Live from Ireland
Usually when people talk about ads on blogs the focus is on Adsense. But some blogs make money from Pay per post articles. So in the interests of journalism I looked into this.
Conclusion: Its too tacky, even for Ambrand.com, plus ahem the returns are too low, and are paid is US Dollars which are laughably worthless at the moment.
Everybody would like to be able to sing like Sinatra.
Having listened to his music for a long time there are some characteristics that have become clear.
Snickers is no ordinary bar, while other brands come and go - Wispa, 54321, Double Decker- Snickers has remained constant, as reliable as the Radio 4 Schedule, and as available as Long Wave. The very name S-n-i-c-k-e-r-s makes my mouth water, I need one… [5 mintues later] ahh I am now Satisfied let continue…
History
Back in the days of paper and pen there was a chocolate bar called Marathon. I imagine the name was chosen to imply to the potential purchaser that this was no ordinary chocolate bar, that this was chocolate bar packed with energy of an Olympian magnitude.
Outside
Snickers has a mono block for factor. It has brown wrapper, emblazened with its name in a bold white 1970s font. Beneath the logo is a picture of a Snickers that has carefully cut with a surgical precision not afforded by teeth to unleash a tirade of peanuts. In the food business it is accepted that Peanuts are expensive, and thus Mars Inc, tha manufacturers of the fine bar are keen to highlight the peanut content, which elevates their bar from the common plain milk-chocolate genre, to the exclusive Marks & Spencer genre. The chocolate feels thick and has a casual few ripples on top, reinforcing the manly assured appearance.
Inside
The peanut aroma cannot disguise the cheap sugary chocolate sheath. The fine peanuts are tempered by the nougat, which bring a sharpness to the flavour. The consistency is dissenting chewy, as the choclate melts away the the nutty nougat provides the punch of peanut goodness. Small pieces of peanut remain in the mouth after consumption. Snickes is best consumed at 8 degree celcius, it does not benefit from being left in a 3 degree fridge like Cadbury Yellow Snack, indeed such temperatures would make convert a satisfactory chewiness to an awkard boiled sweets hardness.
Availability
Snickers can be found in supermarkets, newsagents, service stations. I source my Supply of Snickers from Lidl Ireland, they sell 6 packs for EUR 1.99. The writing is in German and the bars are slightly smaller then the default size though.
The Offshoots
Snickers Ice Cream, Snickers Duo (two bars in one wrapper the spawn of market research findings which killed the obesity causing King size)
Advertising
An Post, the Irish post office, charge EUR 5.00 to send a registered letter (signature on delivery, and web tracking number) anywhere on the Island of “Ireland”.
We would expect the charge to send a regsitered letter abroad to be higher, but infact it is cheaper. The charge for “Great Britain”, “Europe” and “Rest of World” is just EUR 4.93.
Looking past this current irregularity lets just look at the price within Ireland, EUR 5.00. It is quite expensive, when we consider a normal stamp is EUR 0.55, and that registered post is no faster. So why is the price so high? Well I content it is because An Post have a monopoly in this area. Various Government Acts and Statutory instruments specify the “Mode of service” of notices.
For example
RESIDENTIAL INSTITUTIONS REDRESS ACT 2002, Registration of Deeds and Title Act 2006
These say a notice can be served by the writer delivering it to the receiver’s hand, or sometimes just at his address, or having it delivered by “Registered Post”
For the obvious temporal and economic reasons most notices are sent via the latter “Registered Post”. In keeping with the practice of vagueness that keeps the courtrooms whirring legislation does not specify what exactly is meant by “Registered Post”, so rather then use a Private Post Provider and risk it being judged an invalid service it is the practice to use only An Post.
There is an old chestnut joke doing about the memos exchanged between pilots and ground crews…
In programming it’s sometimes necessary to adopt the same attitude, viz don’t solve the problem, just silence the error message. Fortunately all error messages are enclosed in named divs so they can be silenced by editing the stylesheet.css of a wordpress theme;
.wpdberror {
display: none;
}
.error {
display: none;
}
The text will still be sent, but a brower will not display it.
Continue reading ‘Wordpress error messages’
On May 24th we will cast votes for the next government of the Republic of Ireland. Across the channel in England an “auction” of a different kind will be taking place.
Ordinary citizens with illusions of grandeur are being offered the chance to become Irish “Lords of the Manor” as five feudal baronies, and more than 30 lordships will come under the hammer.
However, while the new owners will be able to call themselves ‘Lord of X’, they cannot be known as ‘Lord X’, and cannot sit in the United Kingdom House of Lords.
The feudal baronies of Castle Knock in Co Dublin, Carrigaline in Co Cork and Clanwilliam in Co Tipperary are to be auctioned off by the Anglo named Strutt & Parker.
The feudal barony and lordship of Carrigaline has a guide price of GBP 25,000 (approx EUR 37,000)
Jtold the BBC News Website that there had been a lot of interest in the 24 May sale, with several bids already received.
“A lot of the titles come with ancient grants. Many of them have not been used for a long time and research into the titles may show that the grants may still be able to be used,” said Mr Chaplin… One title sold previously came with rights to a harbour. The government wanted to rebuild the harbour and the title owner received £4m - but that is a complete extreme.” - Jonathan Chaplin of Strutt and Parker
Some of the titles give the owner rights governing local markets and fairs.
Title owners will be able to apply to the United Kingdom College of Arms for a personal coat of arms for their exclusive use.
Manorial lordships date back 1,200 years to Saxon times when they were formed part of the feudal system.
A 1922 United Kingdom property act allowed lordships to be sold separately from the estate they related to, but they continue to be conveyed in the same way as property.
Mentioning “Titles” in Ireland can be risky, while there are many “Lords” and “Ladys” etc in the country there are many people of an Anti-British sentiment here, and the question as to whether or not the titles were nullified upon Independence is complicated.
Article 40, of BUNREACHT NA hEIREANN (CONSTITUTION OF IRELAND) which dates from 1937 reads
1. Titles of nobility shall not be conferred by the State. 2. No title of nobility or of honour may be accepted by any citizen except with the prior approval of the Government.
This paragraph stopped the Order of St Patrick, which was seen as too British. But could it also make the purchase of a title pointless? Indeed are titles pointless?
Well, pontification aside, if I had the money I would bid at the auction, and I imagine there are many of a similar mind in todays Celtic Tiger/SSIA Ireland who do have a bank balance to support their illusions of grandeur.
Despite the 2005 Switchover to Metric road measurements in Ireland there are still road signs with distances in miles. Miles seem so quaint, but in Kinsale, and other tourist towns quaintness is bankable.
I’m considering repacing the lovely image at the top of this website (Roches Point Lighthouse, Cork Harbour, Ireland) with something less “Orish”
I need your input, please leave a comment of wisdom below. Continue reading ‘Website housekeeping’
In my office there is a constant battle battle between paper and “screen” (as the managers call it).
Years ago before computers filing was simple. For every event there was a sheet of paper, that was viewed by a few people - each making a photocopy if required - and eventually the sheet of paper went into a lever arch file or filing cabinet. But perhaps I should replace the word simple with understandable, as if that sheet of paper was later required it would involve going down to a cold dar store room and searching for about 10 minutes.
Today we have two systems operating in parallell, sheets of paper still arrive in the mail and are handled in the traditional way, but how should we file emails? One way is to print them, but not only does this appear uncool it actually costs money in toner, pritner wear, paper, even in a small to medium sized company. Let us not forget the first goal of every business is to make a profit.
My current solution is to have people “print” emails using a PDF driver, and store the PDFs on a network drive. This provides the familiar satisfaction of “printing”. Every day a cron job backs up the network hard drive onto one of 7 drives which are then taken to the storeroom and put in a fireproof data safe.
One problem remains, and that is incoming paper mail. We could scan the documents, and there are plenty of commercial “solutions” around to do that, but there are so many “original” documents such as signed letters that must be kept. Continue reading ‘Paper is dead, long live paper’
First there was Vanity Googling, now you can display a widget link on your site that will tell the world - well the portion there of that reads your ego blog* - just how popular you are.
Add this to your website using the code
<a href="http://www.wholinks2me.com/" title="Click here to see who's linking to my site.">Who links to my website?</a>
* do you use your real name on your blog, do you have a photo of yourself on your blog? Continue reading ‘Who links to me?’
Comments