Penitence for the bad amongst us

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Messina: Pulling the float for the Virgin Mary during La

Messina: Pulling the float for the Virgin Mary during La Vara, August 2013.  Image Credit.

Italy has been in the news quite often for the goings on of its rather colourful politicians. One noteworthy proponent being Silvio Berlusconi. He conjures in ones mind the perfect example of what the Mafia stood for. Political player, entrepreneur and above all else a person who felt he or she stood above the law.

Berlusconi is such an individual. For years he has done all of the above. With his media empire he has manipulated the opinions of the Italian electorate and has managed to stay in power even though he has spent a fair amount of time in court defending himself against a bunch of suspected crimes such as soliciting sex with minors, bribery of civil servants, accounting fraud and more. Above the law. And in fact when it came to the push, even changing the law so that he could escape conviction.

Just like Al Capone, famous Mafia godfather in the USA, he was finally caught on tax evasion charges in 2012. And yet he remained in government. Ignoring all against him. It was only during the last week that he has been forced out. And it seems he is finally offering penitence in the form of community service.

An image on Spiegel caught my eye during the past few days. An image of penitent sinners pulling a float holding the Virgin Mary taking place in Messina during August 2013. It seems the most penitent people are also sometimes the most corrupt. Apparently the people pulling the heavy float (physically) are doing this to be forgiven for their sins. Anybody see Berlusconi there?

Unlike Berlusconi the new mayor of Messina is a barefooted, anti corruption teacher who is seriously fighting the evils of the Mafia in his part of Sicily, historically considered the birth place of the Mafia. One wonders how long he will survive.

Makes me think of the various processions held in Marbella, Spain. Virgins of various names and functions get pulled around as statues or floated in the sea. And the cities governing officials from a few years ago have just been handed long term prison sentences for corruption. A cool €24 billion fraud. Wonder how many of the crew being marched into prison have pulled the Virgin Mary’s float here.

Is there any correlation between penitent Virgin Mary float carriers and the level of corruption practiced by the individual. Probably not…

Welcoming the Evening Wedding in the UK

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Evening weddings now allowed in the UK.

Evening weddings now allowed in the UK.

Did you know that wedding venues in Yorkshire and the rest of the UK were not allowed to offer wedding ceremonies after 6.00pm. That is until October 2012. Finally a new law came into effect that replaced some element of the Marriage Act of 1836. One wonders what else in that Act could be ever so slightly outdated…

That’s surely some time ago. In 1836 the Marriage Act stated that people could only marry between the hours of 8.00am and 6.00pm. The reason for this was to ensure you married the right person. The thinking went that you needed to be able to see them properly to ensure that you weren’t about to get swept away by a dark and handsome stranger.

Strange it took so long. It’s an age where we are constantly bombarded with new technology, advances in medicine, scientific discoveries and more that impact on the way we live our lives. This law seems from another age. Literally.

Of course the churches are also having to change their rules in line with this. Perhaps church officials will need to be available now to marry couples after hours, so to speak. Church facilities need to be opened in the evenings and not just for praying. But why not. Like all other businesses and institutions, they will have to offer what their consumers wish for.

Seems that the UK is slow with some changes to its traditions. Only in 2002 the law was changed that allowed wedding ceremonies to be conducted outside of churches, registry offices or specifically licensed facilities.

Perhaps its a hankering we have for stability that makes us hang onto traditions that don’t make sense anymore. With electricity we don’t need to avoid evening weddings. We can see whether we are meeting up with the right person in front of the marriage officiant. Or not.

Or perhaps we are just used to believing that the law is right and can’t be pushed over to make changes for new ways of doing things. We are just so used to following the letter of the law it doesn’t occur to us that it is in our power it could be changed. And should in fact be changed to be more in line with modern trends and thinking.

It is surprising sometimes to see the UK living back in the land of its ancestors. Actually England and Wales in this case as Scotland changed their law regarding evening weddings some time ago already, It’s otherwise such a forward thinking, all inclusive society that one is fairly surprised to stumble across a law from 1836 that has only had changes made in the past year.

At the end of the day folk didn’t think the change was worth hassling over. And that’s probably it.

Do you want success in Online Dating? Watch this Video

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Online dating is about two sides
This fabulous TED video discusses a woman’s path to finding the right life partner. It’s a great view of online dating and shows how one woman tackled her journey through this landmined field of finding the right one for herself.

There were two elements to her quest. The first one was to find the ideal person online. This was of course relatively easy as she checked through profiles and identified the type of person she wanted to be with via a long list of points she had compiled to indicate what she was looking for in her partner.

She did find this person online. However, to her shock and dismay this person didn’t find her attractive and did not respond to her message.

The online dater needs to present an attractive picture
This small disappointing fact made her realise that there were two aspects to this search in the field of online dating. The second part of successful online dating is all about how the searcher presents herself. And cutting and pasting out of ones CV isn’t really going to work too well.

She tackled this part of her task with much energy setting up ‘test’ profiles to review the market so to speak and identifying the best online profile that could offer her a chance to attract the right person.

And she discovered there were definitely characteristics that allowed certain online daters to be more successful in the online dating environment than others.

She did end up meeting the right person during her trip through the online dating journey. And if you are looking for a partner, you might want to check out her video to see how she did it. It’s an interesting take on online dating. Or Mi Amor en Linea as the Spanish might say.

It’s never really just black or white

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Hamburger Hill. Image from 'Slaughter of the innocents: The Vietnamese war as never seen before.'

Hamburger Hill. Image from ‘Slaughter of the innocents: The Vietnamese war as never seen before.’

Nothing in life is ever set in stone. Or illuminated in black and white. Nothing. Nada. Which means you should never say never. Statements like there is no reason for homes to have a PC, or what would you want a mobile phone for, or there will always be cars or trains to take commuters to work should never be believed in.

Then there are opinions held by folk that advise us that the Russians will always be our enemies (harhar) or that Communism is evil. Perhaps you would believe that North Korea will always hate South Korea? Is that possible?

Before you say yes, best have a look at this statement. The USA will always hate Vietnam and North Vietnam will always hate the USA. Mmmh. No. But it certainly felt like it during the Vietnam/USA war didn’t it. And it’s this black and white fact that has now disappeared that I want to mention.

Commemorating the 50 year anniversary of the start of the conflict a book of photographs by press photographers is being published. Slaughter of the innocents: The Vietnamese war as never seen before. It is considered to be the last newspaper war. That is one where  journalists were the bringers of actual news. What the press photographers shot was what people saw.

What made me take note was one image that showed a US paratrooper wounded in battle at Hamburger Hill in central Vietnam. You see I actually drove past Hamburger Hill in a bus with staff from Hope Center on a work outing. They pointed it out to us. We were past the little bump (hardly a hill really) within seconds, hardly seeing the gun that commemorated the spot.

Yet that insignificant spot was a nasty battleground with many dead soldiers from both sides. And what were they fighting for, both sides? Besides the hill? During those years perhaps the issue was black and white. Communist against Capitalist. Or whatever. But it wasn’t really. It was a bunch of determined locals prepared to die to keep their country safe from a foreign invasion.

And now nobody could be bothered to even remember the hill. Except perhaps the relatives of the hundreds of dead soldiers. What happened to that black and white principle that had to be fought for with guns and human sacrifice?

So before you get stuck on defending a principle you think is cast in stone think really hard. Is it still going to be this black and white in a few year’s time? Think of gay marriages, or women priests in the Anglican church, or women car drivers in Saudi Arabia or time travel or never aging. What of that list is impossible? Thought so.

Lucky to come across young violionist David Garrett

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Every now and then I thank my lucky stars that I have been able to experience the interwebs. Why? Because I can find stuff on it that I would never have been lucky to experience if I did not have this resource at my finger tips.

Here is how it went down! I like to read at least one German article a day just to keep my language skills from fading entirely. But to make it easier I read a more popular magazine. In fact my German family thinks I’m truly slumming it. I don’t think so. I really enjoy their articles and the scope of what they write about. I can read and understand their articles without fuss. And it drops into my email post box every day. easy enough as I have subscribed to two newsletters a day. And it gives me easy access to German. No need to look up words. I get it.

So today I read about an Austrian jeweler who has built up a hugely successful silver jewelery business. He started off as a mechanic, ended up on a tour of Asia after his qualification and ended up falling in love with Asian funky decorative accessories. And the rest if history.

Many stores later his own as well as supplying well known jewelery stores he has made it big. Checking his website after watching a video on him on my German magazine website I see his company has signed up some long haired musician to endorse a range called Rebel. So of course I got to check this musician. And where else but YouTube.

And young musician is fabulous. A true cross over artist. That is he crosses over to every genre, kind of. But then who says you have to only play classical music as a violin player. Well of course there are the Irish who throw in violin into everything that is music. And fabulously so.

But mostly the violin has been banished ever since the demise of the local village bands who were the main entertainment of the folk back in the days. Now only allowed to perform in the hallowed halls of the classical concert venue.

Until you get to see somebody called David Garret playing Guns and Roses. Long hair tied back or waving around dramatically this young man is redefining the violin. And it’s gorgeous. Of course Vanessa-Mae kind of debuted the sexy violinist bit, but she always kind of sold it to me on sex appeal. Perhaps unkindly so. I’m sure she is totally talented and she certainly made a ton of money.

But this young man really gets it. Gets the play music to entertain bit. No matter what it is. As long as it is gorgeous. So as I was saying. Love the interwebs.

Responsive web design – heard of it?

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Responsive web design. A view of a website on mobile devices.

Responsive web design. A view of a website on mobile devices.

Success story for a retailer using responsive web design
Of course we hear all the stories about responsive web design and how we should all be heading towards this. After all mobile devices are taking over the world. Aren’t they? So is your website responsive yet?

It’s nice to find a report where responsive web design is proven to be a successful move. With hard stats to support the move.

The story: PupLife.com went live with their new responsive website September 20120.

Comparing August 2012 (the last full month before going responsive) with August 2013:

  • Sales through mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) are up 88% from $1,918 to $3,600.
  • Total web sales are up 28% from $13,705 to $17,482.
  • Mobile sales as a percentage of total web sales is up from 14% to 21%.
  • Total page views are up 13% from 61,659 to 69,458.
  • The conversion rate for the site on desktop computers is up 29% from 1.03% to 1.33%.
  • The conversion rate for the site on tablet computers is up 38% from 1.14% to 1.57%.
  • The conversion rate for the site on smartphones is up 111% from 0.09% to 0.19%.
  • Mobile traffic has soared 68%, with the traffic pattern changing from 68% desktop, 21% smartphone, 11% tablet, to 53% desktop, 31% smartphone, 16% tablet.

(Stats credit: Internet Retailer)

To support the new responsive website design the company also switched their newsletter mail to a mobile friendly lay-out. An across the board approach. The customers rewarded the company.

Responsive web design allows a retailer to build a single website using a single set of web content and a single code base and have the site display in a way that it fits the size of screen the visitor is using to view the site, be it on a desktop, smartphone, tablet or smart TV. An all in one solution.

But responsive web design is not only for commercial uses. Your company or your small business website also needs to be responsive. This blog post was supposed to go onto Yeah Can. But that site is being revamped. So here we are. Can’t waste a good post. Chat to the peeps at Yeah Can for info if you need to get your website responsive.

Something surprising happened at the Yeah Can Office

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Great blog for UK client DaDa Wear. Responsive of course.

Great blog for UK client DaDa Underwear. Responsive of course.

We’ve been chatting at the office (Yeah Can Web Design Studio) about where the web is moving to and what the technology is up to for web design and web browsing. After all those are the two topics for us. Web design for our work and the consumer part for what our client’s are trying to offer their website visitors.

One of the buzz words that started about two or three years ago was Responsive. And towards the end of last year we headed into this unchartered water. Well more like we jumped in boots and all. Which is probably not a bad way of going about it. If we had known what lay in wait we would probably have changed careers rather.

But when the buzz around gets to a certain pitch you really have to take note. And one sees responsive web design used more and more. There’s some heat there.

Almost a year down the line we are still no quicker at building a responsive website, we are still testing and tweaking and we are still learning at a huge rate. It’s just not so easy to design and build a responsive site.

Every day now, almost, there are statistics flying around as to how the numbers of mobile users are increasing. And what is more important for us, how many users are accessing the interwebs with their gadgets.

So today we did something at the office that was rather illuminating. And in fact we should have done this long ago. We actually tested our own websites as to mobile gadget use. Duh. How slow can you be.

Of course we have seen the little phone and tablet icons appear in our analytics results. But actually checking the overall stats had not even occurred to us. Bad I know.

So here are some surprising results.

Our own business website which is for Yeah Can has a surprising small number of mobile gadget visitors.  In fact only 12% of our visitors use a mobile device to visit our website. Perhaps it’s because people are at work and are using their desktop work PC? Whatever the reason we thought it would be higher.

A website we maintain and promote is for our keywords. Responsive web design experts has a worse showing. Who would have thought that a website dedicated to spreading the word about responsive would have only 9% of the total of its visitors use mobile gadgets.

But here are the really surprising ones. We have a new project where we are learning about SEO practices or Search Engine Optimisation to the uninitiated. We are learning by doing. How to get onto page one of Google search. Our project is called Yorkshire.weddingvenue.info. And what we are trying to do is get this website to rank on page 1 for our keywords.

A most surprising spin off of this exercise is the mobile visitor numbers for our wedding venue site. It stands at a bumper 38% of visitors who use a mobile gadget. Wow. Presuming that wedding venues would attract a predominantly female audience, probably between the ages of 20 and 50 or thereabouts you get a real shock when you see that the uptake of mobile gadget is so high for women.

What that means is that anybody with a business website targeting that audience whether flower shops, beauty and hair products, even cars and the list goes on should be jumping up and down to get a responsive web site. You would think!

But here is the final stat we discovered. And I must admit this one wasn’t really such a surprise. Although still ended up higher than anticipated. We started a Spanish language online dating site last year with Spanish speaking friends. However, their life paths changed and we lost our linguists. We kept the website going. Well we kept it up as in alive but that was about it. Why take it down.

But we didn’t do too much extra work on it. In fact we didn’t even make it responsive. Big mistake. 42% of visitors to our Mi amor en Linea (love online) website use mobile devices to access the site. Are we missing a business opportunity or what…. Not only that, but over the course of the year, our keyword has managed to find itself quite close to page 1. With a bit of effort, such as a responsive website, we could have some success. Well maybe.

So there you have it. Dating and businesses focused on women need to hurry up and make their websites responsive. In a hurry.

Another war for America

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Memorial Day in the USA. More and more grieving people.

Memorial Day in the USA. More and more grieving people.

Are the American people not tired of war? One wonders. And didn’t Obama loudly proclaim, in fact it was one of his winning promises during his first time around election spiels, that he would not have committed America to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Promises.

Yet here he is. Doing the big sales pitch to his government and the American and even the Russian folk hoping to persuade them into meddling in Syria.

There’s no disputing the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Or the effect it is having on the countries surrounding this warlocked state. 2 million refugees and more walking across borders every day. Civilian deaths, gas attacks and the shocking tally goes on.

Having said that. Bringing in a sophisticated strike force into this hot bed of guerrilla warfare is hardly going to work. Think Afghanistan, think Vietnam and the list goes on. Even Zimbabwe managed to outlast a supreme army and to wear them down in the end. Imagine Mugabe as head of that war and you can see how unlikely that seemed.

But besides the problem of trying to wage a war where one side kind of works along some sort of ethical rules if that is at all possible in war and the other side that fights dirty, throwing arms at a humanitarian crisis doesn’t seem to me a solution.

Of course the American arms industry is already gleefully rubbing its hands at the thought of all that spending about to happen. And I would imagine that Obama during the convenient G20 gathering happening right now will extract money from the developed world to pay for his little war mongering (not the first US president to play that card – thinking Desert Storm) so that a bunch of foreign exchange will help with the embattled US debt.

Kind of supplying a mercenary army to the world. In fact one wouldn’t be surprised to discover that the US army could consist predominantly of soldiers (PMCs) supplied by the Blackwaters of this world. Or whatever they are called now.

Besides the unlikelihood of actually winning this war, whatever a win might mean, throwing arms at a humanitarian crisis isn’t really a solution. More arms, more fighting, more civilian deaths.

But the biggest hurdle is really knowing what is going on and who is really behind the strife and how the conflict could be resolved. Nobody really knows who spread the chemical weapons. It does seem likely that a company in the UK supplied it though. Yup. Nasty, nasty developed world.

Whatever the US decides to do, armed intervention is not the right way of doing it. Just alone the fact that the Asians and Russians never mind China don’t want to know is an indication here. Keep out. Let them sort out their own problems. If you want to do something, send more aid to care for refugees. Give them the opportunity to settle in other countries if they wish.

Who is the enemy by the way? The rebels or the government. If the Syrian government is the rebel then isn’t the US aiding the overthrow of a legitimate government. Or at least the world accepted the government as legitimate until not so long ago. A whole new can of worms….

On weddings and wedding gifts

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Are you Frankenstein's Bride?

Are you Frankenstein’s Bride?

Recently read this great article on brides and their tantrums. Find it here. Learned a new expression. The CTFD Method of coping with weddings. It stands for Calm the Fuck Down. And the writer gave a bunch of examples that so hit the spot that I laughed out loud.

Writing about weddings and wedding venues now as I am doing for a work project I’ve come across a bunch of hilarious stuff. And the one thought that crosses my mind is that they should have used the CTFD Method.

In particular the one amusing bit that comes up quite regularly is about wedding gifts. And the expectations around those. Although I must admit when I got married too many years ago to remember entirely we also had a few words to say about the three toasters we got. Never mind the cheap cake fork set and as for the oven gloves with strawberries on them. Yip, I remember those. They lasted for ever.

And that was the particularly funny part of the article. The bit where you can’t forget what so-and-so gave you for your wedding. And you remember it until your dying days. Carrying a grudge for years over something totally insignificant. At least I can’t remember who gave us the strawberry gloves. So I can’t carry the grudge anymore. (:

In particular brides tend to be the most vicious when supposedly rich people neglect to hand over some gorgeously expensive gift that they have always wanted. And as for those brides who themselves gave their friend/acquaintance a gift from a store in expensive Fifth Avenue and doesn’t get an equally expensive gift in return, she is an enemy for life.

Apparently it gets weirder than this. Men get away with it. They don’t bring wedding gifts? No problem. Poor dear probably didn’t know what to get. But the women? No such luck. They should have known better. Taken out a second mortgage on the house to buy a glorious gift. That’s what they should have done.

Regrettably the entire wedding industry is geared towards making a wedding the me-focused, exhibitionistic, overspent event where supposed traditions dictate how the bride and her party should behave and how guests should toe the line. Including expensive gifts.

What it should be is a celebration of an event where you as bride should be thankful that people actually arrive traveling from afar and where what you offer is a gift not based on any gratuitous reciprocal expectations! So apply the CTFD Method whenever you overreach yourself….

Hoping you fail

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Diets - designed to fail

Diets – designed to fail

 

Have you ever considered that there are a bunch of companies and industries where the main focus of their business is on their customers actually failing. That is, they post growth and profits when their customer base doesn’t benefit from their product or service.

Scary thought that.

It had never occurred to me before. But consider the weight loss industry and businesses operating in this field. They benefit if you do not lose weight. Or at least when you put it straight back on again once you have lost it. Because if you don’t succeed you will come back for more diet pills, diet books,  plastic surgery, fad diets, motivational seminars, personal coaches, health gym contracts and the list of businesses feeding off this industry is endless.

They all make money on the fact that you can’t do it on your own. You can’t do exercise, you can’t control your appetite, you can’t get rid of the pounds and so the list goes on.

And they depend very much on this fact that you are dependent.

For instance Weight Watchers sells contracts to it’s members. They throw in a few nutritional well balanced diet books as the membership benefit plus a team leader who runs the weekly meetings and is there to encourage the folk in the group to get rid of the weight. Team leader gets a few Dollars as commission, the area leader gets some Dollars in commission and so it goes up the food chain. Pyramid scheme, almost.

What it does depend on is that people don’t take control over what they put into their mouths or what other pursuits they undertake to keep their bodies balanced and healthy. They depend on failure. They depend on you as the human being to hand over responsibility of your body to somebody else. After all, by joining Weight Watcher (and of course there are a bunch of others too) you are admitting defeat. You can’t do it yourself.

Then there is an entire industry that is supporting this world. Clothes that only look good on skeletal models. An advertising industry that promotes thin is beautiful. Have you ever seen a slightly plumper looking person -in other words normal one – advertising a cellphone, washing powder, sanitary pads, orange juice or motor vehicles to mention a few of the TV ads that are pushed down our throats.

So we buy into thin is beautiful. But to be as thin as the role models in advertising we have to give up food all together. This brings me back to the opening idea. We are going to fail. Because there is no way we can be as thin as the models we see every day on TV, online news portals, in between YouTube videos, in print, on billboards. In fact they are everywhere. Reminding us that only thin is worthy.

So if you want a business idea that will be a success, sell a product or service that depends on somebody to fail. The diet industry has certainly worked this one out. So has the motivational and self-development industry. The health gyms that sell you a one year contract at the beginning of the year knowing full well you won’t last past February know all about it. How do you think they can sell you a life time contract for next to nothing. They are not going to see you your entire life time. And the list goes on.

As a business model, selling failure is for the win.