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Traffic this morning was bad – far worse than usual, but without an obvious explanation.
The roads of Leeds seem to be getting increasing numbers of pedal cyclists, encouraged regrettably by council policies. As a general rule I hate this Autumnal time of year but, I have the conciliation of knowing that all these annoying cyclists will soon be arriving at work cold and wet and wondering if being “eco” friendly is such a good idea after all. Political correctness is not something of which I am a fan.
The Conservative leadership race now nears an end – if you were even aware of it.
I find it quite amazing that in the UK the way to now suggest you are “a man of the people” is to admit to drug taking, or some similar indiscretion, earlier in life. It begs the question, as life standards continue to drop, will we in ten years time be hearing politicians making confessions of muggings and burglaries when they were in their teens. Cameron (the politician in question) should be removed from the leadership race and sent in to re-hab. Re-hab for politicians who cannot come up with a better gimmick than drug use.
A bit more from yesterday’s ongoing tale. I have got another reply, this time expressing confusion as to why I could not make the changes – I guess the guy is genuinely trying to help, but it is turning out to be a long job.
Went to Morrisons supermarket (a big chain in England) last night and actually saw large dead flies on a shelf with some pre-packed curry dishes. Naturally, this asks a major question about the supermarkets hygiene, but also about the ferocity of the curry – could it actually kill flies whist still in an air proof container – perhaps we should get some. On a serious note, we exited the supermarket immediately and headed for Asda where we were able to shop in a “dead fly free zone”.
Watched a dvd with Kiera Knightly (is that how you spell her name) last night. Whilst the film was only so so, I had forgotten how her stunning appearance can happily compensate for a mediocre plot.
Since I don't have too much to write about at the moment, I will continue with my plagiarism tale.
I got a response from my email – in fact I have had three, and whilst the guy appears to be attempting to help, his big problem is that he does not read my emails.
Following his first response I registered with this site, got a profile and had my article linked to it. The problem of authorship however still remained and when I tried to amend this, the system left the status quo intact!
I emailed again, but this time got a response confirming that the link to my web site was working and it had taken a day for the site to update. I have followed up with what will be my final email, pointing out that it was authorship and not the link that was the problem – I suspect that I will not manage to get this resolved.
That said, it gives me a new objective, namely to find out who the hell “Rob LeGrone”, the plagiarist, is. I noticed that when I did a search on him, there were many varying articles to his name, so I suspect that stealing other peoples work, and taking credit for it, is something he may do quite regularly.
After some thought, I decided to send an email, re: plagiarism of my article, to the offending site. I got the standard auto response and then today a short one liner which made no sense at all, but asked that I join their e-zine. Does that mean they won’t steal my articles if I join their club, it sound illicit!
I checked my articles url and it had been removed – not what I had wanted, but decided, in for a penny in for a pound, I might as well join the plagiarists and their site – so I signed up. I now await a response and the linking of my article to “my profile”! Its like being a secret agent.
On to better things, I have written a couple more articles and am considering submitting one of them to a big Spanish web site who have published my stuff (with links) before. In fact I must give them a link here at some point because their site is excellent – Spanish-living.com.
What else? Updated my music blog with a review of one of my all time favourite albums, ELO’s A New World Record, and my other blog with some stuff about google.
Why are people so dishonest?
Earlier this year I e-published some brief articles about towns in Galicia. I noticed today that one of them had seemingly been syndicated out from the original source (that's the idea), but now appears on another e-article site with someone I have never heard of claiming credit as the author.
The link (which is what it is all about for me) still leads to one of my websites, but the mentality of someone to steal a bit of text ,only around 500 words, so as to place it somewhere else and gain authoring credit is simply beyond me. No money can be made from it, there can be no personal satisfaction in its writting (since he did not write it), so why?
I think people who do this kind of thing have some kind of sickness. Incidently, this is not the first time this has happened to one of my articles and no doubt it will not be the last.
Heard yesterday that google now have 70% of the UK market on searches.
Are they really that good - I don't think so.
Upto about 18 months ago, the google algo (which places massive value of inter site linking) did a reasonable job. But now everyone, especially large commercial sites know how to use it.
Just run a search about anything on google, yahoo and msn. Then compare results. You will quickly discover that many google results have no relationship what-so-ever to the search criteria.
Confused - well hit the cashed page of the serps list and you will find that the page appears, not because it has any relevant content, but because it has links that do!
In simple terms any site with money and influence can still spam google and indeed they are spending far more time and money investing in links rather than content. Is this what search results are about?
8 or 9 months ago I started setting up the odd blog because, aside from liking to moan and whine, I could see the value in blog linking.
Guess what, you cannot enter an SEO or webmaster forum today without hearing about the value of blog linking. And "what 's that", google are now giving extra value to blog links!
They really are behind the game. God forbid they turn into the next microsoft and destroy search engine values with obsessive linking technology.
Parked up at asda (UK version of walmart) supermarket today. The carpark was deserted with spaces everywhere but typically a young woman, of no more than 20, was parked in the first available disabled space. Lets hope before too long she needs that space by necessity.
Why has British driving got so bad so quickly? 10 to 15 years ago being "cut up" was an occasional and highly annoying event, yet now it will happen several times in the course of a short journey. In the eighties and early nineties I used to think how bad the European drivers were whilst on holiday, but now they actually seem quite curteous - have they got better, or (more likely) we've got worse!
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