Blogs we like

I had a bit of interesting news today. If I say Blogsherpa to you, you will probably think I’m back on the Wuppertal (stop it!!) path of sillyness but that would not be the case.

Blogsherpa is a relatively new (I think it’s still in beta) system that Lonely Planet have put in place to integrate 3rd party blogs into their own content while passing any advertising revenue to the bloggers themselves. This morning they emailed me saying they liked Send The Bugger Back and wanted to incude it in the program.

Non nerds (that’d be 87% of you then) may (will) want to skip the next few paragraphs. It’s a pretty simple but clever system, once you are approved your RSS feed will be scanned daily and any posts tagged with ‘Blogsherpa’ plus the relevant country and city, will be picked up and included on the corresponding pages on the Lonely Planet site. If anyone clicks on an ad while on a page featuring my stuff, the Google AdSense dosh goes to me.

This is good for me as one I don’t want to put uncontrolled ads directly on here for aesthetic and integrity reasons and two I can’t anyway as I use the free WordPress.com and while it has a great dashboard, you are limited to what code you can include. If you want full control (and the ability to use Google AdSense and similar) you need to use WordPress.org and pay for them or another provider to host the content, at least a tenner a month. Not for me at the moment. I’ve submitted the AdSense application so I should hopefully get a green light in a few days.

I do find Web 2.0, search, cloud computing, cross integration and the related eco-systems etc. pretty intriguing. It’s far more interesting than the day to day Windows sys admin I’m used to anyway, It’s also one of the fastest growing industries of this century so it looks like the future is cloudy.

I’m not expecting anything to come of this or to make any real money but I am quite pleased that a travel literature giant like Lonely Planet thinks my content is good enough to include on their site. It should also get my readers numbers up (currently averaging about 50 hits a day). Big chuftty badge in the oven for me.

Ok, you can come out from behind your mouse mat now, the geek stuff is finished.

I don’t seem to be having much luck with my room mates at the moment. This hostel has various pros and cons but it’s basically a hotel with shared rooms. I’m in a 6 person room but within the room there is another semi-segragated room with a bunk bed in it and I’m up top.

At exactly 5 in the morning I was stirred from my slumber by loud vibrations with Celine Dion blaring out ‘My heart will go on’ (it might not if someone does the decent thing and puts a mousetrap on your tongue love) directly after. This was followed by lights on and a loud exit to the ensuite and then 20 minutes lates lights on again so he could put his phone on charge. Great eh.

In the morning this dude below was oblivious to last night’s events and asked if he could borrow my toothpaste. He had a chirpy friendly nature so I didn’t hold a grudge and said sure why not. I’m not sure where he’s from but he has an African accent and apparently works in Riga (he’d forgot to turn his 7:00am Latvian time work alarm off, hence Celine). He asked me if I’d ever been and I said I was going soon. “You will see me there!” was the reply. Blimey.

Speaking of Latvia, the confirmation email for my Riga hostel booking said they offer trips to an AK-47 shooting range. If it’s cheap enough I may well have a dabble as it’s sounds like a veritable hoot to me. Though in this day and age if AK-47 training on foreign soil works it’s way on to your CV I reckon you could well end up at whichever underground facillity replaces Guantanamo Bay. Oh crikey, my card is well and truly marked now.

Last night I briefly met 2 other roomies, a guy from near Milan and another from Melbourne. Everyone seemed nice enough but one thing I’m not happy about is there are no lockers anywhere, they should be a given in any hostel. You’re forced to put a lot of trust in people you don’t know from Adam (what does that mean!) otherwise.

Hamburg seems to live up to it’s reputation of being the coolest city in Germany, I’ve not seen very much yet but even on my short journey from the HBF to my hostel in the bohemian Altona area I saw 2 nice Vespas and a Lammy in transit, always a good sign.

I just saw on CNN that Real Madrid were charging fans 15 Canadian dollars a piece in Toronto just to watch the team train! No wonder they could afford the gelled tumbler.

Shortly I’m going to make my way to the St Pauli area (where The Beatles famously first started gigging), it’s supposed to be a cool alternative part of the city though I think it has it’s seedy side too. Also Topi has put me on to the fact that it’s the opening game of the season for Budesliga division 2 side FC St Pauli tonight, I’m unlikely to be able to get a ticket but it will be worth the trip to soak up the ambience.

They are a very interesting side with a big reputation for having an alternative leftist following. Check out the club culture part in the Wikipedia entry here.

Another thing that caught my attention today was this piece on the City site, it made my neck do the hairy stand up thing. I too was there, I too was 16 at the time and I too had to convince my Dad not to hop it.

Tomorrow afternoon I head to Berlin for 4 nights, I’m looking forward to it as I’ve heard good things about the city from friends and also it will be good not to be constantly moving around for s little while. The last week has been a bit hectic!

Again I’ve given up on trying to keep these posts short, it just isn’t my way. If you’re finding them to be too mammoth my suggested solution is to only read every other paragraph. It might end up coming across as complete gibberish but some would argue that’s the case anyway.

Over.