Well, after a late rally, I pipped my opponent by 1 vote in my first round match up… Thanks to anyone who voted for me, it was much appreciated.

Now I’m in the second round bracket so do yourself, and me, a favour and vote for me here but again, read the other entry before you do vote.

In other news, I’m pretty much settled in my new home. I’m really loving it here thus far, I mean, what’s not to love with a 51″ HDTV in the lounge and a pool table in the garage?

Jealous? You should be…

Hopefully I’ll be able to get into downtown Atlanta soon, and meet up with Juju Dawnkeyotie to check out her pimped out orgy pad of a home.

By way of Dawnkeyotie comes an interview… I’m torn between being serious or joking around, perhaps a bit of both will do…

1. What’s the most important thing in the world? And why?

Right now it’s the belongings I have in two suitcases and a cupboard upstairs as it’s all I have to my name… Without those I’d be smelly, dirty and naked somewhere, which doesn’t sound altogether bad but not really good if you’re living with people.

2. Imagine you are supreme ruler of the world. Nice, huh? Anyway, name two new laws, initiatives, or holidays that you would institute.

Hmmmm, yeah, first of all, it would be a freakin’ utopia people!

This utopia would be a lot like the world we live in today, except with one critical difference. We don’t have a fucked up world because we honestly believe in all the things we say, we have a fucked up world just because we’re assholes. Everything is open 24 hours a day, everything has a drive through window, and Mad Max is head of the highway patrol.

Don’t like your boss? In my world, we have a radical communist revolution every time its my turn to buy the beers. Hey, everyone has their own set of ethics, just that mine is better than yours..

Bored? WWII era Japanese ToJo Zeroes scream out of the sun and strafe people who stand still outdoors for too long. How long? Nobody knows. There’s no welfare, but citizens are guaranteed the right to as much junk food as they want.

Women aren’t allowed to talk about their feelings, but then men can’t brag about getting laid either. Everyone is required by law to be naked when alone, but I haven’t figured out how to enforce it, since surveillance is illegal.

Television content is as unregulated as internet content, but there’s only one channel. The crazy bastard who owns it keeps playing Xena: Warrior Princess 24/7.

Freedom of the press is for the people who own the printing presses.

Also, May 31st would be a global holiday as it’s my birthday… Wild celebrations would be the order of the day before a number of names are picked at random to go on “The Carousel™” to keep the population of the world down… In fact, anyone over 30 or 35 get’s their ass slammed into “The Carousel™”.

3. You are going to be convicted of a crime, real or imaginary. What is it and why?

Everything I done in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City… Which was a lot…

4. What is your favorite quote (or at least the favorite one you can find in the next 5 minutes)?

“Television is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs”
Hunter S. Thompson

5. If you have to be a mammal other than human, what would you be and why?

A cat probably, they get to sit around all day doing nothing while the humans are really their pets

6. You, too, must do haiku.

Haiku on Scam City?
That will be the day, buddy
No culture is here

Finally…The Rules!!

1 – Leave a comment below, saying you want to be interviewed. Prolly best if you leave an email address. The questions are different every time. I will make up your questions if you volunteer.

2 – I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.

3 – You’ll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.

4 – You’ll include this explanation so that this may spread, like a disease, over blogs everywhere.

5 – You’ll ask other people five questions, of your choosing, when they want to be interviewed.

The voting is up and closes tomorrow… so head on over and vote, but vote on the best one… But read both entries, because I think the one I’m up against is pretty cool and if it wasn’t up against mine I’d probably vote for it

So I’ve made it alive to Atlanta, GA. with only the minor inconvenience of losing a chunk of data on my hard drive that’s rendering it pretty much useless, I think a trip to a data recovery specialist is needed to see what they can do with it as I’ve lost a lot of programs, pictures, mp3’s and even the new version of this place… So the new launch may be a bit later than expected if at all.

So without further adieu I present the pictures of my new home just outside Atlanta.

The House:

The Office:

The Pets:

Here’s a gratuitous panorama of the office.

4 people, 3 greyhounds and 3 cats… A bit of a mad house at times. So yeah, alive and well and blogging again (even got my GeoURL updated to show my new location).

I got an email back from FHM.com and they apologised and have changed their link to a new server, I wonder how long that will last since most barely last a day now… Also they’ve linked to a slightly different version where you can’t hit the penguin as far.

My visitor count ended out at 3,902 with 1.16GB of bandwidth burned up, so never underestimate the insane popularity of the best piece of Work Avoidance™ this year (thus far).

I’m glad I checked my stats when I did, otherwise I’d hate to think how much bandwidth would have been used up before my hosts pulled the plug on me.

Referrer Activity Analysis

Top 10 most active referring domains during period:
fhm.com with 728 referrals made (52.15% of all referrals)
yayhooray.com with 172 referrals made (12.32% of all referrals)
ex-rev.com with 71 referrals made (5.09% of all referrals)
okayplayer.com with 69 referrals made (4.94% of all referrals)
scamcity.co.uk with 68 referrals made (4.87% of all referrals)
ulc.net with 40 referrals made (2.87% of all referrals)
digitallsd.com with 31 referrals made (2.22% of all referrals)
ezboard.com with 27 referrals made (1.93% of all referrals)
covenantofswords.com with 21 referrals made (1.50% of all referrals)
boardnation.com with 19 referrals made (1.36% of all referrals)

Here’s a little story for you all…

Imagine the scene, it’s about 1am, I’m ready to go to bed but for some strange reason, I decide to check the stats for my website… Now with the original website of pingu disappearing, I put it on scamcity.co.uk to share with you guys (and people at a few chosen messageboards too)… So imagine my shock and awe when my bandwidth is through the fucking roof… My host allows me about 1gb of bandwidth and I’m scraping by with that (due to various images being posted here and there and mostly at design communities)

Now my previous best day, bandwidth wise, was at the end of October when Rich Baran died and I posted a little tribute to him, that day it topped out at 130mb (which I though was a helluva lot)

Todays not even over and it sits at 1.2GB (total bandwidth = 2.14GB)

How did it get this horrific you ask?

BLOODY FHM.COM leeched the fucking Pingu game off my ass! (as well as a couple of dozen message boards around the world)

They even have this cheeky description

Smack The Penguin

Animal cruelty can be fun!

A true phenomenon this one. Over the space of a day (January 21 2004 to be precise), FHM.com received over one thousand emails asking – nay, demanding – that we include this penguin/baseball bat brilliance in the top 100. Current office record is 593.5.

So my host has left a message for them where pingu used to be (www.scamcity.co.uk/pingu/) and I’ve sent them a nice, yet blunt, email saying if they want to continue linking to it, they better pony on up… I ain’t paying for stolen bandwidth, cause that’s what it amounts too…

The file for pingu is 300kb… 300kb into 1GB is a lot! 3,300 hits, give or take. There was a time I used to get that kind of traffic in a whole YEAR! Never mind a day…

I don’t expect to see a dime, and all I wanted to do was share the game after the original place died (prolly in much the same way as I have)…

The Mars Rover has done a Beagle 2…

Shame really… The pictures Spirit has sent back have been something magical and good to look at… So here’s hoping the rover ping’s back soon.

Or maybe the Martians have snatched it just like Beagle 2.

What NOT to say in an already paranoid country.

Yeah, stupid girl for sure, that prank rates up there with:

The more I think about Saturday, the more I’m not looking forward to being fingerprinted, photographed, iris-scanned, weighed, poked, prodded, stripped naked, denied access to sanitation, handcuffed if I so much as raise my voice to complain, and generally humiliated because of the American government’s Patriot Act, and I do not anticipate that I will be comforting myself with the thought that, hey, it’s okay because I’m doing my bit to ensure the security of the American people… Though I wonder how my American readers would feel if it was the other way around and all that happened to them at Heathrow because, conceivably, one of your fellow American passengers might be a bomber.

Somehow I don’t think they’d be terribly happy with it.

After being left bitter and jaded about my lack of love from “The Bloggies,” I’ve entered myself into another blog competition I have no chance of possibly winning… Or do I?

BlogMadness 2003 is the new competition du jour, and it’s actually quite a cool one. Instead of voting for your favourite overall blog, you’re voting for an individual entry, prompting you to read the entries in the list and maybe, just maybe, quite liking it enough to add that blog to your “OMG! Must read that blog today!” list. That’s my hope at least

Anyways, I’ve been seeded 17th of 29 in the 2nd region with this entry about death of friends, how it got lumped into the “sports” category I dunno, but I’m not complaining.

I’m not entirely sure when the competition opens for voting, but when I do find out you can be sure I’ll be harassing your collective asses for a vote.

So I’ve been looking through the referral logs for this place and I’ll give a few shout outs to places that link to me, some old, some new, some strange and everything in between…

First up, big shout outs to:

The Boston Common Weblog, who picked up my comments about the New England Patriots a few days ago.

Tractorgirl.org, who’s made a few visits recently, thank you for the kindly link.

Dawnkeyotie, who’s fast becoming my biggest fan, or stalker…

Neuroblog, who really should update more often…

Not many, but that’s from the last 4 days, most of my referrals are made from messageboards linking images I have stored in various places.

But now onto the Coup De Gras… How the hell I’m getting linked from these places baffles me…

paris-hilton-video.blogspot.com and paris-hilton-video-tape.blogspot.com… Ummm yeah, I’ve actually looked through that entire damn site (it’s just a blog about the Paris Hilton tape, not the actual video… I know what you were thinking, especially you) and not found a link to me on it, it must be mystical or something.

freenudecelebrity.net, again, HOW???

iglhrc.org which is the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission website, I don’t even know where this came from… So it’s a cross between a WTF! and a shout out to the gay and lesbian community.

yourwebsitesucks.com… Tell me something I didn’t already know.

mp3int.com… Again, no idea.

Weird and wonderful, one and all…

Smack The Pingu!!!!

Seriously, smack it Sammy Sosa style into Big Mac Land!

My best is 588 (thus far)

EDIT (5:10pm):
My lowest is 160.4, try beating that (you must hit it)

EDIT (7:43pm):
Proof of longest…
Proof of shortest…

EDIT (21/01/04 3:00pm):
95.5 is my new shortest

EDIT (21/01/04 3:06pm):
65.6… I’m retiring

EDIT (22/01/04 12:47pm):
593.5… New longest, matching Dawnkey’s

Some interesting reading as George Bush prepares to deliver his State of the Union address…

Some of these stats are quite scary, but some will argue stats can be twisted to prove just about anything.

232: Number of American combat deaths in Iraq between May 2003 and January 2004

501: Number of American servicemen to die in Iraq from the beginning of the war – so far

0: Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender to the Allies in May 1945

0: Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home from Iraq that the Bush administration has allowed to be photographed

[...]

10 million: Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, setting an all-time record for simultaneous protest

[...]

92%: Percentage of Iraq’s urban areas that had access to drinkable water a year ago

60%: Percentage of Iraq’s urban areas that have access to drinkable water today

[...]

45%: Percentage of Americans who believed in early March 2003 that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 11 September attacks on the US

$127 billion: Amount of US budget surplus in the year that Bush became President in 2001

$374 billion: Amount of US budget deficit in the fiscal year for 2003

[...]

$113 million: Total sum raised by the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, setting a record in American electoral history

$130 million: Amount raised for Bush’s re-election campaign so far

$200m: Amount that the Bush-Cheney campaign is expected to raise in 2004

$40m: Amount that Howard Dean, the top fund-raiser among the nine Democratic presidential hopefuls, amassed in 2003

[...]

90%: Percentage of American citizens who said they approved of the way George Bush was handling his job as president when asked on 26 September, 2001

53%: Percentage of American citizens who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president when asked on 16 January, 2004

That last one is the scariest of all, over half the American population still think he’s doing a good job. If he get’s re-elcted then place your bets for the next stop on the GWB “Freedon For My People” World Tour™ as well as more civil liberites being stripped at home.

Those statistics come courtesy of The Independent.

5 days till I leave… Microsoft threatening Mike Rowe Soft… Illegal stun guns sold on eBay… Tom Cruise opens up a lucrative business by proposing for other people… Leeds United aren’t dead… Yet… And finally, you can adapot Beck’s rabbit…

It’s all good. I spent most of the weekend, OK most of Sunday, gutting my bedroom and throwing out 5 large bags of useless junk I’ve accumulated. Now I just need to pack my belongings into a few suitcases and I’m good to go.

I finally voted from a few people on “The Bloggies“… I was loathed to vote for Belle de Jour for best topical weblog but she (or is it a he?) was newsworthy a while back… On the flip side, I was more than happy to vote for Tequila Mockingbird in the best-kept-secret weblog category… Thanks to Dawnkeyotie and her never ending list of weblog recommendations for that one.

But *sniff sniff* no nominations for lil’ ol me. Maybe next year.

2 years ago I said

Patriots + Super Bowl = Sirloin Meat Grinder: This is the third time that the Patriots have to go to Nawlins to participate in the Big One. This will be the third time they will be turned into a smear by the end of the night. This is going to be a very sad spectacle. Fortunately for me, I won’t be watching it, since I’ll be sleeping at the time of the broadcast. What’s the big story (other than Tom Brady’s injury)? Aeneas Williams, hometown boy, gets to fulfill his dream, and thank God he’s been on a hot streak lately (including that pick of McNabb that sealed the game) or there wouldn’t have been much of a story there to begin with. God help us all. Oh, here’s your possible ray of hope, Pats fans: no team has ever won a Super Bowl after losing to Tampa Bay during the regular season.

But they proved me wrong and went on to win 20 – 17 against the red hot St. Louis Rams…

They’ve sealed their place in the Big One™ again by beating the Indianapolis Colts 24 – 14 at a very wintery Foxboro, all that stands between them and a 2nd Superbowl in 3 years is either the Carolina Panthers or Philadelphia Eagles.

Why am I following the Patroits you ask? Well, I’ve been to Boston a few times and really loved it there (even in the snow) and was very close to actually living there at one point, so as a point I began to follow the fortunes of the Patriots, as I never really followed an NFL team compared to the other sports in America.

Erika has picked the Panthers to win the Superbowl, so with me supporting the Patriots, it could be an interesting day in two weeks…

BBC Radio 3 will be airing more than four minutes of complete silence on Friday… by design.

Avante-Garde or just pretentious wankery?

The BBC Symphony Orchestra is to give a performance of composer John Cage’s seminal piece 4′33″, which does not contain a single note.

Radio 3 is to broadcast the entire composition live, even having to switch off its emergency system which cuts in when there is apparent silence.

The performance takes place on Friday night at London’s Barbican Centre.

It is part of a weekend of Cage’s work. The late avant-garde composer “wrote” the piece in 1952.

So you can write silence?

Wait, so if I sit in silence could his estate sue me for an unauthorised public performance of his work? There’s a mindfuck for you…

The best quote is:

Mr Hughes denied the performance was a “mindless gimmick” and said Cage believed “music was all around us all the time” and the piece was his attempt to make the audience focus on sounds that were “part of our everyday lives”.

But the audience at the premiere was “so discomforted that mostly what you could hear was people getting up and walking out”, he said.

“They were completely outraged and extremely angry,” Mr Hughes added.

Gives new meaning to the phrase “Money for Nothing” doesn’t it?