Monthly Archives: September 2002

Who Needs Content?: Awesome Interface

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Wooh-weeh! The new (at least to me) Conspiracy Games site is awesome! The interface is something else. They have gone to a LOT of trouble over this.

You’ll need a fast machine, Flash 6, a fast connection (it’s huge!) and the sound turned up. From the loading screen, to the main interface, to the site help it’s a wonderful experience. There are hidden surprises (just try clicking all over). The whole site just oozes style.

The site was designed by Fantasy Interfaces who’s own site is pretty cool too!

I’m a text & cmdln man myself, but for the area it’s adressing and the intended audience, this site is soooo cool! 😎 😎

Go there, be impressed.

Update This site is now archived here. Link above updated.

That Google Search

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Wow! That Google search for ‘earthquake in England’ no longer finds my ‘Earthquake in England’ story! I don’t get a mention until page 4 now. And that’s not the same reference. This is less than 10 hours after a 4th and 5th place result!

I’m guessing I was explicitly (or automatically) pulled from the results, presumably for not having content matching the keywords. Looks like my fix was too late. 🙁

We’ll see what happens 🙂

Incredible Google Results and a Problem Semi-Solved

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Strangeness abounds!

Firstly if you search on Google for earthquake in England my story is in fourth and fifth place!

Secondly, they are links to the comment and trackback popup pages with no content! Aaagh!

Luckily, I’ve hacked in a quick workaround which redirects to the main page with the story opened. You can find the details in the b2 forum.

Questions:
1) wtf is my story about the earthquake doing turning up ahead of say, the BBCs story? (It’s a rhetorical question I know all about Blog Power)

2) Why is it that a technically ‘more correct’ link which is not intended to be used (the javascript onclick event is meant to be triggered) causes me problems? (That’s rhetorical too. I know that the real href link is there so that non-javascript browsers can still get to it).

I guess that my workaround is probably the ‘right’ thing to do. A dynamic site such as this should be able to say “Hmmm. This is an inappropriate entry point for an external referer, I’ll redirect to something more appropriate.” Unfortunately, my solution is not quite there yet.

Pleasant Day

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We’ve had a quiet, pleasant day today. We all had a lie in, and didn’t do too much all morning. Jamie and I played a little with our tiny RC cars (yes, I had to go and get one for Jamie yesterday).

The dog got a bath today, he needed it. 🙂 He and the cat both got their regular dose of flea spray; they really don’t like that. 🙁

In the afternoon we went for a walk in the park with the dog . We collected a few ‘conkers’ and pine cones. No throwing of sticks at trees though.

Graham, Jackie, and Thom came round briefly this evening. They were on their way to pick up Bekki from a party. Thom’s being having trouble logging into his browser, but it seems to be specific to their machine. He says he can log in from other peoples browsers. Strange. They don’t have Windows XP, which I believe does have some kind of problem with B2.