Archive for October, 2003
Strange Days
Really, these last couple of days have been hectic, joyous, bittersweet and retrospective but I wouldn’t change a thing. Getting the Moblog to work was a bit of a struggle, but I managed it, even though it’s not using the system I first thought of but if it’s not borked then don’t fix it I guess. Now I just need to post in it to justify the effort.
Then the events of yesterday threw me a bit but today I’ve been approached to co-write a book on on-line relationships and the social aspect of this… Heavily leaning towards my time in Bmans Pub.
I’m ready to throw myself fully into this, so much so I’m resurrecting the website and giving it a nice new millennium facelift and a proper domain name. Should be fun looking back on some good, good times. Funny to think it was 5 years ago I first logged into that sixdegrees chat room.
*sigh*
But that’s a story for another day and another medium, lord knows if this book will ever be published, but it’s something to aim for.
Ani Moller has suggested I change the look of this place as it’s “the default template” so maybe that’s another thing to do, looks like I’ll be busy busy busy over the upcoming weeks.
Blitzed!
Referrer Activity Analysis
Analysis for the Day of Wed Oct 29th, 2003.
Total sessions served during period : 2530
Total search engine referred sessions : 0 (0.00%)
Total referred session : 2260 (89.33%)
Total blind (no referrer) sessions : 270 (10.67%)
Total referring domains tracked during period : 17
Top 10 most active referring domains during period:
yayhooray.com with 2040 referrals made (90.27% of all referrals)
thevishal.com with 113 referrals made (5.00% of all referrals)
ex-rev.com with 56 referrals made (2.48% of all referrals)
ideamouth.com with 23 referrals made (1.02% of all referrals)
animoller.com with 7 referrals made (0.31% of all referrals)
ezboard.com with 6 referrals made (0.27% of all referrals)
google.com with 2 referrals made (0.09% of all referrals)
userland.com with 2 referrals made (0.09% of all referrals)
scamcity.co.uk with 2 referrals made (0.09% of all referrals)
technorati.com with 2 referrals made (0.09% of all referrals)
That’s a lot of referrals for one day for me
130mb of bandwidth used… I only linked 2 files to YayHooray, each about 70k in size… Thats just crazy amounts of downloads/page views.
Rest in Peace Rich (Part II)
I shouldn’t post this right now, no one should read it either but things have to be said…
This morning I found out Rich Baran had died in a car accident near to his home on Tuesday morning. I never knew him personally but over the last 18 months I’ve had enough interaction with him on various design and creative communities to classify him as an acquaintance, I wouldn’t say he was a friend as I didn’t really know him that well. But reading the news that he had passed away shook me to my core and threw me for the whole day… This was at 9am so getting through to 5:30pm was a hard struggle, a struggle in which my mind was constantly wandering back and forth through various subjects but mostly centering on the time when my best friend died some 8 years ago.
Still seems like yesterday, sitting at home on a Sunday morning in August 1995 when I got a phone call from his mum to say he died the night before and standing there in silence for what seemed like hours… days… possibly months… Constantly wondering what if I went round to his house that night like I was supposed to instead of changing plans at the last minute, could I have done anything? I probably couldn’t have and the trauma of watching him die would be far greater than the trauma I suffered. I remember going round to his parents house a few days later, still unable to say anything. It was the same at the funeral, and looking back I’m pretty sure it wasn’t till the casket disappeared that the realisation that I wouldn’t see him again hit me hardest.
I’m somewhat thankful that it was the first and, thus far, only funeral I’ve been to.
But not a day goes by when I don’t think about him, if only for a moment. And that brings me to todays events… It seemed a bit unbelievable at first, a bit surreal but also very “there”… And most weren’t sure what to make of it, it took a while to sink in but once it did there was a massive, and I do mean MASSIVE outpouring of grief, memories and self made tributes including my own little front page tribute.
Rich, we had a few good arguments based upon a difference of opinion but I always loved your crazy writing style on Cotworld and respected the work you put into the games you made…
And as someone said:
Hes probably gonna post on God’s o8.
He’s probably all like “God, I hate what the new o8 has become.” and God will be all like “OMG I know.”
Take it easy man, wherever you are…
Rest in Peace Rich
Mo-Better-Blog
Some days I wish I wasn’t at work, because I have an idea swirling round my head and I’ve got some 5 hours before I can get home and get to work on it…
Basically I want to put a moblog together after finding a site that uses b2 to do it… They even provide helpful source codes to do it so it *shouldn’t* be too much bother.
But easy things always go invariably wrong. So in the meantime here is my world in very low resolution.
I’m Lovin’ It
I’d love to say I had a productive weekend, I really would, but I was playing Pro Evolution Soccer 3 on the PlayStation 2 for most of it.
It was great… You really can’t measure the pleasure a sweet Jon Dahl Tomasson strike that rockets into the top corner like a missile leaving the goalkeeper grasping at mid air brings to your soul, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Coming Soon to a TV Screen Near You, Maybe…
“Dear employer, you commanded me
Your commendations now don’t mean as much
Cause I’m a lost cause, causing a problem
But I promise not to be out of touch”
A strange thing happened yesterday… But I’ll give you a bit of background first. I was designing a shitty site for a shitty removal firm who paid shitty money for it, so we’re basically told to give them the bare minimun of what they specify. And I do, but I try to make them look decent…
So I get the brief for this site and it basically says “refer to brouchure”. So I do… and not to put too fine a point on it, it’s a mess, how this firm gets any business is beyond me, but I digress, I put a bog standard site together… Front page is about the company, second page explains their services in a bit more detail and the third page gives contact information.
So I put it all together and upload it and think nothing of it, till my bosses boss (top level boss) comes over to me yesterday to say this guy has put a complaint into Watchdog…
Fucking Watchdog?!?!
She said I should redesign it, but not change the content, just make it look better, it seems that this guy bought a Reliant Robin but was expecting an Aston Martin DB7…
I was so pissed off, I was ready to call this guy and call his bluff, or appear on TV telling Nicky Campbell that the firm could eat my ass with a spoon! Or even better, tell that to Kate as she chases me down the street with a camera crew!
Funny thing is, I don’t really care, I threw together another site and we’re awaiting a response, if he doesn’t like it then screw him… Plenty more business to get on with.
Daily Distractions
This is how the bottom of my desktop looks everyday… With the scope of information thats assaulting my senses day in and day out, it’s a wonder I get any work done.
First up there is the constantly updating BBC and ESPN News Tickers that make sure I’m up to date with all the news from around the world, the UK and American sports… Some may say that’s a bit of overkill, but I like to have my finger on the pulse when the moment is needed.
Along the toolbar you’ll see (or not see, depending on how good the shrinkage is in photoshop) iTunes, which currently has 295 songs, or 21.3 hours cycling through it. Outlook so I can send and recieve e-mails relating to work. My own web based e-mail so I can send and recive e-mails through scamcity. Dreamweaver MX so I can actually do work.
Pretty crowded huh? Shame you might not see Trillian Pro 2.0 sitting in the system bar as I leave it running hidden in the background so I can converse with various people during the day, when I have time of course…
These are my daily distractions, but they don’t distract me that much…
Breaking News…
Angelina Jolie: “I’m starting to really want sex and miss it again”
Woah there… Did I read that right?
HOT DAMN! Where do I go to sign up?
Seriously…
As one dream ends, another one begins… It’s the circle of life young Simba, the circle of life…
End of an Era
This week marks the end of an era in aviation as Concorde goes on it’s last flight.
One of my dreams would be to fly on Concorde just once, well twice as it would be a return ticket of course, but alas that’s just a dream that will never be realised. Mainly because of a price tag of £4,350 one-way and up to £8,292 for a return trip to New York.
I just loved the idea of flying 2 times the speed of sound, and being in 2 places at the same time, because you could leave London Heathrow at 10am and arrive in New York’s JFK some 3 hours later and be in New York City at 10am.
I wonder if another airplane like it will ever be around in my lifetime (however long or short that may be) but in the meantime, Celebrate Concorde while you still can.
Hell Freezes Over
If you listen closely enough, you can just about hear the Devil sharpen his ice skates… Because Apple’s iTunes has finally arrived onto Windows.
This is how apple.com greets you today… It was only a few short months ago Apple was looking for people to develop this application.
And it has everything the Mac version has, including the iTunes Music Store…
This is how it looks with my OSXP desktop, fits in rather nicely really…
So goodbye Musicmatch and Winamp, a new sheriff is in town.
Where in the World is Shannon Campbell?
Thats all I ask…
Loyal readers get a promise of a redesign and now it’s been almost 4 weeks of eerie silence.
Wassupwitdat?
Slacker with an Excuse
In approximately 7 and half hours of being in work I’ve probably only done about 2 hours of actual work…
What’s the secret of my success? Windows XP Professional of course.
Yes, in a story not too dissimilar from many others, I got back from a meeting at 12 to find my PC has crashed, so the tech guy comes down and after much, and I’ll use the technical term here, jiggery-pokery he gets the machine to work… In 5 minute bursts, that’s assuming I don’t touch the mouse or keyboard because if I do, it goes down quicker than a dirty street slut.
So I goes for lunch and things are no further forward at 2pm, great… Some 2 hours later, after sitting through a reinstallation of XP, I’m now able to do stuff, but I can’t actually do any work as I’m running Windows Update to get all the patches for all those nasty viruses that’s been about recently.
I have to wait 11 more minutes for the first Service Pack update to finish, then another few hours or so for the rest of the little critical updates and what not… So now I’m kicking back, listening to the Foo Fighters rock out in Oslo, Norway, wondering why most days can’t be like this…
Lunch al Desko!
I work pretty much in the middle of nowhere, the back end of beyond, way past the boonies. So getting lunch here involves 1 of 2 things.
1) Waiting for the sammich guy to come about 10am and buy your lunch
or
2) Bring your own
I alternate between the two, but once you’ve made that decision, you have another to make.
1) Lunch al Fresco
or
2) Lunch al Desko
Funny how this little play on words can say so much…
So anyways, I’m sitting here typing this while I shoot the shit with people around me, stopping only to email Melody now and again. Nothing particularly interesting is going on, except this damn CD cover challenge that’s been bugging me for the last few weeks, I’ve circulated it in hopes that someone will know the ones I dont…
So far we, as a collective, have:
1.
2. Def Leppard – X
3. Nickelback – The Long Road
4. Jet – Get Born
5. REM – Automatic For The People
6. The Cranberries – Everyone Else is Doing it, So Why Can’t We?
7. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication
8. Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
9. Fat of the Land – Prodigy
10. The EELS – Beautiful Freak
11. Blur – Blur
12. Incubus – Morning View
13. Feeder – Echo Park
14. Beasite Boys – Ill Communication
15. Janet Jackson – Rhythm Nation 1814
16. Oasis – The Masterplan
17. Foo Fighters – The Colour And The Shape
18. Muse – Absolution
19. Damien Rice – 0
20. Athlete – Vehicles And Animals
21.
22.
23. Pink Floyd – The Wall
24. David Gray – A New Day At Midnight
25. Fleetwood Mac – Best Of
26. Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life
27. Neil Young – After The Gold Rush
28.
29.
30. Suede – Dog Man Star
31. The Smiths – Hatful Of Hollow
32. ELO – Out Of The Blue
33.
34.
35.
36. Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
37. Green Day – Nimrod
38. Manic Street Preachers – This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours
39.
40. Christina Aguilara – Stripped.
41. Bill Withers – Greatest Hits
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47. Take That – …And Party
48. Ani DiFranco – Evolve
49. 10,000 Maniacs – Blind Man’s Zoo
50.
51. Dizzy Raskal – Boy In The Corner
52. The Beatles – The Beatles (White Album)
53. Metallica – Metallica (The Black Album)
54.
55. Erasure – The Circus
56. Pearl Jam – Vs
57. The Streets – Original Pirate Material
58. The Roots – Things Fall Apart
59. The Housemartins – London 0 Hull 4
60.