Shared Birthdays

I had a phone call from my friend Kazeem K. this morning. Kazeem is a great friend from my days at University. He called to wish me a happy birthday (which was a couple of days ago).

Talking to Kazeem, I remembered that I was wrong to think that no two people in my immediate acquaintance share the same birthday except me and my new nephew who was born this Wednesday. Kazeem’s son, now 16, was also born on 14th October.

Of course, I’ve always been aware of a few public people who also share my birthday, including Karyn White (the American R&B singer) and Steve Coogan (the British comedian – alias Alan Partridge) who were born in the same year as me, and others including: Sir Cliff Richard, Sir Roger Moore, Dwight D Eisenhower (34th President of the United States from Jan 20 1953 to Jan 20 1961), Usher Raymond (American R&B singer).

It is not surprising that anyone will share their birthday with many public people: there are just 365 days in a year, and 6 billion people alive today. So everyone of us shares our birth day & month with 100s of millions of others, and even our birth date (year, month & day) with a very lot of people. There are websites out there these days that will show you which public figures share your birthday.

The best one I found is History Orb which searches back to the year 1257(!) for 14th October and comes up with 240 results!!

Happy Birthday

It’s 9:43

As I sat down to work this morning I listened to my voicemails. The first was from my mum, left at 4.30am. That’s quite early, I thought, even if she is calling to wish me a happy birthday.

She sang “Happy Birthday” down the line, just like I had tried to do in my unmelodic voice on her birthday a couple of months ago. Hearing her sing brought a warm glow to my heart and a smile to my face.

Then she dropped the other news: my sister has had her baby. It’s a boy, and he shares my birthday!

I couldn’t help it, tears welled up in my eyes. I had wanted it to happen, but in a way that you want something without imposing your own wishes on other people – like it would be a nice thing to happen. I had sent the email message to my brothers last night: ”OMG my new nephews going to share my birthday!”  Because the dates were so close. I picked up my mobile to call her husband, and there was his text message from 1.49am confirming the news.

That’s how my day’s started. How will it progress?

ADIEU Michael Jackson

Here is my silly Twittering while I watched the Michael Jackson memorial on TV today. I started watching just before Jennifer Hudson came on stage to sing. (I missed the Mariah Carey and Lionel Richie songs):

“Watching the Michael Jackson Memorial on TV”

“Quite sureal – hearing Michael Jackson’s music without Michael.”

“I just like how Brooke Shields mentions his favourite song, not an MJ song, and then Jermaine sings it.”

“The music is great – Jennifer Hudson, John Mayer, and now Jermaine J…”

“This is the last time I will stop to question why anyone should die at the time they die. What matters is the great moments they have lived.”

“Resolution to honour Michael Jackson to go before the house!! A world Humanitarian. Yes!!!”

“My birthday mate Usher – singing one of my favourites: “Gone too soon”. Singing it oh so well.”

“He will never be gone. He is going to live for ever and ever and ever and ever. Now Michael Jackson will never grow old.”

“Kenny Ortega brought many of Michael’s dreams to technical reality for us all to enjoy.”

“Michael’s childrens’ first appearance on a stage! And little Princess singing to ‘We are the world’!!”

“Now all three children are singing along to the words of ‘Heal the world’.”

“This memorial is really awesome. Very sad, but what a Good Bye – to the King of Pop.”

“Little Paris Jackson closed the show.”

So long Michael – You will remain forever in our hearts.

Michael Jackson: Final Rehearsal Footage

Click here (http://billboard.blogs.com/michaeljackson/) to see a brief excerpt from the video recording of Michael Jackson’s final rehearsals for the London O2 concert. The excerpt was released by AEG and is available today on the Billboard website.

Michael Jackson - Final Rehearsal

AEG’s Randy Phillips calls the video “some of the most compelling footage in the 21st century, because you’re talking about a star whose light shined brighter than any thing else in the universe when it comes to music.”

The entire footage includes the Tuesday and Wednesday night rehearsals just before Michael died. “On Tuesday night he performed and gave me goose bumps”, Randy Phillips has said. “It made me realise, jaded entertainment executive that I am, why I do this in the first place. I was asked if I would do this again and the answer is ‘Hell yes.’ How many times in one’s career are you able to touch greatness?”

The souvenir tickets some fans opt for in lieu of a refund were designed by Michael himself and are printed with a lenticular process that gives them a 3-D look.

Kenny G – 10,000 Hours – Malcolm Gladwell

I enjoyed seeing saxophonist Kenny G on the BBC Breakfast News yesterday morning. Indeed the 15 second piece he did from his new album is still ringing in my ears. Kenny G’s music remains as beautiful as ever. He’s got a UK tour coming up this summer.

Kenny G mentioned Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers book during the BBC Breakfast News interview. One of the many concepts Gladwell touches upon in this wonderful book is the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master in any field of endeavour. Kenny G reckon’s he has put in over 20,000 hours of saxophone playing so far.

I first heard of Malcolm Gladwell, and the 10,000 hours’ rule, when actor Will Smith was on the BBC Breakfast  News sofa on 15th January. Will commented that he has put in over 10,000 hours of acting.

I researched Malcolm Gladwell extensively as a result of the Will Smith interview, and ended up buying and reading all 3 of his books to-date. I liked the books so much that I got one of my brothers to buy Tipping Point (the first book) and then lent him my copy of Outliers. And I also bought & read Annette Lareau’s “Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life” on the strength of the mention in the Outliers’ book, and ended up buying copies of Lareau’s book for my two sisters-in-law.

Every once in a while, you chance upon something really interesting and it takes you on a journey of great intrigue. This has been such a journey for me.

The Obama Chair

Check out this assortment of chairs, sporting Obama designs, that I stumbled-upon on the web.

Image credit: anh-minh.com/weblog/archives/design/

Image credit: Blog Like

Image credit: Mondani.com

But nothing can beat the real thing: the chair the President himself sits on when he gets down to business in the Oval Office at the White House:

President Barak Obama in the Oval Office. Image credit: Chicago Tribune  & Getty Images. Picture taken by Mark Wilson, January 22, 2009.

In this picture, the President is sitting in the CONCORDE PRESIDENTIAL office chair made by Global Group. I know the chair very well – my company Chellgrove Office Chairs introduced it to the UK in 2008!

Click here for more information on Chellgrove Office Chairs.
Click here to see more pictures of the President’s Oval Office chair.

You can have all you want – and more – through Grace

I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God.

He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us.

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This is excerpted from the Apostle Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14-20 of the New International Version of the Holy Bible.

What’s wrong with selling Page Rank

I posted a couple of comments on Matt Cutt’s blog just now. The post I commented upon currently has more than 260 comments debating the issue of selling links that pass page rank. The question is so important amongst webmasters that the debate still continues 2 years after Matt posted the entry on his blog. I took Matt’s and Google’s stance on this matter, and I have chosen to reproduce my two comments here on my own blog so that I won’t lose sight of what I have said on the matter. Click here to see Matt Cutt’s post and the full set of comments it has attracted:

I think I get the main jist of this issue: Google doesn’t have anything against selling links – as long as they are intended to guide human visitors to the linked-to webpage. Rather, Google is against selling Page Rank. Because Google’s intention is for Page Rank to be a measure of the natural/organic popularity of a webpage: webpage A should pass some of its Page Rank to webpage B (through a ‘follow’ link) because the owner of webpage A genuinely believes that information on webpage B is relevant to readers of webpage A.

Since Page Rank is a factor in determining the SERPs position of a webpage, webpage A’s link-’vote’ for webpage B should result in the relevance passed from webpage A to webpage B increasing webpage B’s chances of being found on the SERPs for the linked-in text.

A paid link doesn’t say “I am linking to you because I genuinely believe you are relevant for the linked-in text”. Instead, a paid link says “I am linking to you because you paid me to do so, [potentially] regardless of whether I believe you to be relevant for the linked-in text”. THIS is the reason that paid links are not good for SERPs, and therefore why Google needs paid links to not pass Page Rank: Where paid links pass Page Rank, they dilute the quality of Google’s search engine results.

And what about Google’s paid links – Adwords? The answer is simple and startingly obvious: Adwords do not pass Page Rank, and therefore a webpage cannot influence its SERPs position by buying Adwords links.

I recently described my opinion of Google’s organic results and Adwords to a friend. (This also applies to all other SERPs that display sponsored results):

The organic results are like a popular TV programme or an article in a popular magazine, and the Adwords results are like the advertising sold around the TV programme or magazine article. The TV programme has to be as good as possible, to attract viewers. Some of those viewers will respond to the advertising.

So for Google to function well and serve its shareholders, it has to make the organic search results as relevant as possible to searchers. This includes discouraging the selling of Page Rank because that dilutes the relevance of the organic search results. Some of the searchers will choose to click on the Adwords results.

This same idea exactly applies to webmasters who create pages to sell Adsense: write good articles, encourage visitors to your website, and you may get some clicks on your Adsense ads.

Top Gear – Richard Hammond v Louis Hamilton

Okay. The title of this post is not exactly accurate, but it might as well be.

In the first of the two videos below, Top Gear’s Richard Hammond shows how very difficult it is to drive a Formula One car. It is very very hard!

And then in the second video, Formula One’s new-kid-on-the-block Louis Hamilton throws a road car round the Top Gear track. Hamilton’s drive looks like “a walk in the park”; and although the track was wet and possibly oily, Louis came second only to the time set by Nigel Mansell and The Stig. Jeremy Clarkson is keen for Louis to do the drive again in the summer when the track will be dry.

Richard Hammond driving Formula One.

Lewis Hamilton on Top Gear.

Aviva’s Richard Harvey Starts His Year in Africa

Richard Harvey, has started a year of charitable projects in Africa after spending 10 years as chief executive of Aviva plc (formed in 2000 from the merger of the CGU and Norwich Union insurance groups).

Involvement in their local church was key to Richard’s and his wife Kay’s decision to go to Africa. Proof that the Christian faith can play an important role in making us more socially responsible.

As the couple travels through central Africa, Kay is teaching in the local schools while Richard builds boreholes in the communities and energy-efficient cooking stoves in the schools.

Richard Harvey is using his corporate network from the developed world to back his projects with technical expertise and resources.