I Went Looking for a Dictaphone and Accidentally Joined MI6

I have ideas.

They arrive at the worst possible moments: making tea, lying in bed, halfway through a film. My brain announces that I've just had a brilliant idea for a story, and I tell myself I'll remember it.

I don't.

By the time I sit down to write, the magnificent concept has evaporated, leaving me with the vague feeling that I was probably onto something. So I decided I needed a little voice recorder. Something the size of a keyring or a credit card, with a button I could press whenever inspiration showed up. I could record myself rambling, transcribe it later, and get AI to help turn the resulting verbal soup into something resembling a plan.

Voice activation would be handy, too. I don't particularly need recordings of myself shuffling about and making the noises of a man trying to remember why he walked into a room.

I found a promising one. 32GB, USB-C, one-touch recording. Around forty quid.

Out of stock.

This should have been the end of it. I could have waited, bought another, or just used my phone. Instead, I kept looking.

Welcome to Q Branch

There's a whole world of miniature recording kit out there, and some manufacturers aren't content with selling you a little box that records your voice. They want you to feel like James Bond. Credit-card-sized recorders. Tiny magnetic devices. Pendants. Gadgets so small that losing one would require an archaeological excavation of the sofa.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking, "Can I record myself talking about a story?" and started wondering why browsing a gadget website made me feel like I should be wearing a dark suit and answering to a number. Then I found the pen.

The pen

The pen is mightier than the sword. Apparently. Of course there's a recording pen.

It looks like a pen, presumably writes like a pen, and somewhere inside it is the ability to record audio. I should stress that I have absolutely no evidence this particular pen is a lethal weapon. None whatsoever. But there's something about looking for a way to record ideas for a science-fiction story and ending up examining stationery that looks as though it was issued to a particularly untrustworthy member of MI6.

I'm not saying the pen is dangerous. I'm merely saying that if I buy it, my shopping list becomes an operational briefing. I don't even need a pen. I've got several. Some of them probably work. Still, I clicked on it.

Obviously.

The sensible option (probably)

I don't need anything clever. There are AI-powered recorders that can transcribe and summarise everything, but they cost considerably more, and I'd rather keep the original recordings anyway. The rambling, the digressions, the sentence that makes absolutely no sense until three minutes later: that's all part of the process. I don't want a machine deciding what I meant before I've had a chance to work it out myself.

A small recorder with a physical button, decent battery life and voice activation should do the job. One recording might be Doctor Who, another Deadstream, other Mental Ramblings.

Get the idea down now. Sort it out later. Apparently, that's not simple enough to stop me browsing spy gadgets.

Licence to ramble

I still haven't chosen a recorder. The sensible thing would be to buy a basic one and get on with writing. But a small, mischievous part of my brain keeps whispering: You know what would be funny, though...

That part of my brain is responsible for most of what I write. It's also why I can't be trusted to browse gadget websites unsupervised.

If you need me, I'll be in the corner, recording my thoughts about a fictional time traveller and wondering whether I've accidentally found the Q Branch stationery department.

Over and out.

Also on Mental Ramblings: Deadstream | I've Got Hooks For Hands

How Personal Blogs Can Simplify Their Website SEO Audit Process

For many personal blogs, the hardest part of a website SEO audit is not finding problems but deciding what matters first. A site may have old posts, inconsistent titles, oversized images, thin category pages, and navigation that no longer matches what you actually publish. A good audit brings order to that clutter. It helps you see which issues make posts harder to find, which ones are merely untidy, and which pages deserve attention because they still attract readers.

Why personal blogs often overcomplicate the process

A personal blog does not need an enterprise-style audit with dozens of dashboards. In most cases, a simpler review works better: start with the pages that still represent the site. That usually means the homepage, a few cornerstone posts, category or topic pages, and the about or contact page. If those pages are unclear, slow, or poorly titled, the site can struggle even before you look at deeper technical details.

A missing alt attribute on one decorative image is not as important as a cornerstone post with no clear title tag, a category page that says almost nothing, and no visible path to older related writing. Simplifying the audit process means sorting findings by reader impact.

Build a blog SEO audit around five core checks

The most useful website SEO audit for a local business can be organized around five core areas. This keeps the process focused and makes it easier to turn findings into fixes.

Audit area	What to check	Why it matters
Page targeting	Clear page purpose, relevant keywords, unique service or location focus	Prevents confusion and helps each important page match a specific search intent
Metadata	Title tags, meta descriptions, headings, internal linking	Improves clarity for search engines and users scanning results
Local trust signals	Business name, address, phone, service areas, reviews, map or directions details	Supports local relevance and consistency across key pages
Content and media	Thin copy, duplicate text, image alt text, outdated offers, weak calls to action	Makes pages more useful and easier to understand
Technical basics	Mobile usability, page speed, crawlability, broken links, indexing issues, schema	Helps search engines access pages and present them properly

Once you have those categories, run through them in a consistent order:

List your priority pages. Do not begin with the entire site. Start with the ten to twenty pages that matter most.Check search intent. Make sure each page answers a specific local need rather than trying to rank for everything.Review on-page elements. Confirm that titles, headings, descriptions, and internal links accurately reflect the service and location.Inspect usability. Look at mobile layouts, click paths, contact buttons, and form visibility.Note technical blockers. Broken links, duplicate pages, indexing problems, and missing schema deserve attention once the basics are mapped.

This structure turns the audit into a repeatable workflow instead of a one-time burst of stress.

Prioritize the pages that bring local customers closer to action

Local search performance is often shaped by a small set of high-intent pages. A plumbing company may need stronger emergency service and city pages. A neighborhood café may need clearer menu, hours, and location information. A music teacher may depend on lesson pages, studio location details, and inquiry forms. In each case, the audit should focus on whether those pages are specific, current, and easy to understand.

Look for signs that a page is trying to do too much. A single generic page covering all services, all towns, and every variation of a keyword usually becomes vague and repetitive. It is often more effective to create a clearer structure: one strong page per service, supported by well-written local relevance where appropriate. During the audit, also review images. Photos of staff, premises, products, or completed work can strengthen a page, but only if they are compressed properly and include useful alt text where relevant. The same goes for schema. Basic structured data can help search engines understand business details, services, and rich result opportunities without changing the page experience for users.

Use tools to speed up the audit, not to replace judgment

A quick website SEO audit can help surface obvious issues such as missing metadata, weak page signals, or technical errors before you commit to a deeper review. That kind of first pass is useful because it shortens the time spent hunting for problems manually. But the tool output still needs human judgment. A page is not valuable simply because it is technically clean; it also has to match what local customers are actually searching for and make sense within your business model.

For a local service website, an audit is not just a checklist of technical warnings. It should reveal whether core pages have clear meta titles and descriptions, whether images use sensible alt text, whether important keywords are tracked consistently, whether nearby competitors are covering topics you have missed, whether backlink patterns look healthy, and whether schema supports richer search presentation. It can also be useful to look at how your brand and pages appear in AI-driven search summaries and visibility layers. A practical tool such as Rabbit SEO can help organize those checks into a manageable workflow, making it easier to review site health, monitor changes, and turn scattered observations into an ordered task list.

Turn your findings into a monthly process

The simplest audits are the ones you can repeat. Rather than waiting for the site to become messy again, create a short monthly review. Recheck your top pages, confirm that business details remain consistent, review any newly published content, and fix broken links or outdated offers before they accumulate. If your team updates seasonal promotions, event pages, opening hours, or service areas, those changes should be part of the routine.

A useful habit is to separate findings into three groups: fix now, improve next, and monitor. Fix-now items include broken forms, incorrect metadata on key pages, and indexing issues. Improve-next items might include rewriting thin copy, expanding location pages, or refining internal links. Monitor items could include keyword movement, competitor changes, and opportunities to strengthen supporting content over time. This keeps the audit grounded in action instead of turning it into an archive of unresolved notes.

Conclusion: keep the website SEO audit practical

A website SEO audit becomes much easier when you stop treating the entire site as one giant problem. Focus on the pages that drive local action, group issues into a few core categories, and use tools to speed up discovery rather than dictate every decision. The result is a process that is simpler to manage, easier to repeat, and more likely to produce useful improvements. For local businesses, that is the real goal of a website SEO audit: clearer priorities, healthier pages, and a site that better supports how customers actually find and choose you.

Hail, Caesar!

The clip has no real bearing on this other than I find it funny. Something made me think of old Julius though, maybe the Wire when Cheese talks about his name ringing out like Avon's - RIP Lance Reddick btw - or maybe there was some direct talk about Caesar on tv somewhere. Anyway I've been giving some thought to who or what might be remembered in the next couple of thousand years.

Firstly I'm not holding out much hope for there being a human race in four thousand and whatever. The only chance as far as I'm concerned comes with us leaving the planet and establishing ourselves elsewhere. Our eggs are literally in one basket right now. A basket full of cunts. We are so fucking vulnerable to any number of internal and external factors and until we're spread out across the galaxy or even further our chances of survival look shit.

That would make it more difficult for anyone or anything to be remembered, let alone myself. Note, I'm not sure whether I AM writing this or whether I am in the CHARACTER of the writer - that's because I'm being a pretentious cunt. Also, I can fall back on being in character when I talk about annihilating entire cities in due course.

So what would need to be done to ensure your name or my name 'rings out' in a couple of millennia. I would say you would have to do something really fucking positive or really fucking negative and the positive thing would have to be twice as good as the negative thing because that's how the human mind works.

As I'm writing this there's a show called The Leftovers on and a guy who appears to be a copper has taped a plastic bag over his head so that he can suffocate himself. Apparently not intended to cause any long term damage as he later on leaves the house looking pretty chipper - probably just some kind of stranglewank situation.

Anyway, let's say his wife had found him dead on the floor with his cock in his hand it would have taken quite a few cancer all-clears to outweigh it. Even if she herself got good news like that the death of her husband in a masturbatory fashion would always overshadow it, always be what was talked about.

Maybe if someone gave everyone the cancer all-clear they might get remembered for ever, or even eradicated aging or death. That kind of discovery or invention would certainly give you a chance at eternal fame. The problem is eternal infamy would seem the more likely way to go about things. You, or perhaps WE if you'd care to join me, would need to do something so fucked up it could never be forgotten.

I'm discounting any vaguely modern works of music, film or literature, I mean GOT / Avengers Endgame or the last Kunt and the Gang album are all great but they may mean nothing in less than a hundred years let alone a couple of thousand. So it's back to infamy then, something so fucking outrageous it could never be forgotten, even with a malleable internet which will be as close to telling the truth as the record keeping in 1984.

What we're looking at then is death, a literal 911 x 100. Tens or hundreds of thousands gone. A tricky feat to pull off at the best of times, even harder now seeing as you can't just fob flight instructors off by saying you don't need landing lessons - they pick up on that kind of thing these days.

I had an idea for a thing a while back where someone wore a pressure suit, not dissimilar in looks to something Iron Man would wear, that had hundreds of detonators on it. The person wearing it could push any sensor on any part of his body and a building in London would blow up - this is set in London btw, where I lived at the time - not a random cockney holocaust.

I guess, although I should know as it's my idea, that some trip to Downing Street would occur and when the PM refuses to see the guy in the suit the first building goes up. Armed police and all sorts turn up but they soon realise that they can't touch him because if threatened he can take down any number of other buildings - worse still he's literally a dead man's switch. If taken out he will fall and dozens of detonators could be hit causing loads of explosions, well dozens you'd imagine.

Like everything else I'll probably get it going at some point. I know it was a revenge thing and I believe the following song seemed to go with it nicely when I first heard it, the video's great regardless and has a young Jesse Pinkman in it. As for the escort he hires, oh baby! I've chosen the censored version because the uncensored one doesn't have the storyline - there are shades of 'Låt den rätte komma in' which is a great film too. Enjoy!

Also on the blog: Endgame