Google offer some great services. They have expanded well out of the remit of a plain search engine, but it’s still their search engine service that I like to use most.
I like to have a google account and one of the neatest parts of that is the alternative homepage. If you have a google account then try this - http://google.co.uk/ig
Once you’re there and signed in you can modify what is included on the page. Try something like this: Top left click ‘add content’, a little sidebar slides open. You can modify what sort of jazzy stuff you want displayed. Then you could try something like this: in the little sidebar copy and paste this into the input field that says ‘search by site or feed’ - http://artsandelbows.blogspot.com//atom.xml
Then as if by magic, there are the latest headlines from your favourite local arts blog on your customisable page. You can do that with any of the local blogs as well as any other site that has a RSS/XML feed. Oh yes, google.co.uk/ig is set as my homepage with a couple of my favourite feeds. Web at a glance.
So here is what I’m not happy with. I can do all sorts of funky stuff like that, but why can’t I add my favourite google searches to this page like the images or froogle ones that are default? How hard is that going to be for them magic webcoders at google? My main searches are google scholar and google books. Why do I have to go to the ‘more…’ section every time and pick it out of a list?
With the wave of new bloggers, welcome all, I’ve noticed that we are getting some serious skin/theme repetition. So I’ve made a little effort and got myself a new one to which I made some minor mods. Hope it isn’t too difficult for anyone to look at or read from.
Elsewhere on the circuit, seems someone has had the neat idea of listing all the local blogs in one independent spot. So if you haven’t already, get yourself over to Thanet Blog List and see if there are any you have missed.
BTW, in case you wondered, we failed miserably at the quiz on every round except Harry Potter. Though it did seem that everyone there has read the books except me, so we weren’t the exception.
Thats right homies, it’s come to an end. Tonight is the last quiz night at the Churchills, the coolest night in town where you’ll find all the cats. This week all the rounds were picked by lasts weeks teams, so will include such topics as WWE, Harry Potter, Quantum Physics and my personal favourite Corronation Street…. actually, I don’t know anything about any of them but I do like the real ales! It’ll be a damn fun night and if your the worse one there, they give you chocolate! whoop!
Sorry to say guys, but I have the scoop that nobody wants but we kinda expected. Eastcliff Richard has quit. I’ve been in email contact with Eastcliff Richard and he’s detailed a list of reasons why. Here it is in his own words:
Kevin asks, “Whats happening dear fellow? You have closed down your blog.“
Richards reply, “Several reasons dear fellow:
1. I’m having a prolonged sulk. Er, no, that’s not it. Let’s start again.
1. Things have got out of hand recently, and I’m not happy with the turn of events. The blog was meant to be satire and humour, not argy-bargy, and all I was hoping to do was have a bit of fun, and maybe make one or two serious points by sugaring the pill. If other people found it amusing too, all well and good.
I’m afraid I mishandled the Ram Skate business with our precious Dr Moores. It’s very hard to get ‘tone of voice’ across in the written word. I was trying to keep the debate on a banter level, clearly I failed, and now everyone seems to have ended up with a bad case of sense of humour failure.
2. When I started ECR I was genuinely hoping that other, more alternative blogs would spring up, and that’s happened, which is great. I think it’s about time for me to hand over the baton.
3. There’s been such a clamour of people wanting to know who I am, or who think they know who I am, that people are pointing the finger at anyone and everyone. The kind of stupid but scathing nonsense I write is generally best served up anonymously, there’d be little point if someone actually did find out who I am, so I’m getting out while the going’s good! Besides, I wouldn’t want to wake up one morning and find my cliff top mansion burnt down, would I? There are people like that around here, as I’m sure you know.
4. TDC is letting Thanet down badly, it could be so much better (go get ‘em, Tony!). Sorry, that’s not a reason, just a political point.
So there it is, the party’s over, but it was good, if a little odd, while it lasted. Good luck with Skin of Stars, do keep me abreast of hair developments so that I can recognise you if I ever wander over to **** for a pint of the Gaddfather’s finest.
Please feel free to publish this if you want (hopefully a bit of a scoop for you). Remember, don’t let the bstrds grind you down! I did, and now my legs are teeny tiny stumps.
Yours
ECR
P.S Sorry about all that Michael Caine stuff when you had your flash mob. At least you took it in the spirit it was meant!“
Well there you go fellow bloggers. That’s the scoop nobody wanted but alas we have. Let us keep on blogging, I know I certainly will.
Eastcliff seems to have sunk into silence. His blog is now sub-titled ‘Closed due to unexplained fire’. The blog comments have been turned off. The word on the circuit is that he’s thrown in the towel. This is a dispointing outcome to the furore over over the last week or so. Eastcliff has inspired many new bloggers, including me. His blog provided a central point for these new bloggers and frankly the much needed comical relief from all the dull bloggists, again including me. I wonder how well this new breed would do without that. Lets hope this is only a temporary haetus and we can get back on with the serious buisness of ridiculing Thanet.
On that note, I’ll introduce a new blogger who is probably the youngest yet at 17. margatedobson.blogspot.com
The nice thing about doing oonagi is that whenever gigs come up and I’m putting together the info I have to listen to all the music. There is so much music around now that is so accessible that it’s difficult to know where to start. Or infact, you may just get total music apathy and refuse to listen to anything but your Elvis collection.
So in putting stuff together this week I came across Peggy Sue & The Pirates that are going to be playing the Lido this week. I know everyone is pirate mad at the moment, so it was only going to be a matter of time till a name like this came along. The music though is stripped down cool. A couple of girls doing their vocal thing with some rhythmic guitar backing. I like it lots. Music doesn’t have to be complicated to be cool, musicians don’t have to rip the fastest solo on the planet or create the most obscure song structure to be cool (“I love that timing drop from 13/9 to 7/8, maaaan”). Check out PS&thePirates to see what I mean.
If your looking for new music in your own vein, then there is a great site called pandora.com. This is party of the Musical Genome Project. You just enter and artist or a song and it’ll play you stuff from other bands that you may like. It’s very good, though it does only let you try a limited number of searches (or stations, as they call it) before you have to sign up. Sign up is free but you must be located in the US. A quick search through wikipedia for US zip codes is a good work around for this. I think I located myself somewhere in Alaska.
Cripes, the Scrine Foundation (a local homelessness charity) seem to have got themselves in a bit of controversy over the flyer for an upcoming event at the Pharmacy Gallery, Margate. The charity is normally sooo careful with their associations, but they seem to have been caught out a bit here with upset at unnecessary depictions of Nazi subjected humiliations. This is a shame to been caught out like this as it’s such a worthy charity that deserves all the help and support it can get.
More details of event with the original post and discussion @ Arts & Elbows
I went round to Bills tonight. I’ve known him since I was brought to Thanet from Coedpoeth and was placed in Christ Church junior, which was then on Royal Road but is now on London Road. We went to secondary school together and is probably the person I’ve known longest. Tonight we jammed. He’s got a new electronic drum kit rigged up through his computer which, which I actually managed to play some beats on! Of course, the playing got worse and worse the more beers we drank, though I noticed how much more I grooved.
We spent time wandering through the wiki funny vandalism list. I only found it while doing the previous blog-post and I’ve found it terribly addictive. Through this I found an article on the geek language leet eg my name: k3v1n c4rm0dy. Bill was stunned that I didn’t know what this is, he can be so geeky sometimes. The thing that I thought is was very useful for is coming up with passwords. I often use phrases for passwords which include numbers, eg 5greenbottles, but it’s nice to have a good technique that avoids actual words which is vulnerable to a brute force password scan, see my googlepages link to see a screeny of the result of this type of attack.
I’m sure all those of you who use the internet on a regular basis must know wikipedia. The online encyclopedia that is written and moderated by it’s users. I’ll admit to being a bit of a community obsessive, so the concept of wikipedia suits me just fine. As I’m sure we’ve all heard though, wikipedia has been having some problems, most famously of which is vandalism. Though this has always been a possible problem, it comes to light more and more as the reason people don’t use it. It’s a shame as the site self moderates well, with most mis-information being reverted within 2mins (IBM research, 2002).
Alas the more people that use the site, the more bad elements there will be. Earlier this year the Capitol Hill servers had to be banned during an investigation to profile adjustments of public figures. The UK parliament servers also had to be similarily investigated for such profile grooming. Infact, profiles are probably the most vandalised pages on wikipedia, along with the entry on cheese. There was a recently famous example in which two radio one DJs vandalised each others profiles on air, I don’t think that is a good example to set. There is a list of funny vandalisms that have been kept for interests sake and there is also list of regular vandalised pages, if you want to know whats most likely to be dodgy
Still, my faith remains. When me and my ma hit the Telegraph Saturday general knowledge crossword and get stuck, the first port of call is always wikipedia (or winky, as my aunty calls it). Pages that are almost invariably safe are the scientific and technology pages. I doubt anyone but the geeks look at those pages, so that keeps me happy. Another page thats safe? My article I did on Manston village earlier this year. More than you ever wanted to know about a small village in the ass-end of Thanet
Geeks aren’t dumb and on blogger they have found a very useful tool to improve their own sites Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The tool is that many bloggers, like myself, allow un-verified anonymous comments. All the geeks have to do is write a little bot that goes round to all these sites posting comments like ‘your blog is the coolest I’ve every seen »’. The little angle brackets look nice and innocuous don’t they? They are links to a site. Maybe the site the link points to has malicious script on it (the ones I’ve included just go to oonagi, so it’s safe). More likely it’s just a link. Here is where the SEO comes in. The more people that link to your site, the higher it ranks on search engines. So what are we supposed to do? The last thing I and many others want to do is make people log in to comment. Blogger does provide you with a tool of your own though. Word verification on comments. A funny little graphic where you just have to re-type the words. I’m afraid that’s what I’ve had to do. It’s an annoyance, but alas a necessary one.