Jigger

Jigger

- Noun
One who jigs or dances a jig
An odd-looking person
A woman’s short loose-fitting jacket
Steps notched in a tree upon which an axman stands to fell the tree
A block used to hold a cable while it is being heaved onto a ship
A small sail
A sieve for separating ore
Hooks arranged around a central hook and trawled on the seabed to catch fish
A hook for couple trams
A horizontal lathe used in making china
A set of rollers for graining (polishing) leather
A machine for hardening felted fabric by beating
A rest used in billiards
A drawing knife used by barrel makers
A railway car drawn by a single horse
A machine to indicate the price at which a sale has been made
A small weight used to round up the weight of coins
A device of rollers for passing cloth through a dye-bath
A high-frequency transformer
A battery-operated device for giving electric shocks to mentally retarded children
A door
A prison
A cell
A back alley between houses
An illicit still
A measure of spirits

- Verb
To make a succession of rapid jerks as with a fish struggling to get free of a hook
As a substitute for a profane oath (I’ll be jiggered)

Neonicotinoid

From Catch the Buzz

“At Bayer, we strongly believe that advancing sustainable solutions for honey bee health requires ongoing collaboration with partners and stakeholders,” said Becky Langer-Curry, manager of the North American Bee Care Program. “Through our mobile Bee Care Tour stop, Bayer successfully fostered interaction directly with supporters of bee health in Washington to heighten discussion, increase awareness regarding good stewardship practices and encourage the sharing of ideas.”

This is Bayer, the chemical company whose neonicotinoid pesticides have been banned in the European Union and elsewhere...

Repeat And Repeat In My Ear (or Website)

This is where to get patterned backgrounds for websites.

The one quality above all that a repeat background pattern must have is that it appears seamless. If it is poorly made then the mismatch between adjacent tiles will introduce lines or shapes that are not part of the design.

I have tried making tiles myself from scratch in Photoshop, but I don't have the patience to set the designs up perfectly, and it showed in the patterns I made.

I have used Patterncooler and Subtlepatterns. They are different. You might think the Patterncooler designs are too bold and garish. Or you might think the Subtlepatterns designs are too boring. It's a matter of taste and choice.

I have not used Patternhead or Pattern8. I came across them on the web and added them to this roundup. It's usually very easy to delete a background you don't like... just one click and it's gone.

Here are some screen grabs to show you what the different offerings are like. Patterncooler has a built-in colour changer. So if you find a pattern you like you can change the colours before downloading. And there are a lot of designs there... not all like the sample here.

Patterncooler



Patternhead



Pattern8



SubtlePatterns

Social And Economic Justice For All

A society that creates institutions
that are based on care
will create a society
of people who care.

A society that promotes
social and economic justice
will create a society
of people who believe
in the society in which they live.

What if this idea is wrong? What if men will tear each other limb from limb given half an opportunity? Well let's give this idea a chance and believe that men and women will put up with a lot and cooperate when they believe they are all being given a fair shake.

Noah Wilson - Photographer

Take a look at his stuff: It's the most original and appealing stuff I've seen for ages.

Noah Wilson

Ambassadors For World Peace

On my blog at Photographworks back in November I wrote that:

Guinea pigs are ambassadors for world peace. Make it a habit to cuddle a guinea pig and pretty soon the world will be a brighter, more peaceful place.
Don't believe me? Try it and see.

Even imagining holding a guinea pig, letting it sit on my chest, eases the stresses and strains of life.

Have a happy 2014. 

Vanity Or Useful? Virante Authorrank

I adopted author rank and publisher rank as soon as I figured out how to set it up.

My reasoning was that if I want results to appear well in Google, and Google was promoting author rank, then it made sense to take advantage of it.

Yesterday, after reading an article on Social Media Today about author rank, I clicked through to the tool at Author Rank and ran a few names, including my own, through it.

I ran names that I thought would have a strong profile.

Here are a couple of FAQs from the Author Rank FAQs :

Is Virante AuthorRank the same as Google AuthorRank?
No, Virante AuthorRank is not the same as Google AuthorRank.
First, “AuthorRank” is not a Google term. Google has never officially used it. The term was invented by members of the SEO and web tech community as a convenient shorthand to describe Google’s stated intention to eventually evaluate authors by perceived authority in various subject areas, and to use that to boost in search results the content of high-authority authors. This was first described in a series of Google patents known as the “Agent Rank” patents. 

Virante AuthorRank does not use the same data or signals as described in Google’s Agent Rank patents. Agent Rank was to be largely based on social signals, indications from other people that they value an author’s content. Virante AgentRank is based almost entirely on link-based signals, those things that are the primary signals to a search engine of authority for a piece of web content.

What does Virante AuthorRank measure?
Virante’s AuthorRank tool gives a series of scores that measure the general search ranking “power” of an author’s published web content. Factors that are used in assessing this score include:
Use of Google Authorship
Diversity of sites to which an author contributes
Link value of sites to which an author contributes
Volume of content produced by author
Link value of content produced by author

Here are the results: