The Subrosa Blog is now complete
Please be aware that this incarnation of the 'Subrosa Blog' has now ended - why not visit the new Stuart Homfray weblog?.
Of course, that's not to say that the Subrosa blog will never return... I may decide to reincarnate it as a sort of sideblog or something!
If you've arrived here via a search engine results page, you may also wish to consider entering the site via the main entrance, as Subrosa itself has now outlived it's usefulness...
posted by Stuart NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT POSTED VIA BLOGGER!
Saturday, August 30, 2003
Another friday five...
Ahhhh, it's that time of year again - when all the 'kids' (and I mean that in a friendly, non-patronising, non-goat-related way) go back to school. To celebrate, the friday five have selected 5 particularly relevant questions:
- Are you going to school this year?
Whoo-hoo, no! It's been a fair few years since I greeted the end of August with loathing, trepidation and a search for new school trousers!- If no, when did you graduate?
Here's a few clues: the last Mexico World Cup; the movies 'Big Trouble In Little China' and 'Howard The Duck'; the chart hits 'The Final Countdown' by Europe and 'Rock Me Amadeus' by Falco; and the year former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan (Conservative) died.- What were your favorite school subjects?
Probably Biology, Computer Studies, and Mathematics, but I also really enjoyed playing football and tennis- What are/were your least favorite school subjects?
English (they never let me write about the stuff I enjoyed reading); Physics (we did NOTHING involving astronomy - who gives a f**k about the Bessemer process and Hooke's Law [yes, yes, before anyone says anything about it being useful within the study of astronomy, he did a lot of good work with gravity]); and Engineering Drawing (admittedly, half the time I wasn't there, and when I was there, I wasn't really there!- Have you ever had a favorite teacher? Why was he/she a favorite?
Hmm, teachers that I liked... Tricky....... Seriously, I liked Mrs. Goldfinch (Biology) as she was honest and straight-talking with you (and seemed to know what she was talking about - let's hope she finds this, eh?!? ;), Mr. MM Jones (Mathematics), known as 'millimetre' (for obvious reasons) or 'Penfold' (for not so obvious reasons - sorry, MM if you're reading this!) - he actually seemed to enjoy teaching maths, and earlier than those, there was Mrs. Ferguson ('Joy', I think her first name was) - she was very approachable, and a fun drama teacher to boot, I liked her a lot!
By the way, if you're one of the people mentioned here and you're reading this (Welcome!! How are you doing??) please accept my apologies for using your name - if it's a problem, let me know and I'll remove them before you can say the name of the school at which you taught me!!One other thing: I know that it's not Friday, but I'm doing this now because, a) I was too busy yesterday, and b) the Wolves are playing at the moment (currently 0-0 with Portsmouth), and after losing the first three matches in the Premier League 5-1 (Blackburn Rovers - not a bad side), 4-0 (Charlton Athletic - CHARLTON!!! Bloody Charlton!), and 1-0 (Manchester United - hey, that's more like it guys, but why do we only seem to play well against the better teams), I'm too scared to follow the game! :)
posted by Stuart 2:46 PM
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics
Now THIS is the most enjoyable movie review website I've ever seen!
Basically, it looks at the physics of films (not surprisingly!) and points out the flaws in the science of submachine guns ("...the thirty-round magazine in a Mac 10 will be expended in a mere 1.8 seconds of sustained fire! If our shooter blazes away steadily for a total of only 3 minutes, his or her Mac 10 will spit out around 3000 chunks of lead at roughly 15 grams a piece. This amounts to 45 kilograms or a little less than 100 pounds of lead."), scaling ("...a misguided scientist, radioactive fallout, pollution, or some other folly of mankind abnormally shrinks or expands someone or some creature... Expanded objects or persons would have such low densities that they would be blown away in the wind like big balloons. Tiny people would suddenly exert huge pressures under their little feet since the area of their feet would be miniscule but their weight the same."), and "the attractive force of glass" when someone gets shot!
Amongst the reviews are "The Hulk", "The Matrix Reloaded", "K-19 The Widowmaker", "Titanic", and "Speed".
posted by Stuart 7:44 PM
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
I Could Have Got A Scholarship!
Saw a posting about a scholarship competition in the Lockergnome Bits and Bytes newsletter yesterday (actually saw it today as I'm catching up with email again!) run by Half Price Computer Books
Realising that I could easily easily answer the questions posed, I thought that I'd enlighten readers with the correct responses. Here goes:
- One of the rallying cries of the last five years has been "Information must be free!" Do you agree with this statement? Can it be practically implemented without limitations?
Answer: Yes- Are advances in technology making us more efficient, or just creating more barriers to entry for the average person?
Answer: Yes- What excites you most about computers and technology?
Answer: PornographyClear, concise, and straight to the nub of the question! Just see how these compare with the winners of the Canadian Scholarship and the US Scholarship! :)
posted by Stuart 8:25 PM
The Launch of Blogstakes
Blogstakes, launched yesterday, is a new kind of sweepstakes, set up with
...two winners for every prize: a person who entered and the site that referred the winning entry, so it turns out everyone's a winner (where everyone is defined as both the entrant and the referrer!)There are 2 opening competitions: the first is Free BrowserCam For A Year (this one's useful for web designers as BrowserCam displays screen grabs from various browser/operating system combinations), and Clip-n-Seal Fresh Party Pack (basically, for those who like to eat!)
Now normally I wouldn't dream of plugging something like this in such an overtly capitalist style (well it makes me feel like a capitalist :) but luckily, the guy running this seems quite genuine. His name is Brian Alvey, and he's producer and host of the Meet The Makers series of "behind-the-screens" interviews with creative people working in the technical world, and backend developer at Zeldman's Happy Cog Studios
C'mon! Is it wrong to want, just a little bit...?
posted by Stuart 6:49 PM
Friday, August 15, 2003
A friday five moment...
Inspired by Richard at lostpilgrim.co.uk (amongst many others - his was the last f5 that I saw!! ;o), I thought that I'd have a go!
- How much time do you spend online each day?
Most probably TOO long! As the web is where my work activities are based, and at least attempting to keep on top of my email is rather important, it's probably a minimum of 12 hours per day (sometimes I even get the chance to actually see that big shiny ball of light in the sky first-hand)- What is your browser homepage set to?
It's got to be Google of course - nice and speedy, and the first click of the day usually goes to Google News- Do you use any instant messaging programs? If so, which one(s)?
Err, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, AOL IM, and occasionally MSN Messanger - why don't I just pick up a copy of Trillian and make life a little easier?!?!- Where was your first webpage located?
It was first located on some webspace provided by Freeserve, my ISP at the time, in about 1998. Obviously this was quite late compared to a few people, but for a long, long time before that, I was quite obsessed with the vast quantity of information on the internet and was enjoying exploring it (to the point of trying to read EVERYTHING - yes, rather obsessive wasn't it?!?) Luckily, once I had done so ;o), I then decided to become part of it along with my brother, an aspiring comedy writer. We came up with a comedy football magazine (a cross between a fanzine and the comedy parts of When Saturday Comes) called Man In Black. Other than Freeserve, the site was hosted at Claranet, and in a smaller 'pocket-sized' version, on Geocities, and the only place you can see it online is in it's Geocities guise via the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive. Once I dig up the original backup CD, I think I may upload the full site once more for posterity...- How long have you had your current website?
About two years (that's why I'm trying - at times, unsuccessfully - to find the time to do a full-scale re-vamp!Ahhh, what a cathartic process that was [NOTE: obviously not in an absolutely literal sense of course, as that would be most unpleasant!]
posted by Stuart 12:51 PM
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Latest Top Secret MGM DVD Film Series Proposal!!
A confidential email that has been passed to me from a spy within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talks about a planned new trilogy of films about Jesus. Although still at a very early stage, the proposed film titles are:
- Jesus - his birth, early life, and search for his real father
- Jesus II: Messiah Under Fire - realisation of his true vocation, friendships, relationships, betrayal, and dinner parties
- Jesus Threesus - the final years, ascension, reunion with his father, and dealing with inacccurate biographers
Each DVD will feature extras such as commentaries, interviews, games, and competitions, and a boxed set will feature an extra DVD titled 'Holier Than Thou: The Making of the Jesus Chronicles', discussing the origins of the story, the actors, and an interview with the director of all three films, Paul Anderson
posted by Stuart 11:15 AM
UK Citizenship ceremony
According to Statewatch News, on 25 July, 2003, the Home Office released a Consultation paper saying that immigrants being granted citizenship will have to swear an oath of allegiance to "Queen and country" at a public ceremony. The paper suggests the ceremony would end with a round of applause and the "National Anthem".
Apparently, applicants will have to pass an English test, show sufficient knowledge of life in the UK, and, in a ceremony that sounds horribly similar to one carried out in the US, swear:
"That on becoming a British citizen I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her heirs and successors according to law."" I will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom and respect its rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values. I will observe its laws faithfully and fulfil my duties and obligations as a British citizen."It's certainly a good job that I, a British citizen do not have to spout this crap as I'd find it difficult to
- "...be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her heirs and successors according to law"
WHY? What exactly is it that these pointless individuals DO for the country? To be fair, I have nothing against the individuals per se, only the monarchy in general. This may upset a few Royalists out there, but a lot of you folks are the same people who get upset with the whole 'Europe' issue and being somehow "...ruled by Germans" etc, etc!! That's an argument for another time, but make sure you remember the origins of our Royals.... (ie. it's not Britain!)- " ...give my loyalty to the United Kingdom..."
Well, it depends on whether I feel that the acts that the UK carry out are deserving of my loyalty - I'm pretty sure joining the US in invading Iraq to remove their WMD's (btw, have we found any yet?!?!) did not deserve any loyalty.- "...rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values" - well, OK, but what if those rights/freedoms/values change? I'm sorry, but there's no way that I can GUARANTEE that!
- "...observe its laws faithfully and fulfil my duties and obligations as a British citizen" - well, maybe, but what if we get an extreme right-wing, and/or criminal Government, asking me to carry out illegal or immoral acts - does it still apply??
Statewatch editor Tony Bunyan seems to point out another couple of rather important issues too!
posted by Stuart 12:48 AM
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Duplicate sites, mirrors and doorway pages
A nice response to all those that call themselves SEO 'experts' who think that setting up identical 'mirror' sites and creating pages specifically for search engines is a Good Thing. One example from the article:
"There's a big myth out there that says you should bring in customers looking for things that might be similar to what you have, and then convince them to try your product instead. That could work for other forms of advertising, but that's not what SEO really is. Think highly targeted keywords and think exact keyword phrases."Those that disagree with the piece and employ, shall we say dubious tactics that fool search engines, will only prove to be successful in the short term as they will almost certainly be penalized in some way (you might also want to check out Google's page on Search Engine Optimizers too...)
One small thing I would add, though, whilst I'm on the subject of SEO, is that there's not really that much need to focus on those two, now infamous
metatags (descriptionandkeywords) - by all means give them a little thought and add them after the page is complete (as they can give results in some search engines a little tweak - eg. thedescriptionvalue in Inktomi is reasonably useful), but don't kill yourself over them! If you do many searches on Google check out the source of some of the top results and you may well find that some of them with few or even nometa description / keywordtags at all....and if that's not asking for a thousand responses pointing out sites (including THIS one) that rate highly containing the little fellas, then I don't know what will!!! ;o)
posted by Stuart 10:46 PM
Monday, August 11, 2003
It's been a while.......
OK, so I'm back! It HAS been a while since I last posted - some of that time has been taken up by looking for work, some of it, actually doing one or two bits and pieces. Not only that, but I'm hoping to get my ALL-NEW, fully XHTML/CSS-compliant, fully database-driven site up and running soon (finally waving goodbye to
<table>'s) - if anyone fancies a look (it's still at the work-in-progress stage, and I have not yet tested the layout on Mac browsers so feedback would be most agreeable :) you can see it at http://beta.stuarthomfray.co.uk.Right, on with the show! It's stats time again - just thought that I'd make a note of one or two 'interesting' visitor statistics from my log file for the past month or so (about 6 weeks):
OS's
- Windows XP - 26.6%
- Windows NT - 19.6%
- Windows 2000 - 19.6%
- Windows 98 - 19%
Turns out that 89.9% of visitors are Windows-based, with only 3.5% running Macs (funnily, 1% of visitors this month have been running OS/2). Linux gets 0.5% (c'mon you Gnutters...)
Browsers
- MS Internet Explorer 6 - 54.1%
- MS Internet Explorer 5.5 - 15.6%
- Mozilla - 3.7%
- MS Internet Explorer 5 - 3.3%
- Netscape 5 (?!) - 3%
Remember to take into account here that certain browsers do not neccessarily correctly identify themselves to the server (Opera can most certainly be set to identify itself as a Microsoft or Mozilla browser as well as an Opera browser). The other anomaly here is Netscape 5 - this may well be Firebird, but I'll need to check up on that one...
Other than that, Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers show up as 83.7% of visitors, with Netscape/Mozilla at 8.6%. Opera languishes at 1%, with Safari showing 28 visits and Lynx 12.
Finally the interesting one: Search Keywords
- stakka bo here we go - so your Winamp playlist CAN pull in visitors!!! :) Not on the first 10 pages of results, though
- bigsave backup - errr... ?!?! Could be useful, that - in at number 3!! ;)
- tiffany amber-thiessen nude pics - result #21 at AllTheWeb (unfortunately, I don't actually know who she is (my apologies Ms Amber-Thiessen!) but I'm sure that she's very nice!!! If I've mentioned here on my site anywhere, I'm not aware of it!
Update: it turns out that she's mentioned on the Clark Schpiell Productions info within my bookmarks database- images of aaliyah as a child - ehhh?!?!? Why??
- picasio jeans - Straight in at #1 with MSN (that bloody playlist has got a lot to answer for...)
- animated banana button - at last somebody realises what this site's about!!!!
- electropop midlands - number 2 at Google... "musik non-stop, techno-pop..." as good old Kraftwerk once said!
- pamela anderson nude pics - ?????
Update: another Clark Schpiell Productions description within my bookmarks database- milngavie nude - who is milngavie and why are they nude?
- army hussein portrait piss - quite proud of this one as I'm on the first page of results, although I DO wonder who the hell might have been searching these terms...
- how to make a dna tracking device - being number 2 at Google for this, I suppose I should really get on and post exactly how one would build such a device!!
- marketing bollocks dictionary - yes I AM the new Samuel Johnson!!!
Of course, now that these search terms are here, all together in a nicely packaged format, it means that everyone actively searching for results based on them will now find this page, thus enhancing their relevance to my site and defeating the object of wondering why they bring visitors here! The circle is complete, let the nightmare begin...
That's all for now (meant to post this yesterday, never mind..........)
posted by Stuart 4:03 PM
