Bits and Pieces

Jailbreaking the iPad 2

2012-02-17T06:22:00.002-05:00

I've really been getting into hidden object games recently (for an example, check out Hidden Chronicles on Facebook). They're a great time waster, and when you're stuck on a train for hours on end they're a great way to make it a little more tolerable.

I got a new iPad 2 the other week in Bangkok, and two days later I found myself on a train to Laos on a visa run. The problem is that money's a little tight these days, and I just didn't have the money in the bank to pay for a whole new set of games for the new iPad. For some reason I wasn't allowed to simply copy the games from my iPhone to may iPad, despite the fact that I'd already paid for them once.

So yeah, 12 hours before getting the train I was desperately looking for a way to jailbreak iPad 2 in order to download a few games to pass the time. After a few hours of running around the Bangkok electronics markets to find someone to do the job for me I finally returned home and found a piece of software that allowed me to do it in 5 minutes (you can check the link for the site). After hours of downloading games I managed to get enough to last the 20 hour train journey. Score!

email soldiers to show your support

2012-02-17T06:12:00.001-05:00

Over the last ten years or so there has been an ongoing groundswell of supports for our men and women in uniform. Before the 9-11 attacks we didn't really spare a thought for our soldiers, engaged in small, low profile squabbles in little known countries around the world. Iraq and Afghanistan, though, brought our soldiers once again to the fore, and every so often it's nice to offer a little appreciation.

These days you can email soldiers to offer your support, thank them for a job well done or simply to chat with and get to know one of our brave young men and women working to keep us safe and secure. An international pen pal is a great thing to have... while you get the benefit of chatting to someone doing a difficult, dangerous job in a far flung land they get the opportunity to catch up on events back home, relax at the end of a long day and escape their difficult circumstances, if only for a little while.

We love the idea of emailing soldiers, and we think everyone should be doing it.

Hello Kitty Car Accessories

2012-02-08T14:25:00.000-05:00

I've always hated Hello Kitty Car accessories, so when my girlfriend arrived with her brand new Toyota last week I was horrified to see that she'd decked out the interior of the car with seat covers, fuzzy dice, floor mats and all sorts of other things, all carrying the Hello Kitty brand.

Now I can't go near the car without seeing that blank, horrifying cat face staring back at me from every surface. I love having the car, but I can't bring myself to drive it over to a friend's house for fear that I'll be rightfully called 'whipped'.

Hello Kitty can kiss my ass.

Car Seat Covers for Girls

2012-02-06T12:23:00.002-05:00

After two years without a car we finally picked up a beat up old Toyota yesterday. We don't really have the money to pay for gas, insurance and everything else you need to get on the road, but we were so sick of riding the Bangkok BTS every day that we splashed out a little. The BTS costs about 3 dollars a day, so driving around the city is sure to cost us much, much more. Oh well.

We did splash out on one thing, though. My girlfriend is a huge fan of pink, girly things, and since I convinced her to cut back on her shopping in order to afford a car she backed me into a corner and got me to agree to buy a couple of car seat covers for girls. I'm now the proud owner of a pair of Hello Kitty car seat covers. Oh dear.

Now, I'm no fan of Hello Kitty. I spent a couple of months living in Tokyo in 2010, and that experience was enough to turn me off the sugary, oh so sweet and innocent phenomenon. I'd just as soon not have Hello Kitty car seat covers in my Toyota, but I guess this is what happens when you stumble into a relationship. It all starts great, then you start to compromise who you are for the sake of your girlfriend. Before you know it you're driving around Bangkok in a beat up second hand car with Hello Kitty kissing your back.

Well, it's better than getting the train.

Finally Learning Thai

2012-01-31T06:30:00.002-05:00

Well, I've been living in Asia for three years now and I think it's high time I learned a language other than English.

Now don't get me wrong. In the last three years I've picked up enough Thai, Mandarin and Mongolian to get by from day to day, and my Mongolian girlfriend is often impressed by my command of her language (in that polite, patronising way that people who speak three languages fluently display when a dullard such as myself manages to order a meal in broken Mongolian). Unfortunately, my attempts at anything more advanced than 'restaurant' and 'taxi' language - i.e. enough to order a meal and get home by cab - have fallen flat.

I've recently been looking into language learning methods, and I've come across a few promising examples of software for language learning. We're living in Bangkok for the next six months or so, so I've registered for a course to learn conversational Thai in three months.

So, check back around April and we'll see how I'm going. Will I be talking Thai like a native, or will I be bumbling along in broken phrases interspersed with English? Who knows? Only time will tell.

Freezing in Mongolia

2012-01-30T23:51:00.003-05:00

God damn, it's been cold recently. I've spent the last few days packing for Thailand.

I really want to get out to exercise, but short of wearing my Canada Goose Freestyle vest beneath my Columbia Bugaboo parka (a bulky combination, to be sure) I can barely make it out the front door! It's just ridiculous, and I can't wait until next week when we move back to Bangkok.

The next four months in Bangkok are going to be the time to get in good shape. Our apartment block has a gym and two pools, and the bar scene sucks for anyone over the age of 25. I'll be giving up the beer in favour of the pool most nights, and I don't think I'll miss the bars too much.

Addicted to Gun Games

2012-01-26T04:51:00.001-05:00

Right now I'm living in Bangkok, busily researching for a book we're writing for first time visitors to South East Asia. It's hard work, but it should eventually pay off.

Unfortunately I'm being side tracked every day, from two different directions. First, the apartment block in which I live has just reopened the pool after a few months of renovation, and it has one of those crazy glass walls that let you swim to the edge of the building and look out on the city from underwater, 25 storeys above the street. It's pretty wild.

Second, I just can't seem to stop playing these damned gun games. Every time I sit down to type up a few notes or do a little work on a chapter I black out for three hours. When I finally wake up I realise I've played several hundred games. My scores are through the roof, but my productivity has never been lower.

What's worse, I just discovered a whole new section of the site focused on zombie games. I. Just. Can't. RESIST! I'll be playing these for weeks, emailing lame excuses to my publisher, and before you know it I'll be stuck out in Bangkok without a book deal but with an awesome high score on 'All We Need is Brain'.

Oh well. I've made my bed, and now I must lie in it.

We're Moving to Vancouver!

2012-01-26T04:43:00.000-05:00

Well, my girlfriend and I are finally looking to settle down. I'm British, she's Mongolian, and neither of our countries want anything to do with the other. Fortunately, I also have a Canadian passport, so as soon as we get married later in the year we'll be heading over the Vancouver to find a place to call home.

I'm a little scared about the prospect of buying a house, but a Canadian friend of mine assures me that Vancouver realtors aren't nearly as pushy as those from the UK. All the same, I hate dealing with salesmen of any stripe, and I'd much prefer it if they'd just hand me the door key, point me in the direction of the house and send me on my way. If I have any questions, I'll call.

Anyhoo, we've been looking online and the prospects so far are looking pretty good. Naturally, the property prices are much higher than we've found in Ulaanbaatar and Bangkok, but then again it's possible to earn so much more in Vancouver. I guess it all comes out in the wash. Right now I earn just enough to afford a nice condo in Central Bangkok, but back in Vancouver I'd expect to earn at least twice my current salary. Should be enough to buy a decent property, fingers crossed

I Need the Best Skin Care Products!

2012-01-26T04:23:00.000-05:00

Out here in Asia it's pretty tricky to get the best skin care products of the west. When I was living in Mongolia all I could find were Russai knockoffs of western brands, and now we're in Thailand for a while I daren't buy anything for fear that it will contain a chemical skin whitener (that's a big thing here, a country in which pale=beautiful).

My sister is visiting us in the next few weeks, and this morning I emailed a huge list of skin care products I want her to bring over. We won't be back in the west for another 8 months yet, so I need enough stuff to last me through most of the year.

I can't wait until she arrives, though. My skin looks just terrible right now, old and tired, always red from the sun and shiny as hell from the humidity. I'm desperate for some kind of face mask and an exfoliant. I want to get rid of this nasty, blotchy skin, slough it all off and replace it with something much, much more healthy.

Good lord, I'm getting giddy just thinking about it. I'm really looking forward to seeing my sister, but I'm sure that, right after the hugs are done, I'll be grabbing for her bag!

Social Advertising with Linknami

2012-01-22T22:44:00.002-05:00

In recent months I've been experimenting with social advertising, and it just got a hell of a lot more interesting with a few recent updates made by Google.

For the last few years Facebook and Twitter have been emerging as the new driving forces of viral marketing. You see something interesting, you like it on your page or tweet it on Twitter. If it's good, your friends like it and retweet. If it's really good it goes viral, and in a matter of hours you could see tens of thousands of visitors to your site. It definitely makes Internet marketing a lot more exciting, knowing that you can find success in a day rather than wait impatiently to rise through the ranks on Google.

In the last few days I've been trying a promising service called Linknami. If you have a site or page you'd like to promote, the hardest thing is to get the ball rolling. With Linknami you can hire regular people to publicise your content, paying them a small amount to talk about your stuff. It's a great idea, and so far it's showing a lot of promise. I tested the service with a gallery of photos taken over Christmas in Mongolia, paying for ten Facebook likes. Since then my page has been liked organically another 28 times, and the traffic has begun to increase.

Here's the best part: Google is beginning to take notice of social signals. A few dozen 'likes' will give you a nice bump in the SERPS, and if you manage to get something to go viral you could potentially push yourself all the way to the top of the results.

Right, back to the grindstone. I'll keep you updated with my test over the next few weeks.

Smoking a Sähkötupakka

2012-01-14T20:44:00.000-05:00

So we're going through a bit of a financial rough spot here in Bangkok right now. My girlfriend and I arrived a few days ago after a looooong trip down from Mongolia to take advantage of the low cost of living, and while we're here I'll be working 12 hours a day to try to build up a little capital before heading back to Ulaanbaatar for the summer.

One thing I really miss about Mongolia is the price of cigarettes. You can get a pack of Marlboro Lights up there for the equivalent of £1.50, which makes smoking pretty damned cheap when you take 2 days to finish a pack.

It's still reasonably priced here in Bangkok (especially compared to the excessive cost of cigarettes in the west), but it's still expensive enough to make me want to quit. Fortunately I have a partial solution. About six months ago a Finnish friend of mine brought me a gift of what he called a sähkötupakka. When he told me the name I assumed he was going to hand me one of the God awful Finnish snacks he always brings with him, so I was pleasantly surprised when he told me it was just the Finnish name for an e-cigarette. He's been trying to get me to quit for years, the big lug.

Anyway, the sähkötupakka went in a drawer until now. I wasn't too interested until I decided to try to quit. I've tried it a couple of times and the taste is pretty good. I even managed to go 24 hours without a real cigarette yesterday! I'll keep going, and report back. Wish me luck!

Replacing Lost Watches

2012-01-11T11:16:00.001-05:00

One of the most annoying things about travelling is the fact that, no matter how careful you may be, eventually you'll lose something of value. In the last two years I've managed to leave an expensive leather jacket in a hotel closet in the middle of India, an expensive pair of sunglasses in a cab in Bangkok and about half my wardrobe in an apartment in Ulaanbaatar. When you're trying to live cheap it can be frustrating to have to pay to replace all of this stuff.

Right now we're in Hong Kong visiting a good friend of ours, and thankfully he has a spare room for us (Hong Kong hotels are tiny and ridiculously expensive). When we arrived a few days ago on the train from Beijing I dumped my bags on the floor, did my usual equipment check and noticed that I seem to have lost my watch somewhere along the way. I suspect I left it hanging on a hook in the bathroom of the train. I remember putting it there while I washed in the morning.

Men's watches can be damned expensive to replace, so I was pretty pissed off to say the least. Watches, fortunately, sell pretty cheap in Hong Kong, so I was able to pick up a replacement for less than $30 (nice watch, too). Still, I'd be much happier if I could just get over my habit of losing things whenever we move to a new city. Money is tight right now, and I can't really afford to replace another lost item.

How to Remove Newspaper Articles

2012-01-07T13:06:00.001-05:00

Internet safety experts often complain about the dangers of social networking sites such as Facebook, about the effect our online breadcrumb trail may have on our future employability. They warn us about those drunken photos tagged in our profiles, and the ill-advised drug and alcohol related status updates. All of this information will be there forever, they tell us. It doesn't matter how private we think our data may be. Eventually the truth will out, and one day it'll come back to bite us right on our collective asses.

The same holds true for newspaper articles. Individuals and businesses featured in unflattering articles have never had so much cause for concern as they do today. Way back before the days of the Internet we could hope to keep our heads low in the wake of a bad article, secure in the knowledge that today's newspapers will be lining tomorrow's litter trays. Today, though, newspaper articles are not just archived in microfiche form but published and immortalised online. Every article is available at the touch of a button, and every business should be praying for the development of a 'remove newspaper article' option in their browsers.

It's no simple matter to have an unflattering newspaper article removed from the records, and every newspaper will put up a fight before deleting a story, but if you feel you or your business has been unfairly portrayed in print you should follow this guide about how to remove newspaper articles. There's no guarantee of success, but you might as well go down swingin', right?

Investing in Web Design

2012-01-07T00:18:00.002-05:00

The last year or so have been lean times in the Taylor household. Lean, lean, lean. In May of 2011 I moved out to Asia to be with my Mongolian girlfriend, and since then we've been travelling around China, Thailand and Laos, awaiting the day I'm taken off the Mongolian blacklist (I had some visa problems in 2010, and ended up being deported).

Well, in early November we finally returned to Mongolia, and within two months we were ready to leave again - Mongolia sits around -40 degree Celsius right now, which is daaaaaamned cold. So, we arrived in Beijing yesterday, tomorrow we get the train to visit a friend of ours in Hong Kong, and by the middle of next week we'll be in our apartment in Bangkok.

Anyway... as you can guess, none of this comes cheap. Ogi and I haven't been able to work since May and the reserves are just about to run dry. I'm spending my days frantically trying to turn my random collection of websites into something resembling a small online empire, and pretty soon we may be self sufficient, living on Adsense and Amazon affiliate earnings.

To achieve this goal, though, I need the help of a web design company. My stable of sites all look pretty rough right now, and if there's one thing that drives Amazon sales and Adsense clicks it's attractive design. Readers faced with a shoddy looking site click the back button as quick as a flash, but a good looking layout = instant trust (or at least the benefit of the doubt long enough to wow the reader with your rich content).

Before spending money I didn't have on web design for all my sites I decided to do a test run on one of them. I hired a web design company to play around with my Wordpress theme, delving into the coding and modifying the theme to fit my site better. They rearranged Adsense blocks, added some shiny buttons and inserted a few well-chosen product images. Three weeks later I've seen my Adsense CTR jump from a pathetic 0.3% to a much more impressive 5.2%. My Amazon conversion rate has jumped from 3% to 8%.

In real terms this means that the site is generating about $5 more each day (the traffic wasn't great to begin with). It doesn't sound like much, but over a year that adds up to an extra $1,825 - 18 times more than the web design fee.

So, I'm investing much of our remaining cash into my other sites. If the same performance boost holds true for my stable, an investment today in a web design company should add up to an extra $50 each day - over $18,000 a year. Worth it? Definitely.

I am Pissed Off

2012-01-06T23:26:00.002-05:00

Those who know me will probably agree that I'm a pretty mellow, laid back kind of guy. I take life as it comes, and I'm not easily riled. The way my life has been for the last couple of years has tested my resolve a little, and for the last two months I've been living in a country in which I would probably be beaten on the street in broad daylight if I held my girlfriend's hand (Mongolian guys need some serious re-education about acceptable behaviour), but all in all I'm usually calm.

For the last couple of weeks Ogi and I have been hanging out with an Argentinian guy on his way around the world. We put him up for a few nights at our place before booking him in to a local hotel, and when the time came for us to leave Mongolia and return to China for a while, Dan asked if he could take the train with us.

and so it was that last night on the Chinese border at 3AM we handed over our passports to the Mongolian border guards to check ourselves out of the country. Dan, the owner of a pretty impressively spiky head of hair, was called 'pineapple head' by one of the female guards with who he was clumsily trying to flirt. He doesn't speak a word of Mongolian, and I made the mistake of translating into English.

He. Went. Crazy.

Dan suddenly turned into the human form of the website I am Pissed Off. He started yelling about professionalism, human rights and God knows what else until we calmed him down and pulled him away. After being deported from two countries I've learned that you just don't fuck with border guards .

Anyway, here's my point. There are some people who can happily drift through life without ever getting pissed off. It's easy. Most of the people I meet will never see me again, so there's no point getting angry with them. There are other people, though, people like Dan, who fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. These are the people who need to head to I am Pissed Off to vent their feelings before they tell the wrong person to fuck off and end up in jail.

Hire a Babysitter in Mongolia? Naaaaah

2012-01-03T22:27:00.002-05:00

In recent months my partner and I have been living in Mongolia, an unusual country sandwiched between China and Russia. Many things about this country are different from the west (obviously), but the one thing that strikes me most is the difference between the level of hovering care provided by a parent for her children.

You see, back in the west we've grown used to living in a society in which our child's every move needs to be carefully monitored lest he or she accidentally run in front of a bus or be abducted by psychopaths. The real and imagined dangers of parenthood make it a pretty damned stressful experience.

Out here in Mongolia, though, they're a little more relaxed about parenting. Parents here would rarely hire a babysitter, for instance. Instead (assuming there isn't a parent around to do the job) they'd simply knock on the doors of their neighbours until they found someone who'd take the kid for an hour or two. I'd never dare do that in the US or the UK (I don't know my neighbours, in any case).

Anyway, my girlfriend and I are toying with the idea of setting up a baby sitting service in the same vein as Care.com. I'd love to get kids taken care of by responsible, trained carers rather than the potentially drunk neighbours who look after them now. We're off to Thailand for a while next week, but when we get back we're gonna launch right into it.

Buy iPad Now and Pay Later

2011-12-31T04:22:00.000-05:00

I always seem to buy my gadgets at the worst possible time. I buy a laptop, and the week later my house is robbed. I buy an iPhone, and the following month I'm in a car accident in Mongolia - the only casualty the phone's screen. It sucks, but I'm cursed.

When I bought my iPad it was so much bad luck as poor planning that caught me out. I'd been living in the middle of Thailand with my girfriend for a few months, lagging behind on the tech news for a while, and on a trip down to Bangkok I decided to grab an iPad on a mad impulse. I didn't need it at the time, and as it turned out I wouldn't use it for about 6 months.

Just two days after I bought my iPad, the iPad 2 was released. Slimmer body. Better screen. Faster processor. Same price.

This Christmas I decided to treat myself to an iPad 2, but I hit a bit of a problem. I'm poor. I didn't used to be - I was quite wealthy at the start of the year, but I lost my job and ended up travelling around Asia for 10 months with my girlfriend. There's just no money left right now.

Anyway... I took a look at one of my favourite shopping blogs, Shopping Kim, and found a couple of buy iPad now, pay later deals. Irresponsible? Maybe. I don't care. My iPad two will be with me in three to five days.

Happy new year, everyone!

A Pet Pharmacy in my Home

2011-12-29T05:59:00.002-05:00

So for the last few weeks my girlfriend and I have been dogsitting for a nice Czech couple, in return for free accommodation in their apartment. At first this seemed like a pretty sweet deal. We're running a little low on funds, so a month rent-free sounded pretty good...

... That is, until we met the dog.

This little thing is insane. She's a mongrel. Part spaniel, mostly wolf. She eats more than Ogi and I put together, and a couple of days ago she broke a table, she was jumping around so much.

Now, the couple want to move little hyperactive Zaya from Mongolia to the UK, and in order to do so she needs shots, blood tests and a whole host of checkups to make sure she's healthy. This month we've visited the vet almost a dozen times, and we have so much medication in our bathroom (where the dog can't chew it to pieces) that we have a veritable pet pharmacy on our hands.

Anyway... it'll be sad to leave little Zaya next week when her family return from holiday. This last month has reminded me of my love for these furry little creatures. I expect after we leave her I'll have to get my fix from reading the occasional pet blog and chasing after puppies in the street :)

Using an Online Math Tutor

2011-12-25T11:00:00.003-05:00

Throughout my school years my parents would never shut up about my English skills. Spelling, punctuation, grammar... they'd go on and on and on about the fact that I never found any aspect of the English language a challenge. It was just easy for me. The rules seemed easy to understand; simple and intuitive.

If only the same could be said for math. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get my head around mathematics. Basic stuff like addition, subtraction and simple multiplication was easy enough, but once we drifted out of the comfortable shallows I quickly got out of my depth. I could never understand algebra, calculus, or even such a basic concept as 'carrying the one'. In short, I sucked.

I never really got better, either. Even today I usually have my calculator app open on my laptop and iPhone for simple sums. I rely on the calculator, and these days I just don't bother to do math at all.

My New Year's resolution for 2012 is to change that. This year I'm gonna use an online math tutor to wean me off my reliance on the calculator. I'll never bother to learn algebra (even school kids can tell they'll probably never have any real world use for it), but I'm definitely gonna get a good grasp on basic math. Wish me luck, people.

Making Extra Money From Home

2011-12-25T10:38:00.001-05:00

As you may know, my girlfriend and I have been bumming around Asia for the past couple of years. After four months living in Thailand we returned to her home, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to spend the winter. After a little over a month here we decided that -40 degrees was really too cold for human beings, so we're heading back to Thailand by way of Beijing and Hong Kong in a little under two weeks.

The problem is that all of this is dangerously expensive. We need to find an apartment in Bangkok, where neither of us can legally work, so once again we'll be relying on my online income to pay the bills. Pretty stressful, actually.

Right now my income is pretty fixed. $20 here, $30 there, but not much extra on the horizon, so for the last few weeks I've been wondering how can I make extra money from home. I figure I need to make a steady $70 each day to keep us on an even keel, and a little more (ideally) to build some savings rather than just stay level. So far I've been writing extra articles at crazy low rates, and working on my sites to try and build my Adsense and Amazon earnings up a little higher. I think we may be on the verge of something big, but it's under wraps at the moment. I'll get back to you all when it's confirmed, but it may just solve all of our financial problems.

Building an AdSense Empire

2011-12-25T10:27:00.001-05:00

In the last six months or so I've been building up a few new sites in advance of the Christmas rush, hoping to make a mint from the amazon Associates program and the AdSense program. I've been tirelessly banging out content day and night, building sites of hundreds of pages each, hoping to reach the top of the search results and give myself a nice, comfortable passive income.

I'm only six months into this new career but so far I've done pretty well, if I say so myself. Last month I made a little over $600 from Amazon and $400 from Adsense. Out here in Asia that's all I need for a comfortable life, but I'd like to at least double that by this time next year to allow my girlfriend and I the option to return home to the UK if we choose - right now that's just out of the question.

Since the next year will surely be a long, hard slog I've decided to work smart, rather than hard over the coming 12 months. You can buy ready made content to flesh out your sites - articles that will only require a little rewriting to pass the duplicate content filters - and using them you can flesh out your sites with content that Google will love.

I've been using these pre-written articles for the last few weeks, and so far I've halved the amount of time I've needed to spend sitting at the computer, while my productivity rate has stayed the same.

So, if you're building websites and you're finding yourself tired of writing fresh articles every day I advise you to buy a few pre-written pieces. It makes life so much easier.

Pre Natas Fair Promotion in Singapore

2011-12-22T23:22:00.003-05:00

As you may know, my girlfriend and I are heading back to Thailand in a few weeks to escape the harsh winter cold of Mongolia. It's just too damned chilly up here, and we desperately need to see the sun again. I want air conditioning. I want to sleep naked. I want to be able to wake up in the morning, throw on a t-shirt and shorts and head to the shop, rather than a pair of down trousers, a t-shirt, a shirt, a scarf, gloves, hat and a parka.

Our plan is to stay in Bangkok for about four months until the last of the snow has melted in Mongolia, but that means that we'll have to go on a visa run after our first month. Earlier this year we went to Laos and Cambodia on visa runs, and Ogi really wants to try a new country the next time.

We've heard great things about Malaysia and Singapore. We have a couple of friends in Krabi, and a couple more in Singapore, so our plan is to get the train down mainland Malaysia over the course of about a week before heading into Singapore in time for the Pre Natas fair promotion.

The Natas fair, if you haven't heard of it, is an industry event hosted by the National Association of Travel Agents Singapore. Each year in February and August they offer amazing deals on air fares to entice locals to go on holiday. The deals are often linked with banks, so you can often get some great goodies when you pay for a travel deal with your credit card.

With a little luck Ogi and I will be able to find a great deal on a flight back to Bangkok - or elsewhere, if the mood strikes and the price is right.

Bankruptcy and the Preference Period

2011-12-21T00:19:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine is going through a rough time right now. A few years ago he had an idea, and after a looooot of legwork, grovelling, begging and cajoling he'd raised enough venture capital to start a business.

Unfortunately my friend isn't all that savvy. He's a great ideas man, but when it comes to the nuts and bolts of the day to day running of a business... well, he leaves something to be desired. What he'd done is this: he'd promised the VC guys a return on their investment by x months after the payments were made. What he hadn't accounted for, thanks for some more than optimistic number crunching on his part, was that the capital wouldn't be available when the payment date came. The money was there, sure, but it was tied up in stock, rent and wages.

Anyway, things got a little ugly. My friend hadn't covered his ass legally, so the VC guys were tough to deal with. They eventually accepted a repayment on their investment in installments, but this only made the matter worse. With the lifeblood of the business heading out to the investors my friend had no chance. A couple of months ago he filed for bankruptcy.

Now, I always assumed that this was as simple as saying, in fancy legal terms, 'sorry guys, I'm out of money. We're all screwed, but you ain't getting a penny'. It now turns out that it's much, much more complicated than that. There are all sorts of terms like preference period and preferential transfer being thrown around: terms that basically mean that my friend has to repay certain debts come hell or high water, despite filing for bankruptcy.

Well, it's all too complicated for me, but it makes me glad that I live in a country that lacks such a complex legal system as that of the US. Out here on the Mongolian steppe we just break your legs if you don't pay a debt!

Weird Hotels and Crazy Thing to Do

2011-12-20T23:52:00.001-05:00

Now, you all know I visit some pretty weird places in my travels. In the last few years I've stood on the edge of an enormous flaming crater that's been burning for three decades in Turkmenistan. I was in Beijing on National Day, 2009 as the Chinese military rolled through Tienanmen Square. I spent weeks earlier this year living through the worst flooding Thailand has seen in half a century (you haven't lived until you've watched a crocodile wade down your street), and right now I'm living through a Mongolian winter at a ridiculous -40 degrees Celsius. In short, I'm pretty immune to weirdness.

Saying that, I was pretty amused to find this site on the subject of weird hotels around the world. From hotels made of salt to the world's thinnest house to its highest swimming pool, this site is full of weird and wonderful buildings that'll make you realize that the world have taken a definite turn for the weird.

Another part of the site that really appeals to me is the 'crazy things to do' section. I'm always looking for a new adventure, so I love to see ideas like snowboarding on salt, swimming with polar bears and climbing the world's highest climbing wall.

It's this final idea that really appeals to me. The wall is in the Netherlands, and it stands at an immense 127 feet, with a 36 foot overhang. I've always loved to climb, and when my girlfriend and I pass through Holland on the way back to the UK next spring it'll take a hell of an argument to prevent me from giving the wall a try.

A Great Boulder Tennis Instructor

2011-12-20T23:09:00.000-05:00

Back before I destroyed my knee in a car accident in the middle of Kazakhstan (if you can call falling asleep and driving into a field an accident rather than 'dumbass, holy mother of Christ are you stupid?') I was a pretty acceptable tennis player. I wouldn't claim to have been particularly good (my serve needed work), but I had a reasonable amount of game.

A friend of mine recently moved out to Colorado with his family, a move that his young son hated. The old house in Austin, Texas was directly next door to a local tennis club - not a private, snobby and expensive club, but just a set of municipal courts that could be hired for a few dollars per hour. Adam used to play for hours with his dad, Oli and, when Oli's job pulled them to Colorado, leaving the courts was an even bigger wrench for Adam than leaving his friends (friends? Screw 'em. My backhand is sloppy).

Oli know that he needed to restore some normality to Adam's life when they arrived in Boulder. Making new friends in a new town will always be a terrifying experience, so Oli wanted to give Adam some sort of sanctuary; a continuation of his life in Austin, some place that felt safe and familiar while everything else around him was changing.

Almost immediately they struck gold. Just a couple of minutes from the new house is a Boulder tennis instructor. Not just any instructor, either, but the only Boulder tennis academy endorsed by the city. The instructors are USTA certified, the kids all love the place (Adam has already made a few new friends there) and the management have big ideas about holding USTA tournaments of their own.

I'll be heading to Boulder for a short stay in February and, assuming the knee holds up, I can't wait to play a few games with Adam and Oli.

Dennis Yu's BlitzLocal

2011-12-20T22:43:00.001-05:00

Back in the good old days, when the Internet was wild and lawless, it seemed fairly simple to get your content to the top of Google. Just get your keywords in, beg, borrow or steal as many backlinks as you could and, before you know it, you're riding high in the search results.

Well, Google got smart. First they began accounting for keyword stuffing, penalizing those who jammed their target words onto the page more than was necessary. Then they tweaked their algorithm over and over again, developing new rules each time an exploit was discovered. Overnight the face of the internet changed as the old rules went out the window. Black hat SEO suddenly wasn't such a cake walk anymore, and the playing field, as far as is possible on the Internet, was a little more level.

Even so, the world of SEO will never truly be a level playing field. As long as there are sneaky tricks to promote trash over true information the game will always be skewed in favor of the professional cheats. This is why I'm so fond of Facebook as a way to reach potential customers.

Facebook is a truly level playing field. Promotion relies on the human factor - creating content that appeals to real people and not just ineffable, opaque and confusing algorithms. When I recently set up my Facebook fan page to promote my winter clothing review site I used the teachings of Dennis Yu to understand what my readers (and potential readers) are really looking for. Dennis runs a company called BlitzLocal, a search engine marketing agency that, among other things, helps you optimize your Facebook business page to maximize reader engagement.

In the weeks since I started my page I've used the lessons I've gleaned from BlitzLocal to present my page in such a way that my readers, however small that base may be right now, are all actively engaging with my material. They don't just click 'like' and never return... they come back time and again.

Anyway, the sermon for today is this: if you want to succeed on Facebook, don't go it alone.

Bioethics Law is Glenn McGee Law

2011-12-19T07:48:00.000-05:00

Some interesting news came out of my neck of the woods in recent weeks. A team of Japanese and Russian scientists have uncovered a mammoth bone in eastern Russia (just up the road from me, actually) that seems to contain viable nuclei with undamaged genes. It's early days yet, but the hope is that sometime in the near future they will be able to clone a mammoth, thousands of years after they last roamed the planet.

This all sounds a little Jurassic Park-esque to me, but I'm assured the claims are based on solid science. The team hope to implant the genetic material into egg cells from an elephant - a tricky process, but it just might work.

This story raises more than a few ethical questions, though, the most obvious of which is this: is it our place to bring back a failed species? I understand that it was largely the fault of humans (or proto-humans, at least - I'm not big on anthropology) that the mammoth was wiped out in the first place, but you have to wonder how an extinct species would respond to 'reincarnation' in a greatly changed world. Is there a place for the mammoth in the modern world? Can they become a viable species once more, or will they be reduced to a side show oddity? Perhaps most importantly, is a genetic sample from a single specimen enough? It will surely be a dangerously shallow gene pool.

I always find my mind fizzing away whenever the subject of bioethics arises. Maybe it's my grounding in biology and law, but for whatever reason I'm energized by the subject. That's why I love following the Twitter feed of Glenn McGee, the Editor-in-Chief of The American Journal of Bioethics.

I think of bioethics law as Glenn McGee law, for the simple reason that, in his capacity as the president of the Bioethics Education Network, Prof. McGee advises everyone from incoming members of Congress to chief justices of the US Circuit Courts of Appeals. McGee's voice on the matter or bioethics is so strong that all legislation, large or small, is influenced by McGee's counsel.

Anyway... if you're at all interested in the exciting questions raised by people like Professor McGee you should check out his Twitter feed.

Wayne Elsey of Soles4Souls Changes the World

2011-12-19T05:17:00.002-05:00

A couple of years ago I took part in the Mongol Rally, a charity event that sees hundreds of people each year attempt to drive from the UK to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in aid of Mongolian good causes. This journey was the catalyst for my moving to Ulaanbaatar the following year to work with the charity arm of the Mongol Rally organisation, Adventures for Development.

Both during and after the rally I had the good fortune to get to know some truly incredible people, many of who have devoted their lives to lending a hand to the least among us. I keep in touch with each of them now through Facebook, Skype and email, envying them their lives as they visit exotic locales while I sit here in Mongolia at -30 degrees.

A couple of months ago I got a truly tempting offer. One old friend, Joe, an American from Richmond, Virginia, had put together a team with the idea to tackle the African continent in a couple of clapped out old cars that were due for the scrap heap. While the journey would be mainly for fun, Joe reasoned that he might as well raise a huge pile of money for charity in the process.

Joe's idea was to paint the cars as a pair of sneakers, with laces hanging down from the roof. for many years now Joe has admired the work of Wayne Elsey, founder of the innovative charity Soles4Souls, and he wanted to raise awareness (and funds) to help the charity. Soles4Souls collects old, unused shoes from the people of the western world and takes them where they're needed the most. The charity's business model is simple, transferring our surplus to the developing world and using it not just to put shoes on feet but to foster local enterprise, kickstart economies and offer hope to the hopeless.

I really wish I could join Joe on his epic journey from Egypt to South Africa, but unfortunately I'm needed here. There are lots of people right here in Ulaanbaatar wanting for a pair of shoes, and I couldn't bring myself to leave them now.

Developing a Roulette System

2011-12-19T03:29:00.000-05:00

Those of you who know me well will know that, back in my university days, I had a pretty serious gambling problem. I began gambling at the age of 16, placing a couple of bets each weekend on football matches (soccer, to my American readers). When I started university I was given a student loan, the first large chunk of money I'd ever had, and it turned out I wasn't nearly responsible enough to hold on to the money.

Within a couple of weeks of getting my student loan I'd signed up for a couple of online gambling accounts, placing bets on whatever sports were taking place throughout the day and night. I bet on football (both regular and American), golf, basketball, cricket, rugby... even curling, for God's sake. Whatever was being played around the world I'd convince myself I could predict the winner. I was rarely correct.

Things took a turn for the worse when I discovered online casinos. Now I didn't have to wait for a game to begin - I couldn't simply spin the roulette wheel 24 hours a day. Soon after I began I made £6,000 in a single day, betting £500 on the spin of a wheel dozens of times. I was convinced I had a roulette system that could predict the result of the spin.

I was wrong.

The following day, riding high from my big win, I lost over £8,000. Roulette, it seemed, just wasn't my game. I didn't have the discipline to walk away from the table after a big win. I refused to believe that I could lose, and that was my downfall.

Anyway... It's been almost ten years since I last placed a bet. Would I ever do it again? Hmmm, maybe, but right now I'm happy to earn my money with hard work. The rewards may be smaller, but it's definitely better for my blood pressure.

Friends or Keyword Research?

2011-12-16T09:33:00.000-05:00

So it's December, the biggest month for online sales in the year, and it's time to clean up with the Amazon Associates program. For the last few months I've been preparing Christmas gift related articles on my sites with Amazon links attached, and in the last couple of weeks they've begun to pay off. In the last four days I've had over 30 sales through my sites, and though my internet marketing days are just beginning I'm already beginning to become addicted.

One of the ways in which this new job has put a stake through the heart of my personal life jumped out at me last night. My girlfriend and I had been for a nice farewell meal with an American friend of ours who's being deported from Mongolia next Tuesday (top tip: don't let your visa lapse in this country). We'd been at the restaurant for a few hours having a great time, and Lou, the American, suggested we move of for more drinks and a bit of karaoke.

A few months ago this suggestion would have required no thought. Absolutely, I would have replied. Let's go right now! Last night, though, I ummed and ahhed for five minutes, trying in vain to think up a reasonable excuse as to why I couldn't go drinking with this friend who, it's more than likely, I'll never see again.

You see, what I really wanted to do was come home and play around with the Google keyword tool, attempting to find lucrative keywords for my new winterwear review site. I wanted to leave a warm bar filled with friends to head home to a cold office and play on the computer. How sad is that?

Well, not really that sad at all. The missus and I are kind of running out of money and, as I'm here right now on a tourist visa, I can't legally take a job. While it may seem a little pathetic to choose the Google keyword tool over a night with friends I'm actually doing the right thing, earning money so there can be many, many more nights with good food, good friends and good beer. I'm giving up one night now for the sake of endless nights in the future.

At least, that's what I told myself as I trudged home to the computer last night.

Keep on truckin', Taylor.

God, We Got Fat

2011-12-16T08:09:00.001-05:00

The missus and I have had, to say the least, a sedentary year. I've spoken a little about this before, but last October I was deported from Mongolia, the home of my girlfriend, and barred from returning for a year. Since then we've been scratching out a living around South East Asia before finally being allowed to return to Ulaanbaatar late last month.

Now, we spent four months living in a city called Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, and this year the wet season was particularly hot and humid. Rather than leave the apartment in such weather we ordered in most days: heavy, unhealthy western food in the main. We both put on weight, but we told ourselves that we'd exercise more when we reached a cooler climate.

Now we're in Mongolia, and the temperature is around -30 Celsius, faaaar too cold to leave the house for a run. Even a short walk leaves me in pain, and the heavily polluted air doesn't help one bit. Again, we're gaining weight. Why oh why can't we find a climate somewhere in the middle?

In any case, for the next couple of months we're going on a health kick. It starts with eating healthy: our kitchen is now free of snacks, and we haven't so much as smelled a pizza in three weeks. Additionally, we were reading some fat binder reviews and decided to give them a try. Fat binders prevent dietary fat from entering the bloodstream by binding it all together into a mass too large to be absorbed so, along with a healthy diet, they can apparently help you lose weight.

Anyway, we start the course tomorrow, and we'll let you know how it goes :)

Bad Week for Mongolians and Storage Units

2011-12-13T21:44:00.001-05:00

Jeeeeez, it's been all go here in Ulaanbaatar these past few days. First, a friend of mine is in the process of being deported after overstaying his visa for just 10 hours. This guy has been living here for 6 months, and he'll be leaving behind an apartment, a girlfriend and a highly paid job, and all because he forgot how many days were in November and thought he had an extra day to get to the border on a visa run.

The second problem is the pollution, which has to be seen to be believed. The half million people living in shacks and gers out in the ger districts around UB have to resort to burning anything flammable at this time of year to battle the -30 Celsius cold, and when you throw in the crap spewing from the city's 3 coal-fired power stations... well, the air gets a little thick. It's been suggested that breathing UB air in the winter is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. What's worse, my Arizona-based friend Gregg had his flight home cancelled Saturday because the pollution was so thick around the airport that the incoming flight from Beijing was cancelled.

Not too big a problem, I thought, as the airlines will just reschedule him and put him on the next flight out, and in the meantime he can crash on our couch. The problem is that this delay means that he's missing two conventions in the US, the registration of his new non-profit (the date has been set in stone since the summer, and he needed to be there to sign the papers) and the lapsing of his Tuscon self storage contract.

So, because the corrupt as hell government here refuses to provide shelter and heat for the countryside refugees we have half a million folk with chattering teeth, big late fees on the storage unit for Gregg and the possibility that his non-profit status will be revoked, which would really hurt Mongolia.

So, yeah... bad week.

Converting Dexter

2011-12-13T02:27:00.000-05:00

Don't you just hate it when you spent weeks downloading a video only to find that it's in the wrong format for your video player? Pain. In. The. Ass.

As I've mentioned more than once we're living in Mongolia right now, and our apartment is connected to the internet (barely) by a frayed cable that has been chewed to hell by a mongrel dog. I'm not sure whether the connection was any better before the dog had her way with the cable, but it sure does suck right now.

So, my girlfriend has been getting into Dexter, the show about a serial killer police officer, and she asked me to download the first season so we can watch it together in English - our TV only shows it with bad Russian dubbing. The process has taken 3 weeks, partly due to the crappy connection and partly due to the small number of seeders.

When the file finally finished downloading I tried to open an episode on my video player of choice only to find that it was in the MKV format, a file type that my player doesn't recognise.

So, to play the file we had to transfer is from MKV to AVI. I've tried doing that once before, long ago, but couldn't find a decent program to do it. After a looooot of searching I tracked down an MKV to AVI Mac compatible piece of software, and just five minutes later we were sitting down to watch a guy hack people to death in Florida.

Happy days.

Lease Purchase Agreements Kick Ass

2011-12-11T23:22:00.001-05:00

So, we're planning the big move back to Thailand at the start of January. I wish we could have stayed in Mongolia longer (my girlfriend's family are all here), but at -3o Celsius it's a little difficult to warm to the country, if you'll excuse the pun.

So, we're gonna be in Bangkok for an initial stay of just three months, but the ultimate plan is to buy a home in Bangkok to ride out the Mongolian winter, then come back here for the beautiful Ulaanbaatar summer.

Obviously this is all a little expensive, and right now neither of us are earning much money, so we hatched a plan to get a lease purchase agreement in the city. Essentially, this means we'd lease a house with a view to buying it in the future, and our rental payments would be laid against the final price.

We used to do this a lot back as a kid in the UK. Thousands of government owned properties were made available for purchase by the current tenants, and a heck of a lot of people got great deals. We used to call it 'let to buy', but it's exactly the same as a lease purchase agreement.

Anyhoo, I'm a little clueless when it comes to lease purchase agreements so I've been consulting the web for a little info. The best resource I've found so far is http://www.squidoo.com/lease-purchase-agreement-made-easy, which offers all sorts of handy advice of leasing to buy. The site is US-oriented, but it still offers a lot of tips that apply to us here in the east.

Wish us luck!

Searching for the Best iPhone 4 Apps

2011-12-11T22:11:00.001-05:00

Success!

A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend 'borrowed' an iPad from one of her sisters - she has six of them, and they all earn so much money that they buy gadgets they don't need and rarely use, so the missus often gets hand-me-downs of brand new, cutting edge gadgets (it works out pretty well for her).

Anyway, I've spent the last few days desperately trying to undo a mistake I made. I hadn't updated the firmware on my iPhone four for about six months, so I plugged in the iPhone and iPad with the intention of upgrading to iOS 5.0.1, re-jailbreaking them both and sticking a hell of a lot of apps on them before we head off for our three-month long 'escape the winter' trip to Thailand in a few weeks.

Unfortunately, it seemed the jailbreak software wasn't quite ready, so I spent a few days with both the iPhone and iPad empty of apps - and I somehow managed to wipe the photos and contact list on the iPhone, too :(

Anyway, while I've still yet to jailbreak the iPad I managed to get the iPhone sorted out, so I've been on the hunt for the best iPhone 4 apps today. We have a couple of 24 hour train rides ahead of us, so I need a wealth of games and apps to keep myself entertained.

Of course Ogi needs a few apps too, and not necessarily only those that are designed for the iPhone, so I'll be searching for a bunch of free iTouch apps that'll work on her device. Happy hunting, me!

Damned Heartburn Again

2011-12-11T21:49:00.001-05:00

I've been getting some serious heartburn recently, and I only have myself to blame. We've been living in an alcohol-centric culture for months now, and it's all too easy to settle into a routine of drinking heavily every night - especially when the temperature is -30 Celsius outside, as it is now.

Add to that the stress of working in a foreign country, dealing with visas, rent, plumbing, internet and all the other little complications of life without a decent understanding of the language, and this all adds up to a very stressed, often drunk or hungover, heartburn filled old man.

When I was living in the US I used to use Prilosec to control my heartburn (and I'd usually be able to use a Prilosec coupon to keep the costs down), but out here in Mongolia you can only get hold of generic Russian knockoffs of western drugs. It's pretty frustrating.

Fortunately the Russian knockoffs are pretty cheap (most of the stuff seems to be stolen and smuggled over the northern border at Ulan Ude, from what I hear. Still, the price is still much higher than back in the US where I could get a Prilosec rebate when I bought from Amazon.

There are only a few things I miss about living in the US (God, the breakfasts!), but being able to get hold of decent medication without paying through the nose is one of 'em.

Christmas Shopping Frenzy

2011-12-11T10:14:00.001-05:00

As my friends will know I recently moved back to Mongolia to live with my partner, and it's gonna be May before I get to visit the UK for my big brother's wedding. As Christmas is just a couple of weeks away this presents quite a problem for me. The Mongolian postal service is about as useful as a chocolate kettle - of the last three things I sent from here, only one reached its destination - so the idea of sending Christmas gifts home to the family is just silly.

Instead, this year I'm buying all of my gifts online and trusting in my hometown mailman to deliver the safely. It makes sense, then, to try to buy everything in one place to save on postage (hey, I never said I wasn't a cheap skate). After finding my first gift, a personalised Christmas teddy bear for my little nephew Matthew, I think I've found the right place. Look at the little guy, he's so damned cute!

So yeah, I guess I've got just a few more days to pick out the rest of the Christmas gifts in order to ensure they'll all arrive before Christmas morning. I really wish I could be there in person, but I guess his Christmas I'll have to mail it in. Next Christmas, though, me and the missus will be there in person if it kills me!

Unlocking an iPhone in Minutes

2011-12-11T09:51:00.001-05:00

As you may know I recently moved back to Mongolia with my girlfriend (I don't really know why, as the temperature in Ulaanbaatar is currently -32 Celsius - brrrrrrrr!

Anyway... for the last few months my iPhone 4 has been packed away at the bottom of my bag while I used an old Nokia during our time living in Thailand. I knew I could unlock the iPhone, but I wasn't confident enough to hand the phone over to a local shady service center, and I didn't think I had the skills to unlock the iPhone on my own.

So we got back to UB last weekend, and the first thing the missus said to me was 'right, you're unlocking your iPhone right now' - she knew that if I didn't I'd just borrow her phone all the time and run up a huge bill. I went along to MobiCom, the usual place Mongolians go for iPhone unlock services, but it seems the place has closed down in the time we've been away :(

Finally I jumped online to see if I could find some assistance from the good people of the web. Almost immediately I stumbled on this iPhone jailbreak and unlock website - these guys offer software to unlock an iPhone for free, asking only for a small donation in return.

Within minutes I had access to the software, and a few minutes after that I was done! Piece of cake. Don't know what I was worried about!

Christmas Wallpaper - It's That Time of Year Again

2011-12-11T09:35:00.001-05:00

Well, it's that time of year again. As soon as the Thanksgiving turkey went cold we began to gear up for Christmas, and right now in mid-December it's just unavoidable. The stores are playing Christmas songs from dawn 'til dusk; Christmas trees are appearing in windows, and parents are going slowly insane trying to grab the perfect gifts for their kids.

One little tradition my son Adam and I have kept over the years is that, at the beginning of December, we switch to Christmas wallpaper on all of our computers. My laptop currently has Rudolph's glowing nose poking out from behind the icons, and Adam's MacBook has Santa flying across the screen on his sleigh.

I stumbled on a site the other day that had a great idea, and I think a new tradition may be starting. The site where I download my Christmas wallpaper also had a couple of personalized Christmas stories that can be downloaded and amended with your kid's name. I grabbed a story about little Adam going on a Christmas based adventure and the little guy couldn't have loved it more. Earlier today I grabbed the second story, a tale about making new friends at Christmas, and I predict tonight's story time will be just as popular as the last.

Merry Christmas, boys and girls!

Service Announcement

2006-07-09T16:35:00.000-04:00

Since I am, at heart, a dirty corporate whore I'll direct your attention to the new ad box at the top of this here page that allows you to compare the rates of several hundred loans to get the best deal. After all, if you're gonna go into debt you might as well get a low APR. Am I right or am I right?

Hey, and just to distract you from all the dirty capitalist shilling, here's a joke I made up while making lunch:

Q: How does a cheesemaker carry his stock to market?

A: Caerphilly!

Ahem... Hey, is this thing on?

Phishing Scams

2006-07-09T00:09:00.000-04:00

Over the next weeks and months I'll be posting examples of the most prevelant 'phishing' scams circulating the Internet. I seem to get about 10-20 a day, so I might as well share them. Some are even good for a laugh!

Also, should the mood take me, I'll just chat a little :) I've been gone too long so I might as well.

Boobies for Bucks and More

2006-06-26T14:20:00.000-04:00

Dean reports that Rhianna at A Texan Abroad is offering pictures of cleavage for cash.

I did that once.

Didn't get many takers.

Also, I just noticed this over at Wizbang, about a report that suggests that moving to the US is bad for your health.

(The study) found that living in the United States for more than 15 years was associated with a 1.39 increase in body mass index, a scientific measure for weight.

I'm sure I'm missing an important point here but as I understand it, living anywhere for 15 years is associated with an increase in body mass. If you logged the weight of the 25-year old population of any developed and then repeated the process 15 years later I would be shocked if the total was lower.

Take a look at this example. A 25-year old Ukranian man measuring 5' 10" and weighing 170lbs moved to the US. He finds himself an apartment, works hard and provides for his young wife and new child. 15 years later he is a pillar of the community. He has all those things that 25-year old Ukranians dream of when they first arrive. He has the big house; he has 3 children - 2 boys and a girl; he plays poker with his buddies every Wednesday night and smokes contraband Cuban cigars with a tumbler of scotch. He has it good. Those 15 years weren't easy, though, and he's showing his age. He's still in pretty good shape. Hell, he's only 10 pounds heavier than he was the day the boat docked in New York. Not bad, after 15 years.

Sounds realistic? Well, that's an increase of 1.39 on the body mass index. 10 pounds for a 5' 10" man.

10 pounds is nothing. Hell, I lost more than that in the last 3 months, and I barely notice the difference. I'm 23 now and I weigh about 160lbs. If I can reach my 38th birthday carrying only 10 pounds extra I'll be a happy man.

Now, you'll have to excuse me. I have a Big Mac to attend to.

Sweet

2006-06-25T16:04:00.000-04:00

I've just posted this comment on every blog I could find.

Imagine if cats could drive. You'd be all like 'Dude, there's a cat driving that Jeep', and I'd be all like, 'Sweet'.

P.S. My teeth hurt.

No reason. I'm just bored.

I need Diet Coke. Where are my car keys?

Update - I checked what sort of post I was commenting on first. God, this would have been inappropriate:-

Blogger: 'My house just got robbed and I've been diagnosed with a deadly brain disease. This was the worst day...'

Me: 'Imagine if cats...'

'Nother Update - I'm feeling a little remorseful now. Some people might not like cats. They might find the idea of cats driving cars troubling, perhaps even terrifying.

OK, if anyone comes round to complain, tell them I'm out shopping. If they start to kick up a fuss tell them I'm going through the menopause.

23 year old guys can catch menopause, right?

Final Update - In an attempt to avoid losing the respect of several bloggers whom I admire (i.e. Michele at A Small Victory), there is a real academic point to posting a random comment on your site, I promise. All will become clear. In the meantime, please feel free to delete my comment, curse my name and send me hate mail. Thank you.

Huh?

2006-06-25T10:03:00.000-04:00

I'm baffled. I signed up to Google Ads a couple of days back, and their reporting module is giving me some odd data. Now, it's against Google's TOS to disclose more or less any information about Google Ads, but I'm sure it's OK to talk about my hits.

I use 3 stats trackers to check my traffic - Site Meter, Statcounter and Reinvigorate. Traffic has been sluggish the last few days - Site Meter says I got about 125 page views yesterday, Statcounter says 122, and Reinvigorate says 118. The Google Ads reporting module, however, gives me 351.

Stats trackers have never been perfect. I don't think I've ever had a day in which any two of them give identical results, but a difference of over 200? That's just silly. Still, I'm inclined to believe Google, if only because I like bigger numbers, damnit.

Anyway, on the subject of the Google Ads, I've been getting nothing but ads for George Bush dolls and George Bush impersonators. Very odd. Maybe it has something to do with my keywords for the site. NB - this isn't a request for you to click on the ads, look at them, or even think about George Bush. Google seem to have a stick up their butt about generating clicks.

Update - Dean Esmay cleared it up in the comments. I always assumed my counters logged all of my hits, but it appears they only log hits on the front page. I'm not sure how to make them log hits on the archives as the codes for all the counters are inserted directly into the Blogger template. If anyone has any suggestions please email me or leave a comment. Cheers.

Jack of All Trades... Master of Two or Three

2006-06-15T18:52:00.000-04:00

From the comments:

Congratulations! Novels have been written about (and published) on less interesting temporary jobs than working in an ice cream factory. I hope it goes well.

That got me thinking. I seem to have a gift for finding strange work, so I thought I'd do a top 5 list.

5. I once worked for a company that manufactured components for military jets. At first glance that may sound like an exciting company to work for, but no. We had to coat tiny components with heat-resistant paint before they could be installed into the wings, and my job was to stop up all the screw holes with wadded paper to stop the paint leaking in.

We started the day at 8am with a huge pile of little fiddly gadget things on one side of the table and a ream of A4 paper on the other. By the end of the day at 5pm we had a big pile of little fiddly gadget things full of folded strips of paper, and a fuckload of papercuts. They wouldn't let us sit down because, they claimed, it would encourage us to chat (an impossible feat, considering that the factory was so loud that we had to wear earplugs to block out the whirring of the machinery).

A horrible job, but one that had occasional zen moments when the brain slowed to a low purr and the hours flew by.

5/10

4. The job I recently got fired from. I was working on a contract for the Wall Street Journal Europe. Not, as I would prefer, actually writing copy but selling subscriptions over the phone. At one point we were selling to the Belgians, for some reason. You can imagine management making that decision:-

Bill: We don't seem to be getting the response we hoped for in the UK market, Bob.

Bob: No, Bill. Maybe we should try a new tack.

Bill: You could be right. Why don't we get our guys to call the Belgians?

Bob: The Belgians? Huh. You think that'll work?

Bill: How the fuck should I know, Bill? I'm in marketing. What with all the effort of perfecting this fashionably messy hairstyle I don't have much energy to think about anything else.

Bob: I hear ya. You've really got that mane tamed. Kiss me, Bill.

Bill: I thought I made myself clear at the conference, Bob.

Bob: Sorry. So, it's agreed. We're calling Belgium.

Bill: Get your hand off my ass, Bob.

Sorry, I went off on a little tangent there, didn't I? Anyway, stupid job.

4/10

3. This was a strange one. Shops and bars hire people called mystery shoppers to rate the customer service of the staff. I had a good gig while I was a student doing this. My job was to visit a chain of vodka bars, buy a drink and check out stuff like the bathrooms to make sure they kept them clean. I got my expenses paid, so I used to take a friend for a night out for free. After a while I got used to the kind of report they expected me to write, so I didn't bother visiting the bars anymore, but just wrote a report and claimed my wage. OK, so they caught me and fired my sorry ass, but it was fun while it lasted.

8/10

2. My first real job was stacking shelves at ToysRus. Good times. We used to play football in the store rooms, fool around with the box crusher and have lightsaber duels. Me and a guy - I forget his name, but we called him Joker - used to roll a dice to decide what sort of accent we'd put on in front of the customers. Just light accents, nothing too obvious. We did Canadian, Irish, Jamaican and (my favourite) Mafia style. I got fired after we rolled a six and ended up swearing at each other in Sicilian accents over the Barbie aisle.

7/10

And in first place...

1. I ran out of money in my second year at university and volunteered to be a guinea pig for medical studies. OK, so it isn't technically a job, but I'm counting it anyway. They were testing a new anti-depressant and its effect on, er, sexual function. To boil it down the job consisted of whacking off to lesbian porn, taking a course of drugs, and then whacking off again to see if it took longer. It was the single strangest sexual experience of my life. I was led into a small room by two attractive nurses, sat on the bed and was handed a cup. When they left I had to attach a sensor to myself and press a button when I, er, began and again when I was done.

One of the conditions of the study was that I couldn't drink, but I figured one drink couldn't hurt. I went to a friend's house for a couple of sips of lite beer and I'll be damned if 7 or 8 pints didn't just fall into my mouth. I was roused by the phone at 7 the next morning by the doctor running the study, reminding me that today was the day I started the course of drugs. I ran out the door and got a cab into the city.

By the time I arrived I had a throbbing headache and a pounding heart. They tested my pulse and blood pressure, and the doc asked, 'You didn't by any chance have a drink last night, did you?'. I looked up, bloodshot eyes and funky hair, and replied something along the lines of, 'Why, no Doctor. I watched the evening news and retired to bed at sundown with a mug of warm milk and my Bible.' Somehow he saw through my lie - God knows how - and fired me.

Still, I got to watch some excellent porn.

10/10

More of the Fuel Shortages

2006-06-13T19:23:00.000-04:00

Following on from this morning's post about the fuel shortage, I have a quote from an attendant at a Texaco station from this afternoon:

'We're expecting to shut down most of our pumps around 8pm tonight to everyone but people with special needs (i.e. emergency services). We've been told not to expect that the next delivery will be on schedule.'

I passed the forecourt on the way home this evening and found it cordoned off. Also, most of the stations I passed during the day around Manchester had queues stretching back around 10 cars. It seems that the major fuel suppliers in the country are attempting to keep panic at bay, especially since many of the CEO's of these companies claim that there is no shortage and business is 'quiet'.

As Glenn Reynolds may say: Heh.

Tech Stuff

2006-06-10T16:01:00.000-04:00

Oh! Oh! OH! Guess what I just bought. No? OK, fuck you then. I'll just tell you.

My car CD player was stolen around January and I've been using a crappy portable CD player rigged up through a cassette adaptor into the standard Ford tape player since. Its crap, plain and simple. The sound is shit and its a ballache to unplug everything when I get out of the car.

So. I saved my pennies and have bought a kickass CD/MP3 player. Plus! It has a USB port and a slot for a memory stick. The upshot is that I can copy music from my PC onto a USB flash drive to avoid the hassle of burning CDs, or play the music I keep on my mobile phone through the car speakers using my Sony memory stick.

I'm dangerously excited. I may actually come when the postman arrives. That would be hilarious.

Oh, and I also bought a nice chrome Zippo cigarette lighter. I'm always losing those things, along with every pen I've ever owned and at least half my socks. There's probably a highly flammable, very smelly lost and found room somewhere with all the stuff I've ever lost in it.

It'd have wonderful penmanship, though. You know, wonderful for a room. Its not like the bar would be set too high to begin with.

Some geek cool stuff

2006-05-31T12:24:00.000-04:00

Hello, Jack of Random Fate here again. I've just returned to France after my trip to the US to visit family and friends over Christmas. I didn't have much time to post anything on that trip, so I wasn't able to help Daniel blog-sit for Keith. I'll try to make up for that now.

In the Geek Cool arena, I posted today on how there are devices coming out that function similar to the badge-communicators on Star Trek: The Next Generation. First, the clamshell phones imitate the communicators from the original series, now badge-communicators from the second series, I wonder what will come from the other Star Trek series.

More Geek Cool that hasn't been posted by me elsewhere (yet) is news on regulatory progress on the use of power lines as broadband data carriers. This has more implications than the obvious "internet anywhere there is a power plug," a prospect that has a large impact in and of itself. With the increasing use of voice over internet protocol, a nominal investment in equipment would make possible telephone calls from anywhere there is a power plug, bypassing the Baby Bells entirely. Given the large investment that the Baby Bells have in their networks coupled with the costs they bear satisfying FCC regulations, expect the Baby Bells to find ways to fight this technology tooth and nail. While cell phones have made it easy to make a telephone call from many more places than was possible a short decade ago, there are still dead-spots and areas too remote to be covered by transmission towers that do have electrical power which could enable voice over IP calls if powerline broadband is implemented.

Finally, in the "meanwhile on Mars" category, the rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to soldier on in one of the most successful space missions of all time. Isn't it great to live in a country that not only can afford to explore like this, but is also willing to invest the money in the exploration?

Instead of a Real Post...

2006-05-30T00:23:00.000-04:00

Never let the fuel gauge go into the red

Never post what you think of the boss on your blog

Never post what you think of your friends on your blog

Never ever post what you think of a woman on your blog

You will never look manly with a moustache

At a urinal, the number of shakes is a judgement call. 20 shakes, however, is playing with yourself

'I've only had 3 beers' should be followed by the call 'Taxi!'

You will find your first grey hair many years before you expect

Nothing will make you feel masculine like chopping wood

Its OK to like chick flicks. Just... not too often

You should know how to change a tyre

You should know the capital of Australia

You should have a pet

A snake isn't a pet

You should be able to light a fire without matches

Going out in winter without a coat doesn't make you a man. It makes you an idiot

You should be eccentric. You shouldn't be weird

It's a fine line

There are very few causes worth dying for. You have one life. You can pick up another 5 causes on any street corner

'It feels better' isn't an excuse not to wear a condom

When asked what date you're going on holiday you'll always look at your watch before answering

On Crazies and Serial Killers

2006-05-27T14:36:00.000-04:00

I was reading electric meters the other day about 20 miles from my home in a pretty rough area. Thats my job, by the way. I don't have a really dull hobby. Anyway, I knocked on the door of a maisonette, I believe we call them. A large house that's split into 4 flats - 2 upstairs and 2 down. I waited for a minute at the door with no answer, so I started to walk away. As I reached the street I heard the door open on a big guy, maybe early 40s, unshaven and wearing a tight white womans vest that dipped to the chest and was covered in frills. As I went closer I noticed he was also wearing heavy makeup - mascara, lipstick and a little blush.

In itself, that isn't too odd. I see all sorts of people in my job and it isn't my place to judge people for what they choose to do in their own homes, even if its a little weird. The problem is this: as I was reading his meter I was sure I heard what sounded like a woman shouting for help through a gag come from a back room. I froze for a minute, not sure what to do. After all, I'm 5'9" and about 170 pounds of fluff. I haven't thrown a punch since I was 15 (I kicked ass, though). This guy looked like he could have taken me down with both hands tied behind his back, despite the outfit. So, self-preservation being the first instinct I got the hell out of there.

As I left I heard the sound of woodpigeons in the trees. They make a noise a little like owls, a kind of deep coo. They also sound very much like a woman shouting for help through a gag, if you can imagine it.

So. I got in the car and drove to the next job a few streets away, where I sat and had a quick smoke. I ran it over in my head and couldn't shake the idea that this guy was up to very bad things in there. The vest he'd been wearing had been much too small for him, and I'm thinking that if you feel more comfortable in ladies clothing while you mill around your house you'd probably buy something that fit. On the other hand, if you'd abducted a woman and tied her up in your bedroom you might dress up in her clothes even if they didn't fit. Beggars can't be choosers, after all. I decided I had to go back and take another look. I couldn't face the idea that I might open the local paper in a few weeks and read about some crazy guy butchering a girl in his house.

I was so freaked out that I called a friend and told him the story. I also gave him the address and told him that if he didn't hear from me by 5 he might want to send some police along. I'd hate to end up in several pieces stuffed into a range of jiffy bags. Boy, would my face be red.

I got back to the house and knocked again. Again, it took the guy an age to get to the door and I was sweating my ass off. I explained that my computer had crashed and I'd lost his reading so I'd have to do it again. He gave me this hard look and stepped aside. I stalled as long as possible, but couldn't hear anything. At the end of the day I had no right to barge deeper into the house and search the rooms, so I had to leave.

Huh. That was a bit of an anti-climax, wasn't it? You were waiting for the part where I saved the damsel in distress and kicked the freak's ass. Sorry, I'm not that guy. If you need someone to sit in the corner and tell jokes, I'm your guy. Stallone will be along any minute with the guns and stuff.

Here's my point, though. I'm terrified of these people. Maybe not this guy in particular, cause he may have been up to nothing more nefarious than practicing his one-man production of Romeo and Juliet, starring himself as Juliet and his right hand as Romeo. I'm terrified of unstable people. I see them every day - ranging from the innocent elderly who've just forgotten a few basic points about personal hygeine and acceptable numbers of cats per house, all the way to deviants with naked children showing on their screensavers as I walk through their house. The reason they worry me is that we have so little idea of what goes on in the human brain; what little trigger can turn an innocent old cat-lover into the kind of guy who lures kids into his house and does bad things to them behind pulled blinds.

My job puts me in constant contact with troubled people. It also makes me realise just how many of them there are in this country. Virtually every street I visit has at least one house inhabited by a crazy guy with no carpets and rotting tuna all over the place. Each one of them could be the next horror story peddled out to our kids about the dangers of taking sweets from strangers. Hell, it could just as well be one of the guys with the clean houses and fancy flat screen TVs. Its just easier to believe that our future serial killers spend their free time making effigies out of nasal hair and faeces than watching Frasier on Paramount.

In fact, I withdraw all of this. While I'm going on about crazy people in dirty homes I'm forgetting a neat and tidy little house I visited just a couple of months ago about a mile from my home. It was on a nice tree-lined street with luxury cars in the driveways, and a respectable doctor used to live there with his wife and kids. He was called Harold Shipman, and he killed probably 200 people from these parts. Screw the crazies in the hovels. I should be keeping my bead on the old guys with the BMWs.

Panic Buying in the UK

2005-09-13T04:43:00.000-04:00

Weeks after the event, the effects of Hurricane Katrina finally reach the shores of my little island. An increase in fuel prices, primarily due to the crippling effect on US refineries caused by Katrina, has caused talk of blockades of refineries here in the UK to force the government to reduce fuel duty.

For the second time in five years, drivers are queueing for hours in order to fill up their tanks - and this time, we're paying a ridiculous 98 pence a litre. The most amusing aspect of this mess is the strenuous denials from industry heads that there is any panic buying going on. Speaking as someone who waited for over 30 minutes to get into the forecourt yesterday - and was then told that I was the 'lucky last one' to get to use the pump before it was turned off, I call bullshit.

Protesters from the Fuel Lobby have given the government a deadline of tomorrow to meet and discuss their grievances - the most pressing of which must be the 20% increase in the price of fuel at the pump we've seen in recent months.

If the government refuse to reduce fuel duty - which makes up around 48% of the prices of fuel - protesters will cripple the supply routes around the country, including a general blockade of refineries, protests in Dover and that perennial favourite of protesters everywhere, a go slow on the M4.

I for one am all for it. I've got a full tank and a big grudge. It seems I spend most of my wage just keeping my car on the road, and I'm sick of it.

Heh. This post seems oddly prescient today.

Service Announcement

2005-09-12T10:25:00.000-04:00

Big changes are afoot at House Sortapundit. After two years of slogging away at Blogger I've decided to move to cushier digs. Provisionally I'll be packing up and heading to a Typepad site, but if anyone has any suggestions for a better host with the same low, low prices I'd appreciate the suggestions.

Lest We Forget - Angels in Disguise II

2005-09-11T11:26:00.000-04:00

Bravest and Finest

Once again, original artwork shamelessly stolen from Cox and Forkum and then poorly modified. Original here.

Jeff Goldstein vs Ace: Face Off

2005-09-11T08:38:00.000-04:00

Ace, Karol and Jeff had some very entertaining most overrated film of all time threads this weekend. While Karol managed to keep her comments on-topic, Jeff's quickly turned into a most underrated film thread, while Ace started his own underrated thread to accompany the other one.

Now, if you're a regular reader of Jeff and Ace, both seem to be disturbingly proud of their taste in obscure, some would say plain bad, movies. I'm sure Jeff, for instance, just makes up half the titles he recommends (prove me wrong, Jeff, ya crazy sum'bitch).

What I want to do, though, is judge these two bloggers on their readers. They were sked to name their most underrated movies of all time, so let's put them to the test.

Here's what I did. I took the first 25 recommendations from each site and ran them through metacritic.com, a site that collates reviews from almost 50 daily newspapers, dedicated industry magazines and so on (ranging from Rolling Stone to my old employer the Wall Street Journal) and infers an average percentage for each film. But don't listen to my drivel. Here's an excerpt from their about us page:

Since its inception, Metacritic has provided a cross-section of reviews from a carefully-screened group of the most respected critics for the latest (as well as earlier) releases in film, video, music, books and games in a clean, user-friendly manner. And only Metacritic uses Metascores to combine all of the individual critic scores into an overall grade for each item, so users can gauge the critical consensus at a glance. In fact, our scoring system is so unique (unique, complicated--what's the difference?) that it merits its own explanation page.

Of course, some movies haven't made it to Metacritic yet. What to do, what to do? Of course! We went to the Internet Movie Database to see what the viewing public thought of these movies. IMDB reader reviews work on a 0-10 star rating system, possibly the finest rating system known to man (percentages give too much wiggle room, as you well know). In keeping with the, ahem, scientific method I converted these rating to a percentage score.

Anyway, the "winner" will be the blogger whose readers have picked those movies that receive the lowest average score. Of course this is probably the least scientific test in the history of man, but there is no accounting for taste. All we can do is discuss the most poorly rated movies. As always, I leave it up to the reader to judge the quality of the movies in question.

Of course, regardless whether you take anything from this post, it's helped me out. It reminded me just what a fucking great movie Office Space was, and I just found in for a fiver on Amazon. Kickass.

Ratings beside an asterisk (*) were obtained from IMDB user ratings. The unadorned, less fancy ratings were obtained from Metacritic.

Protein Wisdom

Cutters Way *68%
Bad News Bears 65%
Henry Fool *73%
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore *73%
Once Upon a Time in America *82%
Tightrope *62%
Nighthawks *61%
Very Bad Things 31%
Blade 45%
Dazed and Confused 78%
About a Boy 75%
Office Space 68%
Groundhog Day 72%
American Psycho 64%
Guarding Tess *60%
Grosse Point Blank 76%
Election 82%
Amongst Friends *52%
Happiness 81%
Miller's Crossing *80%
Corrina, Corrina *61%
Copland 67%
Smile 47%
The Changeling *73%
Smash Palace *72%

Average --- 66.72%

Ace

The Thing *79%
Of Mice and Men *75%
The Iron Giant 85%
Better Off Dead *72%
Diggstown *67%
GI Jane *55%
Silver Bullet *56%
Rear Window *87%
Arsenic and Old Lace *81%
Downfall 82%
Proof 70%
Shattered *65%
Frequency 67%
Boondock Saints 44%
Ruster's Rhapsody *58%
Weird Science *62%
Dead Again 66%
Kung Fu Hustle 78%
Bubble Boy 41%
Shaolin Soccer 68%
Kung Pow 14%
Unbreakable 62%
Long Kiss Goodnight *65%
Here Come the Nelsons *68%
Robinson Crusoe on Mars *67%

Average --- 65.36%

Ouch. That was ridiculously close. Ace, in fact, saved himself by proposing Kung Pow, a movie that only garnered an average 14% from the professional movie critics. It's almost as if he knew.

And so, by it has been statistically proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the readers of Ace of Spades are more obscure than those of Protein Wisdom. They are more appreciative of critically panned movies, more steadfast in their convictions and unwilling to waver in the face of overwhelming public opinion.

Or, y'know, they just really like shit films. That, however, is a question for another day.

Four Years On

2005-09-11T00:13:00.000-04:00

It's hard to believe that already four years have passed since 'that day'. So much has changed, not only in the wider world but also in our own lives. On 9/11/01 I was working part time in our local hospital to put myself through university. I didn't know what happened until after I got off work (I live in the UK, so this all happened mid-afternoon) and walked into town to get a paycheck advance from a local pawnbroker (OK, so I wasn't quite managing to pay for uni). The pawnbroker had a bank of TV's running along one wall, and I walked by them oblivious. I stood in line for several minutes before noticing that most of the customers in the shop were standing, slack-jawed, staring at the TV's.

After seeing the images I jumped straight on the bus and dashed home. By the time I arrived the first tower had fallen. That was basically it for the rest of the day. Myself and my family sat in front of the TV for hours, staring in disbelief at the scenes, seemingly lifted from some horrible movie. There are no words to describe the way we all felt, but none are needed. None of use needs much reminding to take us right back to that day and recall the fear and anger that brewed and boiled inside us. Today, on the fourth anniversary of that most awful of days, I have no doubt that those feelings will quickly rise again.

This year, however, I have cause for celebration. For hope. This January gone my best friend James became a father for the first time. Baby Thomas is now eight months old, and he's part of the first generation to be raised who did not have to live through that day. I hope that his generation will not be stained with the legacy of the atrocities, that he will grow up in a world in which 9/11 is a story told by his parents, something that belongs to the past - and not a shadow over his future. I hope that he will not be asked to go off to fight the enemies we made on that day. I hope they will be defeated before he has cause to worry about such things. The threat of terror is not a legacy I would like to leave for this innocent boy, and I hope with every fibre of my being that we will not have to.

Lest We Forget - Angels in Disguise

2005-09-10T23:53:00.001-04:00

Finest and Bravest

Image shamelessly stolen from Cox and Forkum, then amateurishly modified by me. See the original, and clearly superior, image here.

When is a Crescent Just A Crescent?

2005-09-10T18:52:00.000-04:00

Outrage was expressed today (OK, not everywhere) at the chosen design of the Auschwitz Memorial Maze, entitled Glorious Swastika, to be built in time to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Nazi labor camp some 60 miles south of Krakow, Poland.

In an open contest hosted by the Herbert Itler Society, the winning design was proposed by Harold Immler.

"This is not about religion per se," remarks Immler, "It's a spiritual space, and a sacred place, but it's open to anyone. The word swastika, in fact, means 'happy smily place' in (mumble, mumble), and the symbol is Eurasian in origin and is actually a sign of good fortune."

Almost immediately on seeing the design, bloggers began to remark that perhaps the use of a swastika to commemorate the death of between 1 and 1.5 million Jews may be seen by some as offensive.

"Nonsense", remarked Immler. As an architect I can assure you that the design is not intended to be symbolic of anything. Rather, it is simply an arrangement of eight straight lines arranged in a cross formation, each arm of the cross with another arm running at right-angles. Surely no one could object to such an innocent design. I only chose it because there is beauty in it's simplicity. And the straight lines make it easy to mow around."

How Far Are We Gonna Take The Blame Game?

2005-09-10T18:07:00.000-04:00

(AP - Reuters) Almost 4 years to the day after terrorists hijacked commercial aircraft and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it has emerged that the atrocities could have easily been prevented.

40 years ago, Congress approved legislation to outlaw the possession of box cutters and other edged devices by Muslims.

The legislation, signed into law by President Johnson, was derailed in 1977 by a lawsuit led by the LABCP (League Against Box Cutter Prohibition).

"If we had kept the prohibition," says leading boxcutter legislator Bobby LaRagu, "those planes would have never been successfully hijacked. The hijackers would have been all, like, 'Everybody stay in your seats! This aircraft has been commandeered in the name of Allah!' and everyone else would have been all 'Well, where's your boxcutter, then?' and they'd be, like 'Damn you American pigdogs and your restrictive legislation!' and that'd be the end of it. OK, so maybe the in-flight movie would have been interrupted during the ruckus, but you can always pick up the plot later on. Or, y'know, rent it at Blockbuster."

LaRagu's view is endorsed by a former key senator, along with academic experts, who say a boxcutter ban is the only way to control the ornery terrorists. The senator, who requested to remain anonymous, remarked "I tell ya, these damned boxcutter nuts have got a lot to answer for."

OK, so I suck at satire. Shut up. Still, exactly how long are we gonna go on with this blame game before we actually settle down and, well, fix New Orleans? I mean, should I go and pick up some popcorn and find a comfy chair? It was 38 years ago that SOWL succeeded in halting the hurricane barrier. I'm not saying environmentalists shouldn't be blamed for many things. Clearly the majority of them are hemp-trousered, dirty haired freaks who'd be ejected from a Hare Krishna sect for being too much of a hippy. Still, it seems ludicrous to attempt to stick them with responsibility for this one.

Damned Teeth

2005-09-10T13:47:00.000-04:00

I have wisdom teeth coming through. In fact, I've had them coming through in what seem to be fortnight long, excrutiatingly painful stages for many years now, and every time they make a dash to escape from my gums I load myself full of painkillers until I become immune from their analgesic wonders and sleep a fitful three hours a night.

Why do I put myself through this? I hear you ask. OK, I don't actually hear you, because you're probably several thousand miles away from me, and even if we were in the same room you'd probably only think it in your head. Shut up, I'm getting off track.

Anyway, here in the UK we have a national health service. Essentially we get free medical treatment for all, and we pay for this (OK, so it's not entirely free) with income tax, national insurance and all the other little ways the government bend us over and ass-fuck us until small change pours out of our mouths (by the by, petrol prices here just reached the wrong side of £1/litre (that's about $7/gallon), a lot of which consists of fuel tax). Theoretically, we can come down with any ailment, wander in to the local hospital and they'll fix us up for free - without having to worry about our insurance carrier rejecting our claim or, worse, not having insurance at all.

Of course, it doesn't quite work like that. When, earlier this year, my brother developed a series of medical problems as a result of contracting malaria while teaching in India, he was kept in hospital for over three weeks doing nothing much apart from vomiting and steadily turning skeletal with only the occasional visit from anyone with medical qualifications, and he was eventually discharged without diagnosis.

Another example. A good friend of mine, we'll call him J. to protect his pride, has for years had two small cysts - one on each side of his face - just below the jawline. They didn't look bad and never hurt, so he figured they were nothing to worry about - until this week. One of them became infected and, in the space of four days, swelled to the size of half a golf ball and filled with pus. On the second day, while it was still only tender and a little inflamed, J. visited his GP (general practitioner) who prescribed a short course of antibiotics to treat it and sent him on his way. They did nothing, and yesterday evening I got a call at work from J. asking for a ride to the hospital. When I picked him up a few hours later he was clearly shaken and proceeded to describe what he called 'the most horrific experience of my life'. I won't go into detail, but it involves an ineffective anaesthetic, a scalpel, about half a pint of blood and pus and an iodine wrap inserted into the cheek. I felt sickened just listening to it.

The problem is that when he asked if the doctor could book him in to have the other cyst removed - lest he have to go through the same disgusting and extremely painful draining process again - he was met with the reply "Not until it gets infected". The NHS is so painfully understaffed that my brother lies in hospital for three weeks and sees a doctor a grand total of twice, while my best friend can't have a routing preventative procedure unless the thing he's trying to prevent actually comes about.

All this, of course, as is routine in everything I write, has very little to do with my original point. What I was trying to say is that, even despite these painfully obvious flaws in our health service, we have it pretty good. J. was treated within 90 minutes of walking into an emergency room on a Friday night, and that's not bad in any country. So, all in all we can be fairly proud of our health service.

With one exception. Dental treatment is not covered by the NHS. Even though I contributed several thousand pounds to the government last year, without requiring any medical treatment whatsoever, if I was to present myself in an emergency room in unbearable pain from 4 wisdom teeth that are actually forcing all my teeth out of place as I write this (to the point at which I can see the dentine - the inner substance of your teeth - at the base of one of my incisors) I would be either sent home or to the emergency dentist for treatment that I would have to fork out even more money for.

Why is this? Why, in a health service in which some people manage to get free breast enlargements, surgery for impotence and even treatments for baldness (all to assist those who suffer from low self esteem and clinical depression, I am assured) I can't have my damned wisdom teeth removed?

Why is the alligator ornery? Cause he got too many teeth in his mouth. That's all I'm sayin'.

4 Meals from Chaos

2005-09-10T08:37:00.000-04:00

Dean Esmay yesterday discussed a report by MI5 which puts forth the opinion that the UK is "4 meals away from anarchy", meaning that if the food supply was cut off we would resort to looting and such. Of course, it would never get to that with us Brits. No doubt one of us would smash the front window of our local Waitrose and then become caught in an eternal cycle of politeness that would stop us from ever entering the shop - "After you, sir." "No, I insist, after you."

I kid, of course. I find that the most mild-mannered of us are the ones who seem to lose it at the drop of a hat. No, what strikes me is that this is news at all. It just seems as obvious a statement as "smoking causes cancer" or "Marlon Brando let himself go a bit". Of course chaos would reign if we ran out of food. It's so obvious, in fact, that as soon as I read the article I put my finger on an author who wrote exactly the same opinion several years ago (that's not to say that the theme hasn't been explored many times in the past, but this particular book happened to be sitting next to my bed and I wanted to share a quote). It's Terry Pratchett, from the novel Night Watch (Doubleday):

In a few hours the shops would be expecting deliveries, and they weren't going to arrive. A city like Ankh-Morpork was only two meals away from chaos at the best of times.

Every day, maybe a hundred cows died for Ankh-Morpork. So did a flock of sheep and a herd of pigs and the gods alone knew how many ducks, chickens and geese. Flour? He'd heard it was eighty tons , and about the same amount of potatoes and maybe twenty tons of herring.

Every day forty thousand eggs were laid for the city. Every day hundreds, thousands of carts and boats and barges converged on the city with fish and honey and oysters and olives and eels and lobsters. And then think of the horses dragging this stuff, and the windmills... and the wool coming in, too, every day, the cloth, the tobacco, the spices, the ore, the timber, the cheese, the coal, the fat, the tallow, the hay EVERY DAMN DAY...

But now, in the dark, it all spun on Vimes. If the man breaks down, it all breaks down. The whole machine breaks down, he thought. And it goes on breaking down. And it breaks down the people.

If you've ever sat on the flyover of a motorway in the UK and watched the articulated lorries flow along the veins of the nation, transporting food and goods to feed every last one of us, every day, in a never-ending process, you'll laugh at MI5's projection. 4 meals? Hah. We're only a mouthful away.

What's the Big Deal?

2005-09-10T08:12:00.000-04:00

I find it interesting that there is such objection to the confiscation of firearms in the city of New Orleans. I remember in the weeks and months following 9/11 the emergency services were vaunted, rightly so, as New York's Bravest and Finest. Today, almost 4 years to the day since so many of the American uniformed services risked and gave their lives to save innocents, many Americans balk at the idea that the New Orleans police force should be able to enforce Mayor Nagin's forced evacuation order against an unarmed public.

Let's look at the situation as it stands. The last voluntary evacuees left the city on Thursday, so logically the only citizens remaining in the city today are those who would resist evacuation, perhaps violently. OK, so the order to confiscate firearms from these people may be essentially unconstitutional, but then again so what? A third of the New Orleans police force bolted after the storm. Those who remain are the Bravest and Finest. These are people who remained to protect and serve the community in which they live - even when they came under fire themselves, even after their own homes were swept away in the storm. They deserve all the respect and support it is possible to give, and if that means that certain people temporarily sacrifice one of the freedoms they hold dear, then why not?

(Update) Volokh's Orin Kerr discusses the legalities behind the gun prohibition.

New Hurricane Scams - Get Rich Quick

2005-09-08T14:29:00.001-04:00

Even as the bodies are being removed from the wreckage that was once New Orleans, the e-mail scammers are creeping out of the woodwork. While some have opted to prey on the kindness of the Internet community with bogus charities, others have appealed to our greed. Here's an e-mail I received today:

Please help me out in this desperate situation. I am a Mexican national and also an illegal immigrant living in the state of New Orleans of the disaster hit area of the U.S.A. I presently work as a member of a rescue team, following the event of the recent disaster in New Orleans which is caused by "Hurricane Katrina".

In a relief effort to save the lives of the indigenes, I personally made a recovery of some treasure boxes which belong to a private banking firm, here in New Orleans. These boxes which are currently in my possession were found to be containing uncountable number of defaced foreign currencies, which ranges from United States Dollars down to Japanese Yens, thus running into hundreds of millions of U.S. Dollars when converted.

I have so far decided to undisclose these funds to the "Federal Emergency Management Agency", pending my personal use, soon after this disaster as things come back to normal in New Orleans. Dear colleague, I have already made prior arrangements with a private courier services firm who will assist me to convey these boxes, out of the U.S.A. I am desperately searching for a trustworthy individual who would provide me with a valid home or business address, in outside U.S.A (particularly in Europe or Asia), where these boxes can be conveyed, so as to start immediate investment opportunities.

I am sorry, I may not be able to leave U.S.A at present due to lack of authentic travel documents, but I would like to entrust these funds in you, and I will make my way out of U.S.A as soon as the boxes are moved out of U.S.A.Thank you for taking out time to read about my problem. I look forward to your reply.Please take note you can always reply me on email: marklyford@tsamail.co.za

Your contact information will required for easy communication.

Warm Regards, markly ford.
------------------------------------

My reply to this message was as follows:

Thanks for your e-mail, Mr. Markly. I too am a cruel, nasty little b*st*rd and would love to take part in your scheme. So, what do you need? My PIN number? Access to my credit cards? I'll do anything to speed this along, as I'm eager to get my hands on the loot.

You see, I'm addicted to hookers. I just can't get enough of 'em. I like to beat them a little, too. The problem is that sometimes I get a little carried away and beat too hard. Here in the UK dumping bodies ain't as easy as it is in the US. I live on a tiny little island, so you have to pay the big bucks to the local heavies to take care of it for you. As a result I owe a few thousand pounds to a local loan shark, and he's threatened to break thumbs!

So get back in touch ASAP, friend. I see great things in our future. Keep living the dream.

Sincerely, Keith Taylor

--------------------------------

The e-mail domain of this little goon, tsamail, comes from Technikon SA, a distance learning service in South Africa. The purpose of these addresses is to give students access to lectures and classmates; to create a virtual classroom, if you will. Now what the hell are they teaching people in South Africa?

The 155th Carnival of the Vanities

2005-09-06T05:29:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the 155th Carnival of the Vanities, the clearing house for the best writing in the blogosphere. Or, you know, a collection of links to the most awful, poorly scrawled, bigheaded tat on the planet. Depends on the week, really. Fortunately, this week has produced some real gems.

I'm sure this has already been done at some point in the illustrious past of this carnival, but I will be presenting each entry this week as a haiku, the Japanese form of poetry consisting of three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. And, to be sure, they are the most shoddy haiku you ever did read. Before you judge me too harshly, though, I only ask that you sit down and try to write 50 haiku about fucking New Orleans, a lot of water and a bunch of black people swiping plasma screen TVs. Anyway, this weeks entries are presented, in the main, in the order by which I received them. Enjoy the bloggy goodness...

(Update) David Giacalone correctly points out that these aren't genuine haiku but rather verse in the 5-7-5 syllable form that we unsophisticated westerners often call haiku. You can find a helpful resource including the criteria for haiku here. Here, though, is my rebuttal (or refutation, or repudiation. These word things were never my strong suit. I like to feel the soil). Have you ever tried writing a haiku about looting of electrical goods in the present tense and including a reference to the seasons whilst at the same time creating a sense of harmony and contrast? I can barely dress myself at the best of times. And at least I didn't call the plural haikus :)

Also, while I'm here, I'd like to point out the ad box to your immediate right. I feel bad when people pay for ad space and then I stumble off and quit blogging for months. Eight Foot Llama is a small enterprise in the business of reasonably priced novelty games such as the Nacho Incident and the Penguin Ultimatum. Please consider them for your next event involving friends with strange senses of humour. Also, you can strike a blow to the heart of Toys 'R' Us and their oh-so-droll letter reversals. Viva small business!

And another thing... after waiting patiently for over two years for an Instalanche I finally get one - and it's not even a dedicated post. I swear Glenn has something against me. Maybe he fears my eloquence. Perhaps not.

And finally, I have fixed 3 broken links that directed you to a Hotmail error page instead of the intended post. Corrected. If anyone finds any more stuff wrong please leave a note in the comments or email me. Cheers.

Doctor Hartline writes
Of Man's tendency to sin
And God owns our stuff

The librarians
Steal umbrellas, the bastards
Baby Jesus weeps

Iran could get bomb
We'd be screwed good and proper
Grow some bomb proof skin

Dump the Big Easy
What about Mardi Gras, though?
We need to see boobs

Some news for grownups
Very clever. I prefer
The funny pages

Get a better job
No more orders from teen boss
The spotty fucker

Look at the gorilla
He's been eyeing up my girl
Wouldn't mess with him

Stuck in stadia
With thousands of sweaty men
So what else is new?

One dollar coins have
Ugly chicks on them. But nude
Ladies may help them

Poetic prose on
Katrina. Nice photos, too
Is that a dead guy?

Melson talks about
Appraisals for mortgages
I'll die a renter

Eating corpses after
Only days? They must have been
Quite peckish, really

Folks blame Bush a lot
He caused death, they say. Maybe
Weather was involved

Lots of money saved
On cable bill. That would buy
A lot of hookers

Looting in the South
People are hungry, I guess
Mmmmm, widescreen TVs

Bring in the Army
To take care of the people
They have real cool guns

Bush the scapegoat
He gets blamed for everything
Some of it's God's fault

So the New York Times
Talks bollocks. Who'd have thunk it?
Monkeys are smarter

Start a business blog
Earn lots of money, you will
And the chicks are hot

You can build traffic
You could host a carnival
You'll get at least five

What would happen, then
if we call them hot ladies?
I'd give them more help

Evil extremists
Knuckle dragging troglodytes
Sound like the DU

Bourbon Street is filled
A thousand saxophonists
Floating in the road

Bush is hurricane
The windy little bastard
Best impeach him now

Never heard of him
This Richard Landes fellow
Entertaining, though

What a crazy site
That is a very sexy
Vegetable, though

The satire runs thick
When a teen boy steals a bus
But forgets the bribe

I just learned today
The plural of premiums
Is premia. Cool

I always get caught
At the metal detectors
Cause I'm magnetic

These guys sound just like
The people at my Nan's church
Crazy one and all

Bush and the Lord God
In cahoots against Sheehan
And the damn Jews, too

Form a partnership
Get Reggie Jackson on board
And you're good to go

That thing in the pic
Looks like a big hairdryer
For a massive head

So mould can kill you?
Here I've been worried about
Flooding and stuff. Shit

The flamboyant ones
Remind me of Will and Grace
That annoying guy

God also gave me
A wicked case of herpes
Or was it hookers?

Give me some food stamps
I earn a fucking pittance
Thank you very much

Babies don't feel pain
I just punched a two year old
Didn't even flinch

Pundits are saying
Bring me the head of the Head
Or blame the police

The aid lottery
Cutting cheques to the victims
The mooching bastards

Give me the contract
To rebuild the Big Easy
I'll make it nuder

Looting in NO
Was it the fault of the Blacks
Dunno. You decide

Don't know what grits are
We Brits eat regular food
Like, er, blood pudding

It's the FEMA rap
Saving lives and humping ho's
I love these bitches

Lefties blame the Bush
We were screwed from the word go
Nice use of fonts, Bob

Black people loot while
White people find. works for me
I'm going 'finding'

Violence in DC
It's probably Clinton's fault
The laid back bastard

Don't demolish it
Send it to me, so I can
Use it as a bowl

Stop throwing the blame
We can all agree, I think
It's Carrot Top's fault

Next week we will be returning to House Hraka to celebrate the 3 year anniversary of the Carnival. In the meantime, you can probably entertain yourself.

Bah Redux

2005-06-22T17:34:00.000-04:00

It's kinda depressing to take a look at my site stats these days. After the dizzy heights of several thousand readers a day it's a bit of a shame to see it fall down to less than 100. Still, that's what you get when you put out one post every couple of weeks. I have nobody to blame but myself but, since I don't like to accept responsibility for anything I'll arbitrarily blame, uh, Paul Wolfowitz. Rat bastard.

Damn it. Writers block sucks. What's worse is that it's not as if my usual output is Pulitzer material.

Bollocks

2005-06-10T17:37:00.000-04:00

I'm trying without much success to get my head around these proposed new road charges here in the UK. Now, it may surprise you to hear that we already pay a shitload for the privilege of mobility in this country (or not, depending on how much you know about our ridiculously socialist little island).

Every year I pay about £120 for road tax. For that I get a little paper disc to stick to my windscreen that gives me the right to use public roads without the inconvenience of being pulled over every so often and slapped with a big fine.

That's just for starters. I drive about 200 miles a week, and pay somewhere in the region of £20 in the average week for petrol, a little over a a thousand a year. Considering my pittance of a salary that equals almost 10% of my income. Now, here's the rub. About 75% of that money - about £750 a year - is fuel tax. Most of my mileage is work related, so effectively I pay an extra 7.5% in tax.

Now the government are proposing to charge road users a fee per mile, ranging from 2p per mile on the back roads to a whopping £1.34 a mile on the motorways during peak times. In exchange they propose to cut fuel tax. I'm not sure if they mean remove the fuel tax completely or just reduce it, but either way I'm baffled. I'm sure I'd end up paying £1.34 at least a few times a week, so I'll effectively be paying more to drive to work than I'll actually earn at work.

I pay income tax - about 20% of my salary - a portion of which is used to maintain the roads and build the new ones. I pay road tax every year, which pays for the light bulbs in traffic lights and for the paint for the white lines in the middle of the road. I also pay £750 a year in fuel tax, a sum that equals the GDP of several small African nations. I have to drive. I really have no choice. If I can't drive I can't work, and Sortapundit goes hungry. I can't even cut down my mileage. I don't spend my down time randomly clogging up traffic on the motorways. I drive just enough to do the job.

Now what kind of psychotic, petty little beurocratic fuckhead thought it would be a good idea to charge me for every mile I drive? If I find him I'll kill him. I'm serious.

Bah

2005-05-21T10:06:00.000-04:00

Yeah, yeah, I know I haven't been around at all these past few weeks. Thanks for the emails berating me. I just haven't been able to build up any interest in writing anything - not that my usual stuff is exactly A-material. I don't know what the plan is, but I hope this break isn't permanent. Maybe in a few days I'll get bored with drinking heavily and watching Family Guy. Maybe not.

I'm more worried about the fact that I haven't even found the energy to shower yet today. I brushed my teeth when I got up and then lost the will to wash. Luckily it's Saturday and I have two hours before I have to do anything.

You know you've reached a new creative low when you blog about hygeine. I'll finish with a stream of gibberish.

gug hall kip saint louise of gonzo ah fuck it

Post-Election Opinion

2005-05-06T05:03:00.000-04:00

Apart from the unfortunate loss of Internet access, last night went pretty well. Surprisingly enough, most of the exit polls were deadly accurate - Labour are back in with a projected 356 seats with less than 30 constituencies left to report. However, this majority is far from ideal for Blair. While an historic vote of confidence from the British people to ask him back for a third term, it's clear to see that the political landscape today is very different from anything we've seen in the last 4 years.

The Conservatives may once again have become a viable opposition. They're projected to finish up with 198 seats in this parliament - far from threatening, but a good sign nonetheless for the Tories. Similarly, the Lib Dems made significant gains at the expense of Labour. While I doubt I'll live to see a Lib Dem administration it's very interesting to see them win seats such as Manchester Withington.

The most important outcome of the night, of course, is the slashed majority of the Labour Party. A stark contrast to the Labour landslides of '97 and '01 when voters rejected Thatcherite conservative politics in favour of Tony's New Labour, Blair escaped this year with around 36% of the popular vote - only 3% more than the Tories.

One of the reasons for this reduced majority has been th protest vote factor, previous Labour voters turning to the Lib Dems to protest Blair's handling of the Iraq war. While not enough to unseat him it's more than enough to give the party a scare. Labour must now work hard to win back the trust of these protest voters. Without these voters to create a buffer between Labour and the Conservatives it could be a very interesting night indeed.

Liveblogging the British Election 2005

2005-05-05T17:52:00.000-04:00

As I've made quite clear in the past, British politics is dull as dishwater. Campaigning has none of the drama you get in the US. Our campaigns last about a month, and even after that short period we Brits are already bored with the spectacle.

However, this is the night it gets interesting. In the next few hours we expect to see Labour's majority slashed. My personal opinion is that they will safely remain in power. The question, though, is how much power? Stay tuned, readers. I'll be liveblogging the results as they come in, so feel free to drop in as the evening goes on.

For the past three elections, the first constituency to release poll results has been Sunderland South. This constituency has been in Labour hands since 1992, when Chris Mullin seized the seat. The seat is considered safe by any standards, with a 63% share in 2001, 68% in '97 and a hair under 58% in 1992.

And the first result of the evening is.....

drumroll, please...

Chris Mullin, Labour - 17,982

That's about 59% of the popular vote. While solid, it's by no means a good sign for Labour. It's very good for the Lib Dems - they stole 3% of Labour's share.

1 down. 645 to go.

Number 2 is Sunderland North.

The winner?

William Etherington, Labour - 15,719 votes.

Sunderland North is almost a mirror of Sunderland South. It has been a Labour seat controlled by Etherington since 1992 - however, this year Labout lost 9% on the 2001 election.

The third result in is Houghton and Washington East, the seventh safest Labour seat in the UK. With 735 of the vote in 2001, Labour's Fraser Kemp seems a lock. The result?

Fraser Kemp, Labour - 22,310

Again, even this safest of constituencies has seen a downturn of 9% for Labour since the 2001 election. These first results suggest that Labour could lose a huge number of their battleground constituencies as their marginal voters turn to the Lib Dems.

The next result to be declared is Rutherglen and Hamilton West, just south of Glasgow in Scotland. This has been a Labour seat since we were fighting Hitler, and in 2001 Labour candidate Tommy McAvoy took 57,4% of the vote.

The winner is...

Tommy McAvoy, Labour - 24,054

McAvoy is the first Labour candidate to show an increase in the vote since 2001. However, since 2001 there has been a reshuffle in the Scottish constituencies, so in real terms McAvoy lost 4% of his share since 2001. And the pattern continues... so far Labour have lost 6.75% of the vote since 2001. Labour won 41% of the vote in 2001, while the Conservatives took 32%. If the pattern continues we'll see Labour take around a little over 34%.

Barnsley Central is the fifth constituency to declare. One of the safest Labour seats in the country, Illsley has held this seat since 1987, and in recent years has garnered at least 69% of the popular vote. The winner this time?

Eric Illsley, Labour - 17,478

Again we see a downturn in the Labour vote - 9%, in fact. That knocks up the average dowturn in Labour voted to 7.2% on the 2001 election. It seems more and more likely that the exit polls may have overstated the expected Labour margin of victory. We'll have to wait for the marginal constituencies to come in before drawing any solid conclusions.

Labour have held Hull West and Hessle. Alan Johnson has held the seat since 1985, but lost 3% of the vote compared to 2001.

Labour have also held Rotherham. Denis MacShane took 15840 votes, but lost 11% of the vote compared to 2001.

They also held Vauxhall in London with 19,744 votes, down 6% on 2001.

Aw crap. It seems I'll have to cut this coverage short. I had to move to another room to let the occupant of this one sleep (he's been clerking at our local polling place from 7am-10pm, so he's a little beat). I took a laptop to the lounge, but it seems our new cordless phones are interfering with the broadband connection in there. I can't quite figure out technology more sophisticated than a bottle opener, and I fear that if I start pulling on wires I'll never get the phones back on. So, you'll have to keep up to date by such outmoded media as TV news or the wireless (they still call it wireless, don't they?)

Meanwhile, I'll retire to bed where I can watch the results until I drift off. Night all.

Running Total (number of seats)

Labour=353
Conservative=195
Lib Dem=59

Hhmmmm...

2005-05-05T15:17:00.000-04:00

Well, as it turns out I think my ad campaign is still running. I'm not entirely sure, but I'll leave the ads up a little longer until I know for sure. In fact, I'll step them up a little (shut up - I just spent 2 grand I don't have on a car. I'm a shill, but a loveable shill).

Now I'll sit here waving a wedge of cheese until someone clicks it.

P.S. Hey, and if worst comes to worst and the campaign is closed, at least the woman on the ad is pretty damned hot.

Ha. Google Rules!

2005-05-04T17:16:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow we'll all be going to the polls to decide who will run my country for the next 4 years. I've written maybe one post about the election, outlining just how crushingly dull British politics can be. This, however, has been enough to rocket me as high as number 11 (out of a hair over 3.5 million results) on Google for '2005 British Elections'. I'm now hovering around number 30 - ahead of The Economist, The National Review, C-SPAN and even the frickin' BBC.

Of course, when I said we'll all be going to the polls, I mean everyone else will be going to the polls. I'll be sitting on the sofa eating cheese and red onion sandwiches watching Scrubs and Smallville. Apathetic? Meh.

"If I Could Be..."

2005-05-04T15:43:00.000-04:00

I got tagged with the "If I Could Be..." meme by moehawk a couple of weeks ago. "Tagged"? "Meme"? "moehawk"? What kind of hellish nightmare is this? Anyway, far be it from me to ignore my responsibilities, so....

If I could be a lawyer... I'd be recruited by a prestigous law firm who turn out to be in bed with the mob/ stumble upon a huge mass tort case, make millions and then be indicted for insider trading and sued by my clients/ open my own firm with a hard-working but extremely ugly paralegal as the Robin to my Batman, fall for a woman with an abusive husband and sue an insurance company for billions. Hell, anything to get John Grisham to write about me. It's crap... but it's entertaining crap.

If I could be a linguist... I'd challenge Noam Chomsky to an all-linguist Death Match. I think I could take him. I really, really do.

If I could be a psychologist... I'd finally figure out why every night I dream I'm being chased down the street by my Mother - but she doesn't look like my Mother: she looks like Adolph Hitler in a bright pink Superman costume carrying a bag of donuts and a short length of wood.

If I could be an architect... I'd travel back in time to the year my Dad designed the building I studied in at university, slap him hard in the face and demand to know why, of all the materials he could have used, he chose to use ridiculously ugly brown glass. Wait - architects can time travel, right?

If I could be a writer... I'd have a hell of a lot more readers than I get tossing out this tepid pap every few days.

I'm supposed to tag a few bloggers with the meme, but as I'm famed for my sloth I'll just generally tag the blogosphere. Feel free to consider yourselves all officially tagged. It's time for my tea.

Just When You Thought You'd Got Rid of Me

2005-05-04T15:08:00.000-04:00

You take a break for a measly week and your advertisers bail on you. Turns out I'm not being paid anymore for my Godo loans ads. Damned things are more trouble than they're worth.

It was good to have a week off. Things have been a little crazy around here recently so I enjoyed the time off. My grandad passed away in the early hours of Saturday, but after the weeks of agony he went through in hospital - on top of the years of general pain and reliance on bottled oxygen and pills - it was for the best. He had, as we Brits like to say, a good innings. The problem is that because it was a bank holiday weekend the country totally shut down, so my gran was only able to get a death certificate yesterday, and she still has to register the death before starting to arrange the funeral.

I've never understood why people should have to sort out all the paperwork of death themselves. If there's one thing you don't need on your plate when your nearest and dearest passes away its miles and miles of bloody forms - and that's before you even get to the stage of being stung for a couple of grand for what amounts to a wooden box and a hole in the ground to put it. Fortunately for gran she has a lot of children who can take some of the burden. We'll be hosting the post-funeral reception at our house to avoid having to hire a function room and catering. That's another thing I don't get - post-funeral parties. I can't think of a less appropriate time to break out the chips and dip.

Anyway... in other news, the new car is bloody brilliant. After a year of driving an absolute pile of shit it's a breath of fresh air to pull away from the lights without the back end of the car juddering so much it actually leaves the ground. It's also nice to have such luxuries and functioning brakes, suspension and tread on the tires.

I've also got a fancy new mobile phone, one with 16 times as much memory as the last one, a 1.3 megapixel camera, MP3 player, FM radio and frickin' Super Mario Brothers on it. The only problem, of course, is that my new network has terrible coverage up here in the hills so I can't reliably make calls or sends texts from home. Then again, who ever makes calls on their phone? Thats, like, so April.

No Title

2005-04-28T18:14:00.000-04:00

Apart from the whole death of my car farrago in the past week, I've also been distracted by a couple of other things. The most important of these is that my step-grandad is dying. He's been in hospital for a good while now, with alll sorts of illnesses related to both his old age and his years of smoking, but he worsened in the past week. My gran was called in with the rest of the family late last week with a warning that he would probably go within a few hours, but he managed to fight back from the edge - something he's done 3 times in the last 2 years.

Tonight, though, may be his final night. My dad came to find us at the pub to tell us that he's fading fast. My gran, mum and most of the family are at the hospital, but my brother, sister and I have had a few drinks so we thought we'd better stay away.

Anyway, blogging will be scarce the next few days. I just don't feel like it right now.

New Car

2005-04-25T18:35:00.000-04:00

After a long weekend of searching around, calling dealers and - more often than not - discovering that the car I wanted had already been sold, I've finally found a decent ride. It's an R reg (1998) Ford Fiesta 1.25l Zetec with a little over 40,000 miles on it. It seems in good shape, but I probably wouldn't know a bad car unless it actually exploded on the test drive.

What pisses me off, though, is that I was looking at a much better car earlier in the day. I found a Fiesta on the Internet that was a year newer, had 15,000 fewer miles on the clock and looked, if you'll forgive the language, fucking cool. Diamond black (is that any different than regular black?) stunning alloys, electric windows, power steering, central locking and a nice CD player, and just a few hundred quid more than the one I ended up buying. I couldn't get through to the dealer on the phone so I drove out in my temporary company car to the dealership. As I approached I saw that the car was still in front, and wandered around it in awe for a few minutes, drooling all over the paintwork. After I reached a dangerous level of dehydration the dealer sauntered out and told me it had been sold last week. Were they just trying to torture me by leaving it out on show? We'll never know - I tore out the guys lungs and threw them into traffic. Grrr.

Anyway. I went on to another showroom and settled on a different Fiesta. It's cheaper, but it doesn't look quite as good and doesn't have the features of the other one (apart from power steering and a sunroof). Both front tyres are a little worn and it wants to wander to the left but otherwise it seems great. I got him to replace both front tyres, realign the tracking, tax the car and get a fresh MoT and agreed on a price. I can finally pick it up Wednesday.

So, all in all this has been a weekend that cost me a couple of thousand pounds more than I'd planned to spend, but otherwise it was good.

2005-04-23T09:35:00.000-04:00

Apropos of nothing, is it just me or do you also get a little chill down your spine when, after 4 minutes of silence, Tom Hanks says 'Houston, this is Odyssey - it's good to see you again"?

Maybe it's just the novelty of Hanks shutting up for a minute.

RIP Punto

2005-04-22T13:27:00.000-04:00

My beloved car passed away at a little after 7pm Thursday evening. After a long illness whose symptoms included corroded brake lines, a complete suspension failure, a shaky clutch, bent exhaust and bodywork damage, yesterday evening the straw broke the camel's back.

I had been driving all day on the motorway, and ended up at the end of the day in a local pub with a friend. Later on we drove back to his house, but on the way the engine cut out in the middle of the street. I put on the hazard lights, pushed the car onto the kerb and called my recovery service. While I waited I popped the bonnet and noticed that the cambelt had snapped.

It costs 50 quid (something like $100) to replace the cambelt (also called the timing belt), and they're supposed to last about 40,000 miles. This one lasted about 8,000. The reason is that I have a worn bearing in the camshaft, and I'm assuming it caused excessive wear on the cambelt. A new camshaft costs 200 quid (almost $400). On top of all the other necessary repairs I would have had to shell out around 700 pounds (a little less than $1,400). The car isn't worth that much, so it seems a little pointless to throw good money after bad.

So. I had the car towed to a nearby garage I know and the owner let me leave it there until it gets towed. I stripped all I could carry from the car and told the mechanic to go nuts - feel free to take anything he wants before the scrap metal scavengers pick it up.

I managed to wangle a company car from my boss for a few days, but in the meantime I have to spend the weekend looking for the cheapest car I can find. I have 650 pounds in the bank but I'm looking to spend about 400. For that price I'm guaranteed to get a piece of shit that'll break down after a few miles, but I can't afford anything else.

A few years ago, if you'll allow me to go off on a tangent, I was flying to Singapore. As we were landing R Kelly's 'I believe I can Fly' piped through the Tannoy, as if the only thing keeping the plane in the air was the collective will of the passengers. In that vein, I need you all to keep up a continuous prayer to keep whatever shitty piece of scrap metal I buy on the road. Say a quick prayer as soon as you wake up in the morning and with a bit of luck I won't end up in a fiery ball on the hard shoulder of some God-forsaken motorway in the middle of nowhere.

If, on the other hand, you decide not to pray for the car, you should feel pretty damned guilty when this site suddenly goes quiet for a few weeks, followed by a brief post from my mother to notify you of my painful fiery death.

Whatever. It's up to you.

From the Mailbag

2005-04-19T17:14:00.000-04:00

Rusty Shackleford has posted part 1 of a 4 part interview with the family of Roy Hallums, a civilian contractor abducted in Iraq last November and held hostage since.

Roy was taken hostage along with six other foreign nationals, including a Fillipino named Robert Tarongoy. The U.S. did not publish the fact that an American citizen had been taken hostage because of a policy of treating civilian abductions as purely private matters. The Jawa Report was the first publication to identify Roy Hallums as the hostage.

Read the rest.

God Bless Alcohol

2005-04-18T18:42:00.000-04:00

Jesus H. Christ I had a shitty day.

I noticed one of my rear tyres was almost flat this morning, so I drove to a nearby petrol station by a supermarket to pump it up. About 200 yards from the station the car started coughing, and I noticed it was totally out of petrol. I managed to nurse it into the car park, but it gave up the ghost just 30 yards from the pumps. So... I had to buy a petrol can to carry the gas 30... fucking... yards. Hell, the pump almost stretched that far. I could have pushed it but I'd look like such a loser I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Anyway, a few quid later the tank was full but the rear tyre was still flat and the station didn't have a working air pump, so I had to drive a few miles to the next station. That one didn't work, though, so I had to drive a few more miles looking for another. After almost getting into the centre of Manchester I gave up and drove back. Two hours wasted, and I only got half the work done that I planned.

Thank God I got drunk tonight.

Heh.

Matt Drudge is an Ass

2005-04-17T11:35:00.000-04:00

Matt Drudge in the Sunday Times (h/t Sisu):

Now he sounds disillusioned and says that the "din" is growing into a cacophony: "There's a danger of the internet just becoming loud, ugly and boring with a thousand voices screaming for attention." He is no fan of the blogging phenomenon (weblogs linking sites): "I don't read them. I like to create waves and not surf them. And who are these influential bloggers? You can't name one because they don't exist."

The Drudge Report earns Matt about $1.2million a year, a figure that has been climbing since Drudge shot to fame covering Clinton and Lewinski in the 90's. The Report, a muddled mess of news links and popups draws in, according to Drudge, over 200,000,000 visitors a month - far more than any blog.

Could it be, though, that Matt worries that the success of the blogosphere in recent times may come to overshadow his own success? Could it be that his position in the world of citizen journalism is in danger? After all, while no one site comes close to his level of traffic, the blogosphere as a whole drowns out the voice of Drudge in what he himself describes as a cacophony. But its a good cacophony.

For a journalist like Matt, suddenly bursting into the spotlight and gaining notoriety as an outsider long before anyone had heard the term 'blog', it must be worrying to watch the medium go beyond his control - to watch so many voices emerge in such a short time. These voices rarely have access to the inside sources that give Drudge his exclusives, but together they dig away at leads until they find the story with only their computers and the occasional phone call.

Anyway, have you seen the Drudge Report? It's like the front page of Google News designed by a drunk monkey. With no hands.

Update: Patrick Ruffini agrees.

Not about the drunk monkey part. Just the other stuff.

Lazy Reporting From the NYT

2005-04-16T07:51:00.000-04:00

As I said in the comments here at Dean's World, picking up on the errors of the New York Times isn't exactly rocket science. Today, in an article entitled 'Security vs. Rebuilding: Kurdish Town Loses Out', they discuss the ramifications of cut-backs in Iraqi water projects:

But with the outbreak of insurgency in central and southern Iraq last year, the United States shifted $3.4 billion from water, electricity and oil projects to pay for training and equipping the Iraqi Army and police forces.

Hmmm, I thought. That looks familiar. Now where could I have seen that story before? Oh yeah. It was in the New York Times last year:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 25 - Rising security and other overhead costs of Western contractors are cutting into the billions of dollars set aside for some 90 planned water projects, allowing them to supply only half the potable water originally expected, Iraqi officials say.

Think it could just be an honest mistake? Maybe it was just a matter of two Times reporters writing about the same subject and happened to cover the same subject matter, right? Wrong. Both articles were written by the same guy, James Glanz.

Of course, even ignoring the dishonesty of rehashing old articles in an effort to attack the reconstruction efforts, I can point to at least three reasons why increasing investment in security for the reconstruction is money well spent:

This

and this

and this

Times Disassembles Truth, Strips Words of Meaning, Reassembles

2005-04-15T19:48:00.000-04:00

Let tell you what pisses me off about the New York Times. Its not so much that they flat out lie, but that they're extremely selective with the truth when it suits them.

An example can be found in today's International section in an article titled 'A Trail of Pain From a Botched Attack in Iraq in 2003' regarding a "friendly fire" incident that claimed the lives of 3 US soldiers and wounded 5 in April 2003. An Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle mistook a US artillery unit for an Iraqi missile battery and fired on them with a 500-pound bomb.

Where the Times departs from the truth is when they claim that the soldiers involved - and the public in general - were kept in the dark about the incident, and that the fact that it was friendly fire has been covered up. They go as far as suggesting that the soldiers involved were, in fact, pressured to conceal the truth.

Specialist Coyne, now retired from the military, received a Purple Heart for his injury. But he says that at the award ceremony at Fort Sill, Okla., his superiors instructed him to keep quiet about his suspicions that he had been bombed by American forces.

What they fail to mention is that an investigation into the incident was under way just hours after the incident, and the facts of the case were already common knowledge just days afterwards.

Until recently, some believed the explosion was caused by an Iraqi grenade,
while others blamed non-American coalition forces.

Who are these 'some'? Along with others, CNN reported the incident as friendly fire just days after the event:

An accidental F-15E Strike Eagle airstrike killed three U.S. service members and injured five others, U.S. officials said.

In addition to this, the father of Donald Oaks Jr., one of those killed on April 3rd, was actually informed by the Pentagon of how his son had died on April 4th, 24 hours after he was killed:

The Pentagon would only tell the family that Donny was killed by "friendly fire" on April 4.

Does it sound like they were trying to cover anything up to you?

Cross-posted at Dean's World.

Guest Blogging

2005-04-14T14:15:00.000-04:00

I'll be guest blogging over at Dean's World for the next couple of days, so if you want more bloggy goodness go here.

Chronicles of Glenn IV: WTW Edition

2005-04-13T17:24:00.000-04:00

LET ME TELL ya, I wasn't always a powerful high profile blogger-cum-professor. Far from it. I was raised in the rough 'hood of NorthNorthEast Knoxville, where you lived by your wits and only had basic cable.

One time I called a cop 'Pig'.

UPDATE: That was wild.

I'm With Jay Tea

2005-04-12T13:18:00.000-04:00

Wizbang's Jay Tea has stirred up an unlikely debate over Mormom baptism of the dead. It seems that the Mormon church has been post-humously baptising people for years without the knowledge or consent of the relatives of the deceased (and, naturally, the deceased him/herself). Dean and Rusty don't see the problem.

I'm not religious in the slightest, but if someone tried to baptise me when I'm lying there trying to get a good dirt nap I'd be pissed. Jay Tea put it best: I'm a huge believer in freedom of religion, but I've always thought that a key element of that concept was the right to be free FROM religion.

I get pissed off when religious folk try to make me see the light. I don't like the way they look at me like I'm some naive fool. Feel free to believe whatever you want, but just keep it out of my house, OK? If I choose one day to accept Jesus as my saviour it'll be on my own terms, not because a priest tells me to, or some ass in a cheap suit knocks on my door and sells me God like a set of encyclopedias.

Look, it's very simple. If you're Jewish and you find out your Dad was baptised as a Mormon after his death of course you won't be happy with it. Who would? These guys aren't just making some wishy washy blessings for you. They're swearing you in to the Mormon church. I've never been to Utah but as far as I've heard Mormon Central ain't no party I want to go to. Not only are they making you a post-mortem Mormon (try saying that ten times) they're insulting your faith. They're saying you were wrong to believe what you believed. Sure, they may have the best intentions but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

It would be the same deal for an atheist such as myself. I've made my choice and I'm sticking to it. If I die and show up in Mormon heaven someone's getting a beating.

Also blogging

Aaron, SobekPundit, Bogus Gold.

Update

In response to a few comments I'd like to clarify: I understand that they don't actually exhume a body and dip it in a font. That isn't the point.

Jay Tea, I believe, puts it best in his absolute final word on the matter:

The Mormon Position: "We're only doing this because we care about you. If we're right, you'll thank us. If we're wrong, there's no real harm. So, what's the problem?"

The Jewish Position: "Regardless of your motives, we find it distasteful and offensive. Besides, whenever in our history people do things to us 'for our own good,' it almost inevitably turns out bad for us. Especially when it involves making lists of us. So please stop."

Heading to the US

2005-04-11T18:27:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I asked for some advice about Frederick, Maryland, as a good friend of mine was moving out there to work for six months for an electronic engineering company. First, let me thank those who responded to that post: especially those who emailed links to nespaper articles and other websites. You were all a great help.

As it turns out, though, Craig only stayed briefly in Frederick. He's now been relocated to somewhere in New Jersey. He spent the weekend in New York and is now hard at work 12 hours a day in the cracker factory somewhere in NJ. He will, however, be spending his last three months in Frederick before moving on to Italy for another six months.

I'm fairly drunk right now but I'm getting more and more excited by the minute about heading to America for a short break. I'm thinking a week, but after receiving my commission for this month I can probably afford two. As we say in the UK, a few weeks with Craig in New York would be 'messy'.

Chronicles of Glenn, Vol. III

2005-04-10T16:06:00.000-04:00

SOMETHING MY OLD man used to say seems prescient today. He said, 'son, when you've got a mean thirst and no cash, brake fluid can be your friend. Just make sure you choose a DOT3 or DOT4 solution: anything else'll burn your insides like a motherfucker.'

UPDATE: It just goes to show that wise words can survive hepatotoxicity and sudden, catastrophic kidney failure.

British Elections

2005-04-10T14:20:00.000-04:00

British politics are dull. Trust me on this. The problem could be that the British electorate don't respond to the overblown drama that so interests me about US politics. Also, the UK isn't so sharply divided about news-making issues such as abortion. We're divided about it, but it doesn't dictate which party you support (at least not to the extent that it does in the US).

The result of this is that we don't seem to get fired up about UK politics (I don't, anyway). It seems my ignorance of UK politics has given me a little surprise today, though (h/t Outside the Beltway). The performance of the Conservatives over the past few years (with lacklustre leader following lacklustre leader) led me to believe that they are entirely unelectable. I never imagined that some polls could have them drawing level with Labour.

I've not yet made up my mind this time around. I'd be quite happy to give Blair another term, but I'm not sure I support him enough to vote. I might just withhold it again until it stops being a case of choosing the lesser of who cares.

The Roundup

2005-04-10T12:12:00.000-04:00

Tim Worstall's Britblog Roundup #8 is up. Go. Now.

If You Lay Down With Dogs...

2005-04-09T13:59:00.000-04:00

A few years ago I was taking the bus home from a lecture in Manchester when I was approached by a guy who wanted to sell me a Minidisc player. It was a decent model, and back then this was the height of technology. He told me it was mine for 25 quid. I asked him if it was stolen, to which he replied 'does it matter?'. Naturally my answer went along the lines of 'I will have no part in this. I bid you good day, sir'.

I think I'm right in thinking that you wouldn't buy a Minidisc player if you knew it was stolen. You definitely wouldn't buy it if you knew the owner was beaten up during the theft. Imagine what kind of person you would be if you bought it when you knew the owner was killed during the theft?

So why is it acceptable for a news agency to buy photos from a guy who collaborates with terrorists? A person who makes his trade from recording the deaths of innocents, with full and willing foreknowledge of the atrocities he will photograph?

There have been several photos to come out of this war that were dubious in nature - just a little too perfect, a little too convenient to be just lucky shots, the photographer in the right place at the right time.

The argument can be, and has been, made that war reporters and photographers are simply unfazed of the danger of battle. They are willing to heroically risk life and limb in the pursuit of that perfect shot - the shot that encapsulates to spirit of battle; that highlights the courage and valour of the allied soldier, the futility of resistance. More than anything, perhaps, the shot that can contend for the much sought-after Pulitzer Prize.

However, there are certain situations that beg the question 'just how much did this guy know about what was going down?'. Are they willing to take tips from the enemy? Are they willing to collaborate? Are they even willing to stand and watch, invited guests to the slaughter of innocents and our troops?

The question must also be asked: if I bought the Minidisc player stolen during a murder am I innocent - or am I no better than the killer himself? Everyone has a price. I'm glad that mine is considerably higher than that of one CBS cameraman.

And the moral? If you lay down with dogs... you can fill in the rest.

Others blogging

Austin Bay
Random Probabilities
The Mudville Gazette
Sisyphean Musings
Blogs for Bush
Powerline
Say Anything
Dean's World

and many, many more.

Update

From the comments:

Reporting from Baghdad, CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan told Bob Schieffer that CBS News is cooperating with military investigators. The cameraman came with good recommendations, Cowan said:

"From every indication we had, the work he had done for us the past three months has been exceptional,'' Cowan said. He noted the all the networks employ locals in Iraq that help get footage that U.S. photographers couldn't get.
-----------
On Friday, CBS News issued a statement saying the cameraman had been working with the network for about three months, and had been referred by a trusted source with whom CBS has had a two-year relationship.

"It is common practice in Iraq for Western news organizations to hire local cameramen in places considered too dangerous for Westerners to work effectively. The very nature of their work often puts them in the middle of very volatile situations,'' the statement said.

First, some commenters need to learn that the 'name' field in Haloscan comments has a character limit - you're gonna get cut off if you try to start your argument there - as happened with 'Do a little bit of research be' (that goes for you too, 'Could Your Head Be Any Further')

OK. Lets not pretend that CBS are innocent victims of circumstance here. You're responsible for who you choose to work with, and when your photographer keeps submitting up-close and personal shots of terrorist activity somebody should be asking how this guy is getting so close to the action. "From every indication we had, the work he had done for us the past three months has been exceptional". Well. Duh.

I want to see Abdul Amir Younis Hussein's portfolio. He's been working with CBS for 3 months, so they should have a good collection of his photos and negatives. He was holding photographic evidence of four separate IED attacks on his camera. How many similar photos have been submitted to CBS? How many have been put on the news or website? Moreover, was this guy working exclusively for CBS or was he freelancing for several networks?

Greed and wilful stupidity won't exculpate CBS - and if it turns out that Hussein was working with the insurgents someone at CBS should be publicly flogged. But, of course, they will probably worm their way out of it with a few well-crafted statements that have had any real meaning stripped from them wholesale. It will have been a 'regrettable error' to have hired Hussein. A 'well-intentioned judgement which was, in hindsight, in error'. And then before you know it the spectacular ratings-grabbing shots will begin once again to flow in, and everyone will forget that the media pays the wages of the enemy.

'Nother Update

Mustang 23 from Assumption of Command agrees.

Chronicles of Glenn, Vol. II

2005-04-09T08:23:00.000-04:00

WELL, I USED to be a UN ambassador for peace, but once the whole peanut boy scandal broke that was all pretty much over.

UPDATE: I'm not allowed to go back to Thailand, either.

No Sleep 'til York

2005-04-07T19:03:00.000-04:00

How about this for crazy? My friends and I are planning a long weekend to York next month (we did it last month, and I believe today's youth would have described it as 'off the hook' or something similarly nonsensical - christ, I'm only 23. I am today's youth).

Seem to have lost my thread there. Anyway, I was just looking at hotel prices for the weekend we want to go, and I've found 2 possibilities. The first, a Travelodge, is a 2 star motel type arrangement. Comfortable and clean, but nothing special. It's basically a bed, a shower, and possibly a window. 2 nights = 140 quid (about $260).

The second option is the York Hilton. 4 star hotel with everything you expect from a Hilton. 2 night= 210 quid (about $390).

Considering this is the rate for 4 of us, we could choose the roach motel or the luxury suite - for a difference of $32. Hhmmmm.

A Statistical Analysis of Instapundit, or, Where's My F*cking Instalanche, Reynolds?

2005-04-06T17:13:00.000-04:00

I've been looking at the link patterns of Instapundit in the past few days. I counted every link given from the start of April until around 5pm GMT today, April 6th - a total of 192 links.

To begin, I'm well aware that Instapundit isn't a king-maker. An Instalanche won't suddenly rocket you to the top of the blogosphere overnight, and you won't suddenly find crazy blog advertising money pour into your bank account. However, a sudden rush of readers, however fleeting, is always nice. The biggest rush I've ever had was about 3,000 in a few hours from IMAO. Mmmmm... readers.

Now I'll contradict myself. A link from Instapundit can be huge. Since many thousands of readers use Instapundit as a sort of blogosphere base camp, almost 100% of an Instalanche is made up of fresh readers unfamiliar with your site. There is the potential there to impress a few of these readers enough to keep coming back. Write a few good posts during an Instalanche and you can hook dozens of new regular readers - some of whom will go straight back to their own sites and link to you.

Anyway. What brought this on is that I noticed that Austin Bay Blog seems to have been getting an awful lot of attention in the past few weeks, and I wanted to take a look at the diversity of his links.

Of the 192 links so far in April, 92 have been repeated at least once. Bearing in mind the brevity of the sample set, the fact that almost 48% of Glenn's attention (and traffic) goes to the same 29 sites in just 6 days tells us a lot about the site's diversity.

Based on Instapundit's SiteMeter data, an average of 156,920 readers visit Instapundit in each 24-hour period. All things being equal (ignoring the fact that name recognition may drive more people towards any given link) this means that a single link from Instapundit during the past 6 days (discounting the expected lull in weekend traffic) equals 4,903 visitors. This means that just 29 sites shared 451,076 visitors, while the balance was spread over the 100 remaining individual sites.

And so, Instapundit suddenly becomes even less accessible for the aspiring blogger than before. While at first glance it may seem to be a hugely generous link farm, distributing thousands of readers around the less travelled avenues of the blogosphere every day, it appears that the site is in fact a much more closed system.

Not that I blame the guy. If I was asked to write dozens of posts a day, each requiring me to seek out quality posts to link - even with the promise of Blogad revenues and other benefits - the answer would be 'thanks, but no thanks'. The fact that Glenn has kept it up for several years, including holidays, shows just how dedicated the guy is.

What I'd like to see, though, is a similar analysis on a month-by-month basis since Instapundit's inception, to see if the linking policy has always been this limited or whether I'm just bitter about never getting a link.

Results

Instapundit Links 01-06 April 2005

2 links
Daily Pundit
Tech Central Station
Hugh Hewitt
My Aisling
Small Dead Animals
Samizdata
Winds of Change
Washington Times
Q and O
Spirit of America
The Volokh Conspiracy
The Belmont Club
Inside Higher Ed
CBC
Secondamendmentdocumentary.com
New York Times
Democracy Arsenal

3 links
US News
Chris Nolan
Opinion Journal
Slate

4 links
Publius Pundit
Roger L Simon

5 links
Trey Jackson
Austin Bay

6 links
National Review
Ann Althouse
Captain's Quarters

10 links
Amazon

Update

Dean Esmay, with almost supernatural timing, argues against the insular nature of blogs - also mentioning Instapundit. Meanwhile, Simon argues for it.

'Nother Update

I think the important point to note here, as Dean and others note in the comments, is that there's nothing at all wrong with the fact that Glenn goes through spates of linking a particular site heavily for a while. Moreover it would be churlish of me to bemoan the fact. Looking at my own reading habits it's clear that I fall into the same habit. In the two years I've been blogging my only two religiously daily reads have been Dean's World and Wizbang, with several others falling in and out of favour on a seemingly random basis. Recently I've been spending a good amount of time at Basil's blog, and most of my day in and out of Itsapundit.

For about 18 months between 2003 and 2004 James Joyner's Outside the Beltway was my first daily port of call, but in the past year it's been relegated to a weekly visit - and no, there isn't a good reason for that. James and his co-bloggers still do a great job, but its just one of those things.

'Nother Update

On a semi-related subject, I'm amazed at the speeds of Glenn's email responses. These past two weeks I've notified him of the posting of Tim Worstall's Britblog Roundup, and within two or three minutes he's linked it. Considering the number of emails he must get every day that's pretty remarkable. Yakes me the best part of a day to reply to an email, and I only get abot 5 or 6 related to the site each day.

Crazy Blog Money

2005-04-05T13:51:00.000-04:00

I've got some new ads running up there today - those rather unsightly flashing godo boxes. Okay, they're ugly, but a) since when was this site well-designed? and b) they pay a tiny proportion of the bills.

The Secret of Its(apundit) Success

2005-04-04T04:51:00.000-04:00

Now, here's a perfect example of an April Fools joke that was well executed, didn't take advantage of the readers (grrr) , and had a positive effect on everyone involved. It's A Pundit.

Basil set up itsapundit.com as a joke, a piss-take of Glenn Reynolds' ubiqitous Instapundit. He invited a select few of us to come along and guest post (he must have mailed me the invite accidentally, I'm sure), and guest post we did.

Now, a few days later, we're still posting. What's more, a lot of people are reading. Already itsapundit has around double my readership, and with the level of funny that gets written there every day - not forgetting the sheer volume of it - I can see it's popularity continuing. It's a unique opportunity to read the work of some of the funniest and most talented 1st graders in the blogosphere in one place.

For my part I'll keep posting there as long as Basil leaves it up. I recommend you read while you have the chance.

Chronicles of Glenn, Vol. I

2005-04-03T18:49:00.000-04:00

SO I'M STANDING there, minding my own business - y'know, just browsing around - when I'm suddenly grabbed from behind by one of those rent-a-cop security thugs and dragged into a dark office with a hanging light bulb, where he proceeds to beat me mercilessly for the next 45 minutes.

UPDATE: Turns out you're not allowed in the Magic Kingdom wearing only a bowler hat and wrap-around shades.

First Among Equals

2005-04-02T19:02:00.000-05:00

Image courtesy Wizbangblog

"Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, therefore no harm can befall you; all is very, very well. Do this in complete faith and confidence."

--Pope John Paul II

I've never believed in heaven, but I hope he's strolling through the gates about now.

Others talking

Wizbang
Instapundit
Dean's World
The Moderate Voice
Outside the Beltway
Michelle Malkin
Pundit Guy
Arthur Chrenkoff
Carpe Bonum
Powerline
Confederate Yankee
Kevin Drum
Captain's Quarters
The Anchoress
Baldilocks
Don Singleton

Lazy Saturdays

2005-04-02T11:59:00.000-05:00

Today has been great. The north of England has been transformed from its usual bleak arctic tundra into a very pleasant spring day, complete with warm sun and a light, warm breeze. It was so nice, in fact, that I decided to go out to work for a couple of hours. Considering that my job consists of walking around the streets enjoying the sun while drinking bottle after bottle of fizzy drinks, that wasn't such a tough option.

Following that I came back and posted as Drunk Glenn over at Its A Pundit. It turns out to be a lot of fun to write as a less funny Jeff Goldstein while mocking Glenn Reynolds. Pretty soon I'll be getting a cab over to a friend's house so I can drink myself blind without having to worry about what to do with the car, and then sleep late tomorrow.

I'm considering expanding the Its A Pundit schtick to Sortapundit. I'm really enjoying writing about ferrying corpses over the Mexican border and setting alight squirrels.

Kevin Proves Survival of the Fittest, Fires Paul

2005-04-01T15:27:00.000-05:00

Huh. Kevin Aylward has fired Paul over at Wizbang. After several warnings to drop the whole evolution argument that Paul's been leading these past few weeks, Kevin was finally pushed over the edge today.

I'm fairly sure this isn't an April Fools joke, but lets hold judgement until the morning. Traditionally April Fools jokes are supposed to stop at noon April 1st, so unless they're posting from Hawaii it's too late. More importantly, though, is the fact that this would be a very risky joke considering the vehemence of some of the comments. If we wake up tomorrow to a 'Ha Ha! Fooled ya!' I'd expect an awful lot of feet-shuffling and awkward apologies.

Just to throw my hat in the ring, I'm not too broken up about Paul's departure. I've been reading Wizbang since I first discovered blogs, so Kevin's writing has been part of my day as long as I remember. I actually applied to guest blog when Kevin threw open the doors last year, and I always blamed Paul for potentially stealing my job (kidding - I don't have a chance in hell to write at Wizbang).

Wizbang is better today as a group blog than it was as solo project, but I wouldn't attribute much of that success to Paul (who seems all too eager to take the credit for himself). Jay Tea has been the real discovery of the year. That guy's a genius.

Update

Jay Tea says he may consider bowing out of Wizbang after this. There'll always be a home for him here.

'Nother Update

Yeah, yeah, you should never believe anything you hear on April 1st (though I'm fairly sure the high praise from my boss was on the level). So I'm a fool. What else is new?

When They Said There Was No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, They Weren't Kidding

2005-04-01T14:06:00.000-05:00

Aw crap. I got caught.

'Our records indicate that your account has been deactivated. '

Dear Keith Taylor, The purpose of this letter is to inform you that your publisher account has been removed from the CJ Network and your earnings have been reversed ("charged-back") from your account and credited back to the relevant advertiser(s). This is the result of non bona fide transactions identified by the latest audit performed on your account. Non bona fide transactions include false, self inflated, and/or duplicate leads or transactions. You are not eligible to rejoin the CJ Marketplace and any attempt to do so will result in immediate termination and reversal.

Well, that's £150 I won't be seeing. Thanks for your help anyway, guys.

I wonder if Oliver Willis will enjoy his second mortgage, though.

Obligatory April Fools Day Post

2005-04-01T04:32:00.000-05:00

Aw crap. Basil just reminded me that it's April Fools Day.

Not a bad thing in itself, but I just got woken up by a call from my boss to tell me that my performance had skyrocketed recently, and that I'm the best performing employee in the area. Am I an April Fool?