I'm still alive...

Yes, I realise I've been quiet lately, but I've been a little snowed under by the Open University stuff.

Also, a quick heads up for any Ipswich fans who may have found their way over here - Ipswich Town First, the Independent Supporters Trust, have a project where they are looking for fan memories of previous - see here for more details.

There's no smoke without fire.

Okay, so I fell of the fag wagon. Well, not so much fell, more stumbled. Slowly. It does leave me wondering how I ever managed to smoke 20-30 a day mind. They make my head hurt for starters. Any more than two a day, and I start buzzing. I had four yesterday. I'd clearly be useless if it ever came to crack. That said, where a small packet of tobacco used to last me 2-3 days, I've had the same one open for nine, and I'm halfway through. In some ways, I'm punishing myself by smoking the rest, because I'm really not enjoying them. Not the taste or the sensation. I used to love smoking as well.

And there we go. One thing I decided I wouldn't do, was talk about the old habit. But then I was going to update the new habit a little more often.

Test message

Opera and Blogger have updated. All looks good. Just trying it out, and if so, I'll be back to rock and roll.

And...

I've just noticed that since my last post, my hit count has doubled. Watch it stagnate now that I've actually posted something.

And yes, it is easier to post something new than edit it.

Unintentional Googlebomb

For those of you that don't know, a googlebomb is an attempt to influence a link's position on google by the number of people that link to it in a specific way. One of the more famous examples is a large number of sites linking http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/victories.html to the search phrase "French military victories".

Sometimes, a site may not have many links from the outside world. One of these sites is one belonging to DJ and Fulham's PA man David Hamilton. Because this post on the rather excellent Todger Talk linked to the official website of Diddy Fucking David Hamilton like I've just done, it's changed the name of his link on google. Like so. Oops.

Does it work to say Betfair are cunts?

Oops....

Right. Where was I? Oh, yes there'll be another post soon, as soon as Opera stops being shite with the Blogger template. And I've written that three times now.

I've also found myself distracted by a couple of things since I last posted (insert your own Carry On imagery and Sid James laugh here). Apart from Big Brother (and why do people always vote out the interesting tossers out?), I've been going through some old video tapes to see if there's anything worth copying to DVD. And out of about 60 tapes, I've found about two hours worth. And I've found some awful shite that I'm wondering why on earth I taped it in the first place. Christ, I could almost make a list of things I've taped that I would never have any intention of watching:

* The Brit Awards from the year that Zoe Ball and Frank Skinner presented it (badly) and Travis were Best Band.
* An episode of RI:SE presented by Ian Lee and Edith Bowman.
* Bakersield P.D. - Probably the only program I didn't watch on Paramount c.1998
* An hours worth of Telewest's home screen from 1993 - 8 tiny screens showing various channels round the edge of a quarter size screen showing Beavis & Butthead on MTV. With Telewest's own muzak for sound.
* A Prince's Trust concert on 'The Power Station' - BSB's own music channel. (For those of you that aren't Stuart Maconie, BSB were those people with the Squarial)

Okay, so maybe 'could almost' is wrong. I've also found:

* A random episode of Have I News For You on two tapes.
* Three quarters of a Johnny Vegas game show on BBC Choice.
* Sky's Top 100 Goals of 1991. Well, okay, I've only got the last 30 or so. But they only showed about 10 games that year (For those of you that aren't Stuart Maconie, this was before Sky had the football market cornered, and all they had was the FA Cup and Serie A).
* The first ten minutes of what was shaping up to be a really good Episode from Futurama).

I also found a really random Public Information Film, which caused me to root through a few more on the web, and I also found one of the most notorious of all on my own hard drive.

So, as well as some final thoughts about Euro 2008, that Wedding Present review, and a look at Pablo and Charisteas (which still may or may not happen), I'll be talking about those scary PIFs as well, as soon as Opera stops being a pain in the arse.

Hi, honey, I'm home!

Or rather, to paraphrase the late, great Smash Hits (and when I was a teenager, Smash Hits really was great), I'm back, BACK!, BACK!!!

The knee's back to about 60%, and I can walk a bit, and sit down without it hurting too much now, thanks for asking. There will be a few things coming up over the weekend. I was doing an album review before my hiatus, and I was just thinking about maybe writing something about Ipswich cult hero, and crowd polariser Pablo Couñago. And I'll wrap up my thoughts about Euro 2008, maybe even come up with a team of the tournament, after Sunday's performance, it really should be full of Spaniards, shouldn't it?

And talking about European Championship finals, we're allegedly in talks with the scorer of the winner at Euro 2004 - Angelos Charisteas from Nurnbürg, and I'll say why that would be a "good thing", so you can marvel at it when I'm proved right. Or we can hush it up if he ends up being shit, and smuggled in a van off to Le Havre or Vitesse Arnhem in the January.

And get me, I'm using tildes and umlauts now.

Intermission

Apologies for the lack of updates over the last few days, but my knee has ballooned, so I'm not spending as much time as normal in front of the PC. Normal service should hopefully be resumed by the end of the weekend.

Now available in widescreen

I've been playing about a bit with the settings, so if it looks funny, or the sidebar disappears, let me know.

Hello and Welcome

So this is it. My first blog entry. I suppose I could introduce myself, but let's be  honest, at this stage, the only people who are reading this will know me, so those of you picking this up in the long distant future will have to get to know me from the other scintillating posts.