Archive for July, 2002

blogpop update

Once again, I’ve updated blogpop, but with a couple of improvements, one major and one not so. Firstly, Mo wrote a script that retrieves all the pertinent information concerning UK blogs from the Alexa database, meaning that I’m far more less likely to make mistakes, and secondly, traffic trends are followed, demonstrating in many cases that while sites might slip in the overall listing, they’re still attracting more traffic than previously. It’ll make sense when you see it, I hope. Anyway, I’m very pleased to say that we have four new entries:

Now that I’m pretty happy with the way the chart is being compiled, I’ll let it sit a while and then probably update it once per month.

[update]: Bugger. I knew I’d screw up somewhere, and omitting Disconnected Zeitgeist was where it happened. Tune in for more mistakes next month…

russian brides

A couple of years ago I spent a few days in Moscow, and remember thinking that apart from the odd toothless and haggard prostitute touting for business around the outskirts of The Kremlin, the Russian woman was generally quite an attractive breed indeed. You can almost understand why some men resort to the mail-order method of courtship, but what really impresses me about some of the services offered is that any niche preference seems to be catered for. Want a Russian amputee wife? It’s really no problem at all.

scalpel please

I don’t like long URLs. With so much traffic on the interweb generated by viral messaging, why would any content provider feature an address that exceeds 72 characters, the point at which many mail programmes will wrap a line of text, thus breaking the URL into pieces and making it unclickable? Luckily there’s always been sites around that enable you to turn those unwieldly addresses into nice, compact links for ease of sharing. I’ve used a few myself, but my new favourite is snipurl.com, which also provides a myriad of extra features such as visitor tracking and a very useful email creation interface.

Jeez, sorry about that. I came over all geek for a moment. Here’s a weird Japanese animation featuring a butch looking woman, some aircraft noises, a few vaguely pornographic sound effects, a UFO and eventually some rapidly changing images serving no apparent purpose. Ahhh, that’s better.

sex test

New on blogjam: Cal recently compiled a rather interesting test, taking the current fad for online quizzery to the next logical level by asking which object on his desk you were. It’s good, but there are still far too many variables for my liking – the answers you give tomorrow might alter slightly from the ones you offered today, marking out the subtle difference between you being a pot full of pens and a box of Frosties, and that isn’t very scientific, now is it? So I’ve made my own online test, one so simple that it’s guaranteed to be 100% accurate, all of the time. What sex are you?

Gimme ?1000

I’ve decided to enter blogjam in the Great British weblog competition, even though many others are heaping ridicule on the very idea. Why? Because I need the cash. Why do I deserve to win? Well, obviously, I don’t. There are many other weblogs that are designed better than mine, written by people far more articulate and interesting than I’ll ever be, people with opinions that lead you to question your own. My site, on the other hand, is a poor excuse for a weblog. I’m lazy. I don’t update as much as I should. I have little of interest to say. My links are generally second-hand or stolen. People come to blogjam in their thousands to click endlessly on daft pictures of kittens, but virtually no-one lingers on my homepage. So why am I even bothering to enter? Because the Internet has turned me slowly from an outgoing, gregarious, popular fellow into a shallow, reclusive computer dweeb with very few remaining friends, and blogjam is the nearest thing to a serious relationship I’ve had in some time. In summary, I think blogjam warrants some recognition for putting up with me. It’s the very least she deserves.

kitten travesty

Everyone knows that I am in charge of all things feline and cute on the Internet. Wherever there are kittens, you can almost guarantee that I was a) responsible, or b) knew about it weeks before you did, quite often weeks before it was even thought of. Ladies and gentlemen, I am the Kitten King. There are dark corners of my kingdom, however, recesses where even my sphere of influence cannot reach. Regions where cute is a term of abuse, where small defenceless animals are used for gain, for humour, for a laugh, a-ha-ha. One such area can be found here. Sickening.

blogpop update

The magnificent and minimal Mo Morgan contacted me via the interweb today to point out that I’d neglected to include him in my blogpop chart of top UK weblogs. He was right, so I duly apologised and have now updated the list to feature both Mo and Naked Blog, which missed out first time round because of an incorrect GBlogs listing. I updated everyone else’s rankings as well, which shows the always excellent linkmachinego (one of only two personal blogs on my list of favourites to have been there since the day I started) making the biggest impact, boldly and deservedly leaping up the chart in most impressive fashion.

me me me

Sometimes I suspect that my traffic figures do not accurately reflect of the number of people who visit this site. In the last couple of weeks I’ve had links from ntk, the guardian, slashdot, haddock, moreover newsfeeds and plasticbag, plus a mention on xfm, all of which you’d think would bump up the figures considerably, but for the first time in ages my numbers took a tumble. I’ve decided, therefore, that the only solution is to expand internationally. This has been in the back of my mind for some time, and I’ve been training up a covert blogging protégé to spead the word of blogjam throughtout French-speaking parts of the globe. She’s been doing a pretty good job so far, and today pulled off her first major coup, an interview with RFI, BBC Radio’s equivalent across the channel. In the feature she even manages to squeeze in the quite ludicrous untruth that I was one of the first bloggers in the UK. Well done, Agent X! My European fanbase will surely soar!

Google translation here.