All posts by Alistair Lattimore

About Alistair Lattimore

My name is Alistair Lattimore, I'm in my very early 30's and live on the sunny Gold Coast in Australia. I married my high school sweet heart & we've been together for longer than I can remember. Claire and I started our family in September 2008 when Hugo was born and added a gorgeous little girl named Evie in May 2010. You can find me online in the typical hangouts, Google+, Twitter & facebook. .

Dashes Versus Underscores, It Doesn’t Matter

Advertising, Search

One of the common strategies employed during search engine optimisation has involved placing high visibility keywords and phrases into the URL. Using this search engine optimisation technique lead to URL’s which looked like:

  • http://domain.com/mysuperdooperproduct.html
  • http://domain.com/my-super-dooper-product.html
  • http://domain.com/my_super_dooper_product.html

For quite some time now, search engine optimisers all over the internet pondered whether using dashes versus underscores was the best performing technique. It wasn’t long before it became clear that using a dash as a word separator out performed the humble underscore.

Matt Cutts, a Google engineer has stated at WordCamp 2007 that very shortly Google will support an underscore as a word separator as well as the existing dash. Although the difference between the two seems so subtle, for many web sites it has proved a significant thorn in their sides as their content management systems produced URL’s which utilised an underscore and not the recognised dash.

This news is going to make a lot of people very happy in the near future.

Debunking The Bigpond Broadband Signup Myth

Hardware, Internet, Life

Since moving house at the start of June, I’ve been without any internet connectivity at home. It’s surprising how often you use the internet at home (not including the geek side of things) and I cannot believe how much Claire and I are noticing that it isn’t available.

As soon as the home phone was connected, I submitted a relocation order to Internode in hopes that Telstra would re-provision my ADSL from my old address. Of course, I couldn’t believe it when the first application was rejected due to no ADSL port availability. Expecting that this was a temporary set back, I resubmitted the application a further two times to Internode hoping that it would go through – no luck and the same reason stated by Telstra.

Having been around the ADSL and broadband scene for quite some time, I thought it pertinent to try The Bigpond Strategy. If you’re not familiar with The Bigpond Strategy, it is really quite simple:

Submit an ADSL application with Telstra Bigpond and watch in amazement as it is magically approved when everyone else was denied.

Well I’m here to inform you with a heavy heart, that The Bigpond Strategy did in fact not work and even Telstra Bigpond rejected my ADSL application with the same reason as stated by Internode.

Its been about a fortnight since I submitted the application to Bigpond, so it’s time to resubmit it and try again.

Liar Liar, Pants On Fire

Life

Apparently I failed to touch wood after my comment last week of being the least sick person I know, as on Friday afternoon I fell ill with some nasty bug.

Friday lunchtime I felt perfectly healthy, however by that afternoon I was definitely feeling off. I attended the Gold Coast .NET User Group on Friday evening to hear Boon Tiong Lim present on Visual Studio 2008 and associated technology which was really interesting. While I was there, I managed to win myself a copy of Windows Vista Business which was a really great surprise!

Anyway, I went home and collapsed in bed and slept for about 12 or so hours straight. The following day I couldn’t muster the energy to do much at all and this continued until about Tuesday. Finally got an appointment with a local doctor on Thursday and he said that I most likely fell ill with the same bug that has been putting people in hospital here on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane. The doctor was pretty impressed that my body had managed to fight off the bug on its own, without drugs in only 4 days – go immune system go!

Returned to work today, still have a little bit of a cough however the drugs the doctor prescribed will kill that off soon enough. Next time I’ll remember to touch some wood next time I make a statement like that.

Back Pain, Magic Solutions?

Life

Saturday morning I was playing fetch with Princess, when I bent down to pick up one of her favourite toys and felt my back twinge.

Historically, I would surely qualify as one of the least sick people I know. In the last three years, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to take off work sick or injured. Unfortunately, in the last two months I’ve had some level of back pain more than once. In both occasions, I wasn’t doing anything strenuous when it happened – simply bending down to pick up something light or getting up off the sofa.

I’m fairly confident that the reason I’ve managed to hurt my back in the last couple of months is a direct by product of not doing anywhere near enough exercise and sitting far too long and often at work. When our current block of development is completed, I’m really looking forward to getting back into the gym and walking regularly again. I can literally feel in myself that my body and mental state is in a better place when I’m exercising regularly and I’m really missing it at the moment.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been trying to keep off it as much as possible, gently stretching it from time to time. Anyone have a magic solution for back pain that I need to know about in case it happens again?