Thursday 12 July 2007

Expatica Review

(nr.8) http://www.expatica.com/
Expatica Forum is to be improved, as the website admin has promised - by the end of July, or in about 2 weeks from now.
Apart from the usual spam, crashes and 'pruning', 2 serious technical problems are: some topics now have one/two/three LAST pages empty/emptied with a false declaration "No posts exist for this topic". Notably thus affected are popular topics by Kathaksung, 'avsie' and one topic by 'niceone'. The 2nd problem was an uncontrolled machine-like registration of 'members', which ran into thousands. Unfortunately, the button "members list" has disappeared, so one cannot see it. There were also discrepancies between Total posts numbers for members, myself included, as displayed in different parts of of the database. Alas, the 'offending' numbers were simply erased.
We keep our fingers crossed.
I shall post now and then a short overview of the Expatica topics here on my website.
My site has no counter and I have not switched on the comments option. So, the feed back is via my e-mail and or via Expatica Forum.

The most read topic I started on Sat. 6 May, 2006 (with 15644 hits at the moment) is "Read before MAY 11 - internet safety! " :

http://my.expatica.com/c:nl/forum/viewtopic.php?t=74547

The second most popular discussion is about NEWSPEAK in a topic, started by 'niceone', but taken over by me.
NB ! The last two (?) pages have misleading "No posts exist" and are empty, so do go back a couple of pages to see that the topic is there.
So, "A bit of fun " with 11727 hits:

http://my.expatica.com/c:nl/forum/viewtopic.php?t=75097

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I had an enlightening conversation with Peter Westhorpe - the manager of the Gosport JobCentrePlus yesterday. Keep my fingers crossed.
It turns out the reception desk is staffed by yet another temp/security company.
I could not really ask about extraordinary '3 pairs of eyes' at the reception on Wed. February 28. They now have different people - 'permanent change' indeed.
Could it be the Kestrel agency from Southampton, which is subcontracted by the Gosport Library?
Too many companies, changing company names and logos if you ask me.
By the way, the "11 may" topic this week has mind-boggling BANKING ARRESTS (?) news, which prompts me to remember BARCLAYS bank LOGO.
A few months ago there was a new, changed logo displayed on our High street, which has since been removed (the old one is back). That new logo had an extraordinary semi-abstract underwater siluette - a crown 'sunk', at the bottom of the sea. All in blue shades.
It may be overstretched, but I noticed that THE FOX pub has an old sign, which not in content, but in composition and outlines (green shades instead of blue) featuring lighter center circle with darker perimeter reminds me of that experimental (?) and now removed Barclays sign.