Common Pub Quiz and Quiz Show Questions: Tips to Improve Your Trivia

Overused Tricky or Trick Questions

• When given a question you have to really look at every word individually and you may have to think outside the box. For example: who was the first person to step foot on Australia? It certainly was not Captain Cook it was obviously an Aboriginal.   
• The capital city of Australia is Canberra and is located in Australian Capital Territory (ATC). The capital of Luxembourg is Luxembourg City
• What is the only object visible from space/the moon? This is a very bad question. The correct answer is probably none. Often the correct answer given is the Great Wall of China despite the fact you can’t see it. If you don’t believe me, believe NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall.html
•    In Only Fools and Horses the car used is not a Reliant Robin it is a Reliant Regal Supervan
• The World’s largest desert is Antarctica. A desert is not defined as being hot it is a region that gets very little rain (precipitation). When was the last time you heard it rained in Antarctica
• The only person who can drive on British roads without a licence plate is the Queen.

Celebrity Names

• Paul McCartney’s middle name is Paul; his first name is James. 
• Ray Charles last name is Robinson. Also, he was married twice and had 12 children with nine women.
•  John Denver’s real name is Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.
• The Popes “pope” name is not his real name. For example Pope Benedict is really Joseph Ratzinger and John Paul II was Karol Józef Wojtyła.
• Celebrities often shorten their names to make them easier to remember (and often less forign). For example Fred Astaire was Frederick Austerlitz

Series to Watch or be Aware of:

When it comes to TV it is not possible to have watched everything. Instead it is worth focusing on a small number of highly popular shows which still retain a loyal following.

•          Roy Clarke sitcoms: Last of the Summer Wine, Open all Hours and Keeping Up Appearances.
•          One Foot in the Grave
•         Only Fools and Horses
•         The Two Ronnie’s
•          Morecombe and Wise
•          The Good Life
•          MASH
•          Star Trek
•         Cheers
•          Seinfeld
•          The Cosby Show

Films to be aware of 

You can estimate the popularity of a film (the more popular the more likely questions will be) is to go to IMDB most voted and the Top 250.  

•        Gone With the Wind
•       Singin’ in the Rain
•         The Shawshank Redemption
•          The Godfather
•          Pulp Fiction
•          Lord of the Rings
•          Star Wars
•          Monty Python
•          It’s a Wonderful Life
•          Apocalypse Now

Books to Read

•         Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare. There is always a Shakespeare question. Just read or see the most famous ones: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar.
•          The Great Gatsby
•          A Tale of Two Cities
•          Harry Potter
•          The Lord of the Rings
•          The Catcher in the Rye
•          To Kill a Mockingbird
•          Nineteen Eight-four and Animal Farm
•          Catch-22
•          The Iliad and The Odyssey

10 Thing You Should Never Do With Adsense

Google Adsense is the main revenue source for most internet writers, bloggers and webmasters so getting banned is a very big deal. You do not want this to happen to you so I've collected ten things you must never do which, by not doing them, will keep you on good terms with Google.

1. The Golden Rule: don't click your own ads ever or do anything backhanded to encourage others to. Google is very very good at detecting this and you will be banned and probably loose all the money you made not just the few bad clicks worth. You can prevent bad clicks by downloading the Google Publisher Toolbar which turns the mouse into a big red cross when you mouse over your own ads.

2. Never show more than 3 ad units.

3. Don't put links or images near your ad units as this is deceptive. Accidental clicks are no use to advertisers so really you are just wasting their money. Think of yourself as an employee, Google as middle management and the advertisers as the executives. Google is trying to please those at the top and if there unhappy with you Google is going to come down on you like a ton of bricks.

4. Don't put ads on empty sites: build up content before putting up ads. Advertisers want valuable targeted traffic and are willing to put up good CPC for it  but only if you take the time to create a site/blog which has real value to it's visitors.

5. Don't discuss your Adsense earnings with others or post details online. Most importantly don't share details about CPC.       

6. Don't forget to include a privacy policy. Google requires you to disclose that they use a tracking cookie. If you are publishing on an adsense sharing site make sure they have this privacy policy.

7. Don't put ads on sites with adult content, violence, drugs content, guns or hate speech. Google requires sites to be "family safe"

8. Don't disguise ads - always make it clear to the user what is images, content, links etc and what is ads.

9. Don't alter the adsense code in any way. If you need to resize the ads or change the colours you need to create another ad unit in the adsense interface.

10. Don't ignore user generated content - you are responsible for it.

More information can be found at <a href=" http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=checklist.cs&tab=1187443 ">the Adsense Academy</a>

WebAnswers Levels Explained

I've just recently started using WebAnswers and have been very successful so far using their adsense revenue sharing. But there was one thing I could not understand and that was the titles people were getting and what exactly qualified them.

It turns out that it is based on the number of posts you have on the site.The list below gives the current levels:

Beginner = 10
Contributor = 75
Authority = 180
Expert = 660
Professor = 1000
Brain = 2000

People who have just started are simply called new users.

Personally I think professor should be above brain as the highest rank. Professors have prestige. It would also be good if they had a rank that was stupidly high so that everyone had something to aim for. It could be something like WebAnswers Nobel Laureate = 100,000. 

Who Owns Rolls Royce?

Rolls Royce (the aerospace and defence company) is classed as a public limited. That means that the public can buy shares in the company and become partial owners. Of course some people have a lot more shares than others.

The car manufacturer (Rolls Royce Motors) is owned by BMW.  

7 Ways to Tell A Good Twitter Follower From a Bad Twitter Follower

One of the question you should ask yourself on Twitter is whether you should follow someone back. The question you should really ask is: "do I mind loosing this follower?" In order to decide this you need to ask if they are a good follower or a bad follower. A bad follower:

Bad Follower

1.   Follows huge numbers of people. So they are not following you. 

2.  Constantly replies with dull chit chat. You will gain nothing from following. 

3.  Never or rarely retweets. 

4. Has very few followers - less than 100. They are a nobody. 

5. Tweets very often or all at once. They will clog up your feed and get you so annoyed you will unfollow eventually anyway. 

Finding out a good follower is easier

Good Follower

1. Is followed by a lot more people than follows them (high follower to following ratio). This means they want to follow you and are a "somebody". 

2. Has the verified symbol. 

There is a good bit of software called The Twit Cleaner that I have used. 

How to Start making Google Gadgets - where to find Google Gadget Editor

When I first started Developing for Google Gadgets this was the first problem to solve: where is the editor? First things first: its on iGoogle and you can find this my searching for iGoogle on Google. Then find add gadgets and search from there for Google Gadget Editor.

The iGoogle interface (I've added the editor already)

To get started with the creation of your app or widget you will first need to teach yourself to program in HTML or better learn Java (there are many good free online courses). It would also be worth while to learn CSS to get the gadgets to look good (perfect for blogging too). 

Assuming that you know how to program in at least one language you can get started by following these steps:

1. Click file then save as and save Hello World as the name of the app your building 
2. Now you are ready to code. 
3. When you've finished click file again and then publish (don't forget to preview and debug)

The apps will be hosted on Google as opposed to using their far more complex project hosting site on Google Code. 

Can you put Adsense On Adult or Pornographic (porn) content

The short answer is no and when Google says no it really means no. Google will find out very quickly if you have put your code where you shouldn't have (just like people who click their own ads) and you will loose you account and perhaps even your earnings. Google says:

If your site has content which you wouldn't be comfortable viewing at work or with family members around, then it probably isn't an appropriate site to place Google ads upon 

This I think sums it up very nicely. You will have to look around at the alternative ad providers most of which do not pay as well as Google.

Does Blogger Count Your Own Views in Stats? How to Stop it

When I first started a blog I would marvel at how quickly I was gaining readers. The blog had only a few posts and already hundreds of views had appeared. I was constantly updating and posting and watching the traffic soar and soar, then I took a few days off. Suddenly no-one was reading the blog, I couldn't understand where the 50+ readers a day had gone. Until it dawned on me that I was my entire audience - the stats were nonsense.

So one of the first things you should do when you start a blog you should stop Blogger tracking your own blog visits. This is very simple to do:

1. Go to your dashboard
2. From there find stats.
3. To the right of a graph you should see "Don't track my own page views" - click it
4. Check the "Don't track my pageviews" and the save.

However Blogger will only stop tracking views from this computer, so if you work on your blog on more than one computer Blogger will track the views from your other computer(s). This is because the system identifies you by browser.

How much alcohol is in whisky - units and equivalents.

For all intents and purposes whisky is the most potent form a alcohol you can purchase in a store. By definition to be called whisky it must be at least 40% alcohol. Almost all whisky is 40% - you can buy cask strength whisky at specialist retailers online going up as high as 60%.

So lets assume 40% as being the standard whisky alcohol content - which is very reasonable. We find that a litre bottle of whisky contains 40 units, a 70cl contains 28 units and a single measure (25ml) contains 1 unit. Take as a bench mark that a pint is between 2.3 and 2.8 units.

The way I like to think about the potency of whisky is to visualise it as so:

You remember what its like to drink a whole bottle of wine?

However when you go out to the pub you are better to drink whisky measures than glasses of wine (1.25-1.75 units) or pints (2.3-2.8 units) as a measure of whisky is small and contains the least alcohol (1 unit) of almost all the other drinks you can order.

Top Five Ways To Loose Twitter Followers

1. Tweeting Too Much. If someone opens up Twitter and has to scroll past twenty posts by you before being able to read anyone else they will get annoyed and unfollow.

2. Tweeting Too Little - its all about balance. You need to interact with Twitter and your followers to be noticed. You need enough tweets to get people reading, retweeting, replying and also to show up in several topics (that's what the # is).

3.  Being Boring. If you tweet about your lunch, or worse your poo people read that tweet and wonder why they follow you. The more interesting a tweet the more likely it will be retweeted, replied to and favorited.

4. Spamming Celebrities. Tweeting very occasionally to celebrities with highly relevant and targeted approach will make you look influential and professional when you get a few genuine replies - but if you get nothing it does not matter as the tweets were good anyway. However if you write "what's up?" or "What you doing" to  celebrities your follower count will diminish. Its being aggressively boring.

5. Unfollowing Others. Many people on twitter only follow you because you follow them (sad I know but true). People who follow a large number of people and are followed by a similar number usually keep track of who is unfollowing them with twitter apps (how do you think they keep follower and following numbers the same?). Though these people don't make very great followers anyway.

Getting more Twitter Followers Free with Twiends Review. Scam?

First things, first, I don't think that Twiends is a scam - I can see no evidence to suggest this. They have never updated my twitter feed and have provided me with followers. Though I have never used the paid version. When you read their about section you see how they are trying to operate within Twitters Terms and Conditions.

Twiends Explained

The basic concept behind Twiends is pretty good. and very simple. You follow someone in return for so many "seeds" (usually between 2 and 9). The seeds that you gain can be used to gain followers.  I was very impressed with how fast my follower count grew.

Drawbacks

However, there are major drawbacks with Twiends. The main one is that people follow and then unfollow you so you have wasted seeds. In addition people who use Twiends tend to have be following huge numbers of people so don't make very good followers.

However

Despite this there are advantages to simply having a high number of followers even though most of your followers are following so many people they hardly notice you. For example these crap followers do generally retweet a lot so as your follower numbers increase your retweet rate increase. Also having a large following gives you, strangely, credibility. People look at you as being influential and known whereas what you are really doing is just trying to punch above you weight.

Overall 

I would say that using Twiends is worthwhile. For a start you can get 10 seeds (at most 5 followers) simply for logging in so if nothing else this is worth doing. It is a good way to get started and let people know you have arrived on the Twitter scene.