If I had been unsure of the time warp I was about to experience when some friends and I were preparing for the event by listening to 30’s jazz and modeling our hair after pictures of 30s icons, or if I wasn’t clear on what I was getting myself into when we later met up with more party-goers in a house that leaked early 20th century opulence like a sieve then walking into No. 5 Cavendish Square last night would have been a bit of a shock. But in fact the 1930s swingers party – which could hardly be described as a costume party but more of an attempt at an authentic recreation of a 1930s event – had been the talk of the girls in the office for nearly a week and even I was breaking my self-imposed work night curfew to check out the scene.
A friend knew the organizers (who had pitched their party proposal and won 10,000 pounds from Smirnoff vodka to host the bash) so after being checked off the guest list, we entered a world of pinup hair, cummerbunds and big band swing. The venue was perfect – various rooms wound up and down stairs leading to, among others a whiskey parlour and a private library. And the outfits! I was sorely out of place in what was probably a more accurate recreation of 1930s outside on a sunny afternoon compared to the evening gowns, gloves and pearls that all made their appearance on the women at the event but I didn’t notice a hair out of place thoughout the night. Instead, nearly everyone in attendence had tried their absolute hardest to come dressed for the era.
By 2am, I was beginning to feel the hour and so made my way back to 21st century London but I am so glad I went along and hope next time my wardrobe can be a bit more accommodating – amazingly the same friend knows another group who won another 10k for another 30s theme party – the next one out in a country house for a weekend of 30s frivolity. What a lark!
I have suddenly found myself in what is perhaps the most hectic week of my time in the UK thus far. A full recap of my somewhat excessive social life will be coming forthwith however I wanted to share my excitement over the recently released Spoonfed Events Radar Application for iPhones which is now available for free from the iTunes store. Now, anyone in London can discover what’s on near them with their iPhone with our incredibly nifty app that includes both listings and the “radar” which shows what’s on in the vincinity. Take a look at a video demo of the app:
The app has also been featured in TechCrunch UK, in an article that has already sparked some debate. Read the full article about the Spoonfed Events Radar for the iPhone.
Today is Shakespeare’s official birthday. By official, I mean it’s the day the officials decided he was born. While it is a tad bit unfortunate for Shakespeare scholars and fans that his birthday isn’t known for certain, it actually worked out quite well for purposes of symmetry and national significance – April 23 is also St. George’s Day (and what better date of birth for a national hero than the day of the national saint?) as well as the month and day of Shakespeare’s death. In any case, it is with relative certainty that we can say Shakespeare was born this week.
While I was unable to join the festivities, one of my favourite London landmarks, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, celebrated the date with Elizabethan-era music, dancing, costumed performers and the opening of their summer season. I myself will be heading down to the Globe next Thursday to review this season’s Romeo and Juliet which, while lacking the unique flavour of improvisational Hamlet at midnight, promises to be absolutely magical. In a tragic sort of way, of course, but that can’t be helped. It will also be my third trip to the Globe theatre and I’m glad to be getting a start on the season early – I hope to have plenty of opportunities to go back throughout the summer.
For today, however, I’m wish a very happy (and very, very belated) birthday to Mr. William Shakespeare. I don’t know where we’d be without you. In honor of Shakespeare’s birth, here are a list of just a few of the words for which the first recorded use in the English language appeared in his plays. There are over 2000 words with which he is credited with inventing or using first.
Although I had a good five hours in Edinburgh between arriving in the city after my train from St. Andrews and my flight back to London, I found it was quite an awkward amount of time for properly exploring the city. It didn’t help that I had a 15lb backpack stuffed with four days worth of clothes, shoes and travel accessories to carry around town with me. All the same, I was determined to make the most of my brief time in the city and so began by making my way up to the highest point above Edinburgh where, naturally, sat the castle. Compared to the small St. Andrews castle ruins, the Edinburgh Castle was a stunning feat of masonry, history and vantage, looking in every way as a highland castle should. Despite the rather pricey entrance (12 quid plus another 3 for the audio guide), I made my way into the castle proper and found that it was going to take a lot more time than I had expected to do the castle right. There were a vast number of rooms, chapels, monuments, passages, dungeons and turrets to explore and the crown jewels of Scotland themselves were on display.
One of my favourite parts of the castle was the view over the rest of town. With the audio guide providing bagpipe music and a narrated history of Scotland as a soundtrack, I spent quite a bit of time appreciating the sun, warmth and spectacular view. There was a lot to take in. So much so, that as I started to push three hours at the castle, I felt I had to at least take a quick look at the rest of the town.
I left the castle by way of the Royal Mile, a road that leads down the hill from the castle into Edinburgh. I took a brief detour into the tartan weaving mill tour - basically an outlet shop for tartan and cashmere goods but with a working weaving mill in the basement that allowed visitors a glimpse of the process. Because it was a Sunday the mills were silent but it’s probably a good thing it was a quiet day or I would have quite certainly have been suckered into getting my photo taken in full Scottish tartan regalia.
I continued down the Royal Mile, bypassing the Whiskey Tour (if only because I had a lot more walking to do and a plane to catch), and crossing the entire town to make my way up the hill opposite the castle where a vast public park overlooked the town. There, eating an ice cream, lying half-asleep in the sun, overlooking the North Sea on one side and Edinburgh on the other, I could not imaging a better way to spend an afternoon.
Dinner was a quick sandwich to go, eaten in the lovely Princess Street Gardens situated between the National Gallery and the train station before it was back on the bus to the airport. It was a fantastic trip and I am very much looking forward to returning to Edinburgh for a bit more indepth look at what the town has to offer.
I’ve been less than 24 hours returned from my trip to Scotland - including St Andrews, the birthplace of golf and current hometown of a high school friend, and Edinburgh. There are places you can visit and trips you can experience that are so incredibly different from everyday life that you can’t help but understand the experience in a new way. Maybe this is why you return from some trips so refreshed - it’s a shock treatment of sorts, allowing you to rest one part of your brain and use another for a vastly different experience than the ordinary. I had this sensation during my trips to Austria, to Wales and now to Scotland (while Paris and Barcelona, which amazing in their own way, still had the very distinct feeling of being in a big city with lots of urban and international populations like London). In Scotland, I was far removed from the busy city life and pollution of the city, and exposed to the clean, cold North Sea air in picturesque towns and to be entirely honest, I can say that given the option I might not have gone back to London at all.
St. Andrews is about an hour north of Edinburgh by train. Part of the reason I was so drawn to the town, I think, were the many comparisons I was able to make between St. Andrews (and St. Andrews university) and Waterville and Colby College where I went to school. Both isolated, beautiful campuses with an incredibly clever student population, a landscape prefered by wealthy tourists, an hour or so north from the next big town, right up at the top of the world.
The first evening of my visit to St. Andrews, I attended a ball with my friend Kathryn and her friends at school. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect - even my experiences of formal dances at school more closely resembled a drunken club night than a regency era ball. Of course, the St. Andrews ball was all together different again and was less a ball than a traditional ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee), a Scottish gathering and dancing event that features a number of partner and group dances not at all unlike Western line dancing (in fact one of the dances at the ceilidh was the Virginia Reel!). Despite the presence of high heels and dresses, we all danced through the entire ball and didn’t begin to make our way back to Kathryn’s house until 1am.
The next morning after a bit of a lie in, I got up to begin exploring the town of St. Andrews. I had been warned by Kathryn that there wasn’t a huge amount to see but after breakfast I made my way down to the St. Andrews castle, a seaside stone ruin overlooking craigy cliffs. The entrance price was steep and the entire castle visible (due to a lack of southern wall) from the road so instead of exploring the castle, I instead made my way to the (also ruined) cathedral.
It was wonderful to imagine what this building must have been like in its heyday - only two enormous pilars of stone remained to mark the height and majesty of the cathedral walls. Now the entire area is given over to a graveyard and is a rather eerie but beautiful tribute to St. Andrews architectual and personal history.
I next walked along the beach around to a southern point of town, enjoying the wonderful weather and views. The morning passed quickly and by midafternoon, I felt I had a good grasp on St. Andrews’ layout and made my way to the centre of town - along with just about everyone else in the city - to watch the annual parade in honour of famous St. Andrews University alum and notable former residents of the town. Elaborately dressed up men and women of the university paraded through town disguised as Mary, Queen of Scotts and John Cleese among many others.
After the parade, it was time for a stroll down to the beach, an ice cream and a late afternoon pint before returning back to Kathryn’s house to relax before dinner. I had hoped to try some haggis while in Scotland but when it came time for a meal, I baulked at the local delicacy and decided to go for the steak and Guinness pie (like a hearty beef stew with a flaky pastry on top) as a local-but-tasty alternative. Oh well, there will always be other opportunities for haggis.
The next morning I was going to be leaving for Edinburgh mid morning, allowing myself some time to explore the city before catching my flight home but my last stop off at St. Andrews had to be the famous 18th hole on the world’s oldest golf course. Golf was, of course, invented at St. Andrews and it wouldn’t have been right to leave without admiring the green. It was a wonderful few days and although it is unlikely I’ll go back (Kathryn graduates in a few weeks) I can’t speak highly enough of Scotland. Stay tuned for review and pictures of my time in Edinburgh.
This evening I attended a regular London event called Open Soho - so named for the area of town (Soho) in which it occurs. Tonight marked the 6th Open Soho and the event is self-described as
Devised by PopJam’s Alex Tew and Irish opportunist Paul Walsh, OpenSoho has helped create a community of like-minded followers through its Facebook group and Twitter page, causing a clamber for tickets each time they’re made available. With a sponsored bar and late-night dancefloor, OpenSoho is a highly acclaimed night on the tiles for those currently causing waves and shaping the future of the UK digital, media and advertising scene. These folk work hard and play harder, come join in the fun.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect as I entered the venue, located on the second floor of a rather posh-looking restaurant. As has been the case for many of the meetups I attend, I went alone. Generally speaking, attending events solo is difficult but for something so based on networking I didn’t expect to have any problem and was right to think so. What a charming, social, friendly group of people! I’m fortunate to have a story (”I moved to London with no job, no place to live and not knowing a soul!”) that gets people interested but I think even without a tag line I would have had some incredibly interesting comversations.
I’ve had some trouble nailing down a focus for this blog, as I’m sure many of my regular readers have noticed. London, of course, plays a prominate role but so does technology and the two subjects have not come together very often. Open Soho has, for me, combined the best of both with Londoners truly excited about their startups and businesses all meeting together in one of the best parts of the city, while sharing their technological and internet-related thoughts and ideas. I met part of the webteam that runs What’s On Stage, a London theatre website hoping to meet some techies instead of just more theatre critics; someone who seemed to be taking advantage of the fact that London is a fashion capital with his upcoming Facebook app focused on the modeling industry; a fellow American in London looking for ways to get people jobs and many more besides. Plus there were a couple of familiar faces from previous meetups I’ve attended.
Tomorrow morning I’m off to Scotland for the weekend but I’m very glad I got one final push for tech, business and networking in this week before I switch to the polar opposite, rural setting. All in all it was a great event and I very much look forward to the next one.
I should give a plug to the sponsors of this evening’s bar and Open Soho event, the endlessly cheerful and sugary sweet I Like U Coz, the site that lets you tell anyone in the world exactly why you like them. Go check it out!
About two weeks ago, Google completed an update of their algorithm and listings. While this is something they do every few months (you can see a great recap of when these updates have occurred in the past here: Google PageRank Updates) it still causes a massive shakeup in the SEO world every time. For me, this update was well worth paying attention to for a number of reasons.
1. Learn Page Rank changes
As I have mentioned in the past, the Page Rank that Google assigns to any given web page is often reflective of how important it is to Google and how highly it will rank in Google search results. When Google does one of these big updates, it often modifies the PR of different web sites and pages to reflect changes since the last update. Generally speaking, if you’ve increased traffic, backlinks and content by enough, PR will go up. In my case, I went from a PR3 to a PR2 – this decrease is probably due to the fact that it was not within the last three months, but the three months before that in which I wrote an article that got on the front page of digg, temporarily bringing me a huge increase in traffic and backlinks. I care when Google does an update because I can see how my site’s value has changed in Google’s eyes through change in PR.
2. See if SEO has been working
Search Engine Optimisation is tricky for me as it is often difficult to gauge results. I can optimise my text, no-follow the right links, and build backlinks to The Top Floor Flat, but generally speaking, it takes a few months to see any impact and it’s all but impossible to attribute any change in search engine rankings to any one action or event. When Google does an update, it’s a chance to see where rankings have improved, where they have fallen, and compare that to overall improvements in the site. For example, I’ve seen an increase in my ranking for the term “Reposado restaurant” - the Palo Alto restaurant I reviewed a while back.
3. Gauge competitor’s SEO
Google updates its algorithms across the board, not just for your site so of course you see how things are looking for all web players after the shakeout. Upon doing a search for your key search terms, are you seeing your competitors more often? Perhaps they’ve got a new SEO strategy and you need to make sure that you are staying up to date with your own SEO goals. Have the PRs of your competitors increased? Maybe they are getting more backlinks – take a look at who’s linking to them.
For anyone heavily involved in SEO, it’s difficult to miss a Google update (the Twitter and Blog chatter on the subject during the update was a clear indication of how important a subject it is) but for someone just learning about SEO who might not have seen an update before, as was the case for me, it might be easy to miss, or questionable why an update is so important. For me, seeing a change in page rank, a change in actual search listing results and the changes in my competitor’s SEO is an indication of whether or not I’m on the right track in my own SEO attempts. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled in about three months for Google’s next major update. Want to learn more about Google? Check out this interesting interview with Google employees.
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I ve been singing the praises of the collaborative creation of Courvoisier and jelly makers Bompas and Parr ever since I heard about plans to create a giant punch bowl so big one could row a boat across it. The idea of a bowl of punch where one could...
I ve been singing the praises of the collaborative creation of Courvoisier and jelly makers Bompas and Parr ever since I heard about plans to create a giant punch bowl so big one could row a boat across it. The idea of a bowl of punch where one could...
