Before booking any cheap flights to Goa, you may well want to check out the destination first. Luckily, Holiday Hypermarket give just such an opportunity. By integrating a Google topological map of the area, along with a live weather report and videos of Goa itself, you can get a better idea of the sort of holiday(s) you can expect out there. Combined with a description of the types of people who may well be interested in the destination, and the ability to easily add extras such as ‘meet and greet’ parking or the use of airport lounges means prospective holiday makers should find the site a one stop shop.

You probably will not notice a great deal of difference, especially on the front page, however I have tweaked various aspects here and there, trying to decrease the load time required. Also, when you view individual posts or specific categories, the majority of adverts have now been removed. Whilst I could pretend this was entirely motivated by wanting to please my readers, the adverts were not earning anything like enough to justify their continued existence, especially since some of them may have contributed towards this blog’s downturn in Google’s ranking.
Anyway, let me know if the pages load any quicker, the same, or whether you prefer the look of the site with less adverts and ‘get a review posted here’ type links. If you would prefer not to leave a comment on this post, feel free to contact me, the link, as ever, is at the top of each page.

I still have problems accessing my CPanel interface if I don’t use the HTTPS address to connect, but as there is no disadvantage to this method, only increased security, I’m not overly concerned. Anyway, I was looking through some of the info provided by AWStats, and noticed that regular readers (at least those with a fixed/semi-permanent IP address) are increasing for this blog. Thank you to whoever you are. I also noticed that the raw number of unique visits has been getting healthier over the last few months, despite a break in posts whilst I was in Amsterdam and Britain.

The search terms people are using when they find my site also interests me, see below for an example of them. Free bed plans and Kazakhstan are regularly in the top 5, however I never would have thought that Hetty Wainthropp would be a source of traffic! I have checked through the top 50 (Google) results for that search phrase, and I’m nowhere to be seen, so someone, somewhere is really quite interested in the TV series…

kazakhstan, chris merriman, computers internet blog, free bed plans, triclear, tewksbury flood 2007, hetty wainthropp

Anyway, feel free to laugh at the visitor numbers, gawk at the search terms, or simply ignore this post. On the other hand, if other stats are of interest, such as the countries most visitors come from, or the OS/Browser break down, feel free to contact me.

It looks as though Demonoid.com is still down unfortunately. If anyone has any reliable info as to what is happening, please do leave a comment or e-mail me. In the meantime, in case you have not come across them, torrentspy.com and isohunt.com are pretty good as well.
If you are currently using a demonoid tracker for some of your torrents, it is apparently still live, but without the site, there is no way to search for new downloads.
As ever, I don’t support illegally downloading copyrighted materials (unless you own the original and it is legal to do so in your territory), so only use such services for public domain or authorized materials. /ass covering.

[edit]
I also meant to mention for a while, as torrentspy currently have comments disabled, there is a workaround in some instances… Grab the url for the torrent you are interested in, and add it to end of cache: as a Google search. If you are lucky, and the page was last cached (if at all), when comments were still live, you will be able to see them.

Yep, just over a week after Google dropped this blog’s PageRank from a 4 to a 3, they struck again. Unless the data centres are having some bizarre little jittery dance, and the PR goes back up again, www.ChrisMerriman.com is now back to a PR of just 2
This was it’s rank back in early April.
So what changed? Well pretty obviously I now make commercial posts on here, which Google have decided is bad. Links that are paid for pollute the internet. Unless you pay (AdWords) Google for them. Then they are OK. Obviously…
In the last 6 and a bit months, I have received a lot more links from other people, and before any know it alls jump into the comments with obvious statements, a lot of these links were from people outside of the PayPerPost et al scene. A couple of PR6 links, a few PR5s, and a lot of PR4s all made me think I may even get to a PageRank of 5 myself this time Google updated their stats. Not this time…
Combined with Google’s AdSense account banning last December, I am not feeling a lot of love for them.

It looks as though this blog has dropped from having a Google PageRank of 4 to just 3. This could well be due to the commercial posts I have been making, which have placed a lot more OBL (outbound links) on the front page, or perhaps Google are attempting to deliver on their threat/promise to punish bloggers who try and make a living from their site. I’d gladly be using AdSense right now, however Google saw fit to ban my account, so I had to turn to alternative methods.
Hey ho.

I have just completed a quick check of how this blog is faring when it comes to search engine results, using Google.
www.ChrisMerriman.com is 3rd for the phrase Kazakhstan Blog, an improvement most probably helped by a recent campaign I ran over at PayPerPost. Unfortunately if you search for Astana Blog , this blog is now just 17th, possibly due to the fact that I don’t mention my home town each time it appears in a blog post - long term readers know where I live, but search engine bots (and new readers now that I think about it ) may not be able to figure that out. Though it is mentioned at the top of each page ().
Finally, if you happen to search for Astana Kazakhstan Blog (or the more likely search of Astana, Kazakhstan Blog), then this site comes in at 1st place!
If you are interested in other blogs from this country, then I recommend you visit the Links page, as several other blogs are listed there, whose writers either live here, or at least have an interest in the goings on in this nation.

I hope this post may be of use to people thinking of visiting Amsterdam, whether you be a regular reader, or have arrived here via one of the search engines…

Forums
Amsterdam Coffeeshop Directory Forum - An offshoot of www.CoffeeShopDirect.com . Friendly most of the time, with all sorts of questions answered, not just weed based.

Channels.nl Forum - Not just weed based, you will find threads get a little more heated here. If you have never joined a forum before, perhaps start off at the ACD one listed above, and progress here once you have found your feet.

Virtual ‘Dam - Relatively new addition, seems to have no massive egos currently residing

Maps
Amersterdam CoffeeShop Direct - Maps and SO much more. The amount of info collated here is mind boggling. If you intend to boggle your mind whilst in Amsterdam, do check this site. From this site the ACD Forum listed above was born. So much info of use, I have downloaded the site to my PDA, so I can browse it offline, if there are no free WiFi hotspots in range.

WiFi Hotspots - A pretty comprehensive of official WiFi hotspots. I am also taking a program WiFiFoFum with me, to easily detect where kind citizens have left their WiFi network open for others to piggy back and use their internet access.

Wiki Map of Amsterdam - With places of interest marked. Most have descriptions attached if you click on them. Very easy to navigate around.

GVB Transport Map - The English version with trams, buses, trains and metro services marked out. Simply click on the area you are interested in to zoom.

Nemisis’ Map - Assuming you have Flash installed on your internet browsing device, an incredibly helpful layered map. Difficult to succinctly describe, check it out and click on top right buttons to see how much info is packed in. Each point has further information if you hover your cursor over the area.

Google Earth - Well worth installing. Free, and you can place pins in your favoured destinations. When you are done with that, you can then do all the obvious things like checking if you left anything out in your back garden the last time a satellite took a photo of your area! Once I have returned to Kazakhstan, I will be publishing some data files that should pinpoint locations of worthy places of interest. I have a draft copy, but many places are not yet confirmed in terms of their exact location.

Other/Misc
Who Is In Town? - Particularly useful if you belong to a forum. You can easily check who else will be around at the same time as you. Assuming you don’t dislike their online persona, you can arrange to have a ‘real world’ meeting and see if you have anything (apart from the obvious ) in common.

Muffin Man - A MySpace page dedicated to a brand of special muffins. Blatant advertising, but has a little information at least.

St Nick’s Canal Boats - If you would like to take a trip around Amsterdam’s canals, I’d recommend using this non-profit organization over the big operators.

Escher Museum - No idea how good this is yet, but I (like many ex-students) appreciate his works of art, so I’ve provided the link for now. Will try and provide a proper review after our trip, assuming we make it there.

erowid.org - a collection nearing academic standards of information pertaining to drugs. Although mixed in with personal views, you will find a lot of cited research results and scientific facts here. Useful for reassuring yourself if this will be your first experience in Amsterdam, or if your know-it-all friend is spouting rubbish.

I am also collating all these sites in one place so I can find them easily whilst in Amsterdam. Hence the following unique phrase to allow me to find this specific post easily - purple horse.

It is worth checking the other pages of sites I have listed - many have different sections, each useful, but if I link to each section on each site, I’ll be typing forever.
If anyone else has any sites they would like to see listed, leave a comment or contact me, and I’ll add it on.

No sites have currently requested these links, nor is any compensation involved.

OK it is 6.55am over here, and I am still up, hoping to catch another WorldWide Wednesday opportunity over at PayPerPost, as I managed to last week (see the Argus post). If it does not appear soon, I shall give up and grab some sleep. The official release time for these opps is Wednesday midday until Thursday midday, EST. Here in Astana, Kazakhstan, we are 10 hours ahead of that time (no daylight saving time adjustments over here), so if I’m lucky, I may not miss the releases whilst asleep.
In the mean time, here are a couple of articles I found interesting…

Although I will not need to get a new passport for another 6 years (and therefore, unless a new law is passed, not have to have biometric information added to it with a RID chip (thats a whole other ‘Aware Or Conspiracy Nut‘ post for another day…) facial recognition is already in use at the passport control areas I usually use when flying home. Because of this, I need to remove my glasses (and also not smile, I recently discovered) to ensure that the cameras in the official’s booths can easily measure the distance between my eyes, nose, mouth size etc. and compare it to the passport photo. Although this software aids the fight against the use of false ID, it is not perfect. This BBC article explains how a researcher has discovered that by averaging different photos of a human face into one composite, both computers and humans make less mistakes comparing real life faces to the photo. This should eventually lead to a higher accuracy rate…
Lastly, we have another article, this time on how the Chinese Great Firewall is not so great when under strain. The article goes into some detail about how the Chinese authorities actually manage the flow of information on subjects they would rather their citizens did not have unfettered access to. However, I would really like to hear from anyone who has some first hand knowledge in this area (are you reading this Gavin?), as I was previously under the impression that the so called Great Firewall of China was infact NOT centrally administered or even based, and that the blocking of sites and information was the responsibility of the different ISPs that serve different areas of China. From previous blog posts I have read elsewhere, a resident of one area in China may find they are able to access sites that someone thousands of kilometres away can not. Anyone able to enlighten me?

[sidenote]
I have just noticed this blog is #1 on Google for the term Aware Conspiracy Nut

When searching for accommodation in New York Hotels are usually the first choice in tourists minds. Whilst there are obviously hotels aimed at a wide range of budgets and requirements, with such competition between the many hotels in New York, there are some great deals to be had.
One thing I have learnt from my research on Amsterdam is just how important it can be to get an idea of where everything is situated with reference to other places you want to visit. Although many sites have small maps indicating their address, the Real Travel site lists the New York Hotels alongside a mash up of their database and Google Maps, meaning you can see where exactly your preferred New York Hotels are situated. I had never realised just how geometrical the street layout was in NYC - it looks a little like Milton Keynes! Anyway, you will also find links to blogs and specific posts on the city, should you wish to hear about life in the Big Apple from a personal angle.