It’s about time that I brought Listen To Musak back to life. So, I have decided to do some work around here and see what stays and what goes. It could be a lot of fun going back through all the posts that I have had here over the years. I probably won’t delete anything but I am going to review everything and see what it’s all about.
Today must be like a good dose of Bifidus Digestivum for my database. You know the tellybox ad that tells us that digestive discomfort affects 56% of women, or some such statistic, and then tells us to eat a pro-something yoghurt type thing and in two weeks we won’t feel like we want to fart so much?
Think of junk comments (15,481 of them) and junk trackbacks (3,598 of them) as well as the undetected junk comments & trackbacks (about 7,000 in total) as that bloated feeling and the delete button as a daily helping of tasty Activia from Danone (this blog accepts freebies if you want to contact me). In fact, to help my database get over the discomfort I thought about buying it a blanket and some cushions but it said another Rhubarb Fruit Yoghurt or a tasty Prune Fruit Layer would be better.
So there we go, scientific proof that fewer comments makes you less gassy. So, I turned them off.
2005: By Ek
2004: Save A Pop Idol
2004: Open House 2004
2004: Back Ache Update
2003: Oh Canada II
2002: Don’t Call Me Stupid
Photo by dog007 at Flickr
I’ve just been through the backlog of comments that have been building up on the Man of the Moment section. Even though there has been no new content since April 2006, it seems people have been happy to keep the interactive comment section ticking over.
The Take That reunion seems to have sparked a renewed interest with Mark Owen fans. Dancing On Ice did the same for Stephen Gately.
Here on Listen to Musak it appears the 2007 Formula One season export for Outlook calendars seems to have been a hit. The data was pulled from a preliminary calendar and, as such, need updating. Perhaps I’ll get to that before the season starts for real.
2004: Defining Your Own Space
2004: Similarities At BBC Radio
2003: Freddie, Will and George
2003: And The Years Pass
Warning: This is a pointless, ridiculous entry but I wanted to note how something as simple as the typography can change my whole perception of Listen to Musak.
I mentioned earlier in the month that I had been playing with the design of the site. I was looking at WordPress and Movable Type’s settings. I’ve been wondering what on earth to do about the design which was annoying me (I have no idea why) but I discovered the easiest solution. It’s all to do with the point size of the font and this slightly larger font that I put in place on Saturday has solved all my problems.
I wonder how the launch of Google Analytics will impact the other companies in the space? And what’s more, who knows what’s next. Nice, simple to use interface and, as it’s tied in with their advertising programs, it could be very useful to some people. Certainly saves having to explain multiple systems to people. Perhaps I’ll sign up.
2004: Grid Lock
2003: Last Orders at the Liars’ Bar
2002: This Is How A Thriller Should Read
Well, it’s been a while. Tonight I have spent a few hours building and rebuilding this site trying to get various parts of my Movable Type installation to work.I switched to the default templates for a few hours thinking that this might make things easier but, with hindsight, that was a very bad idea. In switching to the default templates a good selection of my settings were removed (like the way I name the archives). So, I then spent another hours or so trying out WordPress – which was very impressive and fast – but I don’t know if I have the energy to switch. I shall have to see how I feel tomorrow!
2004: A Box That Does It All
2004: Eleven Years In The Big Smoke
2003: Gangs Of New York
A few weeks ago I upgraded to Movable Type 3.2 (Movable Type is the nice and easy software that allows me to maintain this site). Since that upgrade I’ve noticed an increase in the number of attempted comments to the site – the vast majority of which are spam. I did, however, decide to approve one over the weekend on a post from 2004 from Rik, a sickened viewer, who seems to feel either that I have some relationship with Channel 4 or, perhaps, that I am some kind of comrade in the flight to rid ‘offensive and repulsive’ programming from our television screens. Neither is true but I have no problem at all with the fact that he found a programme – which I never saw – to be so worthy of such comments.
What does interest me is how somebody reading this site could so clearly think it is something other than a personal site. You see, it’s the small things that amuse me.
2004: Shrewsbury Abbey at Flickr
2002: Working Late (again)
I have always loved cinema trailers. Often – and you know this is true – they are so much better than the films. Well, I thought I’d try a trailer of my own. Look into the bar on the right of this site. See the Man of the Moment box? Since January 2004 it’s been Andrew Kinlochan. So … coming soon to Listen To Musak and new for 2005 a wholly new Man of the Moment entry.
Sorry, I know it’s not got one of those big American voices or some thumping out-of-this-world music but it’s the best I could do. In the meantime pick up the best of the previous entries: ex-boyband star Mark Owen, TV hero Dermot O’Leary or music for the new Millennium from Justin Timberlake.
Quick notes: I’m currently using the v5 style sheet in case you’re reading this in years from now and I’ve moved things. If you’re using an RSS reader then click here to go to the real Listen To Musak site.
I wonder if yesterday was the first time that the ‘on this day’ entry has provided me with three links at the same time?
2002 was full of links – Glastonbury and World Cup fever. The kind of thing I leave to del.icio.us now as tagging data is fun!
2003 had me developing my downloadable Formula One calendar. I haven’t done that this year – although I planned to. Formula One is still a big part of my summer.
And last year I was moaning about Yahoo offering me extra mail storage and then not handing it over. Well, that was all resolved and something to do with the fact my Yahoo account pre-dates Yahoo UK and thus is – technically – a .com account but is all uk-ised by my location preferences. Understanding a user’s location but offering them the same quality of services (rather than service) is something they still haven’t got. My Firefox Yahoo tool bar, for example, is a lot more useful if I pretend I am in the US that if I am in the UK. Still, I live in hope.
No other posts on this day.
So I had the day off work today and had planned on doing lots of things. I did, in fact, do quite a lot but not the things I wanted to do. I wanted to work on some web site projects and other stuff that I usually don’t get time to do. Still, I upgraded this Movable Type instance to 3.11 so I can see the new features. I did – also – move it to a MySQL database rather than leaving it on the static files that it used to be on. I hope this has made it better but there will be – no doubt – be some oddities that need ironing out.
Comments now need approval unless you have a TypeKey id. This is designed to reduce the amount of spam but if I find spammers have keys I will just turn all comments to require approval.