16-31 May, 2003

This entry was posted on
Friday, May 16th, 2003 at
8:41 am and is filed
under Uncategorized.

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Date
20030516
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
08:41
The resume of George W. Bush tops the chart admirably – and deservedly – today.

I’m still coming to grips with this:

‘Produced a Hollywood slasher B movie.’

Really? No… it has to be some kind of bad joke, surely.

The IMDB has quite an interesting listing for Dubya, but I see no mention of a slasher movie. I’ll go Googling later this morning to see if I can’t discover the truth.

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Date
20030516

Time
08:49
Pensacola police officer resigns after making a 16-year-old girl perform jumping jacks while topless. Officer Shields threatened the girl (and a 19-year-old lad in her company) with arrest for ‘lewd and lascivious behaviour.’ The topless exercise routine was his idea of a suitable on-the-spot punishment. He resigned 30 minutes ahead of being sacked. No doubt he looks forward to a new career in mall security, where he will find wicked, quivering teen flesh in abundance.

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Date
20030516

Time
08:57
I felt a great disturbance in the force. As though dozens of cows cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

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Date
20030516

Time
09:01
The French government believes it is the victim of an ‘organized campaign of disinformation’ from within the Bush administration. I’m simply not prepared to believe that…

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Date
20030516

Time
09:03
After 7 years of legal wrangling, the Utah Supreme Court has finally ruled that cats are not dogs.

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Date
20030516

Time
09:05
More on Matrix Reloaded: ‘We waited four years for this?’

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Date
20030516

Time
09:06
I got a fair amount of stick down at the local pub for taking along a few print-outs of online articles telling the truth about Jessica Lynch’s ‘heroic’ rescue. Couldn’t be real. Any joker could have written it. Etc.

Yesterday, I went down there with a genuine newspaper.

The reaction?

“Well, what do you expect? It’s the Guardian!”

No wonder Tony and George are so confident that they’ll get away with their illegal war. They have the majority of media owners and controllers onside, and everybody trusts their favourite newspaper. Besides, they all saw it on TV – which makes it real, right?

Anyway, we didn’t have a choice. We had to deal with them there Weapons of Mass Destruction, right? Wrong.

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Date
20030516

Time
09:16
Sex: the new rules (at least for those of us in the UK). Remarkably, there is a softening in approach to so-called zoophiles, as they are covered under the general theme of ‘consent’.

Pardon? Consent?

“Sit! Roll over! Good boy! Does Rover want a snacky treat? Goood boy! Does Rover want an extra *special* treat? Goooooood boy!”

RSPCA hassling you over that sack of dead kittens found in the canal? Your best defence now is to claim that it was a ‘sex game gone wrong.’

Next thing you know, we’ll have the folks from Huntingdon Life Sciences producing consent forms (signed with paw prints, natch) showing that the monkeys wanted to smoke high-tar cigarettes, the dogs asked to wear make-up and the bunny rabbits simply demanded to have the new CS gas tested on them.

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Date
20030516

Time
09:32
Desmond looks like he will get a long-overdue slapping for ‘passing off.’ He likes a good passing off, does our Richard. Here’s an article listing a few past offences.

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Date
20030516

Time
09:37
By now you all know that Tom’s Teens! page is a bit of a larf.

This isn’t. This is real. And it’s intended to help Christian youth workers to ‘reach the kids.’

Now, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t know how to speak to the kids when I was a kid – but I certainly knew enough to stick to my own damn vocabulary.

Incredibly, this page has been live for over a year and has yet to result in a single playground stabbing.

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Date
20030516

Time
09:52
Steve’s Not In My America is definitely a blog worth watching. Thanks go to Simon for putting me onto it.

The excellent question asked today is ‘where is the outrage? ….why are we not absorbed in UNgate, WMDgate and Carriergate?’

Steve rightly points out that there is plenty of outrage out there, but most of it fails to make the mainstream channels (insert ‘owned by’ list here).

‘Many of us are just too busy or too distracted or too lazy to actively gather our news. Instead, we turn on the tube or the radio and let it passively spoonfeed us.’

Well said, that man.

UPDATE – True or not, I find it quite telling that we’ve heard not a single solitary whisper about George W. Bush being accused of rape. With Clinton, true or not (or, more to the point, paranoid nutcase or not), the story would have been on the evening news in minutes. You can see some documentation here, some reflection on the media non-reaction here, a comment on it being published – and quickly pulled – at the Fort Bend Star website here and some fun being had with the story here. Enjoy.

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Date
20030516
The Humanity vs. Anarchy Project
Time
09:57
Chalking continues in The Humanity vs. Anarchy Project, but you may notice from the fresh photos on the page that I’ve been exploring new methods of delivery. I’m open to any other ideas people might have. I hear from a lot of people who want to get involved, but are somewhat nervous about committing chalk to a public surface. We need to give them something to do.

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Date
20030516

Time
11:02
I’m at my desk working right now. Honest. Actually, I’m busy sorting my socks.

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Date
20030516

Time
16:19
The truth behind Monkey Man. More free inches for the tabloids courtesy of a B3tan. How many extra copies do you think The Sun sold on the back of this (all the while nudging and winking that they themselves were behind the hoax)? The hoaxers should have grabbed the reward they claim was offered for the real identity of the masked superhero, given the story to the paper involved, and then gone to a rival paper and shopped them (offering the money to charity, of course). Of course, had they done this, the betrayed paper would have dug up just about anything they could find about the hoaxer’s background (or just made something up) and then torn them a new arsehole.

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Date
20030516
The Political Weblog Movement
Time
17:13
Looks like I’m going to have to add The Official Howard Dean Weblog to the very short list on Why Politicians Need Weblogs. Then again, perhaps not. Official it may be, but I see very few words and thoughts from the man himself. The human side is the key. Lose that and there’s no point blogging.

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Date
20030516
Friday Feedback
Time
17:40
Something different this weekend. Instead of sending feedback to me, I’m going to ask you to send feedback to your MP or other regional elected representative. Email, fax or letter, exactly what you send them is up to you – but if you appreciate the weblog format and think that it would do wonders for way they conduct themselves, then I would request that you also include the following URL:

https://www.bloggerheads.com/politicians.asp

I’m getting stonewalled everywhere I turn on this, and could do with some backup. Cheers all.

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Date
20030519

Time
08:28
It’s a Mac with a Lego chassis. So?

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Date
20030519

Time
08:30
Bank robbers asks stranger for fastest way out of town. Stranger happens to be bank manager’s son.

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Date
20030519

Time
08:33
U.S. military attacks Saddam supporters with ‘culturally offensive music’. The play list includes Metallica and Barney.

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Date
20030519

Time
08:37
Harry T. Keane Jr. sues makers of American Idol, saying he came up with the show’s title and concept. He used the old-fashioned ‘$2 copyright’ (mailing the idea to himself by registered post), so it’ll be interesting to see how this one comes out. BTW, the use of the term ‘self described’ in front of an individual’s job description is only one stop short of putting the word ‘loser’ in the headline.

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Date
20030519

Time
08:47
Read about the folks in charge of making President George Bush look good.

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Date
20030519
Christianity Watch
Time
08:51
Abbacomics.com is nothing to do with well-crafted pop. It’s actually about accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour because the voices in your head told you to do so.

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Date
20030519

Time
08:55
The Star Wars Kid made the New York Times! (Link requires registration, but the URL alone speaks volumes…)

While we’re looking at the Times, remember those WMDs that we had to find, but now we’re not so worried about? OK, so maybe this justification for war couldn’t stand on its one withered leg, but there was the need for regime change, right? We had to liberate those lovable little Iraqis so they could run their own country, right?

Well, no…

‘In an abrupt reversal, the United States and Britain have indefinitely put off their plan to allow Iraqi opposition forces to form a national assembly and an interim government by the end of the month.’

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Date
20030519

Time
09:03
Man jailed for having sex with a cow. When will people learn that ‘moo’ means ‘no’…?

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Date
20030519
Stolen Jokes
Time
09:04
A doctor reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a thermometer.

‘Damn,’ he says, ‘some arsehole’s got my pen!’

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Date
20030519
Andrew Orlowski and Weblog Envy
Time
09:08
Dave Winer: ‘…Orlowski, either doesn’t understand the relationship to being on the Web and being in a search engine, or chooses not to clue his readers in.’

Doc Searls goes into much more detail, but both articles make the same point.

Want a chance to be part of the top ten on any given subject? Then you have to open up your site to Google. Duh. Want to be seen as a source of recent and relevant information? Then try publishing a web presence and actually updating it with recent and relevant information in a format that indexing robots can access.

For the record, I should note that I do agree with Orlowski on one small point – that of sometime noise pollution. That’s why my archives aren’t indexable by Google.

Directive Seven: ‘Thou shalt not pollute or corrupt search engines’

If I have something important/enduring to say, then I publish a static page and throw in some modest and relevant arming. If others find it truly relevant, then up the charts it goes.

A range of search queries for Tony Blair’s email address are a pretty good example of this. If the folks in charge of this side of Tony’s business knew what the hell they were doing, the email facility would exist. Even if it didn’t, their explanatory page leading folks to alternative methods of contact would also rank at No. 1 if armed correctly and linked accordingly.

Actually, if The Register had decent Page Titles that explained what their articles were about, I wouldn’t have been inundated with misdirected email for Tony in the first place.

This leads me to something else I should point out of the record… The Register still hasn’t addressed this major problem with Google, despite me speaking with them about this in a professional capacity over a year ago.

Every article they publish comes with the following ready-made title: ‘The Register’ – that’s it, that’s all – and that’s how it turns up in Google whenever you trip over a Reg article in a search. Having more relevant Page Titles would not only improve their ranking for relevant search terms, it would also allow those who find them among search results to know what the hell the article is about (so we know whether to choose that link, or the one above/below it).

Be critical of blogs and Google as much as you like folks, but please know what the fark you’re talking about before you do – otherwise you’ll just look like jealous wannabes.

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Date
20030519

Time
09:49
OK, so Googlewhacking is old hat, but I wasn’t expecting much from either of Dave Gorman’s previous projects and was pleasantly surprised both times – therefore, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

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Date
20030519

Time
10:00
Wonder at the infinite inaccuracy of Hollywood with the IMDB Goofs Page.

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Date
20030519

Time
10:04
I’m praying that someone, somewhere, chooses to create a fitting answer to thankyoutony.com, as I just don’t have the time.

I would like to point out, however, that the following domain name is available.

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Date
20030519

Time
15:19
I had 4 copies of the Palyh virus sent to me this morning (that’s the one pretending to come from support@microsoft.com).

Here are a couple of news reports on this virus by the BBC and The Register. Don’t forget to update those virus definition files, folks!

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Date
20030520

Time
07:21
Meetings today, and yet another chance to educate people. I’m actually going to wear my monkey suit this time. With underwear. See you tomorrow.

PS – That flash show I’ve been working on is almost finished, but I need a few test viewers before launch. Volunteers should send emails to the usual address.

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Date
20030520

Time
16:31
I’m back from London and would dearly love to blog fully, but I’m into the last 20 seconds of this damn flash show and just have to close it off. After that’s done, I just need to add the ‘loading’ and ‘play’ functions and we’re ready for testing.

Head down.

Arse up.

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Date
20030520
Flash Music Video
Time
20:52
My very first flash show ever is now ready.

Well, kind of. I have to learn how to set the music to stream (or so I’m told) so it synchs better on a wider range of computer speeds.

I think I’ve almost got that sussed but – so you can enjoy the full benefit of the learning process – here’s Version 1, warts and all:

JPEG Baby – A Love Song For The 21st Century (800kb)

UPDATE – The version linked above is now the new streamed version. This should work for almost everybody. If it doesn’t, give me a yell. Cheers all.

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Date
20030521
Flash Games
Time
08:22
We’ve had Gasteroids, now there’s Pasteroids. Haemorrhoids will be next, you mark my words.

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Date
20030521

Time
08:25
Disgraced NYT reporter wants to write about his mistakes. And perhaps his upcoming TV movie of the week deal?

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Date
20030521

Time
08:27
Shades of Blogshares, this time paring down to link speculation: The Popdex Game gives you the chance to ‘pick links that you believe will increase in popularity the most in the next 48 hours.’ Kind of takes the fun out of it, don’t you think?

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Date
20030521

Time
08:31
I was quite surprised to read a short acknowledgment of Andrew Orlanksi’s misguided article sans clarification in Monday’s Guardian, but Neil McIntosh more than makes up for it with this belated storm in a tea cup article. On Orlanski’s stunning assumption that drove this biased article (based, he said, on ‘precedent’, Neil had this to say:

Precedent suggests nothing of the sort. The “precedent” quoted, when Google bought the Usenet archives of Deja.com and “removed the groups from the main index”, is a red herring. Google has not removed newsgroups from the main Google index – you’ll find web-based archives of newsgroups on there today. It simply built a far better, specialised search for the groups elsewhere after it acquired the Deja.com archive.

If you want to go by precedent, then it’s probably safer to assume that Google’s expected weblog search will relate mostly to a database formed from Blogger.com users.

Anyway, here’s more loose talk on Google ‘pollution’:

Google isn’t saying “sorry, this sucks for what you searched on, but I’m so confused by all this incestuous linking that I just have to give it to you anyway,” what it’s saying is “I don’t have anything useful for that query, but people seem to think this guy knows his way around, and he’s at least used the words in your search, so maybe he linked to something that will prove useful.”

Spot on. This goes back to my comments of the day before yesterday. If there is no email address for Tony Blair, then who are you gonna call?

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Date
20030521

Time
08:50
Make your own ransom note. Saves a lot of that kerfuffle with old magazines, newspapers and glue, let me tell you. (Link nabbed from Ultimate Insult.)

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Date
20030521

Time
08:53
Michael Jackson spotted in a Spiderman mask and with an afro wig. Sadly, only the second link includes a picture. Has he finally gone completely hat-stand, or is there another record coming out?

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Date
20030521
Does What It Says On The Tin
Time
08:57
beerforthehomeless.com

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Date
20030521
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
08:58
The Einstein Archives are charting well, as is news that the Pentagon has started a Ministry of Silly Walks. Also, the Star Wars Kid made Wired.

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Date
20030521

Time
09:03
Study: Teens not waiting to have sex. Well, what do they expect when Paula Abdul keeps yelling “That’s the money shot!” on network television? Perhaps the producers of American Idol can suggest that she use a more suitable term – like pop-shot, maybe…

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Date
20030521

Time
09:08
A Department of Children & Families employee has been fired after being arrested for drag racing – with his 4-year-old child in back seat.

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Date
20030521

Time
09:11
A gift for all of you who never got over it. I love websites that are hacked out on a basic Word template, and the quotes from ‘users’ are wonderfully sincere.

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Date
20030521

Time
09:15
Damn. With everything else going on today, how the hell am I going to find time to design a suitable statue of George W. Bush?

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Date
20030521
Flash Music Video
Time
09:18
In case you missed it, we premiered the Flash ‘video’ for JPEG Baby last night.

Early versions weren’t synching well on slower/faster computers, but I think we’ve got that problem licked. Do let me know if I’m wrong.

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Date
20030522

Time
08:12
Which of the following would you have trouble believing?

– From 1868 to 1975, the Federal Vampire & Zombie Agency (FVZA) was responsible for controlling the nation’s vampire and zombie populations while overseeing scientific research into the undead.

– During the recent Texas Democrat Boycott, someone, somewhere decided to get a federal authority involved. That authority has since burned all of its records.

– For 29 years, the CIA withheld from the public information about a terrorist threat against Santa Claus.

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Date
20030522

Time
08:28
I remember Wacky Packages. They even made it all the way out to Australia (despite most of the products featured being completely foreign to us). The world is a different place now. Australia isn’t exactly awash with Amercian products… those clever corporations were smart enough to simply buy out local brands.

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Date
20030522

Time
08:35
It’s the tree that grows meat. So now if you’re a vegetarian, you can chew on a burger any time you like. Unless, of course, you have a problem with genetically engineered food.

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Date
20030522

Time
08:42
At the same time the terror alert was raised in the U.S., new outlines of a domestic surveillance system were released. It’s designed to keep an eye on terrorists, of course. Nothing to do with the Home Spying Network at all. Read more about the wonders of the Total Information Awareness database project.

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Date
20030522

Time
08:53
It’s certainly turning out to be an interesting day. Now we have water that goes uphill.

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Date
20030522
The Political Weblog Movement
Time
08:58
You cannot make more people vote via the Interwebnet with stupid ‘feel the width’ measures such as e-voting. Getting them more involved in the political process, however…

BTW, I made three more calls to the Technical Operations Department of the office of the Sergeant at Arms yesterday (to try yet again to get my hands on the procedures required for clearing Movable Type for use on senate.gov). I was put on hold thrice. I was redirected to some guy’s voice mail thrice. I left messages twice. All previous requests (usually left on this same voicemail) for a call, letter, email, anything have been ignored. I get the feeling they don’t take me very seriously… perhaps someone should warn them that this isn’t a very good idea.

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Date
20030522
Flash Music Video
Time
10:59
JPEG Baby received just under a thousand visitors in its first day. Referral data can only account for about half of this traffic, and there’s a lot of ‘linked from email’ indicators peppered throughout the referral stats, so it looks like there’s a great deal of one-to-one sharing going on.

The majority of linked traffic is coming from the pre-launch and launch at B3ta, this site in the Netherlands, and filepile.org

Also helping to spread the word of true love and onanism are phancy.com, TTR2, wibbler.com, meany.mine.nu, vurt.co.uk, adampsyche.com, and The Duchy of Your Fingers.

Daily indexing of Bloggerheads has been pretty patchy since my Dead Blog Holiday last month. It’s kind of like Google getting all ‘Fine, be like that!’ because I neglected our relationship. I’m hoping the link buzz around JPEG Baby will – as a healthy by-product – let Google know that I’m still busy and bring her back onside.

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Date
20030522
Photoshopping
Time
15:13
My design for the proposed George W. Bush statue is finished. I think I’ve captured his essence. What do you think?

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Date
20030522
Flash Thingies
Time
15:38
Weblog: The Movie

Short, to the point, and bound to be a complete mystery to most of the population.

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Date
20030522

Time
15:41
Blogging: Is the UK falling behind?

Tom’s right to be worried. I’m lucky enough to be going to the Weblog Business Strategies Conference in Boston but there’s sweet bugger all going on here in the UK, and this is a pretty good indication of the professional awareness/takeup of blogs hereabouts. And it’s not for want of trying, let me tell you…

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Date
20030522

Time
16:42
The dullest blog in the world just keeps going and going and going…

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Date
20030522
Ronald Scelson
Time
20:01
Ronald Scelson. Spammer. Illusionist. Delusionist.

“I’m probably the most hated person in this room,” said an unapologetic Scelson when giving testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

He’s got that right. The man is either deluded beyond belief or a bare-faced liar/hypocrite/you-name-it.

Washington Post and PC World both have the story, but Slashdot has the most illuminating thread.

I have the feeling that Ronald’s letterbox will be quite full over the coming week.

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Date
20030523

Time
08:45
In the past, glow-in-the-dark products would give off a weak sheen and then die out after an hour or so, but thanks to the wonders of Strontium Aluminate (with Europium) we now have products that can glow ten times as bright for ten times as long. Thank God someone has come up with a practical application for this marvellous advance in technology.

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Date
20030523

Time
08:52
Here’s a picture of that pink bus they’ve been torturing naughty children with in the Isle of Wight. Don’t you think it’s a shame that the only disciplinary measure left to teachers is humiliation?

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Date
20030523

Time
08:55
The Star Wars Kid fundraiser netted over $4000.

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Date
20030523

Time
08:56
Documentation of Gator Advertisements and Targeting. Gator claim to be ‘the leader in online marketing,’ with more than 30 million users – most of them unwitting or involuntary. If you don’t know what Gator is, then you should probably spend time finding out. You’ll soon be asking yourself how you can see if it’s on your computer – and how you can get rid of it. The answer to both of those questions is Ad-aware.

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Date
20030523
It’s War! And Somebody’s Going To Pay!
Time
09:04
‘Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not.’

Cheers all round (again) for the indomitable Senator Robert C. Byrd. Read the entire speech here.

I’ll be emailing Sen. Byrd later today to see how approachable he is about embracing new technology.

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Date
20030523

Time
09:11
Proof that there is no God: McDonald’s is sponsoring Pope John Paul’s visit to Spain.

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Date
20030523

Time
09:13
8ft portrait of Anna Nicole Smith stolen. It’s 8 feet tall, not 8 feet wide. Stop being nasty.

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Date
20030523

Time
09:15
American Idol vote to be audited. Somebody’s been telling porkies….

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Date
20030523

Time
09:18
I won’t be wasting 15 Euros on this. I may, however, buy a monkey. Or not. With people starving, it would be indulgent of me to own a pet and feed that instead. In fact there are so many people in the world, I probably shouldn’t even be breeding. Perhaps I should do myself in and sell the parts for scrap.

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Date
20030523
Flash Music Video
Time
10:08
Yay! JPEG Baby has crossed the language barrier again.

I Babelfished the comments; they translate (very roughly) to say ‘considerably, it is good, is’ before going on to wonder who the hell it is that appears in the tail end of the video.

FYI, it’s Terry Wogan – perennial host of the BBC broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest. Eurovision songs are notorious for long passages of la-la-la-la-la-la, that’s why he was included. The tog-sperm? Well, it was late at night – what can I say?

I’ll leave a comment on his blog and put the guy out of his misery. We want him to be able to sleep nights.

Only 637 visitors yesterday, but I’m hoping for a healthy run over the weekend to make up for it.

UPDATE – Some healthy linkage is now coming in from groovymother.com and coolio’s. Total visits since launch were nudging 2,000 around midday. I’d really like to add a zero to that figure.

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Date
20030523

Time
12:24
Don’t forget that this coming Monday (sorry) is Wank Holiday Monday. Give your hand a rest and instead donate money to the blind. I know it sounds awfully crass, but the organisers couldn’t find an established charity for people with hairy palms.

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Date
20030523

Time
12:52
Take time out to play this Coalition Cards Solitaire Game.

It’s 100% virtual, so you don’t need to respond to a steenkin’ spammer or part with any money.

Incidentally, I got a new variety of card-spam in my Inbox this morning. This new set is called the Deck of Weasels, and features a range of celebrities who dared to speak out against the war.

As you’ve probably noticed, the designer has them all wearing Saddamesque berets.

Devilishly clever, what?

Perhaps Spamhaus can help me to come up with a Spamming Bastards deck. Scelson could be the arse of spades.

UPDATE – Heh. The more I think about his idea, the more I like it. Spammers are a pretty secretive bunch, so photos will be hard to come by. Instead we can put home/business addresses on each card – and/or stats regarding the amount of spam they send. That way the deck would be dual purpose, as you could play Twat Trumps with them as well.

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Date
20030523
It’s War! And There’s Money To Be Made!
Time
13:22
Mark has pointed out to me that police trying to solve major crimes will often ‘follow the money.’ So, if anybody actually wanted to crack the case of the illegal war on Iraq, this place might be a good start.

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Date
20030523
Does What It Says On The Tin
Time
14:16
[NOTE – Do not follow the main link below without decent security settings or the latest copy of Ad-aware, or it will feed you a version of Xupiter (yet more crappy spyware).]

Sars.com is simply marvellous stuff – but don’t visit too close to lunchtime, as there’s a large image of a diseased lung that you’ll probably need an hour or two to get out of your mind. The site also has a short message or two regarding the quality of service you can expect from Verisign, but mostly it’s wonderfully OTT information about death, disease and government conspiracies.

Gems include:

‘The interpretation of the old ancient books say that the Sars Disease can very well be from the revenge of the powerful forces of the nature getting back at the Chinese people for not putting enough pressure towards their government to give back Tibet.’

and:

‘SARS is a mystery illness causes severe acute Respiratory syndrome and can kill you real fast.’

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Date
20030523

Time
14:19
Huzzah! Here’s a little forum love for JPEG Baby. We’ll make Top of the Pops yet. How does ‘Weblong Wonders’ sound as a band name?

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Date
20030524
Flash Music Video
Time
15:28
Now this is more like it. An appearance in the B3ta Newsletter has seen JPEG Baby reach not only the immediate audience of the newsletter, but dozens and dozens of forums as a result. It also got posted to another Japanese site and tomorrow (between 8am and 10am GMT) the song will receive airplay for the very first time on this student radio station in Wolverhampton.

[If anybody else wants to give it airplay, there is a higher quality MP3 available for download; just email me and ask nicely.]

Total visits since launch now number in excess of 10,000. Looks like I’m going to get that extra zero I wanted.

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Date
20030525
Eurovision
Time
07:51
All the really awful acts appeared in the first half, so I wasn’t drunk enough to throw popcorn!

Nice to see Austria placed at 6th, though. At least *some* people in Europe still have a sense of humour.

The song and performance by the UK entry was appalling, and certainly didn’t warrant much attention – but I found it quite telling that we didn’t even get one sympathy vote.

Rock bottom with nil points for the first time ever. It doesn’t look like we have any friends left in Europe.

Oh well. At least we didn’t get booed as much as the Russians did. All that fuss over a very poor performance – and we didn’t even get to see any lesbian frottage! For shame!

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Date
20030526

Time
08:50
See some famous monkeys through history, a list of monkey appearances in The Simpsons, or go out a get a life with some gen-ew-ine sea monkeys.

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Date
20030526

Time
08:59
Trashlog collects and displays a single piece of trash every day for the benefit of the public. It’s appreciated.

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Date
20030526

Time
09:01
Ducklings led away from restaurant drive-through fall through manhole.

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Date
20030526

Time
09:03
SaferAmerica.com offers a range of products to help you deal with the ever-present threat of attack, disaster and disease. The inspired evacuation systems collection features a number of parachutes, including an Executive Chute that’s strangely less expensive than the other parachutes, but is wonderfully slimline and bound to be more effective as a result.

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Date
20030526
Eurovision
Time
09:11
UK act hits Eurovision low. At least this article acknowledges the main problem with the whole ‘nul points’ thing: Jemini were crap.

UPDATE – There’s also this excellent piece in The Guardian: Nul points – UK out of tune with Europe.

Still, Wogan said it best on the night when it became apparent that we didn’t get a single point from anybody:

“It’s pretty obvious what needs to be done. We’re going to have to send a gunboat.”

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Date
20030526
Flash Games
Time
09:16
This is a great collection of classic arcade games in Flash format, featuring everything from Pong to Kong. (Link nabbed from Ultimate Insult.)

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Date
20030526
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
09:21
Enjoy a 360° view from the top of Mt Everest.

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Date
20030526

Time
09:23
Australian boobs are getting bigger. Good news for the boys at home.

(Hi Steve. Your Walnut Whips are on the way. Just send me a bloody mailing address.)

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Date
20030526
Flash Music Video
Time
09:26
JPEG Baby has now reached over 15,440 people. It has been estimated by an independent statistician (well, some guy down the pub at least) that this number far exceeds the number of people who voted for the UK act at Eurovision. Worth thinking about come selection time next year, folks.

We’re getting a lot of Blogdex love, but not all at once (which is keeping us out of the chart). Ho hum.

UPDATE – We’ve pretty much smashed the language barrier on this one. Here’s a link/review in Portugese, just for starters. A lot of what Bloggerheads does goes down well in the Netherlands, but this is the biggest success so far. Most traffic from this part of the world is coming from Westvillage, Fok! and this page at Webwereweld, but there are lots of smaller weblogs and forums adding to the swell. The Eurovision stuff was kind of added as an afterthought/joke, but I’m seriously thinking of putting an entry in for next year – especially considering the universal appeal of this song and how well Austria did with their comedic approach.

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Date
20030526

Time
09:47
Remember folks, today is Wank Holiday Monday. Give it a rest – and give generously.

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Date
20030526

Time
11:16
Media Guardian: Get a grip on reality. I worry about this kind of thing a lot, especially the aspect of aspirations. Do you really want to live in a world where kids are growing up just wanting to be famous? Not wanting to do anything to earn it, mind – just wanting to be famous.

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Date
20030526
Flash Music Video
Time
13:25
More link love from the Netherlands, with a few hundred visitors dropping by from Totally Flabbergasted (permalink with comments proving that a few people do drop by the main blog here).