Today I read of a SEO competition that already started on June 1, 2008. Because it continues to August 31, 2008 I decided to participate.
My entry is aptly named Busby SEO Challenge and is hosted on a dormant site of mine with a nice Google PR and quite a few incoming links.
Now both these do not necessarily have to help this page turning up high in the results when googling for the keyphrase “Busby SEO Challenge”, but I don’t think it will hurt either…
The challenge is to have your site pop up as 1st in Google on August 31, 2008. The reason why I have decided to participate is not that I see myself having any chance of winning. However I find SEO very interesting and I think it is fun to see where I will end up. Mind you, many SEO-specialists participate in this contest…
So if you’d like to help me out, then paste the code below somewhere on your website or blog. Thanks in advance! <a href="http://www.yphh.com">Busby SEO Challenge</a>
The age-old saying “There is a first time for everything” once again comes true!
This afternoon at around 14:30hr my desk and floor were not so stable anymore and instantly I knew that I was in the middle of an earthquake!
Now, since it was my first, I did not really know what to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, rationally you know, but when you’re on the 13th floor of a 5yr old building in Beijing, where in 1976 they had a biggie in Tangshan all rationality goes out of the window it seems and makes place for good ol’ panicky feelings.
So after the major waving of the floor and my desk was over, I walked indecisive into the livingroom to see that the lamps were swinging above the dining table. “Hmm not good, leave” was my initial reaction and I got ready to go out. Standing on the hallway, looking at the elevator and realizing that by doing this I probably would have to walk all the stairs both down and up, I went back inside and called Mia who also felt something and had labeled it “being dizzy”. That description I found later back in many of the online forums.
Within 20 minutes the news also hit the western media (read: the websites I can read) so I could read what had happened. Sichuan, not too far away from Chengdu, in a place called Wenchuan, magnitude 7.5-7.8 on Richter’s scale, 4 kids died (so far).
There are many rumours that there will be aftershocks (that you can feel in Beijing again) between 22:00 and 0:00hr tonight, we’ll see what happens. Hopefully the Great Wall will survive the tremors as I have a day trip scheduled there tomorrow…
Via a client, I received the wonderful news that Homestay Beijing 2008 again was featured in an article in the Wallstreet Journal.
In August last year they already published an article where my initiative was mentioned and on February 9 this year they did a follow-up on that article. Homestay Beijing 2008 is mentioned as only alternative to (expensive and mostly full) hotels.
I have high hopes that this publication will again bring a rush from potential tenants, so I can fill the almost 400 available homestays!
Back from a fabulous holiday to Koh Lanta, Thailand, so placed the photos online.
Also decided to implement the NextGen Gallery that I use for most photo albums for websites I develop for 3rd parties on my own website, just because of user-friendliness.
Been quite busy with website development for 3rd parties lately. Over the past 4 months I have done 4 websites, only 1 of those is a redevelopment of one of my own projects, Beijing Day Trips. The time had come that it needed a new (and more professional) look, so during the past weeks I have been working on that, finished right in time for our holiday to Thailand!
Yup, my girlfriend Mia and I are going on a well-deserved, long holiday to Thailand! We start on Koh Lanta and we’re planning to do absolutely nothing, but staying in the sun, on the beach, in the sea for the first 4-5 days Then we’ll see if we get tired of that and hop over to another couple of islands or maybe even head to Singapore or whereever… We have about 2-3 weeks, so we’ll see!
Anyways, to show off my latests works, here goes:
October 2007, website development incl. CMS (Content Management System) for Die Kochmützen.
November 2007, website development incl. CMS (Content Management System) for DressCode Fashion.
On September 30 I took ISH to the Great Wall at Mutianyu.
ISH is a ‘troupe’ that performs integrating disciplines from the street and club circuit. They were invited by the Dutch Embassy to perform during the cultural festival in the October Holiday. At the festival there was a Holland Village to celebrate 35 years diplomatic relations between The Netherlands and China.
While on the Great Wall the group did quite a couple of cool stunts and they even did a “promo-video” for Beijing Day Trips. Please have a look:
The article states that evolution biologist Michael Worobey of the Arizona University discovered that 1 person is responsible for the arrival of the aids virus in the USA in 1969, much earlier than everyone had assumed.
One person and one alone, yeah right! Supposedly an immigrant from Haiti who traveled to either Miami or New York and from there the virus spread, first in the US and later through the rest of the world.
At the same time the biologist says that the immigrant is unknown, although he did ‘discover’ that he was single, uhuh.
He continues to say that around 1930 the virus was already transferred to humans in Africa who had been eating infected monkey meat. So they were not fucking with monkeys after all then?
Around 1966 the virus was brought to Haiti from Central Africa; the researchers (yup, plural all of a sudden) are almost 100% sure that it didn’t come directly to the States.
Well well well, blame the Haitians! Perhaps Bush needs some excuse to sanction them?
Yesterday was a cold but very sunny day and I had a couple of meetings around town. The first one was all the way in the North, so I took the #13 subway there and the second one was south of Guomao, so I could use the new #5 subway line all the way down.
It was a big surprise to see how enormously packed it was! And that on a normal Sunday, I guess it’s a good thing they finally finished that line.
When I exited at Guomao, the construction-site of the new CCTV Tower (designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren) was standing beautifully against the blue sky, so I quickly snapped a photo:
Then we’ll see if we get tired of that and hop over to another couple of islands or maybe even head to Singapore or whereever… We have about 2-3 weeks, so we’ll see!
