Important information for bloggers using eXTReMe Tracking.

Some of you using this free referrer tracking facility will have noticed a big jump in traffic over the last couple of days. It appears that some enterprising twat person has created a link-farm system that trawls eXTReMe code and inserts multiple referrers into your records.

The links all point back to a handful of sites selling cheap pharmaceuticals. How these business models are sustainable is beyond me - depressingly it means that a fraction of people who they dump their spam to actually send them money. Sometimes I really do wonder about people.

You should be able to filter out these searches fairly eaily, as they all come from a single range of IP addresses.

• Go to your eXTReMe referrer page, and click on the 'Lost My Code / My Account / Support' link.
• Enter your account login and password and once you're logged in, click on 'Edit your Tracker & Account Details'.
• At the bottom of the page this takes you to are 5 fields for excluding IP addresses or ranges of IP addresses.
• In the first field, enter 69.50.175.* (If you have already exluded some IP addresses, you will have to re-enter these along with the new one - check on the main account page before you enter the new information).
• Make sure you have entered your password at the top of the form, and then click 'Make above changes'.

The changes happen immediately, so as long as this link-spamming is coming off this range of IP addresses, you won't see them in your stats.

posted at 1:50 PM •

One year ago I was dwelling on my inability to get sex. I was living with my lodger who would come home from his benefit defrauding job each night with a different conquest. Meanwhile, I would go to bed alone each night and ponder how I had ended up single and lonely, while my flatmate shagged and my ex cuddled up to his new boyfriend.

In the year since then, I think I've had a grand total of one sexual partner - and nothing resembling a relationship. And now, finally, I'm starting to love it.

I'm beginning to feel like an ex-cult member - I no longer really want the messy complexities of sex or relationships. I haven't seen the fuck-buddy for over a month. We text each other, but my heart just isn't in it anymore. He seems to text me the day before he goes away for the weekend, let's get together next week, looking forward to it - and then I won't hear from him again for two weeks when the text tennis starts again.

He texted me on Tuesday, looking to get together on Wednesday night and I texted back I was busy. Fifteen-love. I just feel so indifferent to it all - I have better, more fulfilling things to do, like, um, sorting my recycling and watching 'How Clean Are The Filthy Fulfords' and 'Cutting Edge'.

I just can't be bothered with all the farting around with dealing with gay men. I've let my gaydar subscription run out. Click, yawn, click, minger, click, up himself, click, yawn click yawn click. All the neuroses and hang-ups, desperation and conceit I can do without.

Of course, it does beg the question: is a gay man who doesn't have sex and doesn't really want it still gay?

posted at 11:29 AM •

Don't you just hate it when you come up with a really good idea for a website, only to find someone has beaten you to it?

Well, in any case, my idea is better - this site divulges the entire plot of a film, rambling on for entire paragraphs for chrisaakes. Who has the time to read paragraphs these days? No, my version of a spoiler webiste would be along the lines of:

The Crying Game 1992
She's really a fella.

Job done. No fannying around here, just straight in and ruin the entire film in one (semi-) sentence.

Hello anyway, sorry for the lack of blogging around here lately. I've been flat-out at work, and either too tired or too lazy to write when I get home from work. Oh, and the occasional preview screening to go to...

The 40 Year-Old Virgin 2005
He gets laid.

Well, I think you would have guessed that one from the title. Very funny but overlong film starring Steve Carell (plays Ricky Gervais' character in the US version of The Office). The film is definitely in need of a good thirty minutes of cutting back, but a very very funny nonetheless.

The rest of the time I've been just mellowing out and enjoying life. Not terribly entertaining for you, but a nice change from the drama of the last two or three years for me.

posted at 12:03 PM •

Lunchtime hip-hop.

Getting away from my desk for an hour is a struggle. On a whim decided to pop down to Borders on Oxford Street to see if they had a copy of Butt magazine kicking around. Pass four Shelter chuggers, my do-not-approach aura clearly on the fritz as two of them tried their circus-style freakshow beckoning tactics on me. Pfft, fools.

No joy in Borders so I stroll over to HMV, a guy who seems to be regualrly positioned outside a tat clothes shop a few shops up asking me if I liked hip-hop for some reason. I ignore him too, and resolve to work on my fuck-off-and-die look.

Listening to a track on HMV in-store radio, of which of course I miss the name of. Asking the staff seems like a good idea at the time, but then these things often do. The britpop-fringed loafer looks at me like I'm some total lunatic when I tell him the lyrics were something about Bea Arthur and California.

Luckily Google saves the day - California by Rufus Wainwright.

posted at 5:52 PM •

I've been thinking about writing something about Father's Day this year, but then Jimbo has gone and written something which has so many similarities to my experience of growing up without a Dad, so I thought I'd link to his post instead.

The only part we differ on is our respective attitudes towards the day - growing up I used to loathe the assumption that everyone had a Dad to wish happy Father's day to. I always used to get acutely embarrassed, especially in school whenever asked about my Dad.

I knew as soon as I told people he was dead, I'd get the full blast sympathy "oh, I'm so sorry" treatment. It was and still can be excrutiating.

Well, happy Father's Day, Michael Stephen Powell. Wherever you are.

posted at 3:35 PM •

You make it to the tube on time for the first time in about three weeks and three days, which isn't so great because it means you have to get on a busy train an there's no seats left, and you think that maybe it's not such a bad thing that you're late every gosh darn morning because at least you get to sit down.

And you stand in the little alcove at the end of the carriage, propped between two people trying to perch themselves on the high seats above the fire-extinguishers, except their legs aren't long enough to they keep sliding off the seats. The train pulls out of the platform and you begin to feel a fart brewing and oh god there's nothing I can do it's going to seep out and it's going to be a real silent but deadly one. You can always tell.

And you're standing there trying desperately to hold it in, but it's futile because it's a silent-but-deadly, and there's nothing you can do to stop them getting out. You fart, and the smell slowly starts to expand in all directions in space from you, and you know that any second now the guy trying to perch on the seat above the fire-extinguisher is going to smell it. So you start the performance, you make disgusted faces, you look around trying madly to lay the blame on someone else just by staring at them, but you realise that he who smelt it dealt it, and the perched man can smell it now and he looks like he's about to pass out.

Oh god, why do I always fart on the tube?

posted at 11:50 AM •

American 'Family' Association calls concerned citizens to ask Kraft to withdraw their sponsorship of the upcoming Gay Games.

In case you aren't already reching on your Shreddies in disgust, they kindly offer photographic proof of the sort of depravity that goes on at these celebrations of sodomy.

Note: very work safe pictures, unless you work somewhere that might object to you looking at pictures of drag queens with their arms around bare-chested tanned muscle boys.

posted at 11:32 AM •

Into my little paradise has appeared a grey cloud.

The gay guild (currently 'Iron Forge Ballet Club', soon to be 'Rainbow Carnage', moderator permitting - don't blame me, I voted for the former - much funnier) I play with in Warcraft is a fairly small, close-knit bunch. We haven't had any new members for a couple of weeks, maybe due to the fact that we can't recruit advertise for new members on the official forum boards without our posts getting shot down in flames. We have our own site however, and on Saturday a new member introduced himself prior to starting a character on our server and joining our merry band properly.

And wouldn't you know it's none other than my ex-'boss' from the company that tried to fire me back in 2003. It very much is a small world, even more so in a virtual world like Warcraft.

On finding out that I was soon to be joined by a new guildmate who had, once upon a time, wanted to see me sacked, I was a little perturbed.

Since leaving that company I have never looked back. I see the 'ex-boss' out and about every so often - many times when I was working behind the bar at the King's Arms he came in - funny, I always found something to do so as not to serve him.

Of course, I was all ready to demand the guild leaders get rid of him or I leave. But I slept on it, and I've mellowed out a bit. So what if he's in my guild? I'm not going to be forced to speak to him - I certainly won't help him out, and if it comes down to it, I'll make sure he knows who I am and maybe finally give him a piece of my mind and tell him exactly what I think of him.

Or I suppose I could just make him wear a pink tutu and laugh at him.

posted at 4:35 PM •

Crazy busy at work doing various film sites - have a look at lotdunseen.com - feature website for George A Romero's upcoming Land of The Dead. That is, if it works - we've been having a few issues with getting the DNS resolving properly. Check the full-screen trailer (if you don't mind a bit of flesh-eating zombie action) - and marvel at the registration form - that's my bit.

Actually loads I want to blog about but I just don't have the time - so instead, here's a few online bits and bobs I've been enjoying lately.

Insaniquarium - madly addictive feed-the fishies game.

Perry Bible Fellowship - one of the funniest, well-written comic strips on the web. Dark humour and intricate characters all in three panels.

Mistprintedtype - gorgeous hand-drawn and illustrated portfolio site with free fonts and Photoshop brushes, with a Brazilian punk-rococo flavour.

Threadbared - Laugh out loud funny photos and illustrations from old sewing and knitting patterns. Made even more funny by the sneeringly ascerbic commentary from weirdbabe.

posted at 4:12 PM •

Warcraft is in danger of taking over my life.

I've been playing now since February and it's taking up most (if not all) of my spare time. For those unenlightened readers out there, Warcraft is an MMORPG - or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Basically it's a PC game where you run around in your chosen character, questing, adventuring and generally killing things. It all happens online, and you play alongside several hundreds or thousands of other players.

Warcraft is becoming something of a breakout success, and there are roughly half a million players in Europe alone. Obviously this amount of people all connected together would require vast amounts of server power, so players connect to one of several servers, all containing the same game world.

It's a long way from my early gaming days on a ZX Spectrum - MMORPGs are half game, half chat client - some tasks require you to team up with other players, and trading items is an integral part of the game. There's even an auction house where you can sell your hard won loot to other players - all for in-game currency of course.

A general concept in-game is that players are free to join 'guilds'. Guilds can form around a number of things - a group of friends or players in the same country are the usual sort of thing, and generally exist to support players with trading or assistance with quests.

There are all-girl guilds - though the main problem there is how to prove that the person playing is actually female. There are guilds that are based around communism, with all players sharing the spoils of the group.

Oh, and there's a gay guild. Of which I am a member.

Remember me moaning about being gay taking over life? Really, I know I'm my own worst enemy, don't feel like you need to point this out.

The name of the guild is 'Loud and Queer' - a name I wasn't particularly thrilled to have floating above my character's head when I first joined up. But in a game world where a large number of people playing are teens or twenty-somethings who regularly use the term 'gay' to refer to something to be ridiculed - there's something to be said for being 'Out And Proud'.

All was well, that is until two weeks ago when the moderators of the game announced a revision to their policy of what characters and guilds can and cannot be named. One of their revised clauses directly targets our group as they have decided that names cannot refer or be suggestive of a players' sexuality.

The guild members have been holding their breath waiting to be told we had to change our name, and this weekend we were contacted by a 'game-master' giving us a week to come up with something not in breach of the new rules. While we decide on a new name, they have helpfully provided us with a temporary name, which they inform us we may decide to keep.

And the new name?

'The Iron Forge Ballet Club'.

We can't quite decide whether to keep it - although how this is in any way less suggestive of sexuality I'm not quite sure - and it does smack just ever-so-slightly of stereotyping. The fact remains though, it's absolutely hilarious - I just hope we will be provided with tutus for when we go killing zombies.

posted at 1:06 PM •

Nice work if you can get it.

I have spent this morning making tea-stained "parchment" to scan in as textures to use for creative on an upcoming movie website. Much fun folding, staining, creasing, aging - then in the oven on a low heat for ten minutes. And I didn't even have to ask a parent or guardian to help.

Later I may poo my pants and then have a tantrum over a red crayon for a proper authentic kindergarten feel to the day.

posted at 11:28 AM •

Breaking up is hard to do. But compared to what Jennifer Aniston must be going through right now, my experiences are like a walk in the park.

There you are, married to The Most Beautiful Man In Hollywood™, your post-Friends career is really getting started, and then it all falls apart. And then your ex appears in a film with his new girlfriend, The Most Beautiful Woman In Hollywood™, Angelina Jolie. And they look great together. And they have great (between scenes) sex. And Angelina has the Most Beautiful Tits In Hollywood™.

I'd be jumping under my Mercedes convertible faster than my publicist could issue 'it's a tragic accident' suicide-denial statements.

Brad and Angelina star as Jane and John, Mr and Mrs Smith - top-flight assassins both hiding their real jobs and identities from each other. There's lots of killing, explosions, very large bazookas and guns, high-speed family SUV car chases.

It's funny, sexy, and amazingly clever for what it is. Clever use is made of Jane and John visiting a marriage counsellor in the first act, as we see what has happened to their "five or six" year marriage with so much being unsaid between them. There's much tongue-in-cheek scripting as they struggle with the fact that both of them is bored to tears in the sham suburban marriage they have both created.

Of course, they eventually discover that the other is working for a rival assassin agency, and they are given 48 hours to kill each other.

I won't give any more of the film away (though if you watch the trailer, you should be able to join the dots yourself), but definitely recommend seeing it. The only thing I'd say though is that there's a bit of a gender-divide as to how the film is perceived, but I'm pretty sure the gays will love it.

posted at 10:15 AM •