I have a friend. Actually, I have a lot of friends and I’m sure you will meet some of them in the future. I’m quite lucky in the friendship stakes, though I can’t think why. Maybe they are all secretly studying psychology and are using me as the basis for their Theses?

Anyway. My friend [the one I started on about above] is a web designer. He is a great help to me as he knows a bit about computers, which is more than I do. It was he who kindly gave me the place to put this site. He set it up for me and everything, so all I have to do is Ramble.

I was talking to him last night, and he is upset. Now when a friend of mine gets upset, then I get upset. I’m that kind of chap – empathetic [I’m lucky I spelt that correctly. Some might have left out the “em” bit].

I asked him what he was upset about and he said it was the “Golden Spider Awards”. He says they are supposed to be the “Oscars of the Web industry”. Now this is all Greek to me, so I asked why he should be upset about them.

He said it was because they were giving the web industry a very bad name. He says they are conning the public [and even worse, conning businesses] by giving awards to a small clique of websites that just don’t deserve awards.

I pointed out that if the sites get awards, then they must be good. I mean, you don’t get an award if you don’t deserve it.

But he then told me that independent Irish webmasters have been analysing the sites that are up for this years awards. Apparently, out of the 128 sites submitted only 5 meet basic industry standards.

I asked what that meant. He said it was like 128 books being shortlisted for the Booker Prize and 123 of them are full of spelling mistakes and bad grammar. I pointed out that if they were shortlisted, then someone would have checked their spelling and grammer.

He said that that was what he was on about. The websites aren’t checked or tested. He doesn’t know why or how they were selected, but he said that they were giving what is supposed to be Ireland’s highest awards to sites that just didn’t deserve it.

He was very upset. And at this stage, I was getting upset too. Apparently a lot of people who know what they are talking about are very upset.

He gave me a link to a website that shows the tests that a friend of his did.

Maybe I should put this Head Rambles site up for an award?

But then it just might give me a bad reputation?