I write this from the “parental” area inside the Flying Fortress, a childrens indoor play area the size of a small country. The children are happily off playing whilst me and the good lady chill out with with a book (her) and the internet (me) as our companions for a few hours. It is of course interspersed with sporadic visits from hot and tired children often requesting liquid refreshment or worse, chocolate.

All in all, this wasnt how I envisaged the start of my 9 day holiday, but then English weather is never kind when you want it most.

I have to admit, I am a nightmare when it comes to holidays, or rather breaks from work, which is really what this is. It’s been terrifically busy at work recently, so the break is a welcome one, although I am finding it tricky to switch off and stop worrying about my clients and their SERPS, but I guess that comes with the job. Only this morning I found myself checking a few positions, just to make sure the work we had undertaken recently was paying off. Fortunately, they are moving in a positive direction, so less worry, but I really shouldnt be worrying on my week off at all, SEO does that to you though, especially if you care and I do.

My eldest daugher joked this morning (when the 3 year olds were running around like loony bins throwing food at each other and generally making every room they visited look like a bomb had been dropped on it) that I would be glad to go back to work for the rest! I won’t tell her and as much as I love spending time with my children and adore them to bits, she might just be on to something…

I’ve recently added a couple more photo’s to the ever expanding collection on flickr if you get time to check them out. This week may even provide some opportunities to add to the list further, I can but hope.

This morning I was contacted by a customer by email, then a text message, a phone call and even a twitter mention, all from the same person. It struck me that 20 years ago, he would not have been able to get hold of me on any of those communication platforms. Indeed, it would only have been more impressive had he also left a Facebook wall message and commented on one of my photographs on flickr!

You could argue, he would have been able to contact me by phone 20 years ago, but not on the mobile he actually called me on and in any case, back in the “old days” calls to work were kind of limited.

We really do take for granted the exceptionally clever ways we can communicate these days, with the plethora of social media platforms, mobile phones, the internet in general and numerous other ways we can chat, discuss and argue the days hot topics. In some ways its a shame that the local park has been replaced by MSN or the local pub has been replaced by farmville, but what is important is that we are cable to harness all of this communicational power and yet still dont.

I have a lot of friends who I rarely see on a day to day basis and yet even with them sitting on my Facebook account we still dont talk anywhere near the amount we did 20 years ago. Why is this? Well, although we have a multitude of different outlets to communicate these days, we are still shockingly bad at doing it. Not everyone you understand, but certainly my generation of 30 somethings could do a lot better.

My eldest daughter however was born in to a world which already had ipods, internet and msn and she see’s these things as a means to an end, they allow her to talk to her friends at all times of the day (and usually night) whenever she feels like it. There is no arranging to meet at a certain time, specific place and taking appropriate funds to do so, its just hopping on the laptop and seeing whos about.

This generation will be the first to fully harness the power of the internet and the communication tools it affords us and when that happens, what we think of as being huge now (facebook and twitter for example) will be a mere drop in the ocean compared to what the next generation of internet users have up their sleeves and in their brains.

When challenged recently to answer the question of “What age do we live in?” now, I was hard pressed to answer. Especially when you consider things like the industrial revolution in the 1800’s or even further back to things like the bronze age, but this week, I can comfortably say, we are at a the dawn of The Communication Age.

After last weekend’s jaunt off to Belgium to work with ESL TV, this past week has been a little odd. I had two days of sickness, the first time I have actually been physically sick in about 5 years thanks to some horrid little gastro bug, which also seemed to get my youngest daughter too. Luckily no one else had to suffer from it though.

The TV show was ok last weekend, it was great to work with the ESL guys again, something I never thought I would say 4 years ago when I first worked with them. They really have it down to an art now. They turn up, roll it all out, produce something on a stage and then just pack down and go home. Typical German efficiency you might say, but they also love what they do and its a marvel to watch.

It was the first time my eldest daughter has seen behind the scenes at an event or TV production and although she was bored stupid for most of the time she spent in Belgium, she did seem to enjoy it.

Back to my day time job and the world of SEO continues to amaze and astound me in both positive and negative ways equally. It seems completely at odds with the dictum of not flooding the internet with useless crap when it comes to article spinning, even if I totally understand the reasons behind it, doesnt mean I have to like or enjoy it.

I’ve also found a little time to up some new pics to my flickr account including one i’ve had for a while that I shot at London Docks over two months ago. I am now up to photo number 99 and I want to make upload 100 special. I will either find or take a photo in the next week that will be spectacular or i’ll post a photo which means a lot to me of someone that means a lot to me. Either way, I should have something to post this week as I am heading to an air show later today, if the weather holds. Oh and the lack of F1 stuff here? Its the summer break!

This weekend will see me travelling to Belgium to host, present and commentate on the ESL Asus European Nations Championship, live on ESL TV.

This is just about the most prestigious tournament for nations anywhere on planet earth and this weekend coming will see the battle of the lowlands with the Netherlands (Holland to you and me) taking on Belgium in both Counter Strike and Counter Strike Source. ESL TV will be bringing you live coverage, streamed via IPTV with full on site production of both major games on Saturday.

The matches will be played out at the Antwerp Esports Festival taking place in (oddly enough) Antwerp at the same time.

We will also be giving away prizes and goodies at the event and who knows, probably have some fun via Twitter.

I will also have Corin Cole alongside me providing the colour commentary which means you can expect plenty of dry wit analysis and jokes aplenty between the two of us!

Just a quick one to say that I have begun going through the photographs from last weekends trip to the farm. It was a farm with a difference however, as you will be able to tell from the first photograph uploaded.

I have literally just updated flickr with the Totem Pole photograph (don’t ask!). Wizz over to my flickr account for the pic http://www.flickr.com/photos/redeye-/4817554983/

I’ve been particularly slack on the photography front lately, including a missed opportunity to go to Goodwood for the Festival of Speed. My good friend Steve did go, but I am yet to see any photos from his shoot. It’s the same old story, just not enough time in the week to get out there with the camera, though I did try recently with a short trip on to the south downs to attempt some quick shots, but didn’t get anything worthwhile out of it, such is the way with photography.

Despite my slackness however, I have put together a few galleries of my favourite shots on the web from the last 6 months. There are three galleries showing off friends work including my personal favourite sea scapes as well as two further galleries for Portraits and Sunsets.

Check them out and leave the good people a comment if you are already on flickr, these are just about the best images on there and all in one convenient place. It took me hours to find these, so save yourself the trouble by simply popping over to the galleries :) and if that wasnt enough, I also added my own photo’s from flickr on the little gallery in the right sidebar, which will now update when I take some more. The only problem is, now you know when I’ve been slack and not taken any pics…

Seascapes

Landscape Sunsets

Portraits

You’ll notice on my tweets that I now have branding on them (bottom right corner) that links to this very site. It isn’t new, but its an area which

Have you had the Twitter Light Bulb moment yet?

Twitter (so far) have not seemed too concerned about, but wait until the big guns realise they can do this and before you know it all of the major companies will be using their own branding and link.

From an SEO point of view, many may sneer at this due to it being nofollow, but let’s not forget the power of traffic to a site directly from Twitter and the live feed now featuring in Google Search pages for popular terms. I messed around with this the other day and managed, very easily it has to be said, to get on the front page of Google with a tweet and the all important link. Think how much you would have to spend to get to position 4 for some of the big terms out there and then love the fact you can do it for free using nothing more than Twitter.

There is an easy tool out there to manage your Twitter (and Facebook now too!) and create a new API which you can use to brand your tweets called MarketMeTweet, costing $79 for the year. If you are serious about growing your Twitter following, managing it effectively and using it as a proper marketing tool, $79 is a real bargain. Obviously, if you are a casual user, there would be no need to get it, but the face of Twitter is changing and more companies are realising the power it can yield, managed correctly.

Don’t underestimate the power of social media in SEO terms.

Where on earth does all the time go? It seems like only yesterday when I said I would make sure I blogged more and yet here we are almost a week since the last post. Perhaps I need to rename this place failblog.

We dont like people who have black hats, not in this industry.

Anyway, it’s been an interesting week on the whole with some new discoveries in the world of SEO (more black hats than saville row) and my constant, but steep learning curve shows no signs of levelling off yet. I always felt I had a capacity to learn things quickly and learn a lot at one time, even if I wouldn’t class myself as an academic, but this job has really opened my eyes to just how little I used my brain in the last couple of years.

I was also reminded by my step mother (no, she isn’t wicked) that I still need to finish off her new site. I wouldn’t call myself a web designer in any shape or form, but Im reasonably good in photoshop and I know a bit of php and sql. That said, for her holiday home project I chose to use wordpress and although it has its restrictions, I am finding it reasonably flexible. The main problem is finding some time to get it finished, especially with work and learning taking up large quantities of my time, never mind the children and the long suffering girlfriend.

Perhaps I am doing this all wrong, especially as I work for a company that do web design. I wonder if they do staff discount or even a freebie now and again. On a more serious note, I have been playing with Social Media a lot this week, in particular spending time learning about the Twitter API and how to utilise my own Twitter apps. Obviously this is all from a marketing point of view, but I will admit to enjoying it for personal benefit too. I’ll put up a couple of posts today with the details in for those of you interested.

Mark Webber won in a pretty convincing style at the British Grand Prix. Sure he was aided by a first lap puncture to team mate Sebastien Vettel, but he still had to drive superbly to keep Hamilton at bay. Jenson Button also had a great result coming from 14th to 4th at the flag in an unspectacular but flawless drive.

I was particularly impressed by Kobayashi again as he flung the Sauber around Silverstone and there were plenty of talking points throughout. One of which was Fernando Alonso’s drive through, which I personally thought was rather harsh considering the person he gained the advantage from had dropped out. What was he supposed to do? Typical that Nigel “Dramatic” Mansell was on the drivers panel this weekend for the stewards, no bets guessing where that decision came from.

Finally, it was great to see Sir Stirling Moss at Silverstone, handing over the 2nd place trophy no less to Lewis Hamilton. There is no bigger legend left of the golden F1 years and I was mighty glad to see him in good health, back fighting fit and if you weren’t aware, you can even see him driving in anger again in two weeks time, nice one Sterling.

A certain, annoying moustachioed brummie once said the crowd at Silverstone where worth about a second a lap to him. If that’s true, supporting both Jenson and Lewis this weekend might mean they only get half of that each. Still, the way Red Bull have flown on Silverstone-esque tracks of late, that half a second might come in rather handy to the McLaren boys.

It’s odd, I have never supported British drivers simply because they are British, indeed I have often lamented how crap our drivers have been in the past, even when winning world titles in obviously superior cars. I have seemingly always liked the firey, passionate kind of drivers, Gilles Villeneuve, Jean Alesi, Ayrton Senna and Juan Montoya to list but a few of my favourites and you’ll notice none of them are British.

In fact, until JB came along in 2000 I can’t recall a British F1 driver I have truly loved watching. The same happened again in 2005 when I first watched Lewis Hamilton kicking butt in the junior formula and suddenly in 2010, not only do I follow 2 British F1 drivers, but they both drive for the same team (also British) and are the previous 2 years world champions.

So when I say, I hope for a McLaren 1-2 this weekend which would see a pair of British drivers in a British built car winning the British Grand Prix, it isn’t due to national pride, but simply because the pair of them are fantastic drivers and great to watch. Good luck chaps.