A short update about the blog.

There have typically been two ways for people to know when I post something new to the blog – either to visit the website and have a look, or to use the RSS feed with a suitable RSS Reader.

After a bit of prodding over the weekend, I can now add a third option – Facebook Pages.

So, if you use Facebook, click on the IanVisits Page and if you “like” it then the updates will automagically appear on your Facebook wall.

You can also follow me on Twitter – where you can be delighted to hear about my constant battles with drinking too much coffee or forgetting to turn the oven on.

As someone who used to use Google to advertise services I noticed this ages ago, and bookmarked the details to blog about, and erm, forgot about it.

Anyhow – in a proverbial nutshell, if you are a qualifying charity or non-profit organisation, then Google will give you $10,000 (£6,500) worth of advertising on its website, each and every month – COMPLETELY FREE OF CHARGE.

Thanks to the way advertising on the Google website works, although you qualify for up to $10,000 of adverts, the achievable figure is typically much lower, as you only get “charged” when someone clicks an advert – and that is going to be dependent on how likely people will be searching for topics relevant to your charity.

Anyhow – it’s free of charge, so why quibble!

In fact, if you manage to regularly spend $9,000 a month, rather than getting worried, Google will consider upgrading your Grant to a staggering $40,000 (£26,000) of free advertising each month.

To qualify “Organisations must be based in the United Kingdom and registered with the Charity Commission of England and Wales, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator or by the Inland Revenue to be considered for a Google Grant.”

In addition, they limit the types of organisation that can qualify, mainly denying it to membership organisations or non-profits that already generate a lot of money by selling services. As I understand it, selling tea towels or having a membership fee doesn’t matter, but if, for example you are a non-profit that sells consultancy services, then that would count.

Obviously, having passed that test, then you have to fill in an application form and pass Google’s own internal decision making process.

Oh, and you also need a website and certainly one that is maintained and isn’t based on a free template from 5 years ago. Google is quite fussy about the quality of the websites that advertise on its own services.

Basically, once you get through the system – then you are in the programme forever. Or at least until Google decides otherwise, or you manage to break some rules.

Google says that your application is more likely to be successful if you have a basic understanding of Google Grants and Google AdWords. In your application, you’ll be asked to provide examples of search keywords you would want to trigger the display of your adverts – and an example of a text advert.

Without promising anything, I have some experience in that area, and may be willing to offer a quick training session if you think you have a serious chance of qualifying. Contact me privately and I might be able to find a spare hour sometime or try to direct you to someone else who can help.

You will also need to provide a brief statement about how your organisation will benefit from participating in the Google Grants programme.

The full details and how to apply can be found on the Google Grants website.

Good luck!

*I say London charities, but the Google Grants applies to the whole UK. I am just being Londoncentric as usual

St. Swithin (or more properly, Swithun) was a Saxon Bishop of Winchester, but is more famously known for a popular rhyme that is associated with him:

St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St Swithun’s day if thou be fair
For forty days ’twill rain no more

Today, the 15th July is St Swithin’s Day – so if you look out of your window, the weather you see is what we can expect for the rest of Summer.

Nice isn’t it!

There is an actual a scientific basis to the legend of St Swithun’s Day. Around the middle of July, the Jet Stream settles into a pattern which usually holds reasonably steady until the end of August. So, while you wont get an actual 40 days of rain, the weather we get now is likely to dominate for the next month or two.

Quite where the legend of St Swithin comes from isn’t entirely clear.

He was buried outside the doors of his Cathedral when he died, specifically so that he could hear the rain falling, which suggests that there was some sort of weather link to the Saint. However, the oft-cited story that a heavy hail storm fell on the day his buried remains were moved indoors in 971 as an indication of his anger at the move seems to be a fairly modern story.

There are European saints who are also associated with the weather, so the thinking is that being one of the few learned people he might have had access to European scientific writings and popularised a vaguely understood weather phenomena to his clergy.

As with most Saints, he wasn’t left to rest in peace. In addition to having his grave moved, as mentioned above, he was actual decapitated and his head sent to Canterbury, while an arm ended up in Peterborough. His tomb was then destroyed during the English Reformation, so if you visit the Cathedral today, what you see is a modern recreation.

There is also a link with London – as a church dedicated to his memory was built in the City, near by modern day Bank tube station. The Church was destroyed during the fire of London, rebuilt by Wren, bombed by the Germans and finally demolished in 1962.

However, the iconic London Stone is linked with the Church, as it was incorporated within the Church’s walls in 1798 – until it was removed in 1940 following the destruction of the Church. It is claimed that the stone was completely undamaged by the bombs, lending credence to the legend that the Stone is a protector of the city (must have been having a day off when its home was destroyed).

St Swithin is also associated with Apples, and it is said that if it rains today, then he is blessing the apples so there will be a good harvest this year. Good news for cider drinkers.

Difficult to see exactly where the fire is as I can’t get a depth perspective – so the fire could be next to the London Eye, or 5 miles away (which makes it a very big fire!).

Update – no where near the London Eye (told you perspective has a problem), but next to St James Palace. Better photo here.

Click on photo for larger version

Today marks a totemic 5th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on London’s transport – and naturally lots of people will be reminiscing on the events of that day.

Obviously, when the attacks took place, there was the usual confusion and eventual realisation of what had happened. At work we followed the news as it unfolded during the day, with rumour and misinformation slowly being replaced with cold hard facts.

It was slightly closer to home than for many as one of our work colleagues was on a train following one which had been attacked – and he was quite shaken when he finally made it to the office.

For me though, the biggest memory of the day wasn’t the events themselves, which have slowly blurred into an overall impression of the day – but the journey home.

At the time, I worked in Nth London, and live in Docklands, but was also recovering from a serious illness which meant I was physically weak and needed a walking stick to help me walk.

With all the trains and buses shut-down, like most Londoners, I was faced with a very long walk to get home again. The office, quite naturally sent most of the staff home early.

Although the lack of buses was an obvious issue – it wasn’t until I got down to Oxford Street that the sheer surreality of it all finally hit home. The shops were all open, the crowds were as normal – but something was very strange – and then it hit me, Oxford Street was half empty due to the lack of buses. That was probably the first moment that I really saw the difference the bomb attacks were having on the background landscape of the city.

I was slightly lucky as by the time I got down towards Charing Cross, they were just starting to resume overland trains, and I was able to get to Greenwich, then walk home from there.

Thanks to being unable to walk at a normal pace, a trip I can today walk in a couple of hours took about five hours all told.

However, as I got home, I was uplifted by a sight at the riverside, where a fleet of tourist boats were queuing up at a pier they never stop at to collect stranded office workers from Canary Wharf and help them get into the centre of town.

That was a nice sight to end a dark day.