New Zealand, Day 1

NZ day 1

NZ Day 1A

Buck Rogers?

Classic Car Guide video

Classic Car Guide for Android

Now available on the Android Market--and it's free :-)

The only comprehensive source of actual sale prices of collector cars, with thousands of new sales recorded each month. Plus, Keith Martin's price estimates, model reviews, articles from 20+ years of Sports Car Market magazine, and listings of cars currently for sale near you. Whether you're looking at an ultra-rare Ferrari, or a classic muscle car, the Classic Car Guide gives you all the information you need to know exactly what that car is worth.


Get your Classic Car Guide.

Flying with Joan

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Amelia Island Concours

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Classic Car Guide iPad App Launched

The collector car pricing app for iPad and iPhone launched this week at the Amelia Island Concours D'Elegance and collector car auctions. It's available for free download from the iTunes App Store now--look for Classic Car Guide. Chubb Collector Car Insurance, Keith Martin, and Sports Car Market Magazine are the creators of this app (I project-managed the development, and did a little work on the server-side software and database bits).

Amelia Island 2011

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1999 Porsche 996 Cabriolet

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1988 Lotus Esprit Turbo For Sale

It's official...my Lotus Esprit is for sale now on eBay. Could be yours! :-)

Flying to Salem for lunch with Sara

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Four new little blogs

....magically appeared! One's about energy tax credits and remodeling, one's about replacement vinyl windows, one's about vinyl siding, and one's about installing insulation in Portland.

Worst Weather Wine Tour 2011

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Ferrari FXX Evoluzione - $1.9 million @ Gooding, Scottsdale auction

Fight Hunger in Sierra Leone

Help end Hunger in Sierra Leone and meet the life you change.

New SEO Article up on AboutUs.org

The "wrapper" article for my series on classic SEO mistakes is now up on AboutUs.org.

Visit to the McKenzie's in Castlegar

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New article at AboutUs.org on SEO

My latest article in a series of classic SEO mistakes is now up on AboutUs.org, entitled Classic SEO Mistakes: Shared Page Titles.

SEO Article on AboutUs.org

My article on classic SEO mistakes, the first in a series of 10, is now live on AboutUs.org. This first article is about problems with subdomains and SEO.

Mount St. Helens flight with Mike Dooley

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New profiles on AboutUs.org

Added profiles at AboutUs.org for: Michael Cottam, Carsten Plumbing, and Sunspots' Big Game Hunting New Zealand.

Two new websites for New Zealand Hunting

I've just launched two new websites for my client, Sunspots Safaris. One is focused on hunting Himalayan tahr in New Zealand, and the other is for fallow deer hunting trips to New Zealand.

New seats and carpet for the plane

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Sturgeon fishing with Rodney and Greg

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EFR 2010

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Moto GP Race Day

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Slip and slide videos

From Slip and slide movies

From Slip and slide movies

On the way to MotoGP 2010

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Rotary Club Road Rally & Forest Grove Concours D'Elegance

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Solo flight to Florence

Aviation Jokes

• You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full power to taxi to the terminal. Lead-in Fighter Training Manual


• When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash. Multi-Engine Training Manual


• It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed. US Air Force Manual


• Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do. Unknown Marine Recruit


• You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3. Paul F.. Crickmore (SR71 test pilot)


• The only time you have too much fuel is when you are on fire. Unknown Author


• If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage it has to be a helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe. Fixed Wing Pilot


• Without ammunition, the USAF is just an expensive flying club. Unknown Author


• If you hear me yell; "Eject, Eject, Eject!", the last two will be echos.If you stop to ask "Why?", you'll be talking to yourself, because you're the pilot.' Pre-flight Briefing from a 104 Pilot


• What is the similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots? If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies; but If ATC screws up, .... the pilot dies. Sign over Control Tower Door


• Never trade luck for skill. Author Unknown


• Mankind has a perfect record in aviation - we have never left one up there! Unknown Author


• Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding or doing anything about it. Emergency Checklist


• The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you. Attributed to Max Stanley (Northrop test pilot)


• There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime. Sign over Squadron Ops Desk at Davis-Montham AFB, AZ

BP spills coffee

Cross country flight to Salem

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Flight patterns imported from my GPS into Google Earth

Click each image to see the full-scale version, with notes etc.

Father's Day Dinner

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URL rewriting using 404 handlers

My latest blog post on SEOmoz: URL rewriting and 301 redirects using 404 handlers.

Serious SEO technie nerds only need apply.

Pubsubhub

No beer involved in this pubsubhub...

Blog post on SEOMoz on RewriteRule

Apache webservers have a really cool and useful little feature called RewriteRule. It's sometimes referred to as the Swiss Army Knife of URL manipulation, because it's got two very important, often-used abilities: URL rewriting, and 301 redirection.

Read the blog post on SEOMoz.

Astoria and back before lunch

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Oceanside 2010

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Portland, Estonia

Found an interesting quirk in Google local search today. I was looking for a particular company's placement (HTG) in Google local results. Google correctly spotted that I was in Portland, OR, and showed the following:





Clicking on "More results near Portland, OR" produced the following:





If you zoom out, you'll discover it's showing Estonia. Note that they get the sponsored results right, though...Portland.

Press Release for new Austin Property Management Website

Just distributed this press release for my client, Prime Properties of Austin, which was picked up by the following sites:

• 24-7 Press Release


• Real Estate Today


• World News Report


• EIN Presswire


• Consumer News Today


• Inbox Robot


• News Blaze


• Dotcom News Articles


• Dotcom PR News


• Internet News Articles


• Internet PR News


• Construction News Articles


• Construction PR News


• Industry News Articles


• Industry PR News


• Business News Articles


• Business PR News


• Real Estate PR News


• Entrepreneur News Articles


• Entrepreneur PR News


• Ecommerce News Articles


• Ecommerce PR News


• New Websites News Articles


• New Websites PR News


• Supplychain News Articles


• Real Estate News Articles


• Small Business News Articles


• Small Business PR News


• San Francisco Chronicle


• Houston Chronicle


• Chicago Daily Herald


• The Miami Herald


• NewsOK Oaklahoma News


• UPI.com News


• Columbus Dispatch


• Newsday


• SignOnSanDiego


• Social Picks

More Press for Sunspots Safaris

The press release we just sent out announcing the new Trophy Red Stag New Zealand Hunting website was picked up by a lot of sites:

• 24-7 Press Release


• Travel Industry Today


• World News Report


• EIN Presswire


• Consumer News Today


• Inbox Robot


• News Blaze


• Lifestyle News Articles


• Lifestyle PR News


• Tourism News Articles


• Internet News Articles


• Internet PR News


• New Websites News Articles


• New Websites PR News


• Industry News Articles


• Industry PR News


• Hospitality News Articles


• Hospitality PR News


• Firearms News Articles


• Firearms PR News


• Environment News Articles


• Environment PR News


• Mens News Articles


• Mens PR News


• Sports News Articles


• Sports PR News


• San Francisco Chronicle


• Houston Chronicle


• Chicago Daily Herald


• The Miami Herald


• NewsOK Oaklahoma News


• UPI.com News


• Columbus Dispatch


• Newsday


• SignOnSanDiego


• Social Picks

Thanks, 24-7 Press Release! :-)

Hub Pages

Added a Hub Page for red stag hunting in New Zealand.

About Us pages for Sunspots Safaris

Added two AboutUs pages for Sunspots:

• Big Game Hunting packages for New Zealand


• Trophy Red Stag Hunting in New Zealand

Just launched Red Stag Hunting New Zealand site

Just completed and launched the first of our game-specific micro-sites for Sunspots Safaris: www.redstaghuntingnewzealand.com.

My first cross-country flight: Troutdale - Redmond and back

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Custom wheels

Funny aviation one-liners

'It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.'
- US.Air Force Manual -

'Yea, Though I Fly Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I Shall Fear No Evil. For I am at 50,000 Feet and Climbing.'
- Sign over SR71 Wing Ops-

'You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.'
- Paul F. Crickmore (SR71 test pilot)-

'The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.'
-Unknown Author-

'If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage it has to be a helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe.'
- Fixed Wing Pilot-

'When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.'
-Multi-Engine Training Manual-

'Without ammunition, the Air Force is just an expensive flying club.'
-Unknown Author-

'If you hear me yell;"Eject, Eject, Eject!", the last two will be echos.'
If you stop to ask "Why?", you'll be talking to yourself, because by then you'll be the pilot.'
-Pre-flight Briefing from a Canadian F104 Pilot-

The three most common expressions (or famous last words) in military aviationare:'Did you feel that?' 'What's that noise?' and'Oh S...!'
-Authors Unknown-

'Airspeed, altitude and brains. Two are always needed to successfully complete the flight.'
-Basic Flight Training Manual-

'Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding or doing anything about it.'
- Emergency Checklist-

'The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you.'
- Attributed to Max Stanley ( Northrop test pilot) -

Flickr profile update

Managed to update Sunspots Safari's profile on Flickr to include a backlink :-)

Sunspots Safaris in Google LBC

Now, even Google Local Business Center knows about Sunspots Safaris :-)

New Sunspots Safaris page on AboutUs.org

Just finished putting up a page for Sunspots Safaris on AboutUs.org (another Portland-based internet company, in fact):

www.aboutus.org/BigGameHuntingNewZealand.com

Kimihia Hunting Safaris photos

Just added a Flickr album for Kimihia hunting packages in New Zealand.

Webshots

Added an album of New Zealand hunting photos at Webshots.

Sunspots Safaris press release

Sent out a press release about the new big game hunting site I built for Sunspots this morning, and it's been picked up a lot of places already:

• 24-7 Press Release


• Travel Industry Today


• Marketing & Advertising Industry Today


• Inbox Robot


• EIN News


• Consumer News Today


• News Blaze


• Lifestyle News Articles


• Lifestyle PR News


• Tourism News Articles


• Leisure News Articles


• Leisure PR News


• Recreation News Articles


• Recreation PR News


• Internet News Articles


• Internet PR News


• New Websites News Articles


• New Websites PR News


• Industry News Articles


• Industry PR News


• Sports News Articles


• Sports PR News


• Outdoor Sports News Articles


• Outdoor Sports PR News


• Transportation News Articles


• Transportation PR News


• Tourism PR News


• Travel News Articles


• Travel PR News


• San Francisco Chronicle


• Houston Chronicle


• Chicago Daily Herald


• The Miami Herald


• NewsOK Oaklahoma News


• UPI.com News


• Columbus Dispatch


• Newsday


• SignOnSanDiego


• Social Picks

New Zealand Hunting albums on Flickr

Just added these photo albums for Rodney's new hunting site:

• Lilydale Wilderness Hunting


• Chris Jolly


• NZ Backcountry Guides


• Remuera


• Alpine Red


• Waiau-Toa Station


• Wilderness Quest

Tablecloth trick - BMW 1000 RR

Loving my new plane cover!

Just got my new airplane cover from www.planecover.com, and I'm REALLY impressed with the fit, the materials, fasteners, etc. It's really first-rate, fit perfectly, good quality heavy-duty zippers and snaps, and looks great. Easy to put on too. Nice embroidery of my plane's tail number on the cover and the cowl plugs. And Jim, the owner of the company, definitely has a sense of humor as you can see if you read a bit of his site.

New Zealand hunting website

Just finished launching a new website for my buddy Rodney at Sunspots International...it's for New Zealand hunting packages. He's got all sorts of cool packages put together for hunting red stag, chamois, himalayan bull tahr, etc....all those animals that the thoughtful European settlers brought with them before they realized that New Zealand doesn't have any predators big enough to control those populations :-) So hunting has become very popular, not only because there's a plethora of game available, but it's also some pretty spectacular countryside...check out some of the photo galleries from inside the packages on the site.

Barnstormers newsletter

Got my pic of Alphonse Island, Seychelles in the Barnstormers newsletter.

My new toy

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Bringing the plane home from Auburn, WA

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A beautiful day for flying

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It’s time to upgrade from the Windows 7 Release Candidate

I got this from Microsoft today (I'd installed the Windows 7 release candidate last summer):

"While most people who tested Windows 7 have now moved to the final version, some are still running the Release Candidate. If you haven’t moved yet, it’s time to replace the RC. Starting on March 1, 2010 your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Your work will not be saved during the shutdown. The Windows 7 RC will fully expire on June 1, 2010. Your PC running the Windows 7 RC will continue shutting down every two hours and your files won’t be saved during shutdown. In addition, your wallpaper will change to a solid black background with a persistent message on your desktop. You’ll also get periodic notifications that Windows isn’t genuine. That means your PC may no longer be able to obtain optional updates or downloads requiring genuine Windows validation."

What's funny about this is that as far as I can see, continuing to run the release candidate after March 1 is different from using the final version (which I've been running for a few months now) in just 2 ways:

#1 the live version shuts down about every 8 hours, instead of 2 hours

#2 it shuts down with a blue screen rather than a black one.

:-p

Valentines Day 2010

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Barrett-Jackson 2010

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My first flying lesson!

Google Local reviews - first try at professional reviewers has bugs

Google appears to be taking a first step at incorporating professional bloggers/reviewers in their list of reviews for a given business. Unfortunately it's got a pretty big bug, it seems. They're showing the home page of a local newspaper editor's (Matt Davis) blog 9 times as "reviews" for my client, V Shape Fitness (a personal trainer here in Portland). Matt is a client, and did write about him, but...

Full details in my post on the latest bug in Google Local Search.

Windows 7....the 7 is for Blue Screens

Now I know why they named this version of Windows "7"...it's for the number of times it barfs up a blue screen of death each day :-(

EFR 2009 - the Extended Version

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Fossil OR, Crane Hot Springs OR, Reno NV, Ely NV, Evanston WY (via Utah), Ketchum ID, Salmon ID, Missoula MT, Walla Walla WA via Lolo Pass, Castlegar BC, then back home.

RingEnvy.com tries a new spamming trick

We got a little traffic from this site today, and for various reasons I decided to poke my nose in a little deeper...and was quite entertained by the spammy trick I discovered.

It seems RingEnvy.com is scraping (yes, stealing) content from Yahoo Answers in order to generate lots of pages of juicy content for the search engines to digest and index, in the hopes of driving more traffic.

So that's nothing new, lots of sites try tricks like this. What made it interesting was the trick they used to massage the content so that the search engines didn't see it as duplicate content--a copy of what they'd already seen on Yahoo Answers.

As far as I can tell, they've fed the Yahoo Answers pages through an electronic translator...twice, once from English to another language, then again to translate back. Because of how rough electronic translation is, you end up with a pile of decent english words, with most of the important search terms preserved, but scramble so it doesn't look much like the original text.

Look at some of the gems that result:

• "My fiance additionally as myself have been pondering about stealing scored equally together in Hawaii, yet we're confused on how it would work."


• "I am carrying a finish matrimony in Key West, FL. we am not sure if we should rewear a grave wear during a matrimony reception."


• "I am unquestionably confused additionally as hopefully somebody who has had the finish wedlock in the past can benefit me!"

Here's the original page in Yahoo Answers:

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070409162010AAFhR2I

And here's the translated page (for those who weren't tempted to click on "spammy trick" above):

www.ringenvy.com/talk/tag/destination-wedding/

Google Mini: a Disposable Search Engine in a Box

BACKGROUND: Google Mini is essentially an appliance, a mini version of Google that they ship preconfigured on a cheap rackmount webserver, with a light version of Google installed. You can configure it a little to look like your site, and get it to catalog just your site's pages, and then integrate a search box into your website to implement site search. Cool, useful stuff for us webmasters.

We bought a Google Mini box. It lasted a little less than a year before biting the biscuit. So, Google shipped us a new box as it was under warranty. I sort of expect that a webserver would last more like 3-5 years at least, but what the hell, they replaced it. Not real happy about all the extra time I had to put in, but at this point I was OK with the support.

Well, that replacement server lasted less than 3 months before biting the dust. Some sort of software problem that their tech support said was a known issue, but rare, and gave me some steps to go through to get it to run again. No permanent fix, but they thought it would probably not happen again. Not happy, but hey, it's working again so whatever.

That server lasted only 4 more months before failing completely (hardware). Now, they won't do anything to fix it as it's outside of the ORIGINAL Mini's warranty. They want us to buy a new box for full price of $3000. Google Mini support guy John Lowry told me on the phone that these things have a limited lifespan, and so they can't just replace it for free every few months. Huh? I'd expect the cardboard box it came in to last longer than the servers have been lasting!

So of course we're pretty pissed, as their appliances (essentially a webserver with a bit o' Google software on it) are averaging about 6 months total lifespan. Obviously this is way, way under anyone's expectations of how long a computer should last, whether it's a webserver, laptop, or a desktop PC. ESPECIALLY when it's living in a nice, cold, air-conditioned, clean & smooth powered datacenter like this one.

So what can I do? Not much...it's not worth suing them for $3000. But I bet with a little help from some of you readers we can make the Google Mini site the #1 result in Google for searches for disposable search engine. Which is pretty accurate, from our experience.