A tale of two Brian Garside’s

Me and my Logo

Back in the 90’s I was known as “Darkside”, but ast the proliferations of Darkside’s on the internet increased, I adopted my real name in order  to own a Google Ranking.  I mean seriously, how many Brian Garside’s could there be?

A lot of them apparently.  I’ve been in a seemingly never-ending battle with the Brian Garside’s of the world to keep me at the top of the search engine rankings lately (I’m the web developer Brian Garside after all, so it’s kind of expected of me, just like having great plates is what’s expected of potter Brian Garside).

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Search Engine Optimization is Bunk

The Radical Hive Logo

I get about 7 or 8 email spam a week to my domain accounts promising that so-and-so can make my search rankings much higher for only $xxxx.  Of course this stuff is so much snake oil it’s not even funny.  I can help you improve your Search Engine ranking with 10 easy tips.  Best of all, this is completely free!

So, for the robots out there, check this out:

Top 10 Free Search Engine Optimization Tips by Brian Garside

Consider that a preview tip right there.  That title not only improves the ranking for my name, but will also raise the profile of this article in search engines. Read more

Summer Movie Review Blowout

Disney Pixar's Up

I’ve actually managed to watch quite a few summer movies this year, and other than Star Trek, I haven’t mentioned any of them.  So this is a quick blow out review list of Wolverine, Fast and Furious, Up, The Hangover, and Drag Me To Hell.

I’ve still yet to see Terminator Salvation and Transformers 2 (both pure popcorn movies), and I really want to see Away We Go (although I doubt it will play in London), but so far I’m really impressed with the summer movie crop. Read more

My comics list for August 2009

Blackest Night Superman and Ultimate Avengers

Once again it’s that time of the month, when a young man’s fancy turns to the comics he will be reading two months hence.  There’s some good stuff that interests me and that I’ll definitely be adding to my Comics Pull List through my online comics store All New Comics.

If you’re not already subscribing to your comics from All New Comics I gotta ask you, why are you going to your comics?  Make your comics come to you!

Okay, shameless plug out of the way, this is what I’m adding to my list this month: Read more

What’s So Great About Being A Dad?

Kaylin, Maks, and me

I wrote this for “The Mom and Caregiver” magazine this month, and thought that it would be fun to post it to my site as a Father’s Day tribute.

A father’s role has changed a ton in the past several decades. The rise of feminism has resulted in some pretty great things, like a much larger role in the lives of our children. When I was born it was still something of an anomaly for a father to be in the room at the birth of their child. Today it’s commonplace—the births of my two children are two of the greatest moments of my life. Read more

Relics of my youth: The Arcade

This is progress

I was on Gizmodo several months ago when I came across an article on a man who has built his own video game arcade museum. It got me to thinking about another of the bygone things from my youth, the video game arcade. They were a product of the 80’s, really reaching their zenith around 1985 or so. Today they are all but extinct with the modern day arcade being half kiddie Las Vegas where high scores are rewarded with tickets (which in turn can be redeemed for all but useless trinkets), and half broken down semi-amusement rides resembling cars, skateboards, and motorcycles.

My favourite arcade memories in London were at Wizard’s Castle, Wizards II, and Ace Arcade, all downtown within a three block radius. Read more

Review: Batman and Robin #1

Batman and Robin #1

There is a new status quo in the Batman universe. In the aftermath of Batman RIP and Final Crisis, Bruce Wayne is dead, and Batman is no more. Following these events, the heirs of the Dark Knight battled for the cowl, and the person who reluctantly took on the mantle of the Bat was none other than the original Robin, Dick Grayson. Now with a brand new Dynamic Duo (Bruce Wayne’s son Damian in the Robin role, who’s mother is Ra’s Al Ghul’s daughter Talia), we also have an entirely new (pardon the pun) dynamic.

Batman the light hearted acrobatic thrill seeker, and Robin the brooding, brutally efficient dark avenger.

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What our children think of GM

Kaylin on the future of GM from Brian Garside on Vimeo

I spent some time last night speaking to my children about GM’s recent decision to declare bankruptcy, leaving them with a nice fat $10 billion dollar 12% investment in what was already a useless company.

Heaven forbid that our government had taken that $10 billion dollars and invested it in a forward looking company like Tesla, instead they invested it in a company who’s predatory business practices have managed to drive what little innovation entirely out of their industry. Well played Canadian (and even worse US) government. Now not only are we taxpayers out that $10 billion, but we’ll STILL end up with hundreds of thousands of auto workers on our unemployment roles.

Kaylin’s comments were a little more succinct than Maks, who I think was only interested in grabbing this reporter’s camera, but in the interest of fair and balanced journalism, here is Maks’ point of view.

Maks on the GM Bankruptcy from Brian Garside on Vimeo.

My comics pull list for May 2009

Yes, his name is really Al

Wow, another month, another comic list update.  This was hopefully the last one I’ll have to do by myself for a very long time.  I’ve got a ton of other things that I’m not doing like promotions, weekly product updates, ads, and all sorts of other good stuff.  As of next month Pete’s buddy Gus will be helping us out, and coming on board as our first official paying staff member (if you don’t count Ryan who has done a significant amount of work for us in the past).  So for my last official posting, I added a freaking ton of stuff.

Here’s the stuff I’ve added to my own pull list at All New Comics this month (and there’s some good stuff here). Read more

What I did on my week off

The Garsides in Wonderland

I actually took last week off from work and had a real honest-to-god family vacation.  While I had a list of things I WANTED to do, the list of things I ACTUALLY did was a little smaller, but in some ways a lot better.

Last Saturday night I had the boys over for some UFC action.  We played a little UFC Redemption on the PS3, and then settled in for UFC 98 (Evans vs Machida).  I was looking forward to the Hughes / Sera fight, but I really wanted to see Rashad pound the crap out of Lyoto Machida, who I have always considered one of the most boring fighters on the planet, and a man who along with Anderson Silva is ruining my enjoyment of UFC right now (yeah, I hate Anderson Silva, probably the only man on the planet…but I just hate that stupid little dance he does at the end of his fights so much, and the fact that he’s been world champion for a year and still can’t give us a half hearted post-fight interview).

Unfortunately Rashad lost, and now we have “The Machida Era” to look forward to.  Oh bliss!

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