The 59p Site

Asking what is a dollar will seem a strange question to many people because they will see the answer as being very obvious. It is simply what their notes and coins say on them and comes with a $ symbol before the amount. Australians would say this, Canadians would say this and USians (OK I just made that last one up) would say this. The same would be true of other countries where the currency is called dollar.

I am in Europe though and here we do not use the dollar as the name of our currency. Many European countries use the Euro these days although mine along with some others do not. I type £ and not $ when I am writing about money because that is what I understand.

There are alternative words that can be used such as cash or money which are globally recognised terms for what we all spend on a daily basis so why not use them. The global internet does not recognise a single currency nor a single country so terms need to be used carefully when writing. Pick words that have a global relevance rather than using the ones that are specific to your own country. It helps to get the message across to the widest possible audience and that is a crucial factor if you have a marketing site.

My sites have recently been hit by a lot of automated comment spam that is sourced from a registrar called name.com. The spammer is using the ability to hide their identity which shows that they have something to conceal about themselves. I have sent email to the registrar concerned to complain about these actions but have yet to receive a reply as to any action that they will take.

Now I have news for comment spammers that come to any site that I run and it is this:

GO AWAY AND LEAVE THE SITE ALONE

I have several measures that I take against anybody who chooses to ignore this advice.

Firstly I will check the domain registration details to find out who owns the domain that is being spammed onto me in the link. From that information, I then contact the domain registrar concerned in order to alert them that they have a spammer on their hands.

Now spammers tend to hide behind the screen so their real details are not available but they sometimes forget to build their smokescreen. That exposes their phone number so I will call them up and ask them politely to stop using their automated program to spam. It shocks them to realise that I have been able to find their phone number without any difficulty

The primary action is to simply delete the spam comments. They go straight into the trash. A apammer is not going to harm my site by trying to create a backlink from it to some other place that is pure trash. My search engine rankings are important to me and I will not have them harmed by malicious individuals advertising junk websites.

So stay at home spammers and do not bother me. You do not and will not get past my defenses so, to paraphrase Pink Floyd,

Hey spammers, leave my sites alone

If you want a great way to have a healthy lunch then get a flask!

You might call them a Thermos or you might just use vacuum flask but the principle is the same. They keep food warm for a period of time so they are a great way to have a warming lunch when you are on the move. Get one with a wide neck and the food can even be eaten straight from the flask.

Soups that are blended work best with the flask but many things can be put into one. Make them the night before or simply use the leftovers from the meal if the pieces are small enough. All that is required is to quickly reheat the soup or stew in the microwave then carefully pour it into the flask. That takes a couple of minutes before heading out for the day and has the benefit of providing a delicious hot lunch at a moderate cost.

A flask cup can be used to just drink a blended soup but a spoon and bowl can come in useful if using a stew. The choice of what to put in the flask is yours. It will lead to a lunch that is cheaper and more healthy than would be bought from a takeaway place. You also benefit from being able to choose from some of the recipes on here or from your own favourites.

"Love" ... if I had to define it,

I'd say it means caring and sharing

and discovering and fun

I'd say it means tenderness and passion

and giving and taking

and comfort and happiness...

If I had to define the word "love"

I'd think about us and all

the wonderful things we share

Just a message to give to your Valentine this February 14 or any other one for that matter

Now some may be looking because they think I am talking about a dislike of animals but that is not the the case. Where I am from in the UK, the term just means the thing that people say which you most dislike. You can have many of them as well and, I can assure you,  the internet does bring out many in me.

My theme today is the way that people state times. As I write this, it is 6pm UK time or 1pm US Eastern time. There is a FIVE hour difference there.

Why does it matter?

Well those were only two timezones and there are lots more. I see so many emails that say something will start at a certain time without giving any indication of what that means for everybody. That is a good way of losing visitors because they misunderstand the time that you wrote.

Put the time of something as UTC because that is a universal standard and it is easy for people to convert from that. I will admit a bias here because UTC is the same as GMT and that is the UK timezone.

Just do not go out and assume that everybody is in the same timezone as you are. The internet is global and that leads to big time differences.