Images - Winchester Castle, England

King's Arthur's  Table replica can be found at the Great Hall of Winchester Castle.  A must see travel destination for tourists.

King Arthur's Round Table hanged at Great Hall of Winchester Castle

Great Hall entrance

The statue of Queen Victoria was the work of Sir Alfred Gilbert, sculptor of Eros in Picadilly Circus, and was made to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.

 

Cold dungeon at Winchester Castle

Travel to Winchester Castle, England : Search for Arthur's Round Table

King Arthur of Camelot was  believed to lived during the 6th century, but his story was mostly known from folklore and literary writings. The search for the origin of Arthurian legend had been the subject of several historians, and was depicted on film adaptations since 1900 to present. Modern adaptation was the “King Arthur” movie (2004) with Clive Owen and Keira Nightley.

Winchester is located at Hampshire, South East England. It hosts the Winchester Cathedral which is one of the largest Cathedral in Europe (some scenes from the movie Da Vinci Code was filmed here). The Winchester Castle where the Round Table is hanged at the Great Hall.

King Arthur's Round Table at Winchester Castle

The legendary Round Table at Winchester’s Great Hall was constructed in the late 12th century during the reign of Edward I. The creation was said to be initiated by King Edward because of his interest in Arthurian legend, and for his 1299  hosting of a Round Tables festival .  This festival was a popular event during the middle ages around Europe to imitate King Arthur’s court.

The table was made of English oak and weighs 1.25 tons with 18feet height and 3 inches thick.
According to telegraph.co.uk recent report, researchers  now believed that the origin of the legendary Round Table was inspired by the circular amphitheater built by the Romans in 75AD located at Chester,South West Wales. According to Camelot historian Chris Gidlow, “The first accounts of the Round Table show that it was nothing like a dining table but was a venue for upwards of 1,000 people at a time.”

The knights are known for their strength, courage and heroism. They swore to protect the king and his kingdom. The famous and noblest among the knights was Sir Lancelot, who according to the Grail Legend was a descendant of King David of Israel. His romantic affair with King Arthur’s wife, Queen Guinevere, also played a major part in the legend.

The debate continues about the origin of the Arthurian legend since until now there is no historic proof that the legend ever existed.

More images at Winchester Castle

Images - Travel to Greece

See magnificient images from Greece.  The ancient capital of Athens is worth visiting with the family.

 

Amazing view from Greece, great holiday treat for the famiy.

Great landscape

Feta cheese is a famous cheese originated in Greece.  High in calcium and protein, this cheese is  great for salads,pasta,pizza, burgers, and more.

Business Communications - Idiomatic Expressions

An idiom is an expression, word, or phrase whose sense means something different from what the words literally imply. It can be mistakenly interpreted if the listener does not know the meaning of the expression. It became popular because it gives communication ease in conveying the actual message in a concise manner instead of using several words to explain the message.  Idiomatic expressions are used either in business or personal conversations.   Here are some of the known Idiomatic expressions :



Forty Winks – colloquial for a short sleep or nap taken during the day.

A Greenhorn – colloquial for a raw, inexperienced person.


A Herculian task – a work requiring very great effort for its accomplishment, a work which only Hercules could perform.


A left-handed compliment – one of doubtful sincerity, or ambiguous meaning.

A queer fish – a colloquialism for an eccentric person.

Alter ego – a very close and intimate friend. It is a Latin phrase that literally means ‘other self’.

A screw loose – an expression that means there is something wrong, usually mentally wrong.

A sleeping partner – a term applied to a partner in a business who was invested money in the business, but takes no active share in the management of it. However he gets a share of profits or losses.

A small fry – colloquial for children or insignificant persons.

A bed of thorns – a very uncomfortable situation.

Bare your heart – If you bare your heart to someone, you tell them your personal and private feelings. (’Bare your soul’ is an alternative form of the idiom.)

Bridge the gap – If you bridge the gap, you make a connection where there is a great difference.

Sail under false color – to pretend to be different to mislead somebody.

To the letter – to do exactly what is written or per detailed instruction.

These Idiomatic expressions are timeless as long as society still accepts the general knowledge of  its real meanings . With the present high-tech generation, expressions steps into a different level and idioms are continuously evolving as long as widely acceptable by many.

Elements of a Good Website

Imagine you are browsing a website with an orange text color and with a very small  text size  which you can hardly read.  And while you click a hyperlinked topic, an irrelevant link would appear.  You end up closing and jumping to the next site because you feel your time is wasted.  Neither you are a visitor or currently maintains a web site, an awareness of four elements of a good website is beneficial.

website

CONTENT. A website should foremost  house only appropriate and relevant information.  The content should be well written and edited since  it will reflect on the overall impression of the visitor.  That is why proofreading is very important process for  traditional or online writing.  Likewise, multimedia content should be relevant to the subject and aligned to the clear goal of the website.  Lastly, frequency of updates is also important to show commitment  to  its visitors.

DESIGN. Layout  serves as a window for its content.  A good content will not shine with a poor layout, it should be appropriate to the nature of the website.   The graphical elements like images  which does not take too long to load, color, white space and typography must be appealing, and consistent throughout the pages.

USABILITY.  A good website should have a proper structure and navigational links.  Meaning, it must be user friendly avoiding the viewer to be lost inside the website.  There are proper navigational links on how to go back to home page or go back to main menu. Internal and external links should point to the right information.

FUNCTIONALITY.  It is not enough that a website contains proper content, good design and user friendly, but also offer extra features that visitors will enjoy.  Interactive forums, chats, polls, live links, streaming media, fast loading pages, browser compatibility, relevant search results,  gives added reason for visitors to stay and return to the site.

Job Hunting: Reasons Why You are Not Hired After The Interview

Wondering why you are not hired? You feel dissappointed, right? Take time to evaluate and see why you are not hired after the interview.

Knowing that you are not hired feels a bit of disappointment.  Here are some reasons why you are not hired :

You are late on  the scheduled time of the interview.  No matter how good you are, being late is not a good start. Being punctual is a big first step to impress your future employer.

Your appearance does not fit the position you are applying for.  There are certain positions that appearance weigh a lot if you are applying as a front desk, airline company, sales representative, marketing executive and among others.  If you are applying for a position that entails field work and you look so frail, your employer might think you are not fit to do the job.

You did not made a good impression from your prospective employer. You may have shown unbusinesslike behavior while you are in their office or during the interview.

You have talked too much during the interview.   Do not overdo the interview by talking too much  just to impress them.  As much as possible, your answers should be brief and objective.
Your salary expectation are too high for their budget.  Even if you are qualified for the position, salary is still the most important factor of your application.  Negotiate the salary well, do not overpriced nor underestimate yourself.
You asked a friend or your mother to accompany you to give some moral support.  This will give a wrong signal to your future employer that you are not independent and cannot manage situations.  Remember that once you are hired, you are on your own already.
Job hunting can be very frustrating at times, but with preparation, organization,determination, and persistence you will surely find a  job that is right for you.

Related Links :
Jobs 101 : How to Get Ready for an Interview
Jobs 101 : What to Do During The Interview
Jobs 101 : Common and Rare Questions During Interview

First published in Triond by the same author.

How To Use Web Images Effectively to Draw Traffic and SEO Target

Web images are an essential part of a web page and so the web design process.  In creating or maintaining a website, the  contextual content is only half of the success of a website, many had not realized that images takes an important role on website traffic. It is the supplementary tool for the  content to convey its message as “pictures speaks a thousand words”.  The two should be relevant  to each other to make a good over-all impact of  the website.

Most bloggers and website designers put value more on optimized text, but SEO  optimized image helps boost your page ranking and create more traffic to your website.      Here are some tips on how to use your web images to draw traffic and to make them  SEO friendly :

Search for unique images

Visitors are easily enticed on a website with appropriate images, but unique ones will always get the edge.  Just like for a fresh content, people are always looking for new  images.

Place your images above content

Correct positioning  puts more value to your image which gives a greater visibility to the visitors.

Use appropriate image file size . 

File Size for  faster loading of a web page is one of the most important factor that a web designer should  consider.  The speed of the Internet connection may vary in every visitor especially coming from different countries and in most cases, visitors  do not want to wait for the loading of the pages.  If your type of website requires a lot of images, make sure that every image is reduced without sacrificing the image resolution.

 Use high-quality resolution images

When you look at a webpage with an image, we usually look for clarity.  Which means the visitors should see clearly what message it conveys and how it is related to the content.  Provide a hyperlinked larger image version of the smaller one if necessary.

Filename of the image should be keyword SEO friendly

Whenever we searched an image from the Internet like in search engines such as Google and Bing, we never realized how these search engines were able to find those images.  

To make it SEO friendly, assign specific filename from the SEO keywords on the  title.  If your image is coming from your own camera, it normally creates  a default filename (example :  DSC01227.jpg), make sure that you change the filename before uploading.

Another detail to consider is when creating two words on a  filename, using a dash symbol  “-“ will make your image more of a target instead of using underscore “_”.  Search engines reads the dash symbol as space.

Use captions to your images

Search engines gets their results from tags, filenames, and captions to identify and properly index images.  Captions are text that best describe the image in relation to the text or content.   

 Recommended file formats for web SEO

The three most common image file formats for web are JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group), PNG (Portable Network Graphics), and  GIF (Graphics Interchange Format).  These image formats are widely compatible with recent browsers.  But when it comes to image SEO, recommended formats in exact order : PNG, JPEG, then GIF.

The next time you put an image to your blog or website, it is advisable to focus not only on the appearance and placing of the images, but also how to make your images an SEO target. 

Also published in Factoidz with the same author.