malcolm coles

Where to find me

Meet Ulrika Johnson’s new baby: Malcolm

Posted in Malcolm Coles by Malcolm Coles on the June 25th, 2008

When I see a new Malcolm, the question is - is he helping Malcolms, or hurting Malcolms?

Malcolm X - he helped us.

That bloke in the Vicks advert whose mum said ‘Course you can, Malcolm’ - he hurt us.

Ulrika Johnson’s new baby:

The news that Ulrika Johnson had called here baby Malcolm seems neutral.

A celebrity has called their baby ‘Malcolm’ - that helps us.

That celebrity is the woman who hosted a reality TV where a bachelor had to choose a wife from the contestants - but turned them all down to marry Ulrika. That hurts us.

Kerry Katona: shut up

But Kerry Katona has just weighed in: “Now I like old-fashioned names, but I have to say that Malcolm is not one of my favourites. It’s quite a nerdy name. Let’s hope the other kids aren’t mean to him when he goes to school.”

That’s Kerry Katona, who has:

  • Drug problems
  • Tabloid exposes
  • Smoked while pregnant
  • Was voted second worst celebrity mother
  • Was voted most irritiating person in Britain
  • Was voted fourth most hated person in Britain
  • Was voted most hated woman according to other women.
  • And who called her own children Maxwell, which is a type of coffee.

And she’s worried about other people’s kids being mean to her?

LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

Immigration Advisory Service hacked

Posted in Internet by Malcolm Coles on the June 17th, 2008

Google screenshot of IASSo, if you search for the Immigration Advisory Service on google, it comes with a warning saying ‘This site may harm your computer’. 

This is a warning that google puts in its results if the site in question has been hacked and contains ‘malware’ - software that damage your computer.

I’ve seen a few of these lately - but this one’s the first for a big site, rather than a blog.

Question is, how do you warn the IAS when you can’t go to their site to find out their contact details …

If it happens to you, read this.

Unique meta description and meta keywords in your Wordpress themes

Posted in Wordpress by Malcolm Coles on the May 26th, 2008

I know little about PHP. But after fiddling round with other people’s example code, I’ve finally managed to use custom fields to get a unique meta description and unique meta keywords on each post, and on the home page.

To get this to work, you need to add new custom fields called Metadescription and Metakeywords to each post. The ones for the home page you hard code. And I’m still working on the category pages …

Copy and paste the code below into the head section of the header bit of your wordpress template. It basically checks if it’s the home page. If it is, it uses the hard-coded meta description and meta keywords. If it’s not, it goes and looks up the custom fields and uses the values from there. So there we have it: a unique meta description and unique meta keywords in wordpress.

Unique meta descriptions in wordpress

<meta name=”description” content=”<?php if(is_home()) {echo (’PUT YOUR HOME PAGE DESCRIPTION HERE’);} else {echo get_post_meta($post->ID, “Metadescription”, true);}?>”>

Unique meta keywords in wordpress

<meta name=”keywords” content=”<?php if(is_home()) {echo (’PUT YOUR HOME PAGE KEYWORDS HERE’);} else {echo get_post_meta($post->ID, “Metakeywords”, true);}?>”>

Event tyres review: buying tyres online

Posted in Good reviews by Malcolm Coles on the May 21st, 2008

Four recent car journeys cost me a lot of money … A puncture, a parking ticket (for meter stuffing, even though I only parked there for 45 minutes. Grrr), a speeding ticket and another puncture.

Kwikfit first: bad review

The first puncture was repaired by Kwikfit. I drove down there at 12, which turned out not to be an appointment as I thought, just an indicative time. I would have to wait.

They quoted almost £200, but when I pointed out the price was cheaper on their website, they said I could have that price (about £30 off) if I bought a print out along.

Somehow, I didn’t feel pleased about the discount, just relieved I hadn’t been ripped off.

Event mobile tyres: good review

Event tyres van from their website So when I somehow got another puncture, I bought a tyre online instead from Event tyres - which was delivered and fitted at my house.

A van turned up at the exact time Event tyres said it would, the cost was £50 less than at Kwikfit for an identical tyre, and it was all over and done with in minutes. Excellent.

Have you used them? What do you think?

Nofollow and internal redirects: sites that accept links - but don’t link out fairly

Posted in Internet by Malcolm Coles on the May 19th, 2008

There seem to be increasing numbers of sites who suck up weblinks, but don’t link back out in a ‘proper’ way - ie in a way that helps the site linked to do better in google.

Instead, they use funny internal redirects, stick ‘no follow’ on external links, or just don’t bother making them hyperlinks.

Offenders

I’ve started a list of offenders. Add any others you know of - don’t worry, Wordpress will add nofollow to them all …

  • Wikipedia - all links, even the attributed sources of its facts, are given the nofollow tag.
  • BBC - redirects via some funny internal redirect.
  • Myspace - redirects all new links added vis MSPlinks.
  • UK newspaper sites - even when they include web addresses in their stories, they don’t bother to make them hyperlinks.
  • Youtube - the link in your profile is ‘nofollow’ed.
  • Newsvine - Someone writes an interesting news story, people vote it to the top of the list … but rel=nofollow means no link benefit to the site that wrote it. But newsvine gets all the keywords from its summary …
  • Spock.com - So, I’ll spend time telling you which sites are relevant to me for your person search engine. Then you’ll create a profile page for me, to help you do better for my name as a search term. Then you’ll nofollow all the links to sites about me. Nope.

 

Malcolm Coles on the internet

Posted in Internet, Malcolm Coles by Malcolm Coles on the May 22nd, 2007

First blog posts

Posted in Malcolm Coles by Malcolm Coles on the June 26th, 2006

‘When you hear the long beep, followed by the three small beeps, please leave your message.’ That was the answering machine message of my friend’s mum.

Then there’s the instructions on the work voicemail: ‘Instruct the caller to leave a detailed message, including their name, phone number and address.’ The word ‘detailed’ really is stressed like that. I’m presuming if anyone leaves a message saying ‘It’s Bob, call me’ then an error message cuts in to say it’s not detailed enough and they haven’t left their address.

A first post blog carries equivalent danger: ‘Hi, this is my blog. After the word comments, please leave a detailed comment, including you name and IP address.’ Maybe not. So let’s assume you all know what a blog is. If you’ve come across it before there are any other posts, sorry. Read the ‘About this blog’ post on the right.