You wait, time passes

Crikey, its been ages since I last did a quality blog post. Its the time, I just don't have it, you know, to really sit down in front of the old keyboard and find something new and interesting to write about. I can't just squirt out any old crap.

The other day, via Astrid off of Facebook, I discovered the joy at is Hyperbole and a Half. Its this blog where the author write memoirs, stories of things that happened to her, illustrated using MS Paint.

Its hilarious and almost had me weeing myself. Its her brutal honesty that wins through and also how she shamelessly wants to win at the internet.

I fear if I tried such a thing, friends and loved one's would advise me against it in a matter of seconds.

Anyhoo, There was an interview with the author elsewhere on the web where she says it can take 16 hours to do a blogpost. I understand, I wish I could do that, but I'm inevitably dragged away to do something else, washing up, work, get off the sodding internet, etc. She writes around two blogposts a month and cos its pure internet comedy gold, she has the 1240th most popular blog of the internet, with a technorati authority of 526, by way of comparison, my old Naked Chicks on Post-It Notes barely made the top 100,000 blogs and only had an authority of 126, back in the day when Technorati authority meant something.

Anyhoo, so right now I have a wee bit of time to myself, and instead of practising away at my guitar and videoing poor cover versions of The Just Joans and Moustache of Insanity songs, I'm going to revisit a subject I covered a few weeks back on this here blog, and that is the website All Our Ideas.

For those who haven't been paying attention, AllOurIdeas.org is

...a platform that enables groups to collect and prioritize ideas in a transparent, democratic, and bottom-up way. It’s a suggestion box for the digital age.

You can post a question, provide some possible answers for people to chose and then if people suggest other answers they become part of it too.

I set up a wee half-arsed thing about civil liberties here, its had fifty one votes so far, undoubtedly a large proportion of them came from the same person. See, whilst the site is a great idea, it doesn't quite provide a hosepipe of traffic, that's up to me, the user, putting links on twitter and facebook and here, and I can only muster 51 votes.

Or in the case of deciding whether to play guitar or learn java or some other life-enriching activity, I mustered 54 votes.

And here follows the wee quality bit of this blog post, wondering how popular AllOurIdeas is for other people, here's a wee table of polls that I've found and how many respondents they've had.

Link	Respondents	What
chrislifeenrich	54	Chris's life enriching project
ukcivlib	51	Most pressing civil liberties issue in the UK
nameksp	865	Craigslist Knowledge share project name
funniestword	437	What's the funniest word
sipprellepoll1	3722	What should be Scott's most important focus as your new Congressman?
drogasmexico	21	¿Cómo solucionar los problemas relacionados con el tráfico ilegal de drogas en México?
ilsp	18	What should be the topic of the International Legislator Survey Project in 2011?
studentgovernment	5564	Which do you want more from the student government?
improve_allourideas	494	Which do you want more from allourideas?
innovation	5246	What future innovation does society most need?

That's all I can find right now, there's probably loads more people using the site, but I can't find them, what I can find however its lots of people talking about the site, lots of social media news write-ups.

If more people are to use the site, which would be a neat thing, then surely some kind of easily accessible index would be good. Sure, some people will want their surveys kept quiet, if its just a wee local thing or a corporate employee only survey, you don't want folk for all over Asia voting, but if it something where you want as many people as possible to vote to get the broadest range of opinions, then maybe, instead of an index, some kind of hosepipe site would be neat where you just click through voting on lots of different polls and surveys.

I dunno.

Anyhoo, if you're reading this, having somehow found this page via google, and you know of any other allourideas pages that I don't have on my wee list, then let me know in the comments. Aye.

My next madcap scheme

For the past week or so, since I decided to put the Glasgow Indie Eyespy Movie on hold, I've been having a bit of a dilemma about what my next 'thing' is going to be. I need a focus, I need a thing to do.

I was undecided between picking up the Teach Yourself Java book I'd acquired a few weeks back, or picking up my guitar again.

A friend had urged me to set up a Facebook fan page without specifying why, so I did and found that I could use it for posting videos and stuff, so maybe I could do something like my old video webcasty thing from Glasgow, but bang in the new decade, with just me playing guitar. Could I record a song every night? Even if its just a cover or something I'd written years ago. How long could I keep it going for? Would it become a thing that would help get me a slot at next years Indietracks? Would other people want to get involved? Some cute stripey-topped keyboard player, or a very tall bass player. Would it work?

On the other hand, learning Java would be useful, I could put it on my CV, or use it for building neat web apps, like one that would generate a heatmap for KML feeds from Foursquare, or some fancy automated way of compiling the list of videos from Indietracks bands by scraping some kind of feed. It could get me a well lush job guffawing all day on the internet and shedloads of money with which to redistribute to London's Indiepop music scene and purveyors of Xbox 360 Elites.

I couldn't decide, so I used the marvel that is AllOurIdeas.org. Its a simple organic poll engine I fell in love with a week or so ago when I tried to find out what was the most pressing civil liberties issue facing the UK government.

Neglecting the use of the word 'madcap' I put up the question "what should my next time wasting/life enriching scheme be?", along with three options:-

• Java
• Video webcasty things of my playing guitar
• Abusing other people's photies of Indietracks by using them to reenact South Park

The last option being a wildcard, cos I'm just a crazy kind of guy. AllOurIdeas allows respondents to add additional suggestions into the mix.

So after three days I find a clear favourite has emerged, one suggested by someone else.

They want me to have kids.

Could be difficult, cos its not really the sort of thing I can do on my own in my bedroom, like the other options, but if that's what the internet has decided for me, then so be it.

On the other hand, another received suggestion was to "quit the internet for a few weeks, see how evolve without it".

That would be weird.

Anyhoo, kids it is!

Hot or Not for everything with All Our Ideas

I found a link to a really cool website, its called www.allourideas.org and its the greatest innovation on the entire internet ever, trust me.

Its like Hot or Not, but for opinions. Here, take a look at http://www.allourideas.org/ukcivlib while I explain...

I've asked the question "What is the most pressing civil liberties issue facing the British Government?" And I've suggested three answers, smoking band, photography, cctv. The website offers you two answers at random and you can chose one of the other.

Or you can suggest something new, then the next people who visit the site can chose from those I suggested and those suggested by other people.

On the results page you can then see which answers are most popular and which are least popular.

In the case of the other week's government crowd-sourcing exercise in suggesting which laws to repeal, it was bogged down in thousands of irrelevant and dumb suggestions in a matter of hours. With All Our Ideas the best ones float to the top and the least popular ones sink.

Apparently the folk who created the site got the idea from KittenWars but the Hot Or Not site has been around for years. I'm just glad that someone has put together this sort of thing now.

It took me about thirty seconds to set up my http://www.allourideas.org/ukcivlib this sort of thing is easy now. let me know if there's any other neat questions out there.

London Bloggers Meetup:- Talk Talk

Wha, where, when... A month passes, I emerge from London's underground network, into Oxford Circus and Soho, only a few moments ago I was in darkest Wembley, eating Chinese and looking for my phone charger. The evening of the London Blogger's meetup has come round again.

I emerge blinking into the sunlight, looking for familiar sounding street names, and before long find myself outside the Talk Talk Customer Experience place. Large glass front, neon lights, there are many people inside.

I step in, fail to think of something amusing to write on a name tag, then go looking for people I know.

I find some and we chat. The talk covers many topics but one that sticks in ma heid is the Old Spice advert.

There is a speaker, this evening a cycling Rob talking about podcasting. Its a very indepth talk, covering what hardware to use (the latest Zoom recordery thing), what software to use (audacity) and what services to use to host and cast your pod cast. More of the details are at this link here, but what sticks in my mind is RadioKate's interruption pointing out that Audioboo has new features that the cycling Rob didn't know about.

Crikey, that must be unsettling, having you talk corrected by an audience member. I keep wondering what I'd talk about if it was me up there, what would I say that would hold people's attention, could I even hold people's attention at all.

The short train of thought lead me to ponder, would Andy the LBM organiser consider hosting a special, where all the regular bloggery meetuppery people had to do a 60 second talk. Some deal with twenty slides in a minutes or something. Would that entertain?

Anyhoo, the evening was hosted by talktalk, they were generous with their nibbles and booze and net access, I feel a bit guilty for the blog posts what I wrote back in February its not their fault, its BT with their hellish slow line connections. I hope that it doesn't matter who I direct my frustration at, as long as I vent it.

Regular readers of my blog will know I'm currently trying to write a screenplay, in the vague hope that someone reads it and decides its the greatest and most imaginative thing ever and then goes on to shower me with money and makes it. This you already knew.

I had an idea, a wee cutaway flashforward scene, like what they drop in to Scrubs or Lost. The scene involves a familiar character mentioning someone they know, some significant person in their like that the film's main protagonist doesn't know, the the flash forward to four years in the future, the protagonist finds themselves at a party or blogger's meetup, completely unrelated to four years earlier, chatting with a person who gives away just enough information to identify them as the person their friend mentioned. Then suddenly back to the narative.

As is my usual 'thing' for these blogger meetups, here's a list of bloggery people I spoke to.

• Aref-Adib
• Nima
• Peter marshall - My London Diary
  
• Thomas debuzzy
• Tom - Flashboy
• RadioKate
• Pradeep - Blogger User
  
• James - Battle Theme London
• Angus
• Reyes
• Melissa - Miss Geeky
• As - BBC
• Anna - Completely Novel - cool book publishing site
• Phil - Red rocket
• Rob - Real cycling
  
• Anthony - Fresh Plastic
• Caroline - Caroline's Miscellany - London's historical curiousities
• Longhaired crazy seat slasher chap
  
• His less haired friend called Matt

And here's a list of folk I made vague eye contact with or possibly nodded at and they nodded recognition back

• Lolly - blog til you drop
• Tom - Tired of life
• Doreen owl elbows - Tasty Fever
  
• Andy Bargery - The Marketing Blagger
  
• Londoneer
• Tiki Chris
• Annie Mole
• Proactive paul
• Guitar churchy
  

And here's a graph showing how such lists compare with previous London Bloggers Meetups.

Well, I think I've set myself a new record, cheesy grins all round.

Titter, chortle, guffaw.

London Bloggers Meetup: Best Buy

Went to a London Bloggers Meetup for the first time in ages, this time at Doggett's Coat and Badge, near Blackfriars bridge, under blazing hot sunshine, with civilisation on the verge of collapse. MyBerry was playing up beforehand so I couldn't log on to FourSquare adequately, no one would have known where I was, my last checkin was hours ago on the other side of town.

On the second floor as usual, a warm and fuzzy cloud of recognition, some folk I knew, some I didn't, all friendly and chatting, all united in their enthusiasm for new media and free beer provided by the evening's sponsors BestBuy.

We chatted and introduced ourselves randomly, the phrase "Do you blog?" starting to sound like some 1970's swingers party fetish as we nibbled on canapés.

At some point I broached the subject of how there appears to be the cultural requirement for an artifact, a milestone, representing social networking, what Romeo&Juliet does for love, what Frankenstein does for science, what Heart of Darkness does for stuff, something that encapsulates online relationships, checking out on facebook people you used to know, without actually seeking them. Something like Billy Jones is Dead, but with added internet. How to deal with being unfriended, people who don't exist online, truly its a twenty-first century issue that needs to be resolved adequately.

Andy the organiser set forth on stage, thanked and introduced the evening's speakers:-
Tom Tired talked about political blogging, he works in politics, talked about political blogging, how we have no rules or conventions to abide, only bloggers can compare John Prescot's schlong to a cocktail sausage. The talk was about three minutes too long but rather entertaining.

Kind of reminded me that I need to register "DianeAbbottShouldHaveWon.com"

The second speaker was the CEO from BestBuy. There was a prize draw, where the prizes were Dr Dre headphones and Bon Jovi tickets, as I didn't win my coverage of his talk will revolve round how the chap is very nasel, but nice message. Gotta quote the word "Cushtomer".

I like the idea of Best Buy, an electronics store where they know what they're talking about. Against the backdrop of the shite service that Comet and PC World are reknown for, then some thing as inspirational as Best Buy can only be a good thing. And from talking to the BestBuy blueshirts at the meetup, they sure are an enthusiastic bunch.

I promised that I'd check out the Thurrock store at the weekend, and fire into the hi-fi demonstration room, but I fear, in the light of my self-actualisation and realisation of my nature, that although I like the idea, and I'm an open minded kind of chap, I'm going to come away with rattling off a list of everything they're doing wrong, and everything I'm sceptical about.

Like 3D cinema and 3D TVs, its just a gimmick, the next excuse to replace your existing media collection. As Lossless compression followed MP3 followed CD followed tape followed LP followed sheet music, as Bluray followed DVD followed VHS followed cinema followed theatre. Yes, but no.

During the CEO's talk the recycling message makes me weep blood, aw c'mon ceo, its bullshit compared to "drive slower" and "don't fly", the energy efficiency of your domestic modern conveniences is pish in the wind, do any customers really care about recycling when they buy the product? Doesn't that suggest that they're buying an inferior product which they're not going to enjoy using for many many years. Doesn't that suggest some kind of failure on the part of the designer and retailer? "You'll love our product, but not for very long"

And, oh ffs! Windfarms?

As is my norm for this sort of event, here's a list of the bloggery folk who I chatted to (18):-

• Cristiano Betta
• Caroline's Miscellany
• Bruce Bird
• James Melon London
• Andy Bargery
• Lucy MissCellaneous
• Baz
• Tom Tired of London Tired of Life
• Chris the Best Buy balloonist
• Pradeep meta-blogger
• The BestBuy website blogger chap
• Hayley from Witness to the Beard
• Kate of 'Fox on escalator' internet phenomenom fame
• Doreen owl elbows
• BestBuyGeekTeam David
• Tom Flashboy
• aw man, that other guy who was in the photo at the top of the post, he was kind of cool, although by that point I'd had quite a lot to drink and was rambling
  

Didn't speak to (8)

• Sianysianysiany
• Mark Wainwright
• Fernando Rizo
• Paul Antoniadis
• Neil Hallmark
• Rich Clark
• Dan Walker Smith
• Kirstie Allsopp
• Electric Spectre
  

I think I may have set myself a new record there
but if we consult the graph we can clearly show that apart from February's plumbing the depths of solace, my London Blogger Meetup socialising has kind of plateaued.

New blog design ahoy

Got bored of the old one, then I was listening to a thing on Radio4 about The FACE magazine, and thought I'd strip my blog design down to black and white, to give it a more stark look.

Hopefully I'll include more photies in the future, and make them all black and white halftone images, and it'll all look cool.

Blogging elsewhere

So I'm ensconced in a new house,with a huge garden, and I've been avoiding looking for a new job by gardening. Well, I say gardening, what I mean is hacking away at brambles, making fences and digging holes.

Its thrilling stuff, so much so that I've started a new blog to write about my gardening adventures.

Its called The Wumble of Wembley


Please add it to your feedreadery things if you like it.

Its got to be said though, it probably won't last long, I'm going to be evicted again in a few weeks, so I'm trying to make the most of it whilst I can.

Its damned inconvenient being made homeless. Being skint and unemployed isn't helping either.

Blog Stat Pron - March

Good evening and welcome to my irregular start of the month look at the previous month's blog traffic stats review. According to google analytics, for March, this blog got:-

1,503 Absolute Unique Visitors
2,413 Pageviews

Compared to February's

1,336 Absolute Unique Visitors
2,229 Pageviews

Well, Absolutes are up a massive 170, total Pageviews up by almost 200, I think I've set myself a new record for days when the blog's had more than 100 views in a day, sure it mostly due to one rather popular post I did in February which google seems to love, but its all fair game.


Statcounter reckons I had 2,305 Unique Visitors, and an average of 92 pageloads per day, down 6 from last month. Still not quite breaching the 100 ppd barrier, but getting better man. Maybe next month.

Here are the metrics of of my RSS feeds on various feed readers:

26 subscribers - GoogleReader (same as last month)
4 subscribers - Bloglines (same as last month)
8 followers - Blogger (same as last month)

Boring, same as last month, why do I even bother?

These are my top referrers for March (not including google wanderers)

1. Facebook - 138 visitors (216 friends)
2. Twitter - 52 visitors (174 followers)
3. UK Bubble - 42 visitors
4. Mark Wadsworth - 26 visitors
5. Wikio - 12 visitors
6. Hootsuit - 11 visitors
7. Another Form Of Relief - 6 visitors
8. Liberal-Vision - 6 visitors
9. Quick as Rainbows - 6 visitors
10. Club Baby Honey - 5 visitors

Lets take a brief moment to consider which were the most viewed posts during March.

1. The Holly Greig Story - 589 views
2. What Have I gotten myself into - the TFTA scam - 91 views
3. Origami flapping bird animation - 69 views
4. Death Disco - 64 views
5. Project Streetview Racing - 36 views
6. Bookcase Dreams - 30 views
7. Impending Doom of 6Music - 30 views
8. Brent Central PPCs - 26 views
9. Some Videos to Watch - 25 views
10. Does Shisha Kill - 24 views

The top five most popular posts that I wrote in March were:-

1. Death Disco - 64 views
2. Brent Central PPCs - 26 views
3. Some Videos to Watch - 25 views
4. Latest Dirt on Brent Central PPCs - 24 views
5. Dancing in the Street - 15 views

That's it belatedly for March's stat pron, until next time, take care space cadets.

London Bloggers Meetup - the Greene King

My first London Bloggers Meetup in months and months, damn my job requiring I get up at 4:30am. I slip into Bank underground station, walk for ages to get to the surface, then wander the streets randomly until I find the venue. Admittedly I did use myBerry and googlemaps, but it was still loading when I stumbled in to The City Tavern.

It was a very pubby pub, just like a pub. The meetup was in an upstairs room, kind of crowded. You could see straight into the office above the opposite street. The event was sponsored by Greene King IPA, its a kind of beer. There were a handful of helpful brewer type people around being knowledgable about the ways of beer.

The free beer on tap could be served in one of two ways:-

• Smooth and creamy - the northern style
• Clean and Crisp - the southern style

I went northern. Its all to do with the nozzle, but is it a patronising stereotypically thing? Well, the beer's all right, and the talky brewer chap recommends trying the clean and crisp southern version and comparing.

I wish Aref-Adib was here.

Aw man, the nature of tasting beer is as nuanced as high end audio listening.

The difference between northern and southern styles is in the north the beer is broadly poured from the bottom with a sparkler to add turbulence and for southern jessies its poured from the top without the sparkler. When you make white sugar, you bubble up bubbles of somekind of sodium which removed impurities and bleaches the sugar. Similarly bubbles travelling through the length of the glass changes the flavour and makes the head taste different.

Its the Target hops, an English variety, that give Greene King IPA its distinctive flavour, the oils in the hops. Most people don't know what hops taste like, I don't, well, they taste like that.

I love hearing this sort of thing. Although its a little bit cheesy for the hosty speakery people to list words that people usually use to describe flavour at an event where people will be describing flavours. "Rearrange the following words in the order of you choosing".

So aye, there was a short talk by the brewery people about the nature of beer tasting, which sides of the tongue do the trick and how to pour it.

How would I describe the taste?

It was all right.

There followed a talk from a charity blogger. The travails of charities trying to preach to a new audience who aren't already charitynuts.

Madagasca faces problems, but I can't help but think of Mark Wadsworth's post today about a sequence of adverts on Sky, NHS quit-smoking services, private quit-smoking products, WWF soliciting climate change donations, and then airlines.

It begs the question, how can the government afford TV adverts?

Anyhoo, back to Madagasca, quite clearly having a forest just sitting there, not providing substantial income for the country is unsustainable. Its not going to feed the population, or educate them or get them iPhones. Making your blogpost titles keyword rich ain't going to get Madagasca into the Amazonspace. Ooh, did I make an irony?

Greene King IPA Cask Revolution
Originally uploaded by consolidatedpr

Anyways, as is my way for the London Bloggers Meetups, I'll try to list bloggery people I saw and spoke to.

Spoke/grunted at (7)

• Hailey the beard drummer
• Her friend Shell
• Christiano Betta
• Anthony Fresh Plastic
• Bruce Bird
• Oscar
• Godwyns

Folk who I saw and recognised (8)

• Andy Bargery
• Peter Marshall
• Krista Booker
• Chris qwgmlm
• Sweena
• Lolly
• Michael someone
• Caroline of Caroline's Miscellany

Hmm, everyone's a lot better looking than I remember from last time.

Please excuse spelling, poor memory and lack of links, I'll sort it next time I get on broadband internet. I'm on the train home right now, tapping this out on myBerry, clutching my goodie bag of Greene King beers, and wondering where I'm sleeping tonight.

Top Posts this month #1

Top ten most viewed posts on my blog that I wrote this month

1. London Indiepop Eyespy
2. This Pensioners Burning Books thing
3. Back to Academies International
4. North versus Pachauri
5. Excess Winter Deaths then and now
6. The dramatic return of Glasgow Indie Eyespy
7. Body Scanner Porn the legend continues
8. Pay Cuts Pay Rises
9. Brent Council FOI Fail
10. New Years Resolutions

Frankly I'm surprised I came up with that many posts with over ten hits each, but that London Indiepop one got over 200, by Jove.

Referral spikes

This one time in 1998 when I was a fresher at Strathclyde University, going to King Tuts to see bands a few times a week, I once went on a mission to pull Kenickie. They were on tour, passing through that venue, and we a fine looking bunch of girls. I'd rounded up a couple of fresher chums, we acquired our tickets and headed along.

The gig wasn't the most crowded I'd been to, but the girls were on top form, their acappella version of Come Out 2Nite was a particular highlight of the set. The band had two new members for this, their final tour, some bloke and a hot keyboard player called Dot, who'd later go on to play with Blur.

My attempt at pulling Kenickie got as far as saying "Hey, how's it going?" to Dot. She smiled.

So, thirteen years later when my website charmed former Kenickie lead singer Lauren Laverne on her radio show, it was like completing a ancient quest.

As a result of getting talked up on the 6Music show, the website got a wee blip of traffic.

Lets compare it to other spot traffic blips I've received on several of my blogs:-

• Boing Boing mention - 24,000 hits
• YouPorn blog feeder - 500-1000 hits
• Lauren Laverne on 6Music - 450 hits
• Ian Dale new blogs mention - 200 hits
• Half-arsed Devil's Kitchen mention - 150 hits
• EU Referendum - 60 hits
• WardmanWire - 40 hits
• Britblog round-up - 30 hits

Thrilling stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

What? £80,000?

Other bloggers have been tearing this blogpost to shreds. Its essentially a business plan for how to do a collectivist Left-wing Local blog.

What sticks out for me most of all is this paragraph on costs:-

My initial workings suggest that a local blog covering a population of 30-40,000 people might be able to survive on turnover of around £80,000 per year inclusive of a living wage for two staff and operational costs, but exclusive of delivery costs (see below) which will need to remain volunteer based in the short term.

Its frankly insane.

Blogging platforms are pretty much free. Blogger, wordpress, Livejournal, even Facebook groups/notes. Sure, you can spend money on a TypePad blog and hosting on your own server somewhere, but its not really necessary, its a vanity thing like getting 7 inches pressed.

And whilst a living wage for blogging alone would be nice, it does suggest that you'll be employing people who don't really want to write blogposts.

Me, I work for little over minimum wage, in London, making sandwiches. The blogging I do for free, because I want to.

The author of the post does go on to cover where the money comes from. Not specifically from the website itself, but

...in the longer term these costs should as far as possible be covered by worker organisations like trade unions (and thereafter a Labour party more open to wider left engagement), the reality is that funds may need to be raised from charitable/employment creation sources (see, for example, this kind of opportunity coming along in Wales), and from very local advertising.

Lets turn this into a bullet-pointed list:-

• Local blog
• Trade Union blog
• Labour party blog
  
• Charity blog
• Employment creation sources (no idea what this means)
• Local advertising

Such a list makes me squint at the screen in confusion and despair. Why would anyone want to read such a thing. Why would a trade union paying for such a thing be in the interests of its members, or a charity for that matter? And just what are employment creation sources?

I like knitting, its a fun diversion, I'm not very good at it, but the end results are pretty neat. I'm currently working on a scarf, its taking me ages. About six weeks so far, not every day mind, but a few hours here and there. One day it'll be finished and I can give it to a loved one as a gift. Someone suggested I could sell it, I could have some kind of knitting business.

This is insane. It takes about fifty hours for me to knit a scarf. At minimum wage that would be about £300. Three hundred quid for a scarf of slightly lower quality that TK Maxx.

There's no way anyone would ever buy from my scarf knitting business, it would never be able to pay its worker.

Likewise, a blog that costs £80,000 would never work.

Okay, maybe it would, such things have happened in the past, sometimes overnight. Very rarely, but sometimes.

But if that's your businessplan, its insane.

List of internety bloggy things to do

1. Write a deep and personal blog post that begins with the phrase "I'm a troubled soul..." And then goes on to cover my recent lack of going to gigs, the triumphant return of The Yummy Fur, that Mars Hotel gig in 2002 and my job's horrendous working hours and conditions.
2. Some kind of website where you pay me £10 and I send you something cool in the post every week for X weeks.
3. Some kind of website like FreeCycle but for services rather than goods.
4. Blogpost with the top three of my 365 Days photos.
5. Another blogpost about that Academies International Scam where I write about the people the have giving testimonials.
6. Start doing those blogposts where its a list of links and include that Dick Puddlecote one about alcohol, with the Tim Worstall quote.
7. Scan in and post the Mr ToiletRoll sex photos from 1999.
8. Long blogpost about manufacturing and databases and availability of information, basically ranting about things that annoy me at work and how Linn Products really know how to have a great MRPII system and its given me an unrealistic view of the world.
9. Come up with an idea for what a website called Indie Central Tonight would actually be about.

Blog stat pron - 2009

Good afternoon, and welcome to my summary of this blogs web traffic for the year. I know that its still a few hours to 2010 but I'm bored and have other things to do, like homework and cake making, so I'm wasting time on the internet. Without further ado here are the overall traffic figures for 2009:-

10,451 Absolute Unique Visitors
23,212 Pageviews

Thrilling stuff, I'm sure you'll agree, but I don't have the complete 2008 figures to compare it to, and as Climategate has taught us, you really need continuous data to make any comparisons. Luckily I do have complete data for 2008 and 2009 from Statcounter:-

	Unique Visitors	Pageloads
2009	17,858	22,482
2008	7,614	10,126

I've more than doubled my traffic, coolio. Lets look at statcounter's graph showing monthly traffic:-

Crazy stuff, I'm sure you'll agree. We can clearly see that returning visitor traffic has been dying off for months and months since the peak in the middle of 2008 when the kindly folks from a certain indie messageboard used to visit here often. On the other hand, pageloads have been increasing in steady chunks over the two year period, but have pretty much levelled out now. I'm going to have to start doing something different and new if I want to keep growing.

Moving on, the latest metrics for feed readers are as follows:-

23 subscribers - GoogleReader (up two from October)
4 subscribers - Bloglines (same as last month)
7 followers - Blogger (up one from October)

These are my top referers for the year (not including google wanderers)

1. Facebook - 726 visitors
2. Twitter - 657 visitors
3. EUReferendum - 249 visitors
4. UK Bubble - 198 visitors
5. Mark Wadsworth - 180 visitors
6. Iain Dale - 110 visitors
7. Matt Wardman - 85 visitors
8. Counting Cats - 69 visitors
9. Longrider - 66 visitors
10. Devil's Kitchen - 43 visitors

Lets take a brief moment to consider which were the most viewed posts during 2009.

1. Facebook IQ test gubbins - 1,031 views
2. What Have I gotten myself into - the TFTA scam - 855 views
3. Origami flapping bird animation - 579 views
4. Facebook ChainRxn graphs and hints - 516 views
5. Facebook Scramble graphs - 355 views
6. Animation with Windows Movie Maker - 351 views
7. Names of the dead in Gaza - 219 views
8. Sea level rises - 195 views
9. Band Nationalities - 160 views
10. Names of the dead in Iran - 152 views

Its a bit overwhelming, I know, but that's it for this years blog stat pron update. Thanks to all the folk who've linked here in 2009, I hope to return the favour a bit more in 2010.

Gilmour out

Just Joans for New Years No 1

I started a facebook group to try to get The Just Joans song 'If You Don't Pull' to number 1 in the pop charts for New Year.

There are 30 members already and that's just in a few hours with Facebook status updates and a few Twitter updates.

To be honest I'm impressed with 30, the next milestone is 50, then 100, 200 then 500 and so on.

I'm pretty sure the song is on the iTunes Store, but I dunno if its possible to link to it, all the 'puters I have at my disposal don't have iTunes on them. There's no proper video on YouTube, just the track playing in the background to Rowan's robo-spider-dog. So its almost like shooting ourselves in the foot for stickiness, its just a wee esoteric thing. If anyone who hasn't heard of the Just Joans and 'If You Don't Pull' wants a listen, they're gonna have to do some investigating.

I reckon there's still more pimping I can do. Once the membership gets over a hundred I could start prodding DJs, and there's a couple of budding journo's and bloggers who could cover it.

According to wikipedia, before the download revolution, the lowest selling number one was Orson with around 10,000 copies sold. There's little data on how the lowest selling hits compare now that downloads are included. So whilst every member of the Facebook group may not purchase it, if the group membership gets into the ten of thousands, then its just about possible.

Nah, maybe not, realistically that Joe X Factor chap is unbeatable for a second week, and RATM had a few weeks to build up momentum, wassit 300,000 copies apiece or there abouts? This wee venture has no chance, but its a nice song anyhoo.

Letter to my Sixteen year old self

There's a bit of a meme going round, writing to your 16 year old self. I haven't been tagged, but I was bored in the factory during my break.

Dear Boris 1994,

Try not to freak out, but this is a letter from 15 years in the future.

Sorry we couldn't meet in person, but it doesn't work like that. Here, use these lottery numbers every week 1, 7, 22, 25, 31 and 47, it should turn out just fine.

In terms of advice, it all turn out okay, the girl on the bus is actually quite nice to talk to if you don't freak her out, and at Nosni's New Year party, hold onto the blond girl tightly.

Don't let any inhibitions stop you from doing stuff, cos frankly at your age you rule. You don't realise it but even the trendy girls think you're pretty cool too. Its not all about being cool, but until you get a degree and the internet really gets going, its all you've got.

Also, in 1998 when you bleach your hair, keep more photos, and in 2002, hold onto that blonde girl tightly too. I don't mean in the sexy sense, I mean in that knight in shining armour way you always imagine. You can't save everyone but hold onto people makes you feel better.

Oh, and while we're toying with the directions of time, put more of your nan's inheritance into gold.

Finally, if you ever see Big Tom outside a Sainsburys, give him a big manly hug. And try to stay in touch with more of you schoolfriends.

That's about all I can say right now, times will be good and times will be bad, try to remember the good times more.

See you in the mirror in fifteen years right.

Chris Gilmour 2009

Now, as is kind of standard practice with these things I tag the following bloggers to write a similar post:-

• Foam
• Aref- Adib
• Boy Trouble

Other bloggish folk who've done this letter to their 16 year old self include:-

• Paul Burgin
• Tom Harris
• Wrinkled Weasel
• Greg Pope
• Iain Dale
• Dizzy Thinks
• Norfolk Blogger
• Shane Greer
• Devils Kitchen
• The Nameless Libertarian
• Bella Gerens
• Tim Worstall
• Charlotte Gore
• Mike Rouse
• Donal Blaney
• Jenny Rigg
• Mark Reckons
• James Cleverly
  

Quote of the Day

Gotta love Devil's Kitchen

and the more that I talk about it, the more I realise just how right I am.

he's a great read, but he is a just a little bit up himself, bless 'im.

Googlejuice

How come I'm just into the top ten search results on google when you search for 'borders administration' when Style Bubble has a far better post and gets loads more traffic and has hundreds of people commenting?

Blogish juxtoposition 1

Compare this from Charles Crawford

And this from Burning Our Money

Me, I make sandwiches, I just worked 19 out of the last 27 hours because a colleague's gone on holiday and our shift covering process isn't very robust. And for little over minimum wage, in London.

The London thing completely unrelationed but important. A one-bedroom flat in London costs £120,000, in Hull it costs £20,000. The national minimum wage is the same across the UK. So 'oop nawth' a cheap flat is about 2X minimum wage and 'daan saaf' its about 10X minimum wage. The property ladder's first rung is five times as far away.

BoingBoing on Climategate and the HADCRU hack

I love BoingBoing, its one of my favourite blogs of interesting things. I even got BoingBoinged once, which is like one of the ultimate achievements of blogging.

Anyhoo, CoryDoctorow has this to say

They read through the corpus of email and found that the scientists working on climate change often have substantive disagreements with one another, which they debate vigorously in email, and cited this as evidence of a conspiracy to cover up dissent and present a scientific consensus on climate change.

Futurismic's Tom Marcinko does a great job of putting this in context, rounding up several links to other good commentators around the web. In a nutshell: science is about the advancement of competing theories and the evaluation of these theories in light of evidence. The East Anglia Climate Research Unit's scientists disagreed in some particulars, and used peer-review to resolve them (and continue to do so). No one is paying them to cover up evidence that climate change isn't real or isn't caused by humans -- but they are conducting science the way that scientists do.

Do scientists usually email each other telling themselves to delete emails in case of Freedom of Information requests?

Phil Jones wrote:
>
>> Mike,
> Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
> Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.
>
> Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't
> have his new email address.
>
> We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

Its quite against the law to do this in the UK.

Phil Jones is paid $22 million, and we get code as bad as this:-

* Francis at L'Ombre De L'Olivier says the coding language is inappropriate. Also inappropriate use of hard coding, incoherent file naming conventions, subroutines that fail without telling the user, etc etc.
* AJStrata discovered a file with two runs of CRU land temp data which show no global warming per the data laid out by country, and another CRU file showing their sampling error to be +/- 1°C or worse for most of the globe. Both CRU files show there has been no significant warming post 1960 era
* A commenter notes the following comment in some of the code:"***** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********"
* Good layman's summary of some of the coding issues with a file called "Harry". This appears to be the records of some poor soul trying to make sense of how the code for producing the CRU temperature records works. (rude words though, if you're a sensitive type)
* Borepatch discovers that CRU has lost its metadata. That's the bit that tells you where to put your temperature record on the map and so on.

Usually BoingBoing and Cory are on the side of the just and the righteous, but in this case they seem to be supporting the snakes.