Leave Trip Advisor Alone.

Hoteliers all over the UK are taking TripAdvisor to court over negative comments left about their hotels. I’m a big fan of trip advisor it aided us very much on a trip to America.

While I agree that there may be vested interests reviews posted both positive and negative, the overall result is a benefit for the consumer. If a hotel or restaurant has 3 bad reviews and 3000 good it’s a pretty safe bet, conversely a hotel with 500 bad reviews and 10 good is a simple no go. Not so the hoteliers say, bad reviews are affecting business. In a move that would make the Catholic Church proud, instead of aiming to better their service or deal with customers’ unrealistic expectations they’d rather sue somebody until the bad reviews go away.

What we are seeing here is consumerism go head to head with capitalism. While we the consumer would like to make well-informed decisions on these sorts of things leading to industry wide improvements. The Capitalist hotel owners think we should shut up and buy what they are willing to sell us.

I’ll be the first to admit having done some Search Engine Optimisation these review sites are open to abuse, but after you reach a critical mass of users the fraudulent entries are swamped by the real reviews. In most instances trip advisor has reached this point. Most people who are consumer smart enough to check these sites, are also smart enough to a) not be put off by a small number of bad reviews, and b) understand that they are open to abuse. So we take each review with a pinch of salt.

Here are some of my reviews on TripAdvisor and hoteliers you may like to see they are all positive. So there!!

Slow Cooker - Hungarian Goulash

Serves 4 (or less if hungry .)

This is a delicious slow cook recipe, but be warned its spicy and it will stink your kitchen out.

Ingredients

• 800g pork diced
• 1 large onion diced
• At least 150g of mushrooms roughly sliced
• 2 Heaped teaspoons paprika
• 1/2 teaspoons chilli powder
• 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoons ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon caraway
• 2 tablespoons flour
• tin of tomatoes
• 450ml hot chicken stock
• salt and pepper
• 1 tablespoon sunflower oil
• Sour cream to serve

Directions

1. Preheat the slow cooker.
2. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the pork a handful at a time until it has all been added.
3. Stir in the onion and fry for five mins.
4. Add the mushrooms and fry for a further 2 mins.
5. Stir in the spices and flour and cook for 1 min
6. Stir in the can of tomatoes and bring to the boil.
7. Pour into the slow cooker.
8. Stir stock into mixture.
9. Season with salt and pepper
10. Cover with lid and cook for 8+ hours.
11. To server spoon onto rice top with generous dollops of sour cream sprinkle with more paprika to garnish.

Pictures next time i cook it.

Mike's Special Spicy Regu

Here is a lovely, simple and spicy regu sauce. It makes a fab bolognese and goes well with chicken breast, served with pasta.

Ingredients

• 1 Large Onion
• At least 200g Mushrooms.
• 2 large (4 small) Garlic cloves.
• mixed herbs large pinch.
• oregano large pinch.
• paprika 2 tsp.
• chilli big pinch.
• 1.5 beef oxo cubes.
• 2 tins of tomatoes.
• splash red wine vinegar.
• sugar pinch.
• tomato puree.
• salt & pepper.

Directions

1. Chop the onions small and slice the onions. Peel the garlic ready to crush.
2. Sweat the onions over a low heat.
3. Add the mushrooms and turn up the heat a little, fry for 2 mins.
4. Add the crushed garlic fry for a min.
5. Add the tins of tomatoes and bring to a simmer.
6. Add the spices, herbs, stock cubes, pinch of sugar and splash of red wine vinegar
7. Simmer for 10 mins, taste and season. Add tomato puree if needed. Simmer for a further 5 mins.
8. Serve

Eye on Technology

Here is my Eye on Technology report for the kindle.

On a personal note they do look very good. I've heard a few people thinking of getting these for Christmas presents. At the moment I’m ok with my new phone and new iPod, but the kindle is definitely something I can see buying at some point. Although Cath wants an iPad and I can't really see needing both.

Up coming review will definitely be kindle vs. iPad.

Crazy Dave's cuts bonanza.

Yeeeeeee haaaaaaw! Howdy partners here at Crazy Dave's we pride ourselves on our thinly veiled hatred of public service and gosh darn God must love us 'cause he's given us one hell of a good excuse to sharpen our axe (not that we needed one eh partner.) So why not join us here at Crazy Dave's on the 20th October for Crazy Dave's cuts bonanza - all public services must go!!

Catherine Ledger is fundraising for SHAP Limited

My girlfriend is bravely climbing Kilimanjaro in a little over 2 weeks. She's performing this madness for a very good cause SHAP. SHAP are a housing charity for homeless children and young adults, in the current tory cuts bonanza (all public service must go.) its these vulnerable groups that will suffer the most.
Cath is hoping to raise £3,500 for this worthy cause.

Below is a link to her justGiving.com page, just encase anyone would like to give.

Catherine Ledger is fundraising for SHAP Limtied

approached by Mormons

I have just been apprehend quite rudely by a young Mormon wanting to discuss the gospel. I informed him that unfortunately i was in a rush and couldn't spare the time. So for his benefit I thought I'd blog my thoughts on the subject so that I'm better prepared for the next time this inevitably happens.

I would say theologically speaking i most closely fall in to is agnostic theist, in that i believe in a supreme creator but believe it is inherently beyond human ability to understand that being. Personally I add the extra point that such a being having such abilities would not need such cheap tricks as engraved tablets or golden plates . Not to detract from the greatness of historic figures like Jesus who brought a morality to a world that needed it, but they were just great men. Let's not forget that historic evidence points to Jesus divinity being introduced in a committee in Rome long after his death . The very idea of organised religion is the antithesis of an all powerful being , descriptions that were allegory and meant to teach important moral lessons or cover gaps in knowledge,taken as the actual words of god hence hinting at gods nature.

That's even before we start to talk about the uglier sides of organised religion, the you must convert unbelievers (here read increase the religions numbers by conversion), you must be fruitful (here read increase the religions numbers through birth), you must not be homosexual (again here read increase the religions numbers through birth) and death to unbelievers (here read decrease the number opposed to the religion.) Shouldn't the message speak for itself? Shouldn't the message ring true in some deep part of our psyche without these viral methods?

Then onto the moral debate i'm a secular humanist when it comes to that. Morality comes from human thought not a divine source. Thou shall not kill hits home with any normal adjusted Psyche, but than religion corrupts that to be unless they don't agree with you (see Islamic fundamentalists, see death sentences for adultery, see killing abortion doctors etc.) Thou shalt not steal hits home with most to and do to others as you would have done to you. (again lets just look at how much of the worlds poverty the Vatican could wipe out????) However these aren't divine messages they are all intellectual, arrived at through empathy and thought. These are the ground stone of societies, in a more barbaric time religious penalties were needed to keep those that did not emphasis with their victims inline. The scholars of them time knew noone would stop for example eating pork which at a time before refrigerators and proper hygiene must have caused many deaths just if they said, so they proscribed the edict as coming from a divine source.

As you may have guessed i don't like being preached at, especially by people who don't understand the issues but would rather just parrot something some long dead scholar wrote.

Spree4.com Review

Spree4.com is one of those penny auctions that are everywhere these days. Spree4.com does however have a quite interesting concept. Instead of the mad dash to get the products that most of these auction sites subscribe to Spree4 is more....well laid back.

You buy credits that are than used to see the price of the item, which is normally hidden. Each "bid"/"show price" costs £1. When you are shown the price Spree4 gives you a minute to decide to buy it or pass it by, during which time no-one else is allowed to bid. See nice and laid back, you want it you buy it. If you "jog on" than the next person will see the price you were offered minus 30p. So as with all these penny auction sites Spree4's a gamble but it does seem a lot fairer than some of its competitors. There definitely seems to be some very very good bargains been snapped up in the year they have been active.

It also has a nice array of products Playstation 3's, the Amazon Kindle, the new iPod Nano and Shuffle.

Below is my walkthrough of using the site.



I hope this review is helpful for some people.

What i'm up to.

I have posted quite a few reviews on tripadvisor about local restaurants and some from our travels.

They can be found here if anyone is interested.

Also i have just started a step by step guide on my technical site on how to add autosaving (autodraft) functionality to a java struts application using jQuery. Here is the first entry.AutoSave using Jquery and Java Struts. - Part 1 Setting up the form. I have now finished my implementation so the rest of the method should just be a case of me finding time.

I'm also helping my friend out with some admin of Spree4.com. I'm hoping to add some new products to the site over the next week.

Welcome to my Blog

Hi, my name is Michael Roberts aka The Kat.

I've decided to move my blog to blogger after my site was deleted from uCoz with the loss of all my hard work.

This blog will be anything from reviews (hotels, books, films.) , my thoughts on the world, creative writing, and technical hints (although i'll try to keep most of that on my technical site.)

thanks in advance for giving your precious time to reading my rantings.