Archive for April, 2005

The Death of Faith

Saturday, April 30th, 2005 | Life

Quick post – The Death of Faith is some wierd play that was just on Radio 4. Although strangly it was actually good.

Upcoming summer project

Saturday, April 30th, 2005 | Life

It just wouldn’t be exam time if I was working towards my exams. I try but there is only one thing on my mind right now – my upcoming summer project in the form of a big celeb portal. It has been in development for a while though I finally secured the domain, Celeb Storm, earlier today.

Until now it has simply been known as Project Frog Net. Which I am still using for the test website as the main site is just displaying a holding page as I don’t want to launch the official site yet, just get the domain into the search engines.

The development isn’t going that well though. I want the site to look fantastic and, well, it doesn’t. The site looks good but it just doesn’t feel like a major celeb portal like MSN Entertainment or IGN. It really annoys me when I can’t get designs up to their standard. I know they have loads of designers and stuff but still.

Sleeping would be cool right now

Tuesday, April 26th, 2005 | Life

Well, it’s around 11:10 pm, probably 11:15-11:20 pm by the time I post this. I would like to say that I am amount to go to bed and get a good nights sleep because I have loads to do tomorrow but I still have to update all the fan sites. Fun.

I haven’t done anything all day as I’ve been out for a meal and the cinema (saw Hitch, pretty cool movie) as it’s my dad’s birthday. Which means I missed brand new Star Trek: Enterprise, Dead Like Me and The O.C. but I am sure I can catch up with them later. I can right!?!

Anyway tomorrow I finally have to train the kids and I have loads to do to prepare. I was prepared but then I had the meeting beforehand (which happens the day before, real good timing) and now I need to make loads of changes. Ah well, once tomorrow is over I can sleep for like 16 hours straight.

The launch of my new project

Sunday, April 24th, 2005 | Life

Well know, three posts in one day, this brings be back to when we first started the site and I just couldn’t stop posting. It was a serious problem; I had other things to do back then. Still the past is gone and we must look forward to the future – namely my new project.

A few hours ago I set up Buffy Wiki. It’s going to be like Wikipedia only about Buffy ;). Basically, I am hoping all of the fans of the show will come and contribute and expand on all of the topics and such. The original idea was to use it for developing the series created by fans and I am hopeful of this too.

Customizing it hasn’t been easy, there was a lot of altering CSS with nothing happening. Still, I think I am gradually getting there and just have some other things to do before it looks reasonably ok. I am really pleased with how the logo turns out.

I actually created the site as part of a bet that Darkfire challenged us all to, to see who could get the most popular site in thirty days. The site has to be started from scratch today s I’m hoping if the site takes off it should do pretty well.

The Bill Gates interview

Sunday, April 24th, 2005 | Life

I think I speak for all of us when I say, when is the 50th episode of The .NET Show going to arrive? They posted about it in March will the big announcement that Erica’s Someone@Microsoft.com would feature Lord Gates. Still no word? Meh!

In related (and when I say related I mean unrelated news) the CassieNet News crawler appears to have well, stopped crawling. The headlines just appear to have stopped coming. I should really look into it but it’s so depressing when stuff stops working. I might just have a moan at someone and blame them.

Also it looks like Seremia might be getting back into action. Deni has decided to go with the drums (which is no surprise considering how cool the Dragonforce drummer looks, your just plain weird if you don’t want to look like that!) and we may have a new guitarist too.

Next years TV lineup (oh dear god no!)

Thursday, April 21st, 2005 | Life

My title speaks for itself (ok it doesn’t) – ARGH! I am referring to Star Trek: Enterprise and the lack of a next series! Notice I am taking the time to re-write to make this content family friendly. But this is sick and wrong. 40 years Star Trek has been going and Paramount are just going to throw that away?

It must have been going like five series now (there are four listed but I think the next one will be on later this year – or maybe not, I don’t know). All Treks need to run for 7 series! Next Gen did, DS9 did, Voyager did. That is how it works. And will no other Trek take over from it? It actually makes me feel sick to think of it.

I want to cover some other stuff though I am sure I will be back to this subject at a later date. ABC’s teen drama Life as we know it won’t be back. With The O.C. and One Tree Hill in competition, it’s not a huge surprise, though. Desperate Housewives, West Wing, 24, The O.C. and Scrubs will be back. Also Alias, I thought that had already ended. We haven’t had new episodes in the UK for ages.

While I am on the subject of things ending, I am tired of everyone saying episode six will complete Star Wars – it won’t! There are nine episodes. Chewbacca has been on contract for them for ages (probably since the original) and IGN are talking about the storylines for the films.

Ok, screw it; I am going back to Enterprise now. Who does Paramount think they are kidding? Star Trek was cancelled before, they couldn’t keep it down. This time fans got together to fund the show themselves but the studio turned them down. Take the money and finish the series! This is Star Trek! People fluently speak Klingon so don’t even try to tell me it’s just a TV show, it is part of our culture!

How many pages do I actually have online?

Saturday, April 16th, 2005 | Life

I was wonder today about how many web pages I actually had. I thought search engines might be a good idea. Although I actually have more than they index it would at least be some kind of helpful pointer. I searched Google, Yahoo and MSN for "Worfolk Online" which I used as the majority of my pages have a copyright notice saying this at the bottom.

The results of the test won’t be totally accurate for several reasons though. Firstly not all of my sites say that at the bottom and secondly because search engines are not going to index all the pages on a site due to the sheer volume. As for results relevance MSN storms it again with the most relevant links followed by Yahoo and Google coming in a lowly third.

MSN are really kicking ass with this relevance thing. The top result was Worfolk Online as it should be. This was followed by Worfolk Corp, Worfolk News, Worfolk Creative, Worfolk Music and Worfolk Pictures. Yahoo had a similar line up – Worfolk Online, AdTech (Worfolk Online ad technology), Worfolk Corp and Worfolk Pictures and Worfolk Music being lower down.

Google’s lineup consisted of Worfolk Corp, The Gurkin, Evil Genius Magazine, the list goes on. Worfolk Pictures was on page 2, Worfolk Music on page 3 and Worfolk Creative on page 4. The actual Worfolk Online site was nowhere to be found!

Anyway results of the test. MSN found a total of 6 thousand results, Google managed 27 thousand and Yahoo indexed the most with 47 thousand. I don’t think the Yahoo figure is that far off the actual figure. Well it probably is but it’s getting there ;).

Rover is gone, face facts

Friday, April 15th, 2005 | Life

In case you haven’t heard, MG Rover has collapsed with no hope of rescue. Now everyone is really annoyed. People want the government to bail it out. No! Face facts it’s a failed company. What good is it going to be if it gets bailed out? It’s clearly not going to work as a business; even BMW couldn’t make it work.

It’s being called a tragedy. I don’t think so. It’s not a sudden shock (due to the company’s history); it’s not a big scam like Enron. It’s just that the business couldn’t make any money and so it eventually went out of business. It has happened before – the government bailed it out previously before it took on the name Rover.

Also people have been attacking the Phoenix Group led by John Towers that took on the company after BMW decided to dump it. One person said he was "like the devil really." Erm? So yeah you would have liked to loose your job when BMW decided to dump the company right? Because that is what it sounds like to me.

Maybe the directors did take money out of the company – isn’t it there company to take the money out of anyway? But that’s beside the point, the company has failed, it would have done eventually anyway as only a few car manufacturers can survive so just let it drop, it’s over.

The Blair Witch Project

Thursday, April 14th, 2005 | Life

I just need to squeeze a post out really, it has been a while. I’ve just spent the last hour or so listening to the audio commentary for the Blair Witch Project. I was going to watch it months ago, but you know, I didn’t. We are studying it in media now though so I thought I might as well.

It was fairly entertaining as there were five of them the two writers / directors and three producers. I love Blair Witch for several reasons. First of all as Dawson Leery put it, Hollywood got bulldozed by a group of friends with a camcorder. Encouraging for would be film makers such as myself.

What is cool is how it all got made though. They basically handed the three actors some cameras, supplies, etc then just sent them off into the woods for a week. They dropped supplies and stuff but for the most part they were on their own. Which is what gave all the emotional shots and stuff such reality.

Actually, there is one point I didn’t mention – I launched a
new webmasters forum along with Ceon recently which you want to check out (not
that I am telling you what you want to do or anything but you do want to 😉 –
it’s called Maze Dev.