant to better identify low-quality pages and sites.
These are the sort of pages (often seen on “content farms”) with text that is automatically tuned to match the query – but may not provide the best user experience. (Google apparently calls it a “high quality sites algorithm.)
I am due to help give a presentation on SEO to a group of RBI’s developers on Wednesday – so guess whos going to be quickly revamping the presentation deck tomorrow – as well as groveling in the Analytics data to see if any of our sites have been hit.
Though its my boss that will be fielding the calls from the senior management I am glad to say. Coverage here and Googles own blog here
New Funtionality in GWT Non Informative Title Tags and Non Indexable Content March 23, 2011
Posted by Neuromancer in SEO.add a comment
Google have just lanched some new funtionality in GWT (Google Webmaster tools) two new items in the html sugestions: Non Informative Title Tags and Non Indexable Content
Could be usefull in diagnosing problems in sites that need fixing – espesialy as a non informative title tag is a big low quality signal.
Steam Punk Sara Palin February 9, 2011
Posted by Neuromancer in Uncategorized.Tags: graphic novels, sara palin, WTF
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Comics or graphic novels if we are being pretentious have had some odd one offs and crossovers -and recently a genre which mixes science with Jules Verne HG Wells era SF called steam punk has become popular.
And what did I find…. Drum roll please! Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Steam Punk Sarah Palin.
One reviewer commented
“Steampunk Palin defies classification into any literary genre, unless there’s a genre I’m unaware of simply called “WTF?!?
It seems to be in the so bad its good territory I cant wait for the film. A Review is here
RIP Gladys Horton of The Marvelettes February 2, 2011
Posted by Neuromancer in Music.Tags: Marvelettes, Mowtown, Soul
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Sad to see that Gladys Horton one the founders of the Marvelettes has recently passed away. I saw her obit in the Guardian the other day. I thought I should post up a link to one of my favorite Marvelettes tracks for an early Harlem Apollo show in 63.
As you can see they where doing the moonwalk years before Micheal Jackson and in high heels!
Bing Copying – Google Throws Toys out of Pram February 1, 2011
Posted by Neuromancer in SEO.add a comment
Oh dear sounds like Google is getting upset over Bing using googles results to improve theirs from the write up on Searchengine land here.
Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings. Bing doesn’t deny this.
Reverse engineering is legal other wise we would still all be using IBM PC’s – Google should just man up and take it as a compliment.
Black Templar Space Marines WH40K January 27, 2011
Posted by Neuromancer in War Games.1 comment so far
I have been thinking about doing some WH40K gaming and one a visit to the mother ship at warhammer world I finaly broke down and brought a space marine battle force which is a basic starter set. I also looked at the various different Space marine factions and was taken with the Black Templars.
Black Templar Marine
The Black Templars are a non standard Chapter of Space marines who deviate in a number of ways from the standard, Most of the time they fight in Companies which are formed in an ad hoc manner. The individual squads and specialists fight side by side out of familiarity and comradeship rather than any imposed organisation.
They also have a stark black and white colour scheme which appealed – though when I looked at the difficulty of painting black armour – I did wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew. However I have made a start undercoating a 10 men unit and am in the process on painting them up ill post some pics when I dig out my camera. Though i might not get to this standard.
I am just at the stage of doing the white shoulder pads which require multiple coats of grey as a second undercoat so that the white stands out against the back under coat.
I also went to GW in London and Bedford and brought some more a few days later and have some vehicle models which will be done later.
So left to right we have shots of a rhino APC: a Razorback MICV and lastly a Predator tank when they are made up and painted in the chapter colors. My Local GW Shop in Bedford is here
Quora January 8, 2011
Posted by Neuromancer in SEO.add a comment
Just been playing with a new site Quora that is the new hotness 
Basically its a site where you can post and answer questions – they describe it as:
Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.
You can see my Quora profile here
3000 Point AT43 Game August 15, 2010
Posted by Neuromancer in SEO.add a comment
Pics from my recent AT43 Game
Search Marketing Pro – SEP 2010 August 6, 2010
Posted by Neuromancer in SEO.2 comments
Beer + Search geeks = a good time!
As a standin for the on hiatus SEO London my Boss is aranging a Networking event for SEO’s/People working in Search in London. At the moment its in the advanced cat hearding stage there is an Info Page for Search Marketing Pro Fill in the survay and we hope to see you there.
DR WHO S5 Trailer – Spitfires in Space March 20, 2010
Posted by Neuromancer in DrWho.add a comment
Just saw that IO9 had a link to the latest trailer for the new DR Who series and it looks like DRWHO Season 5 will be a fun season.
WW2 Camo Daleks, Spitfires in space and the return of the Weeping Angels from Blink the HUGO award wining episode from season 3.
China Google Hacks Why Bruce Schneier Is Missing The Point March 1, 2010
Posted by Neuromancer in Security.add a comment
I was somewhat surprised that Bruce Schneier article on CNN blames the US for enabling the Google hack. Bruce you work for the big boys now and you should know how the system works anyhow. I have been mulling his article over for a while and thought I ought to post my thoughts – its not every day you get to point out where an industry leader is wrong.
First lets take the argument about TLA’s and law enforcement being able to subpoena data, phone records and to tap phones causes a weakness , well duh! both law enforcement and the general population accept that with suitable safe guards the police and intelligence organizations should have access to this information. Just because data is moving over the intertubes doesn’t suddenly magically make it any different to other types of data.
There’s of course a different debate about what the safe guards should be and who has access – in my opinion the induhvidual Sir Humphrey in the Home Office who thought that letting local government have access to this sort of data should be rewarded with early retirement and a MBE.
So if you’re a very large organization like Google you do have to work with the system and have procedures and systems to properly handle this sort of data.
Secondly lets take the argument that adding a “backdoor” creates a weakness well theoretically yes. But it behooves Google or any one else to use well established ways of securing that data – in BT I knew team leaders on some projects that had to be PV’d.
I suspect that Googles NIH attitude and general arrogance led them to “invent” there own half assed way of securely accessing the Gmail data – or maybe Gmail security is crap to start with.
Building the ability to tap an email account and then dump that encrypted data out to a separate secure system isn’t that hard given Google’s resources – of course any such system should use an appropriate security model with only security cleared staff allowed to access the data and an audit trail so that if you do have unauthorized use of such data suitable action can be taken – this is all security 101 and i am sure Matt Cutts could point you in the direction of the right people to ask
The real thing to take from this is that the main people to blame (other than the hackers) for this fiasco are Google – who screwed up big time and shows that Google’s “adult supervision” is not doing a very good job.
Other things that come out of this is the suspension of all Google’s staff in china, fairly obvious where the problem is then. And it must truly suck to be one of those people as I suspect that getting a visa to work in the west is going to get a lot harder for them.
I know The CNN article was written for a Sub civilian audience but. you are still wrong and completely missing the point. And I suspect that the secret squirrels BT Security might want to have a word
Also the web2.0 Social Media industry needs to take this as a wakeup call as I am sure at some point there will be a tragedy where a jilted EX, stalker or criminal gets hold of information and a murder results.
The recent case where a a couple under police protection where murdered by hit men with the victims address information being obtained via an BT employee being one example from an oldskool industry (bet the tape of that interview without tea and biscuits with SD would make grim listening)
Ps for non UK readers for a civil servant getting “only” an MBE is almost the worst insult possible.
Uncharted Sea’s First Game – Dwarves vs Orc’s February 11, 2010
Posted by Neuromancer in Uncharted Seas.add a comment
Last Monday I managed to have test game at the Gladiators with some model ships I brought back in the summer at games Expo. This is something of a rare event for me as the last time I put models I have painted on the table was a very long time ago.
Here you can see my Iron Dwarves fleet facing off against Barrys Orc fleet A battle ship and some screening frigates and a cruiser squadron to my starboard. Uncharted Seas is a fast paced, game of naval tactical combat set in a world of high fantasy. The Dwarves are similar in style and design to the early ACW ironclads.
I haven’t got any close ups of my ships but they don’t look to bad especially as they only had the initial primary colors added. I have yet to tidy up the paint job finish; adding the bronze highlights to the funnels and then add a wash to dirty up the armor plate then glass and matt varnish. There is also a very nice dazzle style effect I have seen on some one else’s ships which I want to try out
Both Barry and I think that having the ships on bases would help, especially for the ships with metal sails which are some what top heavy. Theday after the game I brought some clear plasticard from Goldings to base up my ships.
You can see an close up of Barry’s cruiser’s here ill have to see if i can take some close up’s of mine after I finish them off.
It was very much a test game with both of us flicking through the rules books – Uncharted seas plays fast and bloody – we had a magazine explosion critical that took out 3 ships in one go at one point.Uncharted seas have a starter set for all 6 races (which is the forces we where using) plus some additional models, Dwaves have subs and airships which both look fun.
Uncharted Seas can be found at their website and local to Bedford Wargames Workshop caries Uncharted Seas. I can feel a trip out to cranfield coming on.
Oh the orcs won what is it with me and combat debut’s
The Virtual Revolution – The Internet Tankies Version of History February 5, 2010
Posted by Neuromancer in Geek Stuf, Internet.add a comment
Watching the BBC and Alaks Krotoski’s take on the “internet” is an interesting experience whilst not to bad for a guardian tech journalist. The program has some fairly obvious biases and some of its statements about the history of the internet and its precursors are a little wobbly if not in fact twisted or wrong.
They cover the precursors to the internet / www in a very cursory way obviously they just read the Cliffs notes version of internet history and have brought some of the more happy clappy views of the internet from some of the usual American suspects – A species of induhvidual I have just coined the name “Internet Tankies” for. And to totally ignore the ideas for Vannevar Bush who of course postulated a hypertext system in 1945 not a good start there.
The early part covering the pre internet days was particularly bad when covering the Well which was a BBS system and not a system that used internet protocols just because it was based in SV and had a few well known users. A lot of the research and work was done outside of California MIT, Rand and the NPL all playing major roles for example
As some one who was involved early on sceen see cyber gypsies and was one of the mice in the walls finding uses for things I should know that! In fact BBS sysops I know though that connecting the hobbyist BBS systems like Fidonet and WWIV to the internet would spoil and eventually destroy Fidonet.
And no mention of Gopher which is where I found the early text mode only www stuck away on the end of the ITU’s gopher sever which I was looking at as it had a copy of BT’s x.500 directory.
And the whole segment on Microsoft just didn’t make sense MS got jumped on because they stopped the ability of 3rd party browsers manufacturers to charge for browsers. Netscape’s business model was to charge for browsers and that is what the regulators fell on Microsoft on from a great height for (and also in some cases being American)
It will be interesting to see what the rest of the series comes up with but it does seem that they need some more people with a longer term view and to be able to look beyond oh look purty pictures on my mac, and the often patronising Candide like twaddle pushed by Negreponte et al about how giving poor people in third world some crap laptop will automagicaly make theirs lives better NO! access to water and basic medical services will do far more.
And don’t get me started how Stephen Fry gets to pontificate on tech, just because you have read your iphone manual Stephen doesn’t mean you have an in depth knowledge on the internet – let alone what it means in the broader political and economic sense . I bet you don’t even know what the 8th layer of the OSI stack and the 5th layer of the TCP/IP stack are By that argument as I have watched all the Stargate DVD directors commentaries that means I should have been the replacement for Russell Davies on Dr Who/Torchwood.
Whist I agree with Aleks with her skeptical view right at the end she did give Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) in particular a freeride. Ask Alex Chancellor about how Wikipedia announced his death
PS Aleks as an American if you don’t know what a “tankie” is ask one of the older hacks at the Guardian down the pub.
PPS that is assuming you can stop Charles Arthur from going of on his extended rants about how the Kulaks at the ordinance survey should be liquidated.</p
