Mike Nott » Other Stuff

First Violin Recital

Mike — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:43:41 +0000

Another quick family post.

Tonight Mya played her first public violin solo at her school music and drama recital.

She was the youngest participant in the recital and has only been having violin lessons at school for a few months.

She did great.

Nott Family Women – Race for Life

Mike — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:16:15 +0000

I don’t post here very often and when I do it’s certainly never about SEO (I’m way too cool for that). So it pretty much has to be something important nowadays to make me get off my lazy behind and fire-up wordpress. But this post is one that I am very keen and proud to write.

In 2006 a very dear family friend and my Mum’s oldest and closest friend Tamzin Doward passed away after battling with cancer. It was a very tough time for my Mum and also my daughter Mya who was close with her Auntie Tammy.

One thing that my Mum did to make things a little easier, was taking part in last year’s Cancer Research UK Race for Life.

I was so proud that when my Mum told us she was taking part again this year, my wife Janette and 7 year old daughter Mya announced that they will be running too. Mya is especially proud about taking part and has already been round her whole school collecting sponsorships. She also wrote this on her sponsorship page:

[code]“I am doing Race for Life to help people like my Auntie Tammy who died from cancer in 2006. I am trying to raise money to give to the doctors to make medicine to help people with cancer. I am going to do this by running 5km which is very far for me.”[/code]

They are racing this Sunday at 2:30pm, so all of you reading this, please dig deep, click on ONE of the following links and donate whatever you can to such a worthy cause.

Sponsor Mya – Sponsor Janette – Sponsor my Mum

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UPDATE!!!!

Yesterday was race day – and it was fantastic!!

Tens of thousands of runners and supporters turned out on a glorious British sunny Sunday afternoon, to race for life for Cancer Research UK.

Amongst the masses were the 3 Nott family women together with a mixed group of friends of all ages. All were wearing special t-shirts made for the day with a picture of Tammy on the back to show everyone the reason they were running.

The 5km course was nicely laid out amongst the beautiful grounds of Gloucester Park in Basildon and supported by a large number of signs, stages and stalls of radio stations, charities, corporate sponsors and 1,000s of cheering family members and friends.

The race stared at 2.30pm but it took over 10 minutes for everyone to cross the starting line. I am proud to say that Janette and her friend Tina finished the course in just 35 minutes and am even prouder to say that Mya and her friend Rosie crossed the finishing line after just 45 minutes!! Then Mum with her group of Tammy’s friends finished in 50 minutes – 20 minutes faster than last year.

Mya, Janette and Mum would all like to say a huge great THANK YOU to everyone who so generously sponsored them – Mya alone raised over £500!! A fantastic amount for a 7 year old girl.

I just want to say again how proud we all are of Mya, Janette and Mum and hope that all the hard work of the millions of Race for Life women pays off and one day soon a cure is found.

No Longer Vegetarian

Mike — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:09:19 +0000

The Nott world has been in a bit of an upheaval recently when it comes to health and food: taking up and sticking with my first bit of serious exercise in decades – karate, and being on a serious weight loss plan – lost nearly 2 stone in last 2 months.

So just to add to the mix, after being vegetarian for 12 years (though pescetarian for the last 5 years) I have decided to start eating fowl and maybe meat again. I don’t really want to go into the personal details why I’ve decided to make this change, apart from to say that I was a very unhealthy vegetarian (bread, cheese and quorn) due to my slack eating habits. I think things may have been different if I could have been a healthy veggie like some of my friends who I have the absolute utmost respect for.

I am still a massive supporter of the vegetarian movement and fully support all vegetarians. I also hope that my girls will make the switch one day (as long as they take the healthy route) and I may even change back again in the future myself.

SEO Ninja

Mike — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:00:03 +0000

As a few friends/colleagues know, I decided to join a Shotokan Karate club back in August. I’d been looking for a regular exercise regime for the last few years, and as my wife and daughter had been attending and enjoying the club since January, I thought I’d give it a try.

It turns out that Karate is one of the most addictive things I’ve ever tried, as now I can’t stop talking about it and practising constantly (I got called an evangelist).

We were first introduced to the Westwood Karate Academy by Janette’s friend Marites Tomlinson and her son Chris who are both currently part of the ITKF England team. We are actually so lucky that we have one of the country’s top clubs in Southend, and our Sensei Alan Parrish, is also currently the head coach of the England squad.

Anyway, the reason for this post, apart from to spread the word about how great Karate is, is that last Sunday I had my first grading.

All in all, for me personally it was quite a strange experience as I had jet lag due to flying back from PubCon Vegas the day before, so was quite tired. During the practice session beforehand, I consciously felt crap and weak as I’d had no proper training during the previous week.

But as soon as I was called up to grade, my mind actually went totally blank like everything around me just disappeared and all I could actually hear was my pulse pounding in my head. I can’t really remember many of the actual details of the grading as I seemed to do everything without thinking.

My daughter Mya during her grading

Once everyone had finished their grading, Sensei announced the results and told me that I had passed and said “that was good” instead of the usual critique, so I was over the moon.

So now I’m an ‘orange belt’ (9th kyu) and my wife and daughter also passed their gradings – Janette has her ‘yellow belt’ and Mya a ‘red belt’. But it never stops as we only have 4 months to train for our next grading at Easter.

Btw, am only joking about the ‘SEO Ninja’ part, ‘SEO Karateka’ is more accurate.

SEO Wedding – Rob Kerry & Lisa Ditlefsen

Mike — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:00:54 +0000

For those who attended the recent SEO drinks after Ad:tech London, you may remember Lisa Ditlefsen (from SEO Chicks) and Rob Kerry (evilgreenmonkey) making a small wager.

They bet that if Rob could get onto the front page (top ten) in Google for weddings by the time of PubCon Vegas, they would 100% seriously get married in Vegas!!

Now to help them both achieve the eternal happiness they truly deserve, I think we should all get involved. Even if they are both gonna kill me for doing this

So please spread the word as far and wide as possible, and get everyone you know who owns a website to put up a link to Rob’s site, with the anchor text of ‘weddings’.

Example code to use:

[code lang="html"]weddings[/code]

Help spread the word: digg it & sphinn it

SEOs in the Strangest Places

Mike — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:50:22 +0000

I’m sure most others in the industry are used to the general public not having a clue what we do for a living.

When asked what I do, it’s normally safest to mention I.T. or a vague ‘online marketing’.

So I was very surprised today, that while sat in my optician’s chair having an eye exam, when I said online marketing, he said “with search engines?”.

I was suitably impressed to discover that as well as being an optician, he also been spending his spare time building and hosting websites for the last 10 years.

So anybody in the Rochford, Essex area look for a web-savvy optician, go visit Terence Mendoza.

A Nice Break

Mike — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 15:07:01 +0000

Well wasn’t that a nice little break? 19 months since my last post is definitely something to be proud about!!

But I suppose its time for me to get back into the blogging game and it really is quite overdue.

Trying to think of everything that has happened to me in the last year and a half is not easy – especially with my shockingly poor memory.

The most important land mark occasions though were:

The birth of our second daughter Lana (check the galleries for pics of our beautiful little devil)
I switched to a Mac (and am now a die-hard advocate bent on making everyone I know make the switch)
I finally left PartyGaming

I’m sure there were lots of other important things I was supposed to mention, but I do feel quite tired now after all that thinking and typing and had better stop before I cause myself an injury..

Anyway, see you in another 18 months time!!

6th Coolest Guy On The Planet

Mike — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 21:35:34 +0000

Something is wrong – G’s algo is definitely screwed!!!

I don’t know how, but I am currently the 6th coolest guy on the planet.

I only wrote the post to help boost Andre‘s coolness, but looks like I’m just way cooler than him.

[update] Damn, looks like BigDaddy just doesn’t think I’m as cool as the old index [/update]

Coolest Guy On The Planet

Mike — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 17:14:19 +0000

Alert!!
Alert!!

This blog has been hacked!!

Andre Chaperon is officially the 3rd Coolest Guy On The Planet!!!

Happy Thanksgiving 2005

Mike — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 21:35:29 +0000

Just a quick thanksgiving message to my American friends and new-found cousins

First Post

Mike — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 13:04:02 +0000

So, I’ve been talking about doing this for about 2 years now and just kept putting it off for a couple of reasons:

friends of mine have blogs that have been going for years, and the thought of trying to catch up seems so daunting.
i’m lazy/useless at writing – so not perfectly suited for blog writing.

But it is something that I want to start, and more importantly, keep regularly updated.

So the main things I’ll be trying to post about will be SEO (the day job and the night job), PHP (code of choice, but also will post about mysql, java et al.) & general web/computer stuff.

Anyway, I suppose its been long enough + I might as well get started.