tenpastmidnight blog

I've just uploaded the new version of Spider Test, the tool I wrote last year to help people test how well suited their web pages are to being spidered by search engines.

It's got various improvements to the code behind the tests, especially the way it deals with Javascript and nested tables - before it would not notice nested tables if they were below a non-nested table. I've added checking for people mis-using the meta robots tag, which is one of the banes in my techie/SEO live. It's also done up in WPC livery. I'm hoping to add some extra graphical improvements at some point, but I also don't want to lose the lightness of most of the pages.

There's a list of changes in the history section.

I went to move my car after a meeting today and found some bastard has heavily clipped the bumper and torn the bumper mount off one side, forcing it through the wing and causing damage to the spare wheel well. Of course there's no note and they've buggered off scot free.



More pictures

I had been having a good week up until then. Now I've probably got to make an insurance claim (which is going to screw up my insurance for a few years), find someone decent to fix it, get it fixed and make sure everything goes smoothly with the insurance.

I was hoping to go to an aircooled show in Hicksted on Saturday and that's out too.

Frankly: shit!

We've now got a 'Featured Sites' area on the Brighton freelancers site.

A group effort between me, Simon and Nathan.

Hopefully the area will get used by plenty of members, but as less than a third of members even have profiles, I'm not holding my breath :-)

Now my workload has dropped a bit I'm running away from the computer a bit to make up for the many weeks I've been tied to my desk. I walked down to the Marina today and saw an enormous amount of sand has been dropped in on the Black Rock area, and workmen are packing it down in to pyramids and banks with Kangol hammers. Apparently we're having the "Biggest World Sand Sculpture Exhibition" starting on July 14th.

The Times has the story and 'KnavishRichard' has some pictures

During the walk I was listening to Radio 2's coverage of Live 8, which has been very good. Chris Evans is presenting but he seems to have grown up a bit and is just choosing good music to fill in the gaps between live bands and hasn't degraded in to being a childish tosser at all, which is great.

Ian Turner of Romsey Associates went missing last weekend just after the WebmasterWorld Conference. If you know where he is, please contact his family and the Police: Threadwatch has the details

I realise it's a slim hope that this will help, but I don't think it can hurt either. If I could have had a chunk of the world's SEO community and various mates looking for my Dad when he went missing a few years back, I would have used it. Happily, my Dad turned up none the worse for wear apart from having sore feet, and I very much hope Ian quickly turns up and all this has been because he's got stuck somewhere without good comms.

NB: America, grow up and accept the European standard in cellphone systems, then he would have had his mobile with him and switched on and all this wouldn't have happened.


Update, Sat 2nd July, 12.00

Ian's turned up, Threadwatch has the details again, and no doubt some more on the story when the explanation comes out.

Given how competitive a lot of the SEO community is, it's nice to see lots of people in it coming together over something important like this.