Backlinks and their importance

Backlinks are links from other peoples website back to your website.

Why are they important?

In 1998 Google changed the face of internet search engines. The two guys, who started google, sat down and asked themselves how can we make a better search engine. They changed the landscape of IT forever by believing that RELEVANCE was more important than keywords and meta data (these still are useful).

Relevance, they decided was a factor of two main things; who linked to your site, the more links the more relevant you must be. And did your site contain fresh and new content.

When Google robots/spiders scan your site, they are looking for relevance. How many people are linked to your site, how fresh is the content on your site.

Backlinks create RELEVANCE. So the more links you have on other peoples sites pointing to your site, the more relevant you site is, and you will organically float to page one search results.

1 Super Easy Way to create Backlinks. As well as the Blog that's integrated into your website (creating Fresh Content and therefore RELEVANCE). Make sure you POST any blog entry you create onto an External Blog, and make sure there is a LINK back to your website site.

www.selfmanagedwebsites.com.au

The Bunyip's Curse

Today the long awaited sequel to Keegan James and the Dragon's Heart Amulet was finally published. Long awaited at least by me. As my previous post describe I quit my high paying IT job to purse a passion. So now for book three, shortly after I get some high paying IT work for the next 6 months to pay the rent while I sit lolly gagging in the cafes of Yarraville writing novels.

if you want to know more about the book - click here www.lulu.com/peterleslie

Seriously though, Bunyip's Curse has been a labour of pure love and it has been fantastic writing ever word. Writing to me is a form of meditation, its Zen, its just peaceful, even in the middle of noise filled cafe in Yarraville.

So i hope you will all support this masterpeace of creative genius - LOL .. and at least tell your grandmothers about it. Or buy it for a niece or nephew.

Chapter 15 - I Quit

sometimes its hard to keep up with me ... sometimes its hard for me to keep up with myself. I've never really thought that i was impulsive, but it seems that impulse has gotten the better of me.

After a little over a year working at Lonely Planet i decided to quit. Why you may ask. I could go on for days talking about all the things that i think are wrong at Lonely Planet, well maybe a couple of hours at least - however that is not my way. I could also talk for hours about all the things that are right with LP as well. But i might save that for another day.

In the end it really came down to my passion for my books. Over christmas i realised that i started book two in 2003, it was now 2007 and i had barely made a dent in the new novel. It was time, time to let my passions run free, time to immerse myself in writing once again, time to focus. Been a male of the human species I am afflicted with the inability to multi-task. So my life generally runs along the lines of a single focus at any given time, work, writing, travel, work, more work, time for travel, more work, writing.

So I Quit - to spend the next several months working on my next great adventure. 90,000 words later, my second book is now complete. 'Keegan James and the Bunyip's Curse' will soon be published on the Lulu ... check it out ... Keegan James and the Bunyip's Curse

Of course i have had some other adventures along the way. My last day with LP was the 30th March. 1st March i photographed for the third and probably final time - Southern Cross Station ... check it out here ...Southern Cross Station

And of course there was our weekend getaway to the plains of Africa - nicely reproduced at Werribee Zoo - check out the photo's here.... Werribee Zoo

And most recently we spent 10 days in Fiji. Fiji was fantastic, a lot more third world than i was expecting, but fun, cultural facinating and relaxing, it was a wonderful way to celebrate turning 40 (thank you Carlos) and great reward for finishing book 2. Hopefully i will put up some photo's soon.

Just thought i would say hello to the world again, my post have become a bit infrequent and i really should do something about that.

peter

Chapter 14 - A Year On

This is going to be a long entry - so if you just want to cut to the pictures .... and the important bits - click the links below.

My First Novel - Now Published - Check it out Click Here

Melbourne City Photo's; many of these in the current Melbourne City Guide

Carlos Birthday and behind the scenes at Melbourne Zoo

Parkour - Meet these guys Photographing for the Melbourne City Guide - Shot at Hanging Rock


Its been a while since i last made a blog entry, for those of you who don't know - my blog started as a way to communicate my travel adventures to my friends and family around the world (it actually started as an email - but i thought "Hey i'm a technology geek although less and less so these days - i can do better than an email).

And i did have some amazing adventures, from spiritual surgery to witnessing someone drive off the edge of a gorge and me climbing down to the wreck (what was i thinking).

After reading some truly inspiring blogs lately (Bill in Exile particularly) - I decided i needed to get back into the blogging thing and at the very least keep my friends and family up to date with happenings in my life. And particularly after someone recently found my blog by random chance and contacted me to say they loved it except for the ending - it just seemed to trail off...

So after 12 plus months i have finally put fingers to the keyboard to continue the adventure. It's been an very full year.

So after taking 4 months off to bum around the world (read my previous posts) i finally made it back to sydney, my home since i was 12 (apart from the 4 years of startup mania in San Francisco). Not long after returning home and tallying up the credit card bills etc, i quickly figured out that my plans to take 12 months off were in deep doodoo ... i had cash flow - the only problem been, that is was flowing in one direction only. The reaslisation that i would have to get a job again, hit like a ton of bricks.

Deciding that my skills in IT was the quickest way to get the cash flowing inwards - i set off in search of a job .... blah blah blah boring stuff about interviews, how fabulous i am, what a genius i am (that's for you Gus) how quickly i was offered not one but two jobs.

Oh the dilema ... take job a job in Sydney and continue my life pretty much as it was, a job that would certainly have paid the bills. Or take a job with Lonely Planet in Melbourne ... a company thats all about travel (one of passion), writing (another of my passions) and photography (gee yet another of my passion)... so i thought long and hard like i do with all the life changing decision i have ever made (3.4 seconds) and decided to take the job with Lonely Planet and head to Melbourne.

The Move

I have only ever visited Melbourne for short visits, work mostly. So the decision to move here was fairly huge, leaving all my sydney friends behind, my family who are all based in NSW and the comfort of a city i know like the back of my hand. I have often thought i should be a taxi driver in sydney.

In late October i headed to Melbourne for a couple of weeks, to check out the city, sign offer letters, find a place to live.

As i was packing up my life in sydney Carlos entered my life. Carlos happened to be up in Sydney for a couple of nights with his job. I could not believe my eyes when i meet him, nor could i believe that he was interested in me! While i don't think i am ugly, i am certainly don't believe i am a supermodel and Carlos could well be a model if he wanted.

The move to melbourne went extremely well. Most of my life was packed up in a storage locker - so it was easy to pack up my room, hand the removalists the keys to the storage locker and let them take all the crap i have accumulated to Melbourne. Probably one of the easiest moves i have ever completed (compared up to one we have just done).

What a shock going back to work was! The first week in Melbourne i was staying with my friends Sue and John and each evening i came home and just fell asleep on the lounge.

I meet up with Carlos again and that was the start of something beautiful. He has been a permanent fixture in my life since them.

I am not going to describe the minutia of life in Melbourne - its the same as life just about anywhere on the planet. I get up, clean my teeth, shower, shave, go to work, eat, watch tv etc.

What i will say is how i have fallen in love with Melbourne. Of all the cities in Melbourne it is probably the most European. The architecture is fantastic down here - the old, the art deco and especially the new. Melbourne is not afraid to be different, is not afraid to embrace the unusual. Some people criticize the architecture and the art. But very few cities in the world are prepared to give space to unusual art (cows in trees included).

Melbourne has an excellent tram system - i know Melbournians complain about it - but you know what - live in sydney for a month or more and you'll come to appreciate how fantastic the tram and train system is down here. I love the cooler weather, and summer although it can get a lot hotter than Sydney is mostly a dry heat - how i love dry heat. Sydney summers 30 degrees with high humidity can be ugly - Melbourne at 40 degrees and almost no humidity is just divine.

The only thing that melbourne lacks is decent beaches. For those of you reading this from Overseas i'll give you a quick geography lesson. Like most of the major cities in Australia, Melbourne is a coastal city - however Melbourne is built around an enormous bay - Melbourne Map . As a result although there is a lot of beach frontage - there are only little tiny waves - so you have to travel a fair distance to get to decent surf beaches - not a major problem for me as i am not much of a beach bunny. Sydney on the other hand is built right on the coast and there are loads of great surf beaches.

Photography and the Guide

Earlier this year Lonely Planet as part of publishing it latest version of the Melbourne City Guide, asked staff to participate in the guide by contributing photo's. I of course jumped at the opportunity and spent every weekend for a month roaming Melbourne taking photo's. 17 of my photo's were selected and included in the Guide. Check out a selection of the photos Click Here ......

It was a great opportunity to purse my passion and it was a great way to get to know melbourne. A rather controversial train station has been several years in the making. It has a unique wave formation roof and a huge open air internal plan. It is rather spectacular and as part of my submission i spent time photographing the Southern Cross Station. I contacted the station and got their permission to roam the station (in this day of terrorism blah blah security concerns blah blah - wont bore you with my thoughts on our governments involvements in fear generation events etc etc). So i got permission to photograph the station and also got permission to go up on the roof and photograph the roof as well - which was an amazing experience, clambering across this amazing rooftop - not a right angle in sight.

So as you can see i have settled well into Melbourne. It has certainly helped having a gorgeous man like Carlos in my life. Carlos is truly an angel in disguise and certainly needs to be to put up with me - as i know i am not the easiest person to live with and get on with. I have a healthy Leo ego, am stubborn as hell and like everything done my way - but despite all this he loves me with all his heart and i love him with all mine.

Birthday Bash and Zoo Visit

We both celebrated our 39th birthdays this year and looking forward to the big 40 next year. For Carlos birthday we both had a couple of days of work and we headed to the great Ocean Road and drove to the 12 Apostles. This part of the australian coastline is truly spectacular - it reminded me greatly of Highway 1 in California, the Big Sur - south of San Francisco. The coastlines are equally spectacular - but the great ocean road has something that California doesn't - the 12 Apostles - a series of amazing rock formations that form part of the coast line. The drive took a lot longer than i was expecting - about 5hrs - so we got there late afternoon - which also meant we got to experience sunset on coast around this extraordinary area. I decided that a helicopter ride was the best way to see this beautiful and amazing landscape... so check out the photo's by clicking here.

We returned to Melbourne that night and the following day decided to go to Melbourne Zoo. A close friend of Carlos works at the Zoo - so Colin arrange some behind the scenes encounters. I really wish that everyone could get to experience a Zoo they way we did that day. It truly was a unique and fun experience. To begin with we got to hang out with the Lion Keepers and it happened to be feeding day (they don't feed them every day). I really cant describe what its like to be 1 metre (3 feet) away from 4 fully grown male lions. While the keepers feed them a pre dinner snack. I was both terrified and exhilarated. The lions were then drawn into the holding pen, about 10m x 10m (except for one) with food bribes - so the keepers could clean the main area. One of the lions decided he would be cooperative - so he was encouraged into one of the smaller holding cage 2m x 4m at a guess - with a large metal trap door separating this enormous beast from us. We strolled around the Lions Den's the keepers on cleanup duty and also hiding large chunks of deer meat for the Lions to find and feast on. As we were walking around the den - the lion trapped in the small cage started pounding on the door of the cage - adrenaline levels increase significantly i gotta tell you. One of the keepers said "its right about now you are realising you have just placed your life in my hands" - and he was entirely right. After the cleanup and generally checking of the state of the den - we removed ourselves to a secure location and the lions were released - these lumbering giants flew with the speed of a hummingbird in search of there meals.

We left the Lion's Den and where taken to meet one the newest members of the Zoo - a baby giraffe. Again we go to go inside the giraffe enclosure and hand feed mother and daughter with pellets or feed. These giants of the Savannah were gentle lambs as the nuzzled our hands and licked the pellets of food from our palms.

We had lunch and afterwards were taken to the bird enclosures. Melbourne Zoo is attempting to get a flight show off the ground. We got to meet and interact with a couple of Macaws and in buzzard (which i would have thought was an eagle or hawk). The buzzard LOVED having the back of his neck scratched.

We then spent the rest of the day been normal zoo visitors. The butterfly enclosure is fantastic and the new elephant enclosure well laid out and awaiting the arrival of some more elephants from Asia.

The Book

As some of you know i completed my first novel in late 2002. It is the first in a series involving three young adventurers. In the first novel Keegan is kidnapped by the mighty and evil Visnbel and Terri is sent to rescue him (aided by some unusual nuns). They meet Tosh a teenager also imprisoned by Visnbel and the three of them embark on an adventure to find the Dragon's Heart Amulet ....

I have had the novel sitting on a shelf since then and have started working on novel 2. As you can appreciate moving cities and starting a new job has not left much time for writing so novel 2 has not progressed as far as i wanted to.

In the course of surfing the internet I discovered a website called Lulu - which does print on demand printing. So i spent some time getting my first novel into the correct format and have now published novel number 1. Check it out Click Here.....

i am very pleased to finally have the novel out there in the world.

Parkour

As part of photographing Melbourne for the City Guide, i came across a group of guys doing Parkour. Parkour was a movement started in France and is a sort of free from gymnastics. Where the participants interact with their environment using various movements to leap, bound and generally traverse the urban terrain. These guys are amazing to watch and there are tons of videos at You Tube http://www.youtube.com/ ... do a search on Parkour. I have kept in touch with these guys and had the privilege meet them at Hanging Rock to photograph them. Check Out the Pictures Here. A friend of mine Gus was down from Sydney and came with me ... a great day, lots of fun and some good photos.


Life Goes On

So life continues ..... i am hoping to spend some time working on novel 2 over christmas. We moved house a couple of weeks ago - something i don't recommend. And hopefully it wont be so long between entries.

Chapter 13 - Japan

I meet Hiroshi in Sydney just after Mardi Gras early this year. He picked me up StarBucks on Oxford St, of all places. As a result of this meeting I was invited to visit him in Tokyo anytime. So when I was planning my trip I decided to include Japan as the last stop before heading home.

Leaving Amsterdam I had decided to catch the Eurostar to London, where I would spend a couple of nights and then head to Tokyo. Once again I can highly recommend train travel as a great way to see a country and get a feel for the place. The train took me from Amsterdam to Brussels and from there I transferred to the high speed Eurostar. It is also the only form of travel I can afford to travel first class on. The landscape of Holland was lush and green, but I only got to see one Windmill. My next trip to Holland I will definitely spend some time out in the country – it had a simplicity and beauty that you only expect to see in oil renditions of an idealised countryside.

The trip from Brussels to London on the Eurostar was fast…. The country sweeps by at a great rate of knots and for the most part was beautiful – but lacked the lush greenness of the countryside of Holland. The last time I took the Eurostar, with Michael, once you got to the English side of the Tunnel the train slowed down to a snails pace. I was very happy to find out that for the most part they have upgraded the rail lines that the Eurostar runs on and it powers through the English countryside – although not quite as fast as the French countryside.

I arrived in London and had found a cute little home stay Bed and Breakfast in Central London. I got to do a little more sight seeing and tried to sort out some problems with my PowerBook at the Apple store. For some weeks – my Mac had been telling me that my hard drive was failing – fortunately I had my portable hard drive and had been able to back up all of my data. Approximately two and half minutes after uploading my blog entry on Athens and Mykonos and photo’s the hard drive finally failed. I was impressed with how long the drive had continued to operate reasonably well in a such a failed state.

I left London and headed to Heathrow to catch my flight to Tokyo, got the airport, checked in, got seated on the plane. We had been informed that there were some delays due to problems with the Air Traffic Control computers earlier in the day, so we sat on the plane for about and hour. The captain then informed us there they had a fuel venting issue, which was normal when sitting on the ground – but it had reached a threshold where they had to take precautionary measures. We were all asked to leave the plan and wait in the lounge. I have never been so amazed at how disorganised British Airways flight crew and staff were. Surely this sort of thing is an occasional occurrence and they would have procedures to follow – these people where clueless. They tried to keep us corralled – by legal definition we had left the UK and where therefore unable to return. People needed to use toilets and they initially were not allowing us to access facilities. And then it finally got to a point where I think they just gave up trying. After another hour of waiting in the lounge and the captain exited the plane – which is never a good sign. Apparently the fuel problem was very serious indeed and the flight was cancelled.

We were allowed back onto the plane to gather our belongings. And then had to re-enter the UK through the normal security and passport control. When I got to the passport control guy and he asked me how long I was staying – I replied. “Mate I’m trying to leave this place”. As soon as I got my luggage I raced to the premium lounge where we had been directed to sort out flights etc. I knew that they queue was going to be a nightmare. Thankfully I knew where the premium lounge check in was and got there well ahead of the bulk of the plane travels. They were trying to get people onto other flights that night headed for Japan, I just told them I would be happy to travel the following day – which seemed to elicit a great deal of relief from the stressed check-in counter staff.

So I got to spend another night in Sunny London, well a hotel near Heathrow airport. Was not the most exciting night of my life. I was wondering through the hotel lobby some hours later around 10pm and one of the fellow passengers on my flight who I had been chatting with had only just gotten to the hotel after been in the queue at British Airways checkin for several hours – boy was I glad I had been quick on my feet.

The following day I boarded my flight to Tokyo and arrived ten hours later without event or problems.

I arrived in Narita airport – which is about one and half hours by train from Tokyo, I thought Melbourne airport was a long way out.

Tokyo – where do I start… It’s immense, it’s ugly, it’s crowded. There are pockets of beauty – but these are mostly shrines and temples. The rest of Tokyo is dense and not particularly attractive. In fact this description pretty much describes all of the populated areas of Japan that I saw (which I must admit was only Tokyo and coastline between Tokyo and Kyoto and Kyoto itself).

I thought that I had encountered a lot of people in Europe, Japan is jammed packed with human beings. The streets of Tokyo are teeming with life at all hours of the day and night. When you see the apartments that most people live in you can understand why. My friend Hiroshi lives in an apartment, the total size of which is smaller than my bedroom, he had one room which is his bedroom and living space, a miniscule kitchen, and a bathroom. It’s claustrophobic to say the least, so when the shrinking walls have crashed in on you – you want out to wonder the streets along with all the other people who don’t want to be trapped in their tiny little apartments. I don’t know if this is actually the reality for Japanese people – but it certainly was mine while I was there.

Hiroshi lives in an area of Tokyo called Shinjuku. This is usually the area of Tokyo you get to see on news broadcast etc – the massive amount of flashing lights, neon etc. The rest of Tokyo did not seem so gaudy, but still dense and ugly. We did take the monorail/tram down around the harbour and I did see some amazingly futuristic architecture. Tokyo is certainly a city that needs to be experienced at least once in your life.

I was a little overwhelmed by it all and it’s hard to describe everything I saw. There was the street parade, which was just a huge advertisement for travelling to the Islands of Southern Japan, there were the naughty girls, there was one naughty girl who I saw and I thought she had stripes of makeup on her arm, but on closer inspection discovered that these appeared to be numerous razor cuts in various states of healing. There are the Barbie girls who have mostly gone out of fashion, although we did spot a few, there is the busiest intersection in the world – which is mind blowing to watch from above in the busiest Starbucks, and even more amazing to be crossing the intersection with the thousands of other people crossing at the same time. The Japanese people, particularly the younger generations are OBSESSED with name brands, Prada, Gucci, you name it and they are buying it.

Hiroshi took me to the gay district of Shinjuku, which was quite near his home. There are 200 hundred gay bars in Shinjuku. I was stunned at that number. 200 hundred gay bars. But then you find out that each of them is about the size of a large closet. At most they can hold 15 people, at worst 5. They are stacked on top of one another in an area no bigger than an average Sydney city block. Of those 200 hundred bars, only 4, repeat 4 of them welcome westerners. The other 196 will either not let you in, or actively discourage you from staying. It is a very strange place indeed.

I was very glad to get on the Bullet train (XXXX) and head to Kyoto. I had heard beautiful things about Kyoto. The train follows the coast for most of the way to Kyoto, then heads inland a little. The coast of Japan appears to be as densely populated as Tokyo and just as ugly. What amazes me is that a culture that was capable of building such amazing temples and shines – can now only build very ugly and grey monstrosities. I did see a couple of rice paddy fields. The mountains ranges march close to the waters edge, squeezing the population into even smaller spaces.

Initially my reaction to Kyoto was OMG. Its like the rest of modern Japan, U G L Y. I found my hotel and bunkered down for the evening. I had gotten some maps etc and plotted out sight seeing for the following day.

If you can ignore the ugliness of modern Japan, which I think I was able to do, then beauty of old Japan is simply mind-blowing. The Shoguns palaces, with their moats, gardens, carvings, paintings and nightingale floors. A nightingale floor is a floor that was designed to whistle as you walk across it. It has special clamps that secure the floorboards to the support beams underneath. The purpose of the whistling floors was so that the Shogun could hear his enemies approaching in the night. A very effective tool, and a design marvel.

The tranquillity of the Buddhist temples was sublime. Stepping through the gates of the temples is like stepping through a portal in time and space. The world of modern Japan ceases to exist and you are immersed in beauty and peace.

I only had two days in Kyoto and it was not nearly enough to see the numerous temples, palaces and shrines that exist there. I will certainly be returning there one day.

My advice on Japan – bypass Tokyo – head straight to Kyoto and then head to the mountains to see some of the natural beauty that I know exists there but did not get to see on this trip – this is what I will be doing the next time I visit.