MatBennett.com

If you know me then you’re probably wondering how I came to end up running a website about caravans, as it’s not something that I have a particular interest in.

The c4caravans.com was started a few years back as a demonstration of a free advertising system for a customer interested in running such a site for a another market. By the time the project unfortunately got shelved I had developed a fair bit of code and it seemed a shame to just scrap it, so decided to put it up in some form. As it didn’t seem right to use the same market as the customer had intended I picked another at random and decided on Caravans.

Since those beginnings the site has steadily grown in popularity into a busy caravan sales portal. So much so, that I decided to re-write the entire site earlier this year to incorporate and ever growing list of improvements that I had in mind.

Today the site still operates as a free caravan sales portal and continues to occupy when I am off work. Popularity has continued to grow and small improvements continue to be made and the site seems to be going from strength to strength. So much so, in fact, that things are coming full circle and we are now looking at starting another site, along similar lines, as a commercial work project.

It seems that yet another version of this site is now underway - (yeah I know… so many designs, so little content). I seem to have an ever growing collection of digital junk without a permenant home so I thought it about time I put together a system to house it.

When complete, this new version of matbennett.com is part CMS, part blog, part file storage and part photo gallery. For now though it is just part done.

I’m not a huge fan of blogging, as the vast majority seem to have little new to say. Good ones though can be great.

I haven’t yet read enough of Matt Cutts’ blog to decide whether it will be one of the rare good ones or not yet, but at first glance it could be interesting. What immediately made Matt’s blog stand out for the crowd is the fact that he works for Google.

I’d love to know what his employers think of the blog and how much of it he has pass committee before it hit the pages. Certainly what I have read so far is not ground breaking, but does put an interesting human face on the inhabitants of the (in)famous Googleplex. I’m sure that SEO engineers around the world are adding it to their RSS readers at a huge pace, something that Matt himself must be very aware of as he decides what to include.

Anyway, it’s here to remind me to take an occassional look. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

I’ve loved Japanese food for a while, but never really get to enjoy it. The nearest japanese restaurant that I know of is about 60 miles from where I live and I’ve never tried making any myself.

When we were recently away in York we had a great meal at the Buzz Bar, a great informal restaurant offering equally informal Japanese food. This rekindles my interest in trying it at home.

We’ve now taken delivery of the Wagamama cookbook from Amazon (link below if you want it). Although maybe not the more authentic cuisine around, I thought Wagamama recipes would be a good starting point as their whole operation seems to be geared to preparing meals quickly and you can never have enough ideas for quick meals.

The only thing left to do now is to stock up on some the ingredients. Hayling, where I live, is not the most cosmopolitan place in the world so this will probably mean a few online purchases.

Wagamama cookbook at Amazon

I have to confess to having a bit of a fascination with the old oyster beds at North Hayling. Despite being just off the main road very few people make use of this surprisingly peaceful spot. In fact, a lot of locals don’t even seem to know it is there.

The calm of the shallow sea-water “ponds” can be almost ethereal at times, despite some retard in the local council sticking an ugly bus-shelter up at the protected site (there is no road - let alone busses). I wanted to capture some of this tranquility on camera, which is what I have tried to so with these pictures. As is usual with my photos, there has been no post-processing or photoshopping with these - all are exactly as they came off the camera.

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The eve of my birthday saw a magnicent sunset over Hayling Beach, one that I just couldn’t resist taking a few pictures of. I knew that I had a new camera for my birthday, as I had bought the Casio Exilim myself and asked anyone who was stuck for a present idea to chip in, so the temptation just got a bit too much.

OK, it might be a bit cheaky to open your present a day early, but my reasoning was that I had still bought it for myself at that time which was enough to persuade me to take it out of the box and head down the beach. By the time I got to West Beachlands much of the sun had gone, but I managed to get the pictures below - the first I had taken with the new camera.

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