This is a test post for the polls, want to check them out.

Tags: blog, poll

Joomla isn’t an easy system to perform SEO work on, but it can be done.

If you are a professional, or even someone who runs a Joomla blog and wants to do your own SEO work, you should first of all download all the available SEO plugins for the Joomla blog platform. Install them, run them, and then get to real work.

Remember that meta tags are good, but content is better.

One of the keywords I was focusing on was heat transfer fluids, difficult at best because of the little amount of content, but doable. The content is the key, focus on the keywords, use the natural tags that HTML provides you, and the search engines will find your content and rate you accordingly.

Tags: heat transfer fluids, joomla, oiluk, seo

This is a trackback test for a post on Test Blog 1.

After a couple of weeks in dry dock (or should that be the sand bunker?) Aspiring Golfer is going back live with a new design. Jazzed up, fired up with enthusiasm for the game of golf, Aspiring Golfer is poised to be one of the best golf commentaries in the blogging world. Take a look for yourself.

Tags: golf

Nick Dougherty won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and picked up prize money of £400,000 After a nervous, bogey-bogey, start on the final day at the Old Course, St. Andrews, Dougherty finished with a final round of 71 and an 18 under par aggregate score. This was enough to leave him two shots clear of Justin Rose and three clear of Rory McIlroy. The Dunhill trophy is only Dougherty’s second win, having won the Singapore Masters, two years ago.

Justin Rose’s second place closed the gap on Padraig Harrington for the European Tour’s Order of Merit(about £21,000 behind) while the emerging talent, McIlroy secured his tour card for next year, in only his second tournament as a professional, meaning he is the youngest player to have done this since Sergio Garcia. How I’m going to enjoy following his progress through the professional ranks.

Ernie Els continued to discover something like his old form and was in contention for much of the final round, however his push for glory came to an abrupt end on the 17th hole. Incredibly, he caught the wrong side of a slope and putted into the bunker, which left him with a sequence of shots which read: putt, bunker-shot, 3 more putts!

Ernie Els, Justin Rose, Padraig Harrington and Colin Montgomerie go on to the HSBC, World Match Play Championship at Wentworth, which begins tomorrow.

One of the more unusual tournaments of the year is the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. The multi-venue event which has prize money of £2.5million is played on three courses; Carnoustie, Kingsbarns and St. Andrews. There are 168 Pros taking part, who have each been paired with an amateur, including famous names such as Bill Murray (lock up the buggies), Samuel L Jackson, Dennis Hopper (very Hollywood as he puffed on a cigar before his first swing) and Hugh Grant, to name but a few.

Sixty Pros and 20 amateurs will make the third round cut to play a final round, back at St. Andrews. The whole event makes for an eclectic mix of playing styles and dress sense, with some of the celebs providing an injection of good humor and antics along the course.

The standout on day one was Samuel L Jackson. Anyone who can make a Kangol hat, worn backwards, look cool, is always going to look stylish and at ease in their finest golfing apparel. In this case that meant bright red trousers and a lime green, blue and yellow jumper.

The event also marks the return of Padraig Harrington to the scene of his summer’s British Open success and is in fact his first appearance in Europe since then. In the early stages of the second round, the pace is currently being set by Hennie Otto. The 31-year-old, South African, followed a fine six-under 66 in his opening round at Carnoustie yesterday, by moving to a nine-under total after four holes on the Old Course at St. Andrews.

As well as the overall winner I will being keeping an eye on the highest placed celebrity.

The governing bodies of the four major, golfing championships announced on September 20 that they would be introducing random drug testing in the sport. Under the universal policy, testing will begin in 2008.

Tiger Woods has suggested that in the traditional spirit of the game, which espouses honesty and fairness, penalties for players testing positive should be ’significant’ to protect the integrity of the game. Tiger also believes that in a sport, where players have been know to call their own penalties, being caught cheating in this way will be severely damaging to a player’s reputation.

In common with many other sports, Golf’s banned list will include anabolic steroids, hormones and stimulants. I’m no expert on performance enhancing drugs but it did get me thinking about what possible chemical cocktails might improve a golfer’s game. I can perhaps see how drugs might be used off the course, to build strength and stamina (isn’t Tiger looking buff btw?), but I’m struggling to think of anything that would help with a golfer’s swing or putting technique. In a game that relies on total relaxation, I don’t see how being ‘wired’ on a stimulant, is going to help you improve. Perhaps beta-blockers for anxiety might be more appropriate.

There has been rumor of the misuse of performance enhancing substances on various tours and I’m sure the new rules have been brought in to address these, as well as bringing the game in line with most other professional sports.

I will still be shocked though when, and if, the first person is caught foul of the new doping policies and I remain convinced that Montgomerie’s gyncomastia is not the result of the misuse of performance enhancing hormones.

English golfer, Ian Poulter is beginning to develop an image as the bad boy of European Tour, Golf. He has just been fined an undisclosed sum for smashing a tee-marker at last week’s Mercedes Benz Championship in Cologne. This comes soon after a similar transgression (and fine) in July at the British Open in Carnoustie. Last year Poulter was also fined $10,000 (the Tour’s joint highest ever) for verbally abusing a Marshall at the Irish Open.

Poulter puts it down to a demonstration of passion for the game and seems resigned to paying the fines, rather than change his character. As Poulter says, ” I’m not the sort of person who can play a bad shot and smile. It’s not as if I’ve taken a Samurai sword and chopped off a few heads”.

Clearly Poulter is a flamboyant individual which is also expressed through his attire. The game needs characters like him and I hope he earns sufficient prize money that the fines don’t make to much of a dent in his pocket.

Poulter is currently 5 under par, during the second round of the British Masters at the Belfry, two strokes behind the leader, Lee Westwood.

Last week I managed to ‘Juice‘ my balls within a whisker of the Longest Drive. Unfortunately I fell short by a few feet and there are no prizes for coming second. Despite this, I’m very pleased with the Nike Juice, and will continue to use the ball, as it seems like a good compromise for price/performance.

Over the last couple of weeks it has occurred to me that my putting doesn’t seem to have improved much. In fact, I seem to be sinking fewer of those satisfying, long putts than I did six months ago. Given that the Putter is the most widely used club in the bag, then this is a worrying trend.

As an exercise I reverted back to my old blade putter, rather than the 2-ball, Odyssey, I currently use. There was an immediate improvement, and I began to rediscover the joys of putting again. I can only put this down to greater touch and feel on the green, which the blade offers.

I’m still considering a Scotty Cameron and out of interest I checked Ebay. I was immediately shocked to find a Scotty with a starting price of $1,900. Now, I know that these putters can command high prices, but I still find it difficult to reconcile that you can spend this much on one club.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, if anyone has any recommendations for a great (blade) Putter, around the $200 range, then I’d be very interested to hear.

This Sunday I will be travelling to Greetham Valley with my pub, golf society for this year’s weekend, away. The format is two days, 36 holes and as much beer as you can drink - I understand that scores are considerably lower on the second day, and it is considered poor form to sneak off to bed early to gain a competitive edge.

Although we will be playing Stableford, which should in theory at least give me some sort of chance, I’m being realistic and will play to my strengths. One of the things I’m starting to realise is that I can out-drive, much more experienced golfers than myself. In the macho world of Pub Golf, the “Longest Drive” competition, holds as much cachet as overall winner.

With this in mind, I have decided to maximise my chances by using Nike ‘Juice’ Golf Balls (maximum length formula). This is the most I’ve ever paid for golf balls, but I’ve been reading good things and decided to try them out. I particularly like the warning on the box - “A user’s enhanced distance and scoring may adversely affect the moods of playing partners”.

It then goes on to say that, “Nike biochemists spent years……in their search for pharmaceutical grade balls…..for external use only. Contains 12 white pills to maximise length.” The recommended dosage is one Juice ball in the morning to be taken with black coffee - I only hope I can drive straight enough so that I only need one ball in the morning. The packaging wouldn’t look out of place in a Damien Hirst exhibition and I’m sure Art collectors will have paid far more then I did, down at my local Golf Direct.

Lets see if they go the GINORMOUS HUGANTIC DISTANCE, the manufacturers claim.