James Avery’s blog

December 26, 2009

Re-discovered my love for Scrabble

Filed under: Uncategorized, random — Tags: , , — admin @ 2:12 am

Have re-discovered my love for Scrabble, but avoided playing rude 4 letter J word as it might have offended other players. Settled for jam instead and saved the S for a better turn - a win all round :)

Thanks Alan Yentob for reminding me what a great game it is - invented by an architect, and world champion is an architect from Thailand - shows that it is a game of strategy and that the meaning of the word really doesn’t count.

And yes, I did ‘breathe’ a deep sigh of relief when I could play QI and collect 44 points :)

Now time to find some more local players (anywhere on the axis between Manchester and London will do if the players are good enough). Apparently there’s a good pub in London where people play regularly, and I’m sure the rude words are welcome!

(When posts are too long for Facebook and way too long for Twitter, they end up here)

March 30, 2009

Adfero DirectNews are incompetent - and if I can’t say it on A4U I’ll say it here

Filed under: Blogging, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , — admin @ 6:49 pm

I really don’t like companies which go round with a big wooden stick and try to clear up what others say about them on the internet. There has been a thread running on the A4U forum for quite a while about a certain Adfero - “bringer of news”. I could go on and on about the troubles I had with them, but it is feeding time, so I will keep this brief, make sure people know it is out there, and publish any more that is needed later.

The key discussion boils down to Adfero’s claim that:

“DirectNews does provide unique content – we are very aware of the dangers of providing duplicate content to a website and ensure everything we do is unique.”

In our case, this was about 50% right - when the story was unique, it was because the incompetence was on such a grand scale that no-one else could match it. I repeat again (well, as said on A4U about 3 weeks ago, but since mysteriously disappeared), according to Adfero, the Costa Del Sol was in Morocco, and Granada was a spice island walled city in the Caribbean - these are the facts of the so-called news they provided to us.

The rest of the time, the stories were often directly taken from other press releases - any news company will do this to some extent, but there should always be some editing involved, but not in the case of Adfero - again, specifically, I refer to the story they gave us about new BA flights to Algiers, which matched the BA press release we got verbatim.

Adfero then say that they got other blog posters to take down their comments because stories were “unsubstantiated” - I can certainly feel the fresh blow of their censor’s axe coming down tough on anyone who doesn’t like them.

Well, this will not do - an internet company providing news in the 21st century should be able to take a bit of negative commentary on the chin, and should not have to threaten other blogs and forums which say things they don’t like.

Adfero, when you read this tomorrow, please take note that this blog is the personal opinion of James Avery, and relates to the former contract between yourselves and Flightmapping Ltd. The opinions are my own, but if you take issue, you can email ja @ jamesavery .co.uk.

Note - I should point out that the above comments refer to Adfero Ltd, and the Adfero DirectNews product. It does not relate to Adfero Group, a Washington DC based media agency.

March 26, 2009

A few bookmarks about Social Networking and Affiliate Marketing

Filed under: Blogging, Social Networking, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 3:45 am

I’m going to expand on this list over the next few weeks, and I know I have a fair bit of reading to do to play catch up.

A few useful blog posts with suggestions for expanding websites through Social Networking:

January 8, 2009

To Be Continued

Filed under: Chess Board Maps, Uncategorized — admin @ 6:45 pm

An overview of world transport routes:

World Transport Map

Major airports & trunk train routes in France:

 

World Transport Map

December 24, 2008

Mapping Victoria around the world

Filed under: Chess Board Maps, Uncategorized — admin @ 4:33 am

Earlier on this evening, I posted out my last batch of Christmas cards, leaving just a few local ones for the morning. Then I get a Swiss Cottage (London) address for a friend from Hong Kong. The idea of the CBM (Chess Board Map) concept is that simple links between places can be drawn on a text file map which can be printed out rapidly on one sheet of A4 paper. The links don’t have to be geographical - the more lateral (INSIDE the box) the connection, the better - as long as it makes sense to the end user.

Some of my links will never make sense to some people, but I hope that everyone can understand the idea of Victoria, as you don’t have to go too far to find somewhere named after her (the British Queen), or after the name derivation (Latin for victory). I would start at Victoria Park in my home town of Royal Leamington Spa, but I haven’t counted that in the list as it isn’t really well known outside Warwickshire.

Victoria Station in London might be an obvious place to start, but there are several other Victoria stations in the UK, not to mention the former Victoria station in the former Bombay. Down under we have Melbourne, state capital of Victoria, and there is also a Victoria University in Wellington, capital of New Zealand. I hope you get the gist - I know there’s a couple left out - maybe Leamington should be included; then there’s the Swedish Queen and Mexico’s first president, but this is the list for now.

The first code is for the airport which serves the city mentioned (as a general rule, no airport = no mention), and the second is for the closest reference on the Chess Board Map (CBM) - e.g. London = C2. Bold CBM references are for cities which are directly on the map, standard text is where the CBM references the nearest point:

 

Sorry about problems with formatting. I will try and fix this in the morning.

CODE

CBM

CITY

NAMING
ATH E4 Athens Victoria Square and station
BOM F7 Mumbai former Victoria Station
BUH F3 Bucharest Victoria Palace
CNH B2 Columbus, Ohio Victoria’s Secret
CVM A4 Ciudad Victoria Mexico
DAC G5 Dakar Victoria University
DGO A4 Vitoria de Durango (fmr) Mexico
EBB E7 Lake Victoria nearest major city =
EMA C1 Nottingham Victoria Station
GZM D4 Victoria capital of Gozo, Malta
HKG H4 Hong Kong numerous
HOG A4 Victoria de Las Tunas Cuba
LON C2 London Station & numerous other
LOS D7 Lagos Victoria island (business district)
MAN C1 Manchester Victoria Station
MAN C1 Manchester Victoria Wood
MAN C1 Manchester Victoria Beckham
MEL H8 Melbourne state capital of Victoria
NYC B2 New York City Victoria Theatre
ROM D4 Rome word origin, victory in Latin
ROS B9 Victoria Argentina
SEN C2 Southend Victoria Station
SEZ E7 Victoria Capital, Seychelles
SFO A2 San Francisco Victoria Theatre
SIN H6 Singapore School & Theatre / Concert Hall
VCT A3 Victoria Texas
VFA E8 Victoria Falls Zimbabwe (Victoria Falls airport)
VIT C4 Vitoria Gasteiz Basque country, Spain
VIX B7 Vitoria Brazil
YTO B1 Toronto Victoria University
YUL B1 Montreal Victoria Square, Metro station
YYJ A2 Victoria, British Columbia and University

Sorry about problems with formatting. I will try and fix this in the morning.

October 3, 2008

The four hour working week — something to check back later

Filed under: Time Management, Uncategorized — admin @ 10:01 pm

A fellow colleague in the travel affiliate world has just reminded me about “The 4 Hour Working Week“, a book and blog by serial entrepreneur Tim Ferriss.  I say reminded me — he mentioned it before, and I really should have taken a look then.  Much of what he says is based on the good old Pareto rule, which basically states that you can get 80% of your results from 20% of effort, as long as you know how to concentrate on the right 20%.

I can’t really comment on this much further, because I have been so out of practice lately with all of these techniques, but I hope that at least by making a bookmark to this website, and scratching out a few thoughts here to come back to, I can make sure that I go back and do a lot more of this into practice.  However, there is something about this guy that really separates him from all the traditional self-improvement manuals which are out there, and that’s at he is able to use such wonderful jargon and acronyms. I’ve never met the guy, and only even spent about five minutes on his website, but I’m liking him already!

Here’s a few of my favourites:

  • “Everything popular is wrong” (sounds like a little bit of a rewind back to Zoo TV)
  • MBA = Management by absence
  • Geoarbitrage
  • “Protecting” time (after all, we all go to such great lengths to protect our money)
  • Remote Control CEOs
  • “Ultravagabond”

Now, what was that I was thinking about whether or not I really need an office?

Back to work….

May 23, 2008

Roger Waters - Dark Side of The Dome

Filed under: Music, Uncategorized — admin @ 2:13 pm

Having seen Roger Waters in Hyde Park in 2006, and again at Earls Court last year, I had particularly High Hopes for this show, even if the set list would be virtually identical to these two performances.

I saw two concerts at the newly opened 02 Arena (former millennium Dome) last year, but there was always going is something special about seeing Roger Waters playing “Time” in a venue that is effectively at the centre of time, being so close to the Greenwich Meridian.  If you’ve ever flown over The Dome (the view from London City airport is particularly good), you will know that it is supported by 12 pylons, effectively turning it into a giant clock face with a little bit of imagination. 

Does all this matter, considering that the O2 arena is buried firmly inside The Dome?  Maybe it wouldn’t for Take That, but Pink Floyd’s work has always been full of grandiose symbolism, so seeing Dark Side of the Moon played inside such a big white tent was always going to be an epic performance.  As with many previous Pink Floyd shows, Waters’ stage was designed by Mark Fisher, who has also created stage sets for The Rolling Stones and the U2 amongst many others.

The set list, and set pieces (my personal favourites were “Perfect Sense”, “Time”, “Money” and “Comfortably Numb”) might have changed little in the last two years, but inside the O2, everything just sounded that much crisper, and felt that much more impressive.  Dan [Fell, Flightmapping colleague] managed to catch Comfortably Numb on his camera, and he has put this on You Tube - the sound is amazing, considering that his camera is no bigger than a cigarette packet.

Dan reckoned he had just witnessed the best show he had ever been to, whereas the Scouser standing behind me promise that he would take this memory to his grave.  I’ll just settle with saying that I was completely blown away by this performance — maybe not the great Gig in the Sky, but certainly the combination of Waters and the riverside dome made Perfect Sense, even if this post doesn’t.

Set One 
 
In the Flesh
Mother
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts II - V) (abridged)
Have a Cigar
Wish You Were Here
Southampton Dock
The Fletcher Memorial Home
Perfect Sense (Parts I - II)
Leaving Beirut
Sheep

Set Two (The Dark Side of the Moon)

Speak to Me / Breathe
On the Run
Time / Breathe (Reprise)
The Great Gig in the Sky
Money
Us and Them
Any Colour You Like
Brain Damage
Eclipse

Encore

The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb

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