Blackhat SEO – Esrun

Back to Europe

Regular readers will remember that I went over to Europe and drove around a bit about a month and a half ago… well I have decided that I want another little break so I’m going back! I just booked an 8pm ferry tomorrow night to Dunkurque and a return ferry Midnight on tuesday.

If anyone has any suggestions on where I should go then let me know! I’ll be looking over flash earth tonight to see what my options are, I love driving through different countries so no matter where I go it should be good.

The funny thing is I have spent forever looking at new cars since I think it’s about time I bought a nice car. I currently drive a rather basic renault clio but only drive about 10 miles a day so there’s never been a good reason to get a decent car. Anyway I have spent so much time looking at new cars but no time at all on this trip lol oops.

Comment if you have any suggestions

Update: I decided to go see a friend tonight and have a few drinks(read: A LOT of drinks) since I’m going away and he plays guitar quite well and made a song up on the fly which I recorded on my cell phone so I thought i’d stick it up here …*file removed. back 14th july*

Legal action against spam hunters

Every now and then you get a new boy scout who feels it’s their duty to go hunting for spammers and “out” them to the public. They wont do something constructive like come up with a real solution, such as improving captcha systems.. no because that takes brains! They just fixate on certain people and spend all their free time (highlights their sad lives) trying to track down spam and make a big deal about it.

I don’t know if spamhunters are stupid or naive but outing someone as a spammer won’t stop them spamming, at worst they’ll loose a batch of sites. Everyone I know in this business builds sites over different domains, servers and whois details so you would never actually close down someones whole operation.

Sometimes I feel that it is necessary to take legal action against people to protect my reputation, often these people make libel comments online and think they can just get away with this – they cannot. I was speaking to a friend this morning about taking action against someone who has been making comments which I consider defamation of my character and they said they weren’t 100% if the comments would be considered libel…… Okay fair enough I said but the bottom line is most people don’t want to go to court or simple can’t afford it. Even if I loose its going to cost them a reasonable amount of money defending themselves which should teach them a good lesson.

I’m laid back enough to take shots against me, take the piss out of me.. but it goes one step further when people start trying to publish details about you and make you out to be a criminal. Even if the information is already public and known by most, its just the intention made by these people that bugs me.

Back in the U.K

Well I just arrived back home and it’s nice to be able to lay back in my own place. I got stopped for a “random” customs search and I ended up stuck there answering questions for 30 minutes or so. The main problem was that I was unable to provide any proof of where I had been staying within the EU. One comment made by a customs officer which made me laugh was “And you know it’s illegal to bring guns and drugs back into the country?”… why on earth would it be LEGAL!?

Some pics… Some were taken while driving so aren’t that great.

My route:

Random:

Eiffel tower:

The police in Paris chased after this vehicle and stopped it in front of the lights I was waiting at. After a short time they had the other people from the car in cuffs and on the floor:

When in Belgium I think there was a football (soccer) match on or something and there was such a huge police and military presence.

Ugh good morning amsterdam

lol its about 5a.m and I’m feeling a bit rough. I got chatting with a couple of canadian guys in one of the ‘coffee bars’ yesterday and ended up spending the day with them getting pretty wasted. We went on the hienikken factory tour where you’re given 3 tokens to get beers while walking around but people keep giving us their tokens because they didn’t have time or just didn’t want to drink… we had a hell of a lot to drink there. I’m feeling a little worse for wear this morning but oh well I’m off to Dunkerque now.

Amsterdam here I am

I didn’t get a chance to go online last night but I did make it to Belgium.. I stayed in Brussels. To be honest I didn’t think much of Belgium. It was okay I guess but it just seemed a bit … I dunno just not that Great.

I have literally just pulled into Amsterdam and there are hundreds of open wifi points which beats paying 4.50 euro an hour! Looks good, I think a lot of places are closed though because its sunday and/or because its early. Oh well I’m off to explore now.

I’m in Paris!

I left for Dover (UK) at about 7pm thursday evening and boarded the ferry at about half 9. The ferry departed at about 10-10:30pm and arrived at around midnight in Dunkerque (France). My initial idea was to drive straight from Dunkerque to Germany but I decided that since I was pretty tired then maybe I’d go for something a little closer to start with and sent an SMS to a friend back in the UK asking for the postcode of the eiffel tower in Paris.. Over 200 miles later I’m in the centre of Paris at about 3:30am and decided to get some rest at a ‘rest stop’ and got a couple hours sleep in my car. I set off to find a hotel at about 9am.

Let me tell you, driving in France is madness! The roads are generally poorly maintained and most have no lighting nor cats eyes in the ground. Many roads don’t even have lane markings so traffic kind of just merges into one big lump with everyone trying to fight for some space. I supose I got the raw end of the deal being in Paris because its obviously going to be one of the busiest parts of France but its just so crazy I cannot even explain it. It’s just dangerous.

Anywayyyy, I managed to find a hotel and had an nice shower and change my clothes then I went and spent today at the eiffel tower (it was SO SUNNY!) where I met a lovely little ladie who taught me the tradition of kissing goodbye… whoooo lol.

Right now I’m using a wifi at 4.50 euros an hour which isn’t too bad I guess. I’m trying to decide what to do next. No matter what; I will be sleeping in Paris tonight but I just don’t know about tomorrow. If I don’t leave for Germany early in the morning then it’s just not going to be possible to make it there, do something and make it back to Dunkerque by Monday. So I have to decide whether to stay in Paris for a couple more nights and check out some museums and such like… maybe even disney land LOL I like crazy rides OR find something to do in germany.. Or a whole different country!

Edit: Oh bollox! I thought going to Paris would actually bring me a bit closer to Germany but its added about an hour!!!!

Edit2: With the help of a mate I have decided on going to Belgium and then Holland and then back to Dunkerque. Wahey let the good times roll!

Mac speedcamera detector

I tried my hand at a bit of C programming a good few months back and it was a bit of a nightmare. It reminded me of when I use assembly on PICs; having to declare everything and be so strict. This really makes you realise how slack your PHP code is!

Anyway it was coded for use on mac os X and basically reads data from a bluetooth gps device and then compares the data against a speed camera database and prints out how close you are to a camera and what type of camera it is. It is ran within the terminal.

All I wanted to say is I hope people who code in PHP realise how fortunate they are to use a language which is so laid back lol.

I have attached the code just incase anyone wants to see it. I am certain it could have been coded better but it was the first thing I had written with in C.

Download: mac speedcamera detector

France to germany…

I am thinking about going away to france and then drive through to germany. My idea is to leave Dover(UK) and get a ferry with my car over to Dunkerque(france) and then drive through to germany. I’m just curious if anyone can offer an insight into any potential problems and the time it will take.

I intend to leave tomorrow evening and return Monday night.

Any ideas readers!?

Google maps suggests just over 6 hours..

Update: I have just booked my ferry tickets and ordered a new sat nav. Way wah woo wah!

I <3 Wales!

Lately I have felt that things have been building up on my mind and when I got home friday I decided that I needed a break. A couple of weeks ago I went swimming at one of my friends indoor pools and one of the girls there was welsh and I absolutely loved the accent. I decided pretty much then that I wanted to goto Wales at some point!

So I got home at about 6pm friday and started looking around online for things to do in Wales. I found a lot of sites that suggest activity breaks in Wales and decided that I’d do something like kayaking or quad biking or just something a bit exciting! I started calling several different places but most either didn’t answer the phone(out of hours) or couldn’t help me at such short notice until finally I got through to a guy in north wales who runs an activity place and said he had some people doing some activities on the Saturday and that I could join in with them if I wanted and stay at the place on a B&B scenario.

So I went and got a sat nav unit from someone I work with and left Essex at about 8pm. I arrived in North Wales at about half past midnight which is pretty quick. I drove into St Asaph and asked a couple of local lads for direction, unfortunately they didn’t know the way but I couldn’t help but smile when they started speaking welsh to each other lol. I ended up talking to a couple of girls who had been in the pub and we drove around a bit looking at stuff like ‘tha vallaaay’ lol. In the end they showed me where the place was and I took them home and then arrived at the adventure place at about 2am.

Where I was staying was a big mansion type place which was so large that I kept getting lost walking around it! On Saturday I did some quad biking, mountain biking, archery and in the night I went up into the caves with one of the guys(staff) I made friends with.

Wales is an amazing place! The water and air are just superb and the people are amazingly friendly. I will definitely be going back but for a longer time, maybe a week.

I dropped a couple of people off in Birmingham on my way home which unfortunately added a couple of hours to my journey, taking about 6-7 hours to drive from north Wales to Essex.

I’d highly recommend that if you have never been to Wales before you should go!

Kitesurfing

Most people who know me will know I like to spend my free time doing exciting stuff… rally driving, paragliding, kite surfing… anything where there is a bit of excitement involved really!

I usually go abroad a couple times a year kitesurfing because it’s so much nicer abroad. The weather is hotter, the wind is more reliable and the sea is much cleaner and warmer! But now and then I like to take the kites out locally although generally not in the cold dirty UK sea :p

We were using a 10m kite with 30m lines.

We started today by the coast and my friend kept moaning about it being too windy and dangerous but I wouldn’t agree and we carried on setting up. The launch was sketchy at best and he was right, it was FAR too windy! I was holding the kite above my head which is where there is generally no power but it was lifting me into the air and holding me there! I asked him to hold onto me and it was lifting both of us! I have to admit, at this point I did start getting a little nervous and started to shout “GET IT OFF ME!” referring to where the kite hooks onto the harness you have to wear.. luckily we managed to disconnect it and the kite crashed down to the ground.

After this we decided to relocate to a less windy place and it was much safer although there were some very odd rising winds to start with.

Edit: Oh and usually you have a safety release system which lets the power lines go slack and therefore if you get into trouble you can make the kite loose power instantly… I just haven’t got around to setting that up yet!

Anyway got some cool pics

PIC 2

PIC 3