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Month: April 2003

Net: Quick Bucks On Blogshares

April 21, 2003
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Quick Buck on BlogsharesGo on, have a look at the “Blogshares Top 100 Blogs” and see who appears in position 92.

Yep, it’s Richy’s Random Ramblings showing that all 10,000 shares (I’ve done a “share split” to double the number of available shares) have been sold in my blog and that each share is currently worth $3.92. Doesn’t sound a lot, but it means my lowly little blog is worth a whopping $11,738.24 and beats other well known blogs such as “Davezilla” and “Scriptygoddess”.

Now, if my shares in blogs I don’t read such as Deirdre on the WEB, MyDimension # unDefining Reality and JNalpak.com were to make sudden rises as well (as I’ve got 1000 shares in each of them worth just $233.33), then I’ll be able to sell them and hopefully buy some of my own stock back. But since each outgoing link from my blog is currently worth a massive $257.35, then hopefully me just mentioning them here will cause them to increase in value…

However, I’ve got a very strong feeling that my share price is going to slump by around $9,000 shortly for a short period of time – so I would advise people reading this to sell their stock in my blog now!

I’ve you’ve got no idea what I’m gabbering on about, go check out Blogshares, it’s still in beta (launches on the 1st of May), but it’s a whole lot of fun (for free!) and like me you could increase your initial $500 of virtual money up to $20,246 within a week. Now, if only I had the real life money to play the real life stock exchange….

Polls: Pucker Up!

April 21, 2003
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Surprise KissAfter coming across the What Sort Of Kiss Are You? quiz via Tracy (who found it via Brenda), I thought I’d see what sort of kiss I am (I personally thought I was a human, but it just goes and shows that nowadays you can’t be sure what sort of corporeal form you are!).

Allegedly, I’m a “Surprise kiss”:

You have a surprise kiss! Your partner is always pleasantly pleased to have you jump outta no where to dote them with a fun peck on the cheek or more passionate embrace. super markets and work places are your favourite places to attack your loved one with all your love =p

Hmm, maybe….

TV: Oneiric Accord Advert

April 21, 2003
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Honda Accord advertisementYou may have seen the new Honda Accord advertisement on television now (if not – have a look at the Macromedia Shockwave versions for 56k, 100k or 300k connections or the Quicktime version) – but were you aware that the advert is “real” (hence not computer generated as you’d expect nowadays), and that it took 606 takes to get right?

It’s a fascinating two minute long advert for the new Accord car and I’ve watched it dozens of times already (at least 6 times tonight) as it’s just amazing – from the counterbalanced tyres going up hill, to the way everything just interacts perfectly. If only I had a complete drivers licence and money I’d probably go out an buy the new Honda Accord because the advert is so good (at least Honda are getting lots of mentions for the new Accord because of it – there’s two threads on Metafilter about it).

According to what I’ve read about the advert, the music in the background near the end is “Rapper’s Delight” by “Grand Master Flash and the Sugar Hill Gang” and is probably based on the 30minute long 1987 French short film “The Way Things Go (Der Lauf Der Dinge)” by Peter Fischli and David Weiss amazoncom:B00005UW7W which also shows items moving in a domino effect – one thing “topples” another, which causes the next to move etc etc. But like many others, when I first saw the advert I was reminded of a childhood game called Mousetrap [Order from Amazon.co.uk] amazoncom:B00000DMFD where you used to set up the pieces and then turn the first wheel to start the trap going – I don’t think myself and my sisters actually played the game properly, but we got plenty of enjoyment just making it “work”.

Like Ext:Circ, I’ve also ordered (from Honda) a free copy of the DVD which includes a documentary, music video and illustrated guide to how it was made (you can fill out the form on Honda’s site or call 0845 200 8000 if you want one yourself) – but if you aren’t UK based, watch the advert anyway, it’s amazing!

PS: “Oneiric” means “Of, pertaining to, or suggestive of dreams; dreamy” which is certainly one way of describing this advert!

Search: New Microsoft Search

April 20, 2003
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Microsoft SearchAt the start of April, a Reuters news article came out which quoted Bob Visse, director of Marketing for MSN:

We do view Google more and more as a competitor. We believe that we can provide consumers with a better product and a better user experience.

Sounds ominous doesn’t it? Many people expected Microsoft to therefore create their own search engine (instead of just using Looksmart, Inktomi and Direct Hit), but it seems things have happened a bit quicker than expected!

Yep, a few people have noticed a new robot or crawler indexing the internet and all signs point back to Microsoft at the moment.

Whilst it hasn’t yet hit my blog, I have been hit by it on one of my other sites with the following details:

131.107.163.49 – – [20/Apr/2003:12:54:56 +0100] “GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1” 200 763 “-” “MicrosoftPrototypeCrawler (please report obnoxious behaviour to newbiecrawler@hotmail.com)”

The IP address 131.107.163.49 falls within the 131.107.0.0-131.107.255.255 (in otherwords a 131.107.0.0/16) netblock which is allocated to a certain Microsoft Corp of One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington, 98052, USA.

Using that information, I was then able to look at the logs again and saw quite a few page requests (I stopped counting after the 200th request made in the first 9 hours of today) from the IP address 131.107.65.225 (also owned by Microsoft) with the “Browser User-Agent” of “Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.2;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322)”.

So, it would appear Microsoft has launched a new spider/robot out on the Internet and its name is MicrosoftPrototypeCrawler, but Microsoft want to keep it slightly quiet for now by mostly hiding the user-agent string (which states what sort of computer and web browser you are using) as being Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 on Windows NT 5.2 (Windows XP claims to be Windows NT 5.1, so I would guess the new crawler is pretending to be on Windows .NET or 2003).

If the results from the crawler will be made public or not (or if they are just for internal Microsoft development for some reason), or what affect it’ll have on the Internet and the way people search – especially considering that according to Alexa Research, MSN.com is the 2nd most popular site world wide (Google is only 5th). But I’m wondering why MSN/Microsoft is so concerned about trying to semi-hide the crawler for now and why they are using a @hotmail.com address instead of a @microsoft.com one (the former doesn’t really give a lot of “respect” on the internet due to the fact anybody can get them for free).

News: Mwahhh! We’re back!

April 19, 2003
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Leicester City Football Club Motif/LogoYes!!! After a year stuck in Division One where we had to combine celebrating a new stadium with the football club going into administration, Leicester City Football Club are heading back to the Premiership League!

After our 2-0 win over Brighton (making it our 15th unbeaten game in a row), we have now been promoted back to the Premiership where we belong and the remaining three games against Sheffield United (who are just behind us at the moment in the league), Norwich (8th) and a strange team called Wolverhampton Wanders (Wolves: currently in 6th place) are just formalities – although we will try and continue to beat Portsmouth for the title of Division One Championship (we are currently 2 points behind them but have a game in hand).

To think, this time last year when Leicester was relegated (just for the one season), my boss (now ex-boss) was soo confident that we’ll stay down and his club – Wolves – would be promoted (as they were in the playoffs this time last year). Alas, it appears that Leicester City have got what it takes and poor Wolves are destined for another year playing Nationwide Football League in Division One.

One word: Mwahhhh! 😀

Nigel is celebrating, and I might even go out into Leicester tonight and do a bit of celebrating myself! Well done the Foxes!!!