Life in Ronda and Spain, Spanish Property

Today the BBC has an article on some of President George W Bush's worst quotes, which makes for hilarious reading, but also reminded me to jot down some thoughts for writers who want to improve their communication, and just maybe, increase your earnings per article on sites such as DP, Webmaster-Talk, or Netbuilders.

Without wasting any time on puffery, let's get straight into the words I often see native and non-native speakers alike use incorrectly.

Confusing your and you're, this annoys me considerably when I see native speakers doing it. Your means that the object of the sentence belongs to the subject, for example, 'your house has a blue roof'. By contrast, you're is the contracted form of you are, and would be used 'you're a handsome devil'. Read More

Back in the 1980s I stayed in a hotel of Interstate 95 in West Palm Beach for a couple of nights while holidaying in Florida, which was one of the highlights of my trip, now I wish I could go back.

Now before you think I've gone mad, I mention this because a few days ago I had the mixed fortune to watch a film set on location in Florida's Palm Beach, I say mixed because the film "The Prince and the Pauper" is aimed at a much younger audience, but it did give me the chance to see how wonderful the city skyline looks now.

My memory of the area is that it is a playground for the rich and famous and West Palm Beach travel is a growing industry with Carnival in June, and one of the world's best known independent film festivals, both based in the county.

Florida's east coast is probably more famous for Miami, but anyone choosing to visit, or even invest in property there should probably give Palm Beach a look before making a decision given that it is only a little over an hour away from Miami, but without the big city problems.

The Palm Beach County property appraiser should be your first stop if you're interested in the general housing, apartment, or acreage property market, especially now since purchase values may have decreased but property taxes are unlikely to have done.

West Palm Beach is a small city compared with it's southern neighbor, and I believe more appealing for that, and is part of Florida's famous Gold Coast where the sun always shines, and the city boardwalk is safe for families and retirees.

Here are some of the best Palm Beach hotels for your next holiday in the sun.

I think this must be the most amazing photo I've ever seen, it immediately jumped out and grabbed my attention while flicking the pages of Car Magazine that I borrowed from a friend. Where I live getting UK magazines takes time, mostly because I'm a cheap skate and don't want to buy the magazine when it first appears on the newsagent shelves, so I wait until I visit friends and read their copies.

The picture is a Lotus Elise which has been converted to battery only with the addition of fans and bouyancy foam that lets it swim. But as I said, it was the photo that jumped out at me, what kind of photographer can make a picture of a car look like it's cruising along on the bottom of the Atlantic?

Whilst I would never describe myself as a great photographer, I am proud to say I've sold a couple of shots on micro-stock sites, but this is way beyond anything I can do.

A few years ago I tried my hand at underwater photography, but Ric Frazier has taken this to the level of being an art form, and consequently he's in demand all over the world to direct photoshoots and video for commercials.

I'm not sure what's involved in becoming a noted underwater photographer, and when I think of it, I always expect pictures of reefs, sharks, sunken wrecks, that sort of thing, so it was a bit of a surprise to see Ric's portfolio which is nothing like this, in fact being underwater is about the only thing in common with my expectations.

Certainly I can see why he is in demand for commercials and editorials, his photos are obviously taken to maximise impact when words surround the subject. If you have any interest in photography, even if you just want to improve your skills for holiday snaps you should definitely check out the rest of his portfolio.

In SEO terms, managing bounce rate is not often talked about, most 'experts' tend to focus on off page optimization that usually involves minimizing reciprocal links and gaining relevant one way links.

For the last couple of weeks I've been taking a look at my stats on this site over the last four years, and a couple of other sites I own that are younger.

What I've been looking for is a way to improve my SERP (Search Engine Result Page) position, or improve earnings from passive sources such as AdSense.

Internal links improve pageviews
The interesting thing I've discovered is that there are several pages on this blog that have a good number of backlinks and have their own unique title, description etc. Read More

Recently I've started taking a look at my workflow and the effort involved in maintaining websites, and given my personal circumstances, ie not having a guaranteed source of power/Internet, I've started playing with developing websites in plain HTML.

The great advantage of sites coded in plain HTML is that they are easy to backup and work on when you don't have instant Internet access. I've mentioned it before, but backing up a CMS such as Wordpress, Serendipity, or Joomla is painful.

Recently I discovered RapidWeaver, a platform for the Mac that makes it easy to put together a website, including a blog, using supplied templates, or you can download them. Read More

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in. Read More

Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope you all have a great holiday despite the crisis. Here in Spain Christmas day is a special day for catching up with family or going to church, but the really big day for giving gifts and having a party is the 5th of January.

We were hoping for a white Christmas since we had snow on the mountains around us only a week ago, but we've had a week of much warmer weather, so no snow today.

Starting tomorrow in Ronda, we have three days of live Nativity and a themed market in the town square where every stallholder has to wear period costume. I believe many of the stall themselves will be constructed of wood with period coverings as well.

Enjoy being with the people you love today, Merry Christmas

A few days ago I was walking around Ronda at night, and happened to cross the Puente Nuevo on my way back to my bicycle which was parked at the railway station.

The photo you see here involved me peering over the wall on the La Ciudad side, and in the background you can see Plaza de España. The Christmas lights are on every night in Ronda now, my photo doesn't do them justice, I'm itching to take some nicer shots in La Bola, Ronda's main shopping precinct where the lights are a fantastic blue and silver.