In this month’s issue you can find out how to speed up your web browser’s loading time, how to create rich animations for your website and why images and pictures are so important in social media sites like Facebook.

You can also find out how to calm your eyes when working late on your PC and how internet based TV is investing in new online only TV content.

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

This Month’s Podcast

The Internet Monthly – May 2013:

Or, download: podcast_may13.mp3 [13' 31'', 6.2MB]

This Month’s Articles

This month’s edition of The Internet Monthly podcast contains the following articles. A list of links associated with each article are included for reference:

1. WORKING LATE AGAIN? – How to turn your computer screen into a soft light box calming you while you work
   • stereopsis.com/flux
2. FACEBOOK / TWITTER TAKEAWAY TOOLS – Powerful Twitter and Facebook integration tools for your website
   • enews1.websitemagazine.com
3. IMAGE TOOLBOX – Increase your social media engagement with images and videos
   • simplymeasured.com/blog/2012/03/27/the-impact-of-facebook-timeline-for-brands-study
   • www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/social-show-and-tell-the-image-toolbox.aspx
4. HIPPO ANIMATOR FOR WINDOWS AND MAC – Add rich HTML animations to your website
   • www.hippostudios.co/?S=Animator&P=AnimatorFeatures
5. FIVE TIPS FOR FASTER WEB BROWSING – Simple tips to speed up your web browsing
   • www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-tips-for-faster-web-browsing/722
6. TWENTY CLASSIC ARCADE GAMES – 20 all-time arcade game classics
   • www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/05/feature_ten_arcade_classics
   • www.miniclipminiclip.fm/games/classic
   • www.simplyeighties.com/80s-computer-games.php
7. TV ON THE NET – Net based TV investing in net only TV content
   • www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9889892/What-will-Netflix-do-next.html
   • www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=35787
8. MORE TV ON THE NET – Awards ceremony for Net only TV shows and some of the winners
   • www.streamys.org
   • www.amazon.co.uk/Halo-Forward-Unto-Dawn-DVD/dp/B00BFCJLIE/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1364579763
   • www.youtube.com/user/ERB
   • www.youtube.com/user/HplusDigitalSeries
   • www.lizziebennet.com
9. PBS 2013 ONLINE FILM FESTIVAL – 30 Independent films competing for the online film awards
   • www.freefilmfestivals.org
   • www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzkQfVIJun2LyQFWskflkYUt_Y6QqbH3c
10. LINKEDIN IMPROVING SEARCH – LinkedIn becoming a content rich website
    • www.marketingpilgrim.com/2013/03/linkedin-teaches-its-old-search-engine-some-new-tricks.html
11. SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH – A medical search engine for the diagnosis of rare diseases
    • findzebra.compute.dtu.dk
    • www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2013/mar/25/findzebra-diagnose-rare-diseases-symptoms

Subscribe to the Podcast:

This podcast is sponsored and reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet Limited. The music on the podcast was provided courtesy of Will Tang.

The post The Internet Monthly: May 2013 appeared first on Richard Farrar.

Like it or loathe it Twitter is mainstream. Yet while it may be one of the top 3 social media websites in the world, many people just don’t “get” it and until recently I counted myself as one of those. However, with a concerted effort over the last few months I have come to understand Twitter and have learned to love it.

While I’ve had a Twitter account for a number of years, dabbling every now and then with a tentative tweet here or there, I never really “got” it. For some reason the penny just wouldn’t drop.

At a recent meeting of my local social media club one member extolled the virtues of Twitter and how beneficial it was to her business. She had over 36,000 followers and swore by its power for lead generation and networking.

Having heard first hand of Twitter’s power I decided to take action. Before our next meeting I was determined to “get” Twitter. After all, if the BBC and such highbrow programmes as their political “Question Time” used Twitter, then it was about time I “got” it.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is described by some as a “micro-blogging” website, or “the SMS of the Internet” and allows you to send messages (Tweets) of up to 140 characters in real-time. These messages can embed links to other media, such as photos or videos, as well as linking to other websites.

Twitter is used by a wide variety of people from the banal “I had toast this morning” crowd, to businesses seeking to connect with their customers through to journalists monitoring Twitter’s stream of consciousness for breaking stories.

Like many things, with Twitter you get out what you put in and as up until recently I wasn’t putting very much in to it, I certainly wasn’t getting very much out of it.

My First Experiences with Twitter

My first tweet was on 26 January 2008. It was not terribly inspiring or insightful, being simply: “Pootlinng”. Embarrassingly, I even spelt it wrong!

Interestingly however, my second tweet was much more insightful:

While I continued to dabble with Twitter over the coming weeks and months, I never really clicked with it. In the end it took almost 5 years before I really came to terms with it.

Investing in Twitter

Updating my Twitter Profile

Having decided to give Twitter a really good go, my first task was to update my Twitter profile. I used the same branding background as my other social media profiles for consistency, and crafted my Twitter “bio” paragraph; introducing me to fellow twitterers and including the all important link to my blog.

The Twitter profile is essentially your “sales pitch” and your one chance to capture a passer-by’s attention in an attempt to get them to connect with you.

Did mine work? Absolutely!

As a direct result of my Twitter profile I was mentioned in a podcast about podcasting where the host Dave Jackson read out my Twitter profile verbatim, adding “sounds like a guy I wanna know.”

Here’s an 18 second clip from that show:

You only have one chance, so make your Twitter profile count!

Engaging with People

Whilst getting to know Twitter I’ve come to realize that it’s true power is in facilitating conversations and enabling you to engage with likeminded people.

Over the past few months I’ve made a few really good connections via Twitter and have had some very useful conversations. By following interesting people I’ve also found some informative articles and fantastic resources on the web that I would never have found otherwise.

If you intend to use Twitter purely as a broadcast mechanism, announcing to the world what you’ve just had for breakfast for example, then you’re probably not going to get terribly far (unless you’re already a celebrity).

So, if Twitter isn’t just about broadcasting your breakfast menu, how should you use it?

Twitter Etiquette (Netiquette)

While Twitter can be used in many ways, there are some general dos and don’ts to consider regarding its use.

Until recently there was a helpful tool (Twit Cleaner) that could be used to clean up follow lists by removing stale and poor quality entries. Whilst no longer available unfortunately, when it was around this service used a variety of metrics to highlight poor quality Twitter accounts. These were defined as people who tweeted in the following ways:

• Egg heads; no profile icon set
• Not much interaction; < 10 tweets in total
• No activity in over a month
• Too high volume; > 24 public tweets per day
• Hardly follow anyone; follow < 10% back
• Nothing but links
• Duplicating the same link > 25% of the time
• Bots; > 90% from an RSS feed
• Little original content; > 70% re-tweets

Distilling these points we can extrapolate that to be a good twitterer you need to:

• Upload your photo/avatar and add a captivating profile
• Tweet regularly, but not excessively
• Follow others back
• Mix it up; tweet links, re-tweet other’s tweets and post original stuff
• Don’t spam!

It’s not rocket science. Tweet regularly, tweet interesting things, engage with others and share the love.

Twitter Tools

There are many ways to tweet; from Twitter’s website, to mobile apps enabling you to tweet on the go, through to more sophisticated desktop social media management tools like Tweet Deck, Hoot Suite and Buzz Bundle.

Delving into the relative pros and cons of these tools is beyond the scope of this post. However, if you’re just getting into Twitter then their own web interface is a pretty good starting point.

Twitter’s Key Features

At the top of Twitter’s webpage is a tool-bar that provides quick and easy access to a few of Twitter’s useful features.

Conversations (@Connect)

This is a quick place to check who’s followed you recently, what tweets have mentioned you (with the @ reference to your Twitter name) and tweets of yours that have been re-tweeted. This feature can also prove useful for tracking and responding to conversation threads.

If someone follows you, and they look a genuine and interesting person, the general etiquette is to follow them back.

Hashtags and Search

Hashtags (#) combined with the search facility are a phenomenally powerful feature of Twitter and are heavily used by the twittering fraternity.

Hashtags enable you to mark (tag) keywords or topics in a tweet that you or others can search on at a later date. They are very useful for categorising and finding tweets.

For example, if you’re looking for information on podcasting, type #podcasting into the Twitter search box and you’ll be shown all the recent tweets about podcasting that used that particular hashtag.

Bookmaking with Favourites

Another useful feature of Twitter is the ability to mark tweets as favourites, effectively bookmaking or saving them.

Quite often tweets contain links to useful or interesting websites that you’d like to be able to refer to at a later date. With a single click you can bookmark a tweet for quick and easy access.

The Power of Lists

Lists are a very powerful and much under utilized feature of Twitter.

As Twitter etiquette seems to be “follow those who follow you”, you can quickly end up following masses of people resulting in a stream of tweets impossible to follow.

Clearly you can’t follow everything everybody says and this is where lists can prove invaluable. You can create lists (private or public) for specific topics of interest, assigning key twitterers to them as you go.

Once set-up you can quickly scan your lists to see what your close friends or colleagues are tweeting about. If you find anyone on your lists uninteresting, or perhaps clogging them up by tweeting too much, just remove them.

In Summary

After 5 years of floundering I finally “get” Twitter, but only because I made a concerted effort to use it regularly and explore it in more depth. Like many things in life, you only get back what you put in.

Over the past few months I have made many connections with people on Twitter and have had some interesting conversations. By following select individuals more closely, and by using lists, I have discovered some fantastic articles and useful online resources that I would never have discovered otherwise.

So, if you’re like I was and aren’t quite sure what this Twitter malarkey is all about, then I recommend diving in head first and immersing yourself in Twitter for a while, but make a real effort. If after a couple of weeks you still don’t get it, then what have you lost, nothing really, but if you do get it you could gain so much more.

Enjoy the journey and why not connect with me on Twitter @richardfarrar?

The post Learning to Love Twitter appeared first on Richard Farrar.

In this month’s issue you can find out how some of the top companies are using social media to engage with their customers and how to take a simple on-line test to see if you’re addicted to the internet.

You can also find out the many different things you can now 3D print (including a car) and how men and women differ in their twittering habits.

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

This Month’s Podcast

The Internet Monthly – April 2013:

Or, download: podcast_apr13.mp3 [12' 20'', 5.7MB]

This Month’s Articles
This month’s edition of The Internet Monthly podcast contains the following articles. A list of links associated with each article are included for reference:

1. ARE YOU A NET ADDICT? – Test your addiction to the internet
   • www.amodernmother.com/2013/01/are-you-addicted-to-the-internet.html
   • www.netaddiction.com/index.php?option=com_bfquiz&view=onepage&catid=46&Itemid=106
   • www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/10/07/a-world-wide-woe.html
   • www.techaddiction.ca/internet_addiction_statistics.html
2. FASHION TO FEATURE IN ONLINE TV – Fashion publisher moves into on-line video
   • www.courier-journal.com/article/20130313/BUSINESS/303130157/Conde-Nast-puts-magazines-video
3. HOW STARBUCKS USES TOP SOCIAL MEDIA – Starbucks bucks the trend with conventional social media wisdom
   • econsultancy.com/nz/blog/62281-how-starbucks-uses-pinterest-facebook-twitter-and-google
4. HOW MCDONALD’S USES TOP SOCIAL MEDIA – Twitter tops McDonald’s social media activity
   • econsultancy.com/nz/blog/62329-how-mcdonald-s-uses-facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google
5. MEN TWEET FROM MARS, WOMEN FROM VENUS – Men and women’s different tweeting habits
   • www.brandwatch.com/twitter-landscape
6. JOURNALISTS ASK: WHAT USE IS TWITTER? – Twitter now seen as an indispensable source for journalists
   • blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2012/11/02/what-its-like-to-tell-a-story-without-social-media-and-why-i-will-never-do-so-again-guest-blog/#content
   • blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2013/03/05/what-good-is-twitter-for-public-service-journalism-new-polis-report
7. ONLINE CONTROL FOR ONLINE ADS – Control all of your on-line advertising from a single platform
   • www.pricingengine.com
8. FONT DESIGN FACEOFF – The Internet spawns a new breed of font designers, but is it for the best?
   • www.computerarts.co.uk/features/can-anyone-design-type
9. TEN THINGS YOU CAN 3D-PRINT – 3D Printing taking off
   • www.forbes.com/pictures/mhl45mmdg/lego-adapters-6
   • www.thingiverse.com
   • www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/03/microsofts-kinect-can-see-inside-your-skull-with-its-almost-x-ray-vision
10. CANADIAN PRINTS CAR – A fully fledged car manufactured using 3D printing
    • www.theengineer.co.uk/channels/production-engineering/in-depth/solid-progress-the-transformative-power-of-3d-printing/1015723.article
11. SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH – Search for 3D print files and patterns
    • www.defcad.com

Subscribe to the Podcast:

This podcast is sponsored and reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet Limited. The music on the podcast was provided courtesy of Will Tang.

The post The Internet Monthly – April 2013 appeared first on Richard Farrar.

Five years ago I began this blog and am now therefore officially into my sixth year of blogging. If my blog was a small child it would be starting school! This time every year I take a brief moment to review my blog’s progress over the past 12 months and to contemplate its future direction.

Over the years my blog has grown steadily to a point where it was attracting around 20,000 visitors per month. This began to spur me on and towards the end of last year when I resolved to concentrate more on my blog; writing more posts and engaging in social media more.

To this aim I completely redesigned my blog’s theme (choosing to develop it on the popular Genesis Theme Framework), I began using social media (particularly twitter) much more and even started a local social media club. I also started to write posts more frequently.

Ironically, shortly after implementing the theme change my blog got savaged by Google, resulting in a 50% drop in traffic! While this has undoubtedly knocked me back a bit, I remain undeterred. If breaking my neck 12 years ago didn’t stop me, then sure as Hell Google isn’t going to stop me… onwards and upwards!

Posting Frequency

When I started blogging I rather optimistically planned to write one blog post a week. Needless to say this posting frequency didn’t last very long and my current posting frequency is about 1.6 posts per month (19 posts in the last twelve months). This is up a little from last year’s figure of 1.25 posts per month, so a small but definite improvement.

Every month I produce a podcast for my friend’s company Zen Internet which I syndicate on this blog. As such, 12 of the year’s posts are accounted for with this podcast, which means in real terms I feel that I only managed to write 7 posts during the last 12 months.

I always try to write posts that are of a reasonable length and quality which will remain on the website indefinitely, therefore continuing to attract long term traffic. While these posts may take a while to write, I see them as a long term investment plan for the blog.

Website Updates

New Theme

The biggest update to my blog this year was its new theme. Moreover, rather than just recoding the style-sheet for my theme I took the bold decision to base my new theme on the Genesis Framework. This framework took a while to get to grips with, but promised a robustly coded core to act as the foundation for my new theme.

While in general I’m very happy with the Genesis framework and my new theme, it appears to of had some unexpected ramifications with severe traffic penalties from Google. While I have always tried to follow Google’s webmaster guidelines in building websites that the search engine would “like”, the new theme seems to have “upset” Google.

Speaking to a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guru Matthew Woodward, he thinks my problems lay with the on-site structure (i.e. my new theme) rather than the quality of the articles or off-site links, which Google could penalize via their Panda or Penguin algorithms respectively. Clearly I’ve got some work ahead of me to try and remedy this situation.

Other Website Modifications

In addition to the new theme design I have also changed a few of my key WordPress plugins. The significant changes being with the website’s SEO functions and its speed optimization.

Search Engine Optimization

For my blog’s SEO functions I used to use the All in One SEO plugin, but removed this when I implemented the Genesis Framework as it had in-built SEO functions.

However, I have now stopped using Genesis’ integrated SEO options in favour of Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. This plugin is far more advanced, featuring social media integration (such as Facebook’s Open Graph implementation and Twitter cards), an integrated XML sitemap option and keyword assistance with SEO scoring.

Site Speed

In order to speed up my site (another of Google’s ranking factors) I installed the Use Google Libraries plugin so that common JavaScript libraries are downloaded and cached from the Google Content Delivery Network (CDN).

I also swapped my old cache plugin for the W3 Total Cache plugin. This plugin not only caches pages and database queries for quicker downloads, but also removes extraneous white space in HTML, CSS and JavaScript files to further reduce download times.

Using the Pingdom Tools “Full Page Test” on-line page-speed tester, I managed to get my page load times below 1 second; better than 92% of all tested websites apparently.

Statistics for the Last Year

For the majority of the year my blog performed well with a steady upward trend. Unfortunately my theme change caused disastrous consequences, dropping my overall traffic to 50% of its peak.

While this traffic drop is quite frustrating, I’m determined to persevere with my new theme. I intend tracking down the source of the problem and making the appropriate changes as necessary; let’s hope next year’s review paints a better picture.

WordPress Statistics (Totals)

• Posts: 116 (97 last year)
• Comments: 828 (608 last year)
• Spam Comments: 187,287 (110,389 last year)

Comments and Spam

Anyone who runs a blog has to deal with spam comments and unfortunately as a blog grows, so inevitably does the spam. Thankfully my blog’s Akismet and Conditional CAPTCHA plugins capture and filter the majority of the spam. The number of spam comments that Akismet caught this year were up by 70% over last year.

The following graph shows the overall spam comments caught by Akismet since I started my blog.

Website Analytics

Like the majority of blog owners I use Google’s free web analytics service to monitor my website’s traffic, which supplies me with a wide range of statistical information relating to the blog and its traffic.

Over the past year my blog received an average of approximately 17,000 visitors per month viewing over 21,000 pages every month. Last month’s visitor and page view statistics however are substantially lower than the year’s averages due to the recent drop in traffic:

• Visits: 10,465
• Pages Viewed: 13,270

Over the last year my blog received almost 205,000 visits with over 256,000 page views. The following graphs are for the past year, with the particular dip in recent traffic clearly visible.

Traffic Sources

In line with previous years the vast majority of my blog’s traffic was brought in via search engines. Google again dominated the traffic sources accounting for 97% of all search engine traffic. The relative percentages of the different traffic sources have remained consistent with last year’s.

My blog is clearly beholden to the whims of Google, which has become painfully obvious with my recent drop in traffic. This is clearly something that I need to give some serious attention to, as anything that I can do to make my blog less reliant on Google has got to be beneficial in the long term.

Countries of Visitors

My blog attracts a fairly broad geographic audience, with visitors from 202 different countries (up 7 countries from last year’s total).

The United States and the United Kingdom combine to dominate with 51% of the blog’s overall traffic. The relative percentages of the different countries have remain unchanged over the last year however.

RSS Subscribers

My blog’s RSS feed continues to be supplied via Google’s FeedBurner service,  which provides a useful set of statistics as well as offering the RSS feed as an alternative e-mail subscription option. However, with the recent demise of Google’s Feed Reader, some pundits are predicting the closure of the Feedburner service by Google. I do hope this isn’t the case, but only time will tell.

My feed currently attracts 99 subscribers (30 of which subscribe by e-mail). This is an increase of 43% over last year’s 69 subscribers.

The following graph shows my RSS subscriber levels steadily increasing over the history of the blog, even with Feedburner’s erratic reporting and the sudden drop last year where they appeared to change how they reported their figures.

Summary

You can view my four previous year’s statistics at:

1. Happy Birthday Blog
2. Blog Hits the Terrible Twos
3. Happy Birthday Blog: Three Today!
4. Annual Blog Review: Year 4

Over the last twelve months my site’s visitor numbers have increased by 11%.

My blog’s most popular post is still Embedding Album Art in MP3 Files, which receives 52% of the blog’s traffic, although this has dropped down from 60%. I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing as it’s good to have my blog traffic spread over a wider range of posts and not so heavily reliant on a single post.

My top 5 posts remain the same as last year’s and in the same order, although they are all receiving a bit more traffic than the previous year, apart from the Embedding Album Art in MP3 Files, which is down in traffic by 5%.

1. Embedding Album Art in MP3 Files (133,839 views)
2. How to Check if your Speakers are Wired Correctly? (44,899 views)
3. What is Joint Stereo? (18,443 views)
4. Song Capacity Calculator for MP3 Players (12,028 views)
5. What are ID3 Tags in MP3 Files? (8,647 views)

And Finally…

On the whole, despite my recent set-back, blog traffic is up. So if I can get over the current problems with Google and continue with my plan of being more proactive with the blog, then the coming 12 months should be positive.

I intend to write more posts and continue engaging in social media more, integrating it with my blog.

I’ve also decided to focus a bit more on podcasting. This seems to be a recurring theme on my blog, and something I really enjoy. Watch this space!

Finally, thank you to all of you who have left comments, or who have subscribed to the blog.

The post Annual Blog Review: Year 5 appeared first on Richard Farrar.

As a species we have adapted to eat a broad range of food, from nuts and berries to fruit and vegetables through to meat. We are opportunistic omnivores by nature and in a large part owe our species’ survival to our broad dietary capabilities.

Some creatures are herbivores (rabbits for example), some are carnivores, such as lions, and some are omnivores like Homo Sapiens; you and me. By definition, omnivores eat everything. The word omnivore comes from the Latin, omni = “all’’ and vorare = “to devour”.

Our anatomy and physiology is overwhelmingly adapted for the mastication and digestion of a wide range of foodstuffs from roots, nuts and berries, fruit, vegetables to meat. It’s all part of our success and adaptability.

Evolution: Adapt and Survive

Our diverse diet is not a recent adaptation by any stretch of the imagination.

According to archaeological records dating back over a million years ago, our ancestors Homo Erectus ate a varied, omnivorian diet and even softened raw foods with fire and tools leading to the evolution of our smaller molars and stomachs.

Our ability to eat a wide variety of food is thought to have been a significant factor in our species’ survival through the last ice age.

Vegetarians and Christianity

If you don’t believe in evolution, and you don’t eat meat, then here’s a short informational message for you; “we are designed to eat meat!” Even God says so. There must be Christian Vegetarians, so I don’t know how they reconcile the two opposing viewpoints, but the bible is unequivocal:

Genesis 9:3, New International Version:
“Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”

In other words, tuck in!

Now, it doesn’t mean we should be cruel to animals and treat them as such factory farmed commodities as we seem to nowadays, but it does say everything is fair game for lunch.

Fresh is Better

Real meat doesn’t come from a supermarket, pre-packed with a barcode.

Real meat comes from living animals and should be treated with according respect, not least of which because it tastes better.

In the not too distant past we were all intimately connected with the animals we ate. We either looked after them ourselves (as our very lives depended on their well-being), or we hunted them in the wild.

How things have changed?

Animals I’ve Eaten

When I stop to take account of the different kinds of animal that I’ve eaten over the years, it’s a surprisingly varied and substantial list.

However, while I may have eaten a lot of different animals, I am quite fussy as to the actual bits of an animal that I eat. I really don’t like fat (a bit like Jack Sprat from the nursery rhyme), skin, squidgy or overly chewy bits. So the specific parts of any given animal that I might eat may be fairly restricted; not terribly good I know.

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
His wife could eat no lean.
And so between them both, you see,
They licked the platter clean.

I am also more than happy to try new things, but I think I draw the line at insects. Although not everything I have eaten was a vertebrate, generally speaking I like my meat to have had a backbone.

So, what have I eaten?

Here goes…

Animals of the Water

1. Prawns / Shrimps – Yum, yum, one of my favourites
2. Crayfish – Like prawns only bigger = yum
3. Lobster – Crayfish on steroids; YUM but expensive
4. Crab – Another nice crustacean, but with a distinctly different flavour
5. Tuna – My favourite fish, a bit like a meaty steak, a very firm meat
6. Swordfish – Halfway between Tuna and traditional white fish
7. Marlin – Not too dissimilar to Swordfish
8. Salmon – A classic fish, very distinctive flavour
9. Cod – The quintessential fish for your chips
10. Halibut – Bog standard white fish
11. Haddock – Ditto
12. Hake – Ditto
13. Sea Bass – Ditto
14. Red Talipa – Ditto
15. Monk Fish – I try not to make a habit of this one…
16. Plaice – Fish that’s been run over by a steamroller
17. Barramundi Skate – Another two dimensional fish
18. Squid – Not my favourite, a bit like eating rubber
19. Scallops – Very nice with Parma ham, but I don’t like the squidgy orange bit
20. Mussels – Not my natural choice; too much like eating worms
21. Cockles – Have eaten, but see above re. worms

Animals of the Air

1. Chicken – The ubiquitous avian meat
2. Turkey – The Christmas favourite
3. Duck – A Chinese restaurant favourite when crispy
4. Goose – Vicious animals! Used to be the Christmas bird of choice in yesteryear
5. Pigeon – Delicious when pan fried
6. Pheasant – Quite a strong, gamey flavour
7. Partridge – Quite small; one bird per person
8. Guinea Fowl – I know I’ve eaten this, but can’t really remember very well
9. Ostrich – Perhaps not very good at flying, but definitely a bird and good as a burger

Animals of the Land

1. Cow – The most common mammalian meat
2. Pig – What sausages were invented for
3. Sheep – Not my favourite, but good as Kebabs
4. Goat – Lovely in sausages [Updated 10-03-2013]
5. Deer – A slightly stronger flavour, but delicious
6. Kangaroo – Makes a nice, tasty steak
7. Zebra – A bit tough, but OK
8. Rabbit – Good in a game pie
9. Crocodile – Not much flavour and a bit chewy
10. Snail – Good with garlic if you don’t look at what you’re eating
11. Frog – Not enough for a main course, but again good with garlic
12. Wild Boar – A flavoursome alternative to the common pig
13. Bison – A nice change from classic beef and a bit healthier

Unbeknownst to me I may have also eaten other animals, but as I was clearly oblivious to these at the time (like horse meat in a dodgy burger for example) I cannot with certainty add them to any of the above lists.

Over time however, I am sure that I will continue to add to my lists as a “work in progress”, slowly but surely munching my way through the animal kingdom.

So, that’s what I’ve eaten. What different meats have you eaten that I’ve missed off my lists, which you think are worthy of consideration for future dining?

The post If it Moves, Eat it appeared first on Richard Farrar.

In this month’s issue you can find new friends near you on-line with two new social media sites and learn the best ways to keep your precious Facebook account safe and sound from a range of potential threats.

You can also find out how to improve your on-line browsing experience with a few alternative web browsers that you may not be familiar with and discover a simple trick to help boost your creativity.

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

This Month’s Podcast

The Internet Monthly – March 2013:

Or, download: podcast_mar13.mp3 [11' 02'', 5.1MB]

This Month’s Articles

This month’s edition of The Internet Monthly podcast contains the following articles. A list of links associated with each article are included for reference:

1. SOCIAL SITES FOR SOCIALISING – Make NEW friends on-line with two new sites
   • nextdoor.com
   • app.ban.jo
2. GUIDE TO FACEBOOK SECURITY – An on-line guide to help protect your account
   • www.kidsandmedia.co.uk/official-guide-to-facebook-security
3. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY – A free tool to hide Windows folders on your computer
   • www.ilovefreesoftware.com/10/windows/hiddendir-free-tool-for-hiding-private-folders.html
4. TCC LE – An advanced command line tool for Microsoft Windows
   • jpsoft.com/tccle-cmd-replacement.html
5. TWIST AGAIN – A media player application capable of playing almost anything
   • www.computeractive.co.uk/ca/review/2179003/doubletwist
6. TESTING, TESTING, IE5 TO 10 TESTING – A tool to test multiple versions of IE
   • www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Browsers/IETester.shtml
7. BETTER BROWSERS – Alternative browsers that may give you a better experience
   • www.opera.com/download
   • www.apple.com/safari/download
   • www.rockmelt.com/app-tour
8. PICTURING PIXIA – A free, powerful photo editing alternative to Photoshop
   • download.cnet.com/Pixia/3000-2192_4-10112912.html
9. MOSAICAL MAGIC – Software helping you create mosaics with your existing photos
   • download.cnet.com/AndreaMosaic/3000-2192_4-10889016.html
   • www.1066.co.nz
10. THE RESTFUL ROUTE TO EXTRA PRODUCTIVITY – Sleep yourself to creativity
    • www.lifeevolver.com/late-riser-5-reasons-sleeping-day-boost-productivity
11. SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH – A dedicated search tool for animated GIFs
    • www.giphy.com

Subscribe to the Podcast:

This podcast is sponsored and reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet Limited. The music on the podcast was provided courtesy of Will Tang.

The post The Internet Monthly – March 2013 appeared first on Richard Farrar.

In the five years that I’ve run this blog I have only ever used two different themes and as my most recent theme was over four years old I decided that it was time for a change.

Additionally, as WordPress constantly evolves, new features are released that only the latest themes are able to take advantage of. Clearly my old theme wasn’t making the best of what WordPress had to offer; all the more reason to update it.

In the process of refreshing the look of my blog with a new theme, I decided that it would be opportune to consider building my new design on a “framework” based theme. But where to start? Which framework, and what advantages would a framework actually give?

Understanding Theme Frameworks

While the exact definition of a theme framework may vary depending on your perspective and the particular framework implementation, a general definition can be considered as:

“A framework is a ROBUSTLY CODED theme that acts as the FOUNDATION for other themes”

Parent and Child Themes

The advantage of building themes on a framework or ”parent theme” is that every theme developed using the underlying foundation has the same core code as its parent with all of its associated advantages.

Using this method you are not reinventing the wheel every time you code a theme. New themes essentially customize the main or parent theme creating what are known as a child themes, which inherit all of the desirable properties of the parent.

Advantages of Using Theme Frameworks

Using a solid code base as the foundation for your themes, you can be confident that your themes’ code is correctly optimized for SEO, with validated, secure code designed for accessibility.

Furthermore, whenever your themes’ framework or parent theme is updated, your child themes will automatically inherit these updates and the latest code. This essentially future-proofs your child themes and therefore your blog.

Why Choose the Genesis Framework?

With a plethora of theme frameworks available for WordPress, such as Genesis, Thesis, Hybrid and Thematic etc., how do you choose the best one?

Nothing is all things to all people, so a lot can depend on your personal circumstances and what you expect from a framework.

The two most popular frameworks for WordPress are Genesis and Thesis.

I chose the Genesis Framework for two key reasons:

1. Firstly Genesis is much CHEAPER than Thesis. For a one-time fee of around $60 Genesis can be used on unlimited sites, with free updates for life plus lifetime support. Thesis on the other hand starts at around $90, with only 12 month’s of upgrades included.
2. Secondly Thesis, while being highly configurable with its easy to use drag ‘n’ drop Visual Design Template Editor, is very bloated compared to Genesis. I liked the lean, compact efficiency of Genesis, even though it meant more work configuring style sheets by hand.

Another positive for the Genesis framework is the recommendation from Matt Mullenweg (WordPress’ founder) who says:

“Child themes and a framework are the only way you should build your WordPress site and Genesis has great support for child themes and other WordPress functionality.”

Key Features

Some of Genesis’ fundamental features that attracted me to its use are:

• Code optimized for speed of loading
• Architecture designed for search-engine-optimized code
• SEO integrated into the framework; no additional plugins required
• Code written securely following WordPress security best practices
• Validated XHTML compliant code
• Integrated Google authorship identification for enhanced SEO

Genesis also comes packed with many other useful features such as a configurable breadcrumb navigation menu and multiple layout options.

Framework Implementation

Unlike the Thesis framework which supports a Visual Design Template Editor, to code a Genesis theme you are going to have to get your hands dirty. Luckily, as an Electronic Engineer by trade I’m used to hacking code, so this wasn’t a major issue for me, but may be for some.

Theme Coding

There are two main files that require modification to code a basic Genesis child theme:

1. The first being the style.css cascading style sheet, which should be familiar territory to any competent web designer.
2. The second file is a key component of most WordPress themes, functions.php. This file enables you to customize the Genesis framework in greater detail using the framework’s pre-designed hooks and filters.

Hooks and Filters

The concept of hooks and filters can take a little while to understand and is probably the steepest part of the learning curve when coming to terms with the Genesis framework.

Hooks and filters are a useful way of customizing the framework’s underlying code in a controlled manner without hacking the original code directly.

Using this method maintains the integrity of the underlying code base, which in turn enables the core code to be updated without causing any undue repercussions.

Importing SEO Data

Prior to implementing the Genesis framework I used the popular All in One SEO plugin for my blog’s SEO functions.

Part of Genesis’ attraction for me was its SEO functions built into the framework, which I really wanted to make use of. However, I had a large amount of historical SEO data from old posts that I wished to retain.

Fortunately Genesis have a handy plugin (SEO Data Transporter) that seamlessly imports all of your SEO data from popular SEO plugins, like the All in One SEO plugin, directly into the framework.

Once imported you can happily remove your old SEO plugin and the SEO Data Transporter plugin, leaving you with an efficient, integrated SEO solution.

In Conclusion

Adopting the Genesis framework can bring many advantages, such as secure, validated and SEO optimized code together with future proofing of your themes.

However, coding a child theme is not straightforward. Genesis does have a bit of a learning curve, particularly in understanding its use of hooks and filters. If you’re not familiar with basic CSS and PHP coding then Genesis is probably not for you; Thesis may be the better option.

If you are comfortable with basic coding, then Genesis could be the framework for you.

The post Implementing the Genesis Theme Framework for WordPress appeared first on Richard Farrar.

In this month’s issue you can find out how to check your work on-line for grammatical errors and why you have to have a Facebook account to be able to comment on an increasing number of newspaper websites.

You can also find out how to delete your Facebook account if required and how to boost your productivity and creativity by going cold Turkey with the on-line world.

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

This Month’s Podcast

The Internet Monthly – February 2013:

Or, download: podcast_feb13.mp3 [9' 43'', 4.5MB]

This Month’s Articles

This month’s edition of The Internet Monthly podcast contains the following articles. A list of links associated with each article are included for reference:

1. JOIN FACEBOOK OR STAY QUIET – Facebook accounts required to comment
   • www.pressgazette.co.uk/trinity-mirror-regional-titles-bar-non-facebook-users-leaving-comments
   • menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1598150_the-manchester-evening-news-website-is-changing
2. HOW TO BID FAREWELL TO FACEBOOK - How to close your Facebook account
   • www.facebook.com/help/delete_account
3. UNCONNECTIVITY BOOSTS PRODUCTIVITY – Going off line can boost creativity
   • unews.utah.edu/news_releases/nature-nurtures-creativity-2
4. PAINT-ON POWER- Electrically conductive carbon paint
   • www.bareconductive.com
5. PLATFORM BLACK – Peer-to-Peer short term lending against outstanding invoices
   • www.platformblack.com
   • www.prospectmagazine.co.uk
6. MUSICATION – Become your own DJ with the Secret DJ app for iOS and Android
   • www.musicmagpie.co.uk/article.asp?id=77
7. OUTLOOK EXPRESS SPELLCHECK – Spell checker tool for Outlook Express
   • www.snapfiles.com/get/spelloe.html
8. GRAMMARLY – On-line tool to check your text’s grammar, with helpful suggestions
   • www.grammarly.com
9. REVERSE DICTIONARY - Look up words that you know the meaning of
   • onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml
10. 10 USEFUL SITES VERY BRIEFLY – 10 sites that you could find very valuable
    • talltweets.com – Send tweets longer than 140 characters
    • unfurlr.com – Find the original URL hiding behind a shortened URL
    • jotti.org – Scan any suspicious file or e-mail attachment for viruses
    • imo.im – Chat with friends on Skype, Facebook & Google Talk all from one place
    • privnote.com – Write text notes that self-destruct after reading
    • screenr.com – Record movies of desktop actions and send them to YouTube
    • scribblemaps.com – Create custom Google Maps with extreme ease
    • chipin.com – Get money on-line for an event, good cause or charity
    • marker.to – Highlight parts of a Web page for sharing
    • wolframalpha.com – Get fulsome answers without searching
11. SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH – Facebook’s new search feature: Graph
    • www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/jan/16/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-search-video

Subscribe to the Podcast:

This podcast is sponsored and reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet Limited. The music on the podcast was provided courtesy of Will Tang.

The post The Internet Monthly – February 2013 appeared first on Richard Farrar.

There can be many causes of problems when attempting to upload videos to YouTube and therefore many different solutions. However, if you are managing to upload your videos apparently successfully, only to find that they have become corrupted in the process with pixelization, then thankfully a very simple solution exists.

Corrupted Video Uploads

Recently I’ve been getting into video editing and like the majority of people I chose to publish my videos on YouTube.

My first videos uploaded without issue, but soon after every video that I uploaded appeared to upload successfully, yet when viewed had become visually corrupted.

The video corruption looked like typical digital artifacts (blocking artifacts) manifested as coloured pixelation of the image, similar to that experienced on digital TVs with poor signal strength or incorrectly aligned antennae.

Upon investigation I discovered that these defects were not because of any format issues with the video files, but were apparently a result of a known issue with YouTube’s parallel processing system. This issue only affected some users, yet affected all video formats for those unlucky users.

The Solution

To circumvent this problem as a “stop gap” solution YouTube created an HTTPS / SSL version of their video Uploader. While this may appear to be identical to the regular uploader, it makes use of Secure Socket Layers (SSL) to encrypt all transmitted data.

This SSL uploader is not available through standard links on the YouTube web site and can only be accessed using a special web address / URL. To access the SSL version of the YouTube uploader, use the following link:

https://upload.youtube.com/my_videos_upload

The critical part of the above URL is the “https“, which tells your web browser to use the SSL version of the web page instead of the standard version, thereby compensating for YouTube’s processing linked to the pixelization defects.

Known Issues with the SSL Uploader

While the SSL uploader fixes the pixelization problem for most users (myself included) without any further issues, some users have reported that the SSL uploader runs significantly slower than the standard uploader.

This doesn’t appear to be the case for everyone and may be due to problems with noisy internet connections.

If you are one of those that unfortunately suffer from the speed problem associated with the SSL version of the YouTube uploader, there are a few points to consider that may help to alleviate your problem.

Improving your Upload Chances

While some video uploading problems may be beyond your control, there are precautions that you can take to improve the quality of your internet connection and give you the best chance of achieving a clean upload:

• If possible use a hard-wired internet connection rather than wireless
• If you have to use wireless, get as close to the base-station as possible
• Switch off your antivirus during the uploading process
• Do not do anything else on your computer while uploading

The post How to Fix Pixelated YouTube Upload Problems appeared first on Richard Farrar.

The techniques described in this article show how to manipulate footage from a standard video camera to create the look and feel of footage caught on a CCTV camera security system by layering together multiple effects.

While this tutorial uses Lightworks as the video editor of choice, the basic principles should be equally applicable to other video editors such as Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects and Sony’s Vegas Pro.

The Aim

The aim of this tutorial is to create the look of a typical CCTV camera system from regular video footage to produce something like:

to

The overall result is achieved by layering simple individual effects together, and as such should be readily achievable in many common video editing systems.

Getting Started

First things first, you will need to either create a new project or open an existing project in Lightworks to edit your raw footage.

If you are not familiar with Lightworks then I would highly recommend following the excellent tutorials on their website before attempting to go any further. Lightworks can be a bit daunting at first, but is worth persevering with as it is an amazingly powerful and flexible video editor.

Eight Steps

To achieve the result we are after we need to combine the following 8 effects together:

1. Greyscale (B&W)
2. Colour Tint (Blue)
3. Contrast  Adjustment
4. Vignette
5. Grain
6. Gaussian Blur
7. Scan Lines
8. Time Code Overlay

1: Greyscale

While modern CCTV footage is probably more likely to be colour these days, here we are trying to produce the “effect” or “illusion” of CCTV footage. For this reason we will make the footage black and white to enhance the CCTV feel of the final result.

With your video clip selected in the editing timeline, click on the Effects.. button in the bottom right hand corner of the timeline to bring up the Add Effects panel.

From the upper right hand corner of the Add Effects panel click on the small arrow to drop-down a list of effect categories and select the Video, Colour category.

From the list of colour effects, select the Greyscale effect. Your selected clip should now be displayed in black and white.

2: Colour Tint:  Blue

For this particular CCTV effect we are going to add a slight blueish tint to the image using the Colour Tint effect. This should help to make things “feel” a little more like monochrome analogue video.

This effect can be added in the same basic way as described previously:

Effects.. > Video, Colour > Colour Tint

Once you have this effect loaded into your effects chain it then needs to be configured by clicking the small arrow at the top left hand corner of the effect to open the effect’s configuration window.

With the effect’s configuration panel expanded, click on the Tint Colour colour box to choose a colour that you’re happy with for this effect. Leave the Amount set at around 50%.

3: Contrast

Next we need to tweak the contrast of the original footage by adding and configuring the Colour Correction effect:

Effects.. > Video, Colour > Colour Correction

Tonal Ranges, Contrast: 1.38, Gain: 0.87

4: Vignette

The next effect to add to the effects chain is a vignette. A vignette darkens the image around it’s corners mimicking the effect of cheaper camera systems and lenses.

This effect is not native in Lightworks, but can be downloaded from the Lightworks forum together with simple instructions on how to install it.

Once you have loaded the effect to Lightworks, it’s use and configuration is just like any other effect:

Effects.. > Video, Stylize> Vignette

Master, Amount: –55.00%

5: Grain

To enhance the feeling of a poorer quality camera system we need to add some graining to the image. Again, the graining effect is not a native effect in Lightworks, but can be downloaded and installed as for the vignette effect.

To add and configure this effect once installed:

Effects.. > Video, Stylize > Grain (Variable)

Strength: 8.00%, Size: 3.60, Grain Blur: 4.80%

6: Gaussian Blur

Again, to further the look of poorer quality video we can blur the whole image a little:

Effects.. > Video, Stylize > Gaussian Blur

Amount: 100%

7: Scan Lines

To make the video look like an old analogue TV or CRT signal we need to mimic raster scan lines on the image. This requires overlaying an image of scan lines on top of our video footage. You can download the scan line image that I created for this, or you could create your own if you’d prefer.

To use this image, add the Image Key effect:

Effects.. > Video, Keying > Image Key

This adds two individual effects to the effects chain; Image and Blend.

Open the Image effect and select your chosen scan line image.

With the scan line image selected we then need to open the Blend effect to set the level of the image’s Opacity to produce our desired result:

Opacity: 46%

8: Time-code Overlay

The final icing on the cake is to add a time-code overlay.

To do this click on the cogs icon at the top right hand corner of the edit view window and select BITC Panel from the drop-down menu. This should open the BITC Overlay option menu.

From the BITC Overlay window select one of the time-codes that you’d like to display as an overly from the Clip Labels tab, e.g. Primary T/C.

Once the time-code is displayed in the edit viewer window you can drag and drop it to any area of the image that you choose. Dragging the edge of the text box enables you to enlarge the box size to suit.

Ensure that the Overlay enabled box is ticked and that should be your CCTV video effect created!

Experiment

While combining the individual effects above produces a passable CCTV type effect, once you have the basic effect configured, feel free to play with the individual component effects, or even remove or replace them altogether to produce your own effect.

Consider this effects chain as a starting point for your own creativity.

Video Tutorial

If you’d like to see the exact process for creating this effect first hand, please watch the following video tutorial of the process:

The post How to Create a CCTV Effect in Lightworks appeared first on Richard Farrar.