Aug 24
Ben KingPlay Life
Last Wednesday I was in London with Rob and Gem on a Pareto Law training course. In the evening I went out in Fulham for a drink or two. Apparently ‘Life Begins at Fulham Broadway‘, its a lie I tell you!!
We started out in Zinc, that abruptly shut at 11pm, wondering around revealed every other bar was shut, eventually we found Chateau 6.
Chateau 6 is a really nice chilled out bar, we got a bottle of wine in, and then at midnight all the lights came on and the bouncers wanted us out!
All that remained open was a dicey pub/club thingy called Fiesta Havana, which taxed us £3 each to get in and was just rubbish and only open until 2am anyway!
Dejected I did the right thing and thought lets have a kebab, could I get a Kebab?! Nope all 5million kebab houses and take aways on North End road were shut, I mean what is that all about.
Lets take this in contrast with last night, when we were out in sunny Coventry, spoilt for choice with many bars and clubs open until the early hours of the morning, and as for takeaways, do they ever shut in Coventry?!
So to sum up, in my opinion Coventry is better for late night drinking than London, unless of course you want to go to the West End and get ripped off!!
Aug 24
Ben KingPlay Life, WoW
For the last year or so Steve C and I were the only WoW players at bit10, however we have seen a recent flurry of newcomers…
Through no particular effort by Steve and myself, Rob fell first, he in turn converted Craig and now Steph is going to give it a try!
In addition Rob has got 2 of his housemates playing it.
WoW is undoutably an awesome game, however with 6 million players worldwide and rising rapidly, but its ‘crack’ like ‘play for 5 minutes and you are hooked’ qualities are a little worrying!!
Aug 14
Ben KingLife, Play Life
There has been some extensive debate on the Warwick blogs, here, about whether The Varsity pub, that nestles nicely on Kirby corner outside the university, is in fact called ‘Varsity’ or ‘The Varsity’.
For my 10p worth I think its ‘The Varsity’, and I can say so with some certainty, because once upon a time, shortly after I graduated from Warwick (30th Auguest 1999), a friend (Jay McGuinness) and I embarked on a 1 day epic adventure doing a tour of the majority of ’The Varsitys’ in the country (at the time). So here you go (apologies for the poor image quality)…
Lincoln…
Leicester…
Wolverhampton…
Birmingham…
Coventry (City Centre)
Coventry (University of Warwick)…
So there you go definetely ‘The Varsity’, in fact the Unversity of Warwick arm was ‘The New Varsity’!
Aug 10
Ben KingBusiness, Internet bit10, Business, Interweb, Web/Tech
We are redoing our website, because frankly its a bit rubbish, it consistently fails to convert traffic into leads, and it is a pretty poor reflection of bit10, a classic case of the cobblers shoes.
We know what is wrong with it and we have kicked off a project to get it right.
The great thing is that Ally and I get to be bit10 customers, and we are running the project as if it was a client project and we are going to do it textbook.
Steph is our messenger (project manager to the non informed), Stuart is our technical lead.
The first step, which is to complete high level project requirements is complete, and a budget allocated… you can read it here.
The next step is to kick off the ideas generation and actually decide exactly what we are doing… that happens this afternoon.
So far my experience as a bit10 customer has been a good one, however I am frustrated by the time it takes to ‘do the job properly’ – although I totally appreciate the necessity!
Aug 08
Ben KingPlay Life
If you like your wine (and who doesn’t), I would strongly recommend you take the time to visit Matt and Mark at Vinology. I buy all my wine there and they really know their stuff. Highly recommended.
You can find them over in Stratford, on Henley Street opposite Shakespeares Birthplace.
Also as a bonus if you mention my blog they will give you a discount!!
Aug 07
Ben KingLife, Play Life
Believe it or not this evening I found myself asking this very question… and its suprisingly difficult to answer.
You see my girlfriend is from Lithuania which means she is fluent in Russian and Lithuanian, and also speaks very good English, however just occasionally we find a word that stumps her.
Today in the supermarket, swede got her, no dictionary listing for it… very bizarre.
Turns out that I had failed to realise the Turnip/Swede link (from my perspective a Swede is a winter root vegetable and Turnip sole purpose is for Blackadder sketches). In fact the Swede is called a Swede because its the swedish version of the Turnip, in fact a Turnip is a smaller whitey fleshed version of what we brits called a Swede.
So the answer to the question, for all of you who are still reading, is ‘Repa’ which is the Russian for Turnip.
There you go, you can all sleep better tonight. 
Aug 04
Ben KingInternet, Life Life, Web/Tech
This blog has meant that a vanity search for Ben King on Google has seen the first reference to me in the search results rising from the complete obscurity of page 16, to a far more impressive position 4 page 2 (at time of writing).
This is pretty impressive, especially given the stiff competition of the famous Ben E King of Stand by Me fame.
However I don’t think that particular Ben King is going to be the problem that denies me my Google ‘top slot’, its this Ben King, a freelance journalist (who has apparently just got a job for Channel 4 news), a relatively prolific blogger and above all he owns benking.co.uk.
This is going to take some beating, I am especially gutted as I seriously considered buying benking.co.uk for myself 8 years ago, however at the time I could not think why I would need it and I was poor and at that time and we were not Nominet members so the domain would have cost me £80. 
Why do I care at all!? I am not entirely sure, however now I have got the bit between my teeth I am going to do my upmost to get that top slot.
So Ben King, my nemesis, enjoy your domain, however beware I am coming after you!!
–
PS - The irony of me linking to him, improving his Google rank, thus shooting myself in the foot, has not escaped me.
Aug 03
Ben KingBusiness Life
I took delivery of my new Nokia 6233 today. I was shocked to discover that Nokia have changed the charger!
Unlike other manufacturers, Nokia have for years stuck rigidly to roughly the same type of charger, this is meant that the traditional Nokia charger is all present, like Coca-Cola you are never more than 5 minutes from a Nokia charger!
In my world I have so many Nokia chargers now, I have:
- One in my study.
- Two in my bedroom (one by each side of the bed).
- One in the guest bedroom.
- One in the kitchen.
- One in the living room.
- One on desk at work.
If I go to someones house and even if they no longer have a Nokia phone chances are they will still have a charger kicking around.
This has meant that I long ago gave up worrying about battery life on my phones, and have stuck by Nokia, because it would be a pain to have something else.
I have long wondered why other phone manufacturers have not simply adopted the Nokia ‘standard’ for their phones, as its clearly a barrier to sale. Also for other household rechargable devices, the Nokia charger being ever present it surely makes an obvious choice.
However Nokia have now broken my charging utopia, and gone with a smaller 2mm connector!!! Ahhh!!
A quick Google however reveals that Nokia have thought of this already… they are already selling an adapter to convert from traditional Nokia -> new Nokia… They cost about a fiver each.
Ah clever – at least I suppose this means they have thought about it!
I am still gutted though!!!
Aug 03
Ben KingBusiness, Internet Interweb, Web/Tech
Today I have only just discovered the joy that is Google Advertising Professionals, It allows us to manage all of clients adword campaigns from one ‘Client Centre’, which makes life significantly easier than maintaining separate logins and passwords, I can’t believe I didn’t discover it before! (Well actually Matt told me about it ).
Aug 03
Ben KingBusiness Business, Web/Tech
So my IBM X4 Ultrabase has packed up and beeps manically whenever we stick any of our X40s into it. A quick all to IBM, not sure if its in warranty or not (its well over a year), ‘no problem sir we will send you a new one tomorrow, please bin the old one!’ – Fantastic!
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