Geocities – My First Web Page

Just kidding....

Heavens above!

With all the social media attention going to Geocities at the moment (it closes today after nearly 15 years – strange to think it was a pioneer back in 1995), I thought I’d have a root around and try and see if I could find my old account. I honestly wasn’t expecting to be able to.

Surprises of surprises though, I did, and I was fairly ’shocked’! I was a completely different person back then – looking back at it now, I am cringing something rotten!

The picture seems to have gone (thankfully!), but the basic text content remains the same (along with the horrible advert bar at the side). My site was last edited in 2003 (six years ago), and would have been created around that same time, so I would have been 16/17. I don’t think this was my first attempt, but it is definitely the attempt I seem to have decided to settle with. It makes you wonder how bad the other attempts were!

As with most people, Geocities was my first attempt at building a website, and to be honest, I thoroughly sucked!

That said, I am VERY pleased that I had a flash of inspiration to look and see if my old account was still on there, as it was a completely unexpected reminder of how I used to be, and just how much I have grown up since then! It’s like one of those letters written to your future self, in a  weird way.

Oh, and straightacting.com is now an application on Facebook apparently… my, how times have changed! If I bothered using apps on Facebook, I am dead cert I wouldn’t get a ten these days (and certainly wouldn’t wave it around like a badge of honour heh!!). Europride at Manchester? Gosh!

What, you want to see it? Have I not stalled you long enough? Oh goodness, go on then…

Oh, and xkcd.com have a marvellous Geocities themed webpage in honour of the closing of the Geocities site… it looks fabulous! (have a look today – 26 Oct 2009 – though… I don’t want to take images of sites I don’t own!)

BYE BYE GEOCITIES, U WOZ LOTZ OF FUN! *WAVES*

[I wish there was a midi of the funeral march that I could upload here!]

Google Logo – Perseids

Liking the logo that Google are using whilst the annual perseids meteor shower is lighting up the night sky.

Unfortunately it was a little cloudy over London this morning, so I may give it a bash later on this evening/first thing in the early hours of the morning – I’d absolutely love to see a meteor!

Latest Last.fm radio page

Recently, I’ve started using the last.fm player a lot more frequently instead of just using the service for scrobbling, and I have to say, the new radio / radio page is a HUGE improvement!

I like the integrated stats, slideshow, interface, links to events and download info and most noticably, the speed with which the page is able load all this up in – it really is no different to listening to a CD. A vast improvement on the last.fm player of days gone by.

Once again, I am addicted to it heh!

CLICK ME for me/my radio station.

100,000 views!

As at 21:40 on Monday 13th July, my blog page has had 100,000 views! Hurrah!

I know that to some people 100,000 views is small-fry, however I must say that I am very pleased that my various ramblings have garnered so many views!

A sincere thank you to all who have visited in the past, those who have left comments and shared their opinion, and those who continue to do so. Special thanks goes to those who subscribe to my RSS feed and continue to trawl through all of my wild and varied ravings heh. Hopefully the content that I blog and share is interesting to the majority of people who visit and that people are enjoying reading these random snapshots and thoughts that litter my life.

Those who know me will know that I am a total stats geek; so here are a few for you!

• I opened my blog on 8th February 2008

• 100,000 views over 521 days works out as an average of 192 views per day (the average is so low mainly due to it taking quite a while for the number of visits to my blog to take off). Currently I receive around twice this number daily, and the total views in the first 5 months of 2009 already has overtaken my total blog views for the whole of 2008.
  

• My busiest day was on Saturday, October 18th 2008

• My most visited blog posts ‘of all time’ are:
  

1. Merlin / Robin Hood
2. Skins Season 2 Finale
3. The X-Factor doth commeth!
4. Joanna Lumley: Northern Lights
5. Hairspray – Timeless To Me
6. Jeff Wayne’s Musical War Of The Worlds

As you’d expect; my top three posts are largely there due to the totty / image referrals, however the fourth-sixth place posts are all there on their own merit – hurrah! I sometimes post multiple blogs on similar topics (e.g. Spring Awakening) though, on this occasion,  I’ve been lazy and not consolidated the figures on similar posts.

The pictures on the top 3 blog posts also lead the list of ‘links’ that people have clicked through to when browsing my blog.

I garnered the most blog link referrals from a tag that linked to my (pleasingly geeky) post on the Large Hadron Collider that CERN were running on 10th September 2008.

So there we go… some random and pointless statistics about my blog heh!

Here’s to the next 100,000 views… it seems weird that I have to do twice my current (and, to me, mammoth!) total number of views before I can get as excited about all this again heh. I liked getting excited at all of the smaller milestones, so now that those increments have increased, I guess that I will just have to challenge myself to blog even more and, hopefully, find yet more people who want to keep in regular touch with my ravings heh!

Thanks again for reading and participating folks! x

Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds

BBC 404 Error

I absolutely love the new 404 error page that the BBC have come up with (much better than the usual browser standard!!).

To view the screen shot at full size, please click on the image.

Michael Jackson 1958 – 2009

OK, so I was in two minds as to whether or not to do a post… there is so much already on the internet about this tragic event that I really have very little  information to add to what has already been said. Friends who know me ’in the real world’ will also know that there are other periferal aspects that I am unable to comment on at present. However I reasoned that this is such a huge event, and something I am sure to look back on in later life, and so I’ve decided to say a few words for the purpose of my blog.

I saw mention of something being wrong come up on twitter around 21:30 and at first wrote it off as a rumour; after all, I’d not heard of TMZ, and Sky News are hardly a reliable news source in my opinion. However it soon became apparent that there was some weight to the rumour and I was quick to switch on to BBC News 24, and I stayed there until around 3:30 this morning watching this all unfolding.

On the note of BBC News, I thought that their coverage was occasionally disgusting (referring specifically the male anchor chap who was on around midnight GMT when they confirmed Jackson’s death). I don’t see why, less than 5 minutes after announcing death, they went and did a hatchet-job character assassination on him! Why skirt the issue for hours and then, as soon as he dies, absolutely slate him and bring people on the phone to try and portray him badly? Not what people wanted to hear at that time, surely? I can’t believe that when they went back to Uri Gellar, the male anchor said “Uri, your friend is dead”, and said it completely deadpan and without compassion. What a twat.

Truly this was the first time that twitter has broken a story for me, and it has been ‘interesting’ to read the reports of the roles of social media in this instance. I just wish that the subject matter had been a happier one.

I think I understand why a lot of people feel confused about all of this. I never met the chap, never saw him, and only really knew him through his music (which I adored and has landmarked key moments of my life thus far); however I feel a strange feeling of loss and sadness. My family is small, so I don’t really have too much experience of death and so I do feel at a bit of a loss as to how I am feeling, how I’m supposed to feel, and why I do. I’m still slowly getting used to the idea of ‘he’s really not with us any more’.

I sincerely don’t think that we will ever see such an immense public reaction as this again, and I think that it really did come straight out of left-field… I mean, he was only 50 years old! It really does make you appreciate the fragility of life. I am still struggling to comprehend all of this I think… perhaps when the media hype quietens down, I’ll be able to process my thoughts a little more clearly. I hasten to add that I am not one of these die-hard-I love you Michael-kind of fans, moreover I am a lover of music, and I think that Jackson truly was the master of his craft!

My favourite song of his (and one of my all-time favourites) has to be ‘Beat It’:

So many of my memories include Jacko songs, especially some great nights out back in the Village in Manchester – with most of them revolving around this song.

Back in the day when I was at college and all of my friends were getting into thrash metal, and I wasn’t(!), they used to tease me that the music that I listened to was manufactured rubbish (in fairness, at the time, it largely was heh!). However the next day, I came in and put on ‘Beat It’ and we all rocked out to Van Halen’s guitar riff, danced around the common room and agreed that even though Jacko wasn’t thrash metal, he certainly was very, very cool!

I really don’t think his success will ever be matched, and I would say that I think we’ve genuinely lost *the* biggest star that we will ever produce in our generation. Through his music, and the decades/generations to follow, I am sure he will live on. Certainly, when I am old and half-dead, you can bet I’ll still be skipping along paving stones to ‘Billy Jean’ and contemplating how I can fit ‘Thriller’ and myself as a zombie into my funeral to give everyone a fright heh.

“Music has been my outlet, my gift to all of the lovers in this world.
Through it — my music, I know I will live forever.” Michael Jackson.

RIP x

Zack16 – Viral Marketing Campaign

I came across the Zack16 thing on twitter this evening after a tweet from a friend, and I have to say that I was incredibly miffed.

First of all, there is a really well designed website and social media presence for the character (Zack Johnson) along with several short videos which make up one large movie… all about a guy who has lost his ‘guy bits’ and gained (is that an appropriate word? heh!) ‘ladybits’. (You’re thinking WTF too, right?!)

Here’s a YouTube of all 4 installments that have been aired thus far:

Now… I have done some snooping, and have found out… wait for it… that this is actually a social media/viral campaign for Procter & Gamble’s Tampax brand!

I’ve quoted from an online article at the end of this post where the author has gotten hold of P&G to confirm the campaign and it also provides a little more information on the campaign itself.

It’ll be very interesting to see how they develop this, as I’m rather intrigued. Quite gutsy of P&G to do something as ‘out there’ as this, and from what I’ve seen, I think they’ve done it, to a very high (but slightly confusing!) standard. That said, it doesn’t seem to be faring all that well in terms of what it’s trying to achieve, and I know that this will have it’s critics, and people will say that it’s inappropriate etc.  Either way there is much more to come from all this it would seem, so it’ll be great to see how they develop it. I’d suggest visiting the official website and then choosing your preferred social media from there if you’re wanting to follow it further

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — The marketer behind a stealth viral campaign featuring videos of a fictional 16-year-old boy who wakes up one morning to find his “guy parts” gone and replaced with “girl parts” is none other than Procter & Gamble’s Tampax.

The campaign from Leo Burnett, Chicago, is anchored by a blog featuring professionally produced videos at Zack16.com. Its main link to Tampax to date has been when title character, Zack Johnson, has his first period during French class and sneaks into the girls’ restroom to use a Tampax vending machine.

The campaign’s backer hasn’t been the only thing stealthy about it. As of this week, the most viewed of nine online videos produced had been seen fewer than 6,000 times on YouTube, though it’s had a few thousand additional views on such sites as Funny or Die and StupidVideos.com. The fictional Mr. Johnson also has a Twitter account, @ZackJohnson16, with 949 followers.

“It’s a learning lab out on the net,” said a P&G spokesman, who characterized the push as “just playing around with some different ideas. You can tell it’s not very heavily branded at all.”

He said he’s not sure what the ultimate plan is in terms of revealing Tampax’s connection to the effort. And it’s not clear whether or how Mr. Johnson’s Freudian nightmare will end. In a possible bit of foreshadowing, the fictional character’s Twitter feed said today: “Watching gyro meat spin on a stick reminded me how things always come back around. Maybe it’s a sign my guy parts will return?”

In the course of his change, the character has developed a new sympathy for and connection with his 14-year-old sister, an appreciation for the travails of menstruation and premenstrual syndrome, and an affinity for the Tampax brand.

“It was inexpensive for us to do this one little effort and kind of get a feel for how much pickup it gets, if it goes viral or if it doesn’t,” the P&G spokesman said. “For Tampax, we’ve got our Mother Nature advertising and Mother Nature effort,” which he said remains the brand’s main campaign. YouTube videos of those TV ads, in which Mother Nature crisply presents a woman with her “monthly gift” encased in red paper and tied with a bow, have gotten about tenfold the YouTube traffic so far of the Zack Johnson campaign.

SOURCE

Vlog Update: 13th June 2009

Note to self: do try not to sound so depressed on these, especially at the start! Also, make sure that your glasses are straight, maybe try something different next time, plan the ending, and make sure that there is at least one thumbnail that is actually usable!

For those getting this via RSS or my e-mail subscription system, my vimeo channel can be found at http://www.vimeo.com/darkaeon

“Bing.com” – the new MSN Live Search

Bing.com is the new re-branded version of MSN Live Search (which was, frankly, awful, clunky and had a terrible interface!).

Having had a quick look around the Beta site today, it’s a pity that the same terrible Live.com interface still pretty much exists, especially on the web results, however I do rather like the way that it handles image results (much prettier layout than Google, which is rather basic in comparison!).

Take, for example, a search for Mitch Hewer: (click me) – pretty interface, pretty results!

I also (for the time being) ‘love’  bing.com as it seems to have sent me a lot of traffic today via referals… hurrah for their indexing system!

I prefer the way that WordPress.com handles the click throughs too (for the time being, until they catch on!). Most search engines, including Google, show only the search term on my blog stats under ‘Searches’, and then if images are clicked on, I can see a view via ‘files’ – though cannot pair the two fields together – however by having the link on the referrals page (and it referencing bing.com), it makes it much easier for me to see what content is attracting you all here in the first place! (topless pictures of Mitch Hewer and Nicholas Hoult from Skins it seems !)

I reckon that Goggle will always be my first stop for search results, be it web or image, however if bing.com were to make one of the little search widgets for the Firefox browser (the top right hand corner drop down box), then I think I could easily be converted to using it for images, provided they keep it as it currently is!

Twitter deals with Swine Flu

So, we’ve all now heard far too much about ’swine flu’ and by now there should be many of you lot also using twitter…

But how do the people of twitter cope with the news of ’swine flu’…

I have to say, this is an accuate and cracking cartoon by the clever folks over at xkcd!

This morning, my twitter feed was full of ’swine flu’ related tweets… from the (un)funny jokes you’ve already heard twice on the way into work all the way up to the serious/hysterical ‘argh, we’re going to die’ tweets!

SOURCE (definitely well worth checking the xkcd website daily for new cartoon cells!)