Web Blog of Greg Mathews

I hope all of you that celebrate Christmas had a very Merry one. Ours was a fairly quite affair, out for lunch and then back to ours with the inlaws. What was yours like?

I must admit our kids didn’t do aswell as they have in the past from us, we only spent about £50 ($80) on each of them and this did make me feel a bit guilty as I have been very lazy over the past year and done very little coding to bring in the cash. That is going to be my New year resolution ‘Get of my arse and do some work’, oh was that last years?

Do you have any new year resolutions? what are they?

Happy new year to you all.

I am going to get into trouble with this post I am sure.

Do you check pockets when loading the washing machine?

This morning Tracey was unloading the washing machine and pulled out our sons mobile (cell) phone. He had left it in his pocket and then put his clothes into the wash basket.

I totally accept it is his fault, we generally all leave our mobiles on the side so we know where they are, he has obviously forgot when he came in. This is not the first time this has happened and he has obviously got the telling of he deserved but I do think that kids pockets should be checked before going in the wash. If pockets had been checked, then the mobile would not be dripping water. This opinion has on numerous occasions caused arguements in our house.

OK maybe not yet but if anyone does want to offer me the $3,967,595 that it has been valued at by Marcosweb.com then I would be more than happy to accept.

I do have to laugh, how do these sites come up with such far fetched figures?
who puts together their formula?
Who convinces these site owners that their formula is correct.

The site also shows me a map of where my traffic comes from, ie where you all are around the world. This map is provided by Google and it appears to be the same map as found in my Google Analytics. Surely this information should mine and not easily accessible by any Tom Dick or Harry.

Our eldest son returned from school on Tuesday with a letter about a school trip to Spain for a week. Great,  I am a believer in these trips and if we can afford it at the time then all three of our kids will go on these trips as I am sure they learn a lot more then when we go away on holiday.

Anyway, the cost of the trip is £350, (about $500 USD), again this is not a figure that surprised me, and a deposit of £100 ($160 USD) is needed to secure the place. Alls good, over a period of time we can do that.

Oh NO, I read further down the letter, the trip is at the end of February 2010, the £100 deposit has to be paid by this coming Monday, and to make things worse the £350 doesn’t include meals.

Now this is from a school which is in a town that is still generally ‘economically depressed’, this is just 2 weeks before Christmas which is a hard enough time financially for many anyway.

I did email the teacher organising the trip and it turns out that this will be the only chance that the Spanish class will get to go on a trip to Spain as  their next school year is exam time and trips do not generally take place. He also claimed it was short notice as they was unsure if the trip could take place.

There was a French exchange last school year and we had a good 6 months notice. Why not this time?

These people are meant to be teaching our kids yet they don’t seem to be able to plan ahead.

Our son has said it could be his Xmas present, that is a nice gesture  as he knows things aren’t as good as they have been at the moment but it is an educational trip so if he goes it won’t be his Christmas present.

Yep, I set up yet another URL shortening service. I know there are a lot of these tinyurl clones but I wanted my own:)

So if you have a long url that you want shortening then do give URLuda.com a go. Get in quick and you can enter your own custom url.

If you want to create a URL to hide your email address you can also do that, ie in the ‘URL’ box on the form enter mailto://email@address.com and then when someone clicks on your new url, rather than them being redirected to your blog or an affiliate link their email client will open with your email address in the ‘to’ address box. This is a great way to reduce the chance of your email address being harvested from your blog/site by spammers.

An example is the URLuda.com/contact, which will allow you to send me an email.

Yes that’s right, we’re now into December, stores have had xmas items on show for at least 2 months so I thought working on that  basis it must be about time I start pushing Mystery Valentine Card, the site I created last year.

It is still just available for the US/Canada and UK and Europe, you can select the card you want sent, select how you want the card signed and provide the name and address of who you want the card sent to, we then write and post the card for you.

In the UK it has become big business to sell your mobile phone to ‘recycling’ companies or send them off to charities.

But how much is your phone actually worth?  I have quickly put a small site together that allows you to select your phone make and model and it then searches for the best price for you.

Take a look at What is your phone worth? and give it a go, there is also a list of recycling companies on the selling page including a couple of US companies. I was disappointed to discover that the US does not appear to be recycling phones anywhere near as much and I was only able to find a couple of companies.