Author: Greg

Well, the big showdown was last night, and in spite of a few bruises it was a whole heap of fun… And depite being heavily outnubered, the Bloggers more than held their own.

The showdown only really lasted 3 games, the first was tied 2-2 (with yours truely scoring the first point of the night), the Bloggers won the second game, handing Flickr their ass with a crushing 4-2 victory, but the Flickrites made a few changes to their lineup and came back to tie it up with a really lucky 6-2 win… As I said, the Bloggers were completely outnumbered, most of us had to play “ironman whirlyball” by playing 3 competitive games back-to-back while the Flickrites could rest up if they wanted to, so by the third game, the Bloggers reserves were completely spent. But it was still a lot of fun.

Actually, it was a damn near criminal amount of fun, and completely disorganised… It must have been hilarious for an outsider to watch as it was basically 10 bumper cars scooting in super slow motion up and down a court chasing after a glorified golf practice ball, only slightly bigger. To put it into some kind of perspective, there was another set of games going on on the court next to us, and they played like pro’s, high speed, set positions, TACTICS!!! Yes, we must have looked pretty funny indeed.

After the third game it was decided to drop all this silly posturing and have former foes on the same side and thus was born the first stages of rebuilding the burned out bridge that lies between Bloggers and Flickrites. Who knows how long it will last, but with the truce in place, and the flag of peace flying high, it can only means good times ahead folks… In fact, a peaceful meal was had afterwards with everybody having a good time, and an even small group kept the peaceful spirit going long into the night in Decatur, good times.

Anyways, my entire set is here and a gratuitous panorama is here. Enjoy…

Not to brag, but Blogger toatally kicked Flickrs ass 6 ways from Sunday

Atlanta Flickr/Blogger Showdown

Originally uploaded by FLC.

In wake of the recent bombings in London, Tony Blair has outlined plans to extend powers to deport or exclude foreigners who encourage terrorism.

So here we go…

• New grounds for deporting and excluding people from the UK – including fostering hatred or, advocating and justifying violence to further beliefs. The powers will cover statements already on record. Consultation on the plans will finish this month
• Agreements with other countries, such as Jordan, to ensure people can be deported to their nations of origin without being tortured or ill-treated
• Amend human rights laws, if necessary, to prevent legal obstacles to new deportation rules
• Home secretary automatically to consider deporting any foreigner involved in listed extremist bookshops, centres, organisations and websites
• Make justifying or glorifying terrorism anywhere an offence
• Automatically refuse asylum to anyone with anything to do with terrorism anywhere
• Consult on setting a maximum time limit for extraditions to other countries – Mr Blair said it was unacceptable that Rashid Ramda, wanted for the Paris Metro bombing 10 years ago, was still in the UK
• Examine calls for police to be able to hold terror suspects for longer before pressing charges
• Use more control orders against British terror suspects, who cannot be deported
• Increase the number of special judges hearing terror cases
• Ban the Hizb ut Tahrir and the successor organisation of Al-Muhajiroun – and look at whether the grounds for banning such groups need to be widened
• Review the threshold for gaining British citizenship and establish, with the Muslim community, a commission to advise how to better integrate parts of the community “presently inadequately integrated”
• Create a list of foreign preachers who will be kept out of the UK and consult on creating new powers to close places of worship used to foment extremism
• Use biometric visas for those from designated countries and compiling a database so people whose views or activities pose a threat to UK security can be kept out of the country. They could only appeal against the decision from overseas.

And this is possibly only just the begining…

I tend to keep myself to myself blogwise, sure I’ll occasionally take potshots at the likes of Jason Kottke for being, in my unedumacated eyes, nothing but a freeloading bum, but I digress… Stats is a bloggers best friend, and I check mine semi-regularly, if only to see which LiveJournal or MySpace members is leeching what image off me, currently my PimpJuice picture is a hot favourite…

Anyways, it’s also nice to see who’s linking to you, it boosts the ego and everyone needs that everyonce in a while… So imagine my spittake when the top referrer is CNET’s news.com, woah, mainstream news source. And it turns out I’m quoted, kinda sorta, in a roundabout way in their Blogma blog, top quote no less about the story of a new blog created every second.

It may not be fortune, but I’m one rung further up the ladder as far as fame goes…

Yep, it was 2 years ago today I re-invented Scam City into a proper blogging blog.

After not getting what I wanted installed by my busy webhosts (can’t really complain as they give me this place for free) I’ve gone back to the old faithful Blogger… Simple, clean, painless, easy access, the list of superlatives goes on and on… To tide me over in the meantime, and this is pretty dirty for a stopgap.

Blogger templates have been dramatically reduced, and what’s left kinda sucks so off to blogskins.com I go only to find a heavy load of really pathetic templates… But I guess it will do until I can get round to designing my own…

I have plenty of time, sitting about the house all day has led me to cabin fever, and having a screaming 18 month old baby doesn’t help one bit… So it’s time to put this free time to use. Time to be productive…

Watch this space.

Two years, where does the time go? In fact, speaking of wasted time, on the 28th of this month I celebrate 6 (SIX!!!) years of Scam City on the interweb, then on October 14th, I celebrate 5 long ass years of blogging…

5 years (almost) and I’m not rich nor famous, I must be doing something wrong… Actually, I need to import those old hand coded blog entries into here one day… One day…

Kinda suck I chose to watch Family Guy tonight as I would have had the choice of possibly the two best/worst movies of all time…

Seriously, who in their right mind chose to put Point Break and Navy SEALs on the same night at near enough the same time, thats a choice no man should ever have to make in his life, it’s either one or the other, not both… You can’t have your cake AND eat it. The only way it could have been worse is if it was the Testosterone Holy Trinity™ with Top Gun added in there…

Of course, the only logical choice is Point Break, simply because it has Keanu Reeves’ best line in a movie ever (and thats saying something), “I AM AN FBI AGENT!”