Kerching

Up until a couple of weeks ago I had never made a penny from my internet presence. Not a dime. Not a peanut.

For some reason Bravissimo don’t consider my physique at all suitable to advertise their buoyant range of bras and glandular support devices – this despite my enthusiastic championing of all the marvellous work they do – and so my pleading to feature one of their banner ads on my web site fell on deaf ears. Even after I’d offered to do it for next to nothing.

Clearly their business brains are suffering from a poor blood supply. They might want to consider a cross-your-heart bra in future.

So I had reconciled myself to a life of non-monetary recompense for all my wonderful web work. I even turned it into a virtue.

Ha! Let others whore and sell themselves for baby wear lines and cholesterol lowering products. For me it is all about the writing. The written word. The art, my luvies, the art.

And then Marks & Spencer – or rather an advertising agency working for Marks & Spencer - approached me via email and offered to pay me $90 (yes, you heard that right: $90) just to feature a text link to their wine page on my main web site, pocketropolis, for a year.

Ha! I thought. Easy money if it’s kosher.

‘Cos I must admit I was a bit dubious about the payment actually being made. Despite my Willo The Wisp and fairy light demeanour (ahem) I am a cynical soul who wouldn’t so much look a gift horse in the mouth as give it a CT scan.

But – and this is what persuaded me – I haven’t updated pocketropolis in about 2 years. I’ve neglected it badly. It’s like a garden slowly going to seed. You know how it is – too many other pressing things to do; too many other creative projects, work, kids, life. But nevertheless this is where M&S and their advertising lackey wanted the link. Not on my blog (whose stats are looking so good they could be on a catwalk). But on my main web site that is starting to resemble a torched car left on a roadside in Essex.

Money for old rope then. (Hey, wonder if Bravissimo have ever thought about designing a bra made from old rope?)

So I added the text link. Not exactly in pride of place. And waited for payment.

It took a while. The old cynic in me began to hover its index finger over the delete key. All those prompt replies from the lackey when they were chasing me had stopped. I heard nothing for days.

And then just when I was about to give up the money arrived electronically.

Real money.

Just over £50 given the current crap exchange rate.

Shit. I’ve finally made money out of this internet thing. Money for nothing. My chics for free.

Easy.

And I don’t feel like I had to hack off a bit of my soul and hide it in an old locket for Harry Potter to find at a later date either.

It’s good. I think I have the bug. Now I want to make some real money. Big bucks. Amounts that would make a Swiss banker cry.

See, I have this idea for a web site... kind of a social networking thing where people can upload photos and tag people in them only I’ll assume copyright of all their images and then secretly deploy face recognition software which can be abused by third parties to identify everybody on the site and all of them can pay me loads of money to trample all over everybody else’s human rights...

Cool, huh?

Or do I need to hack off a bit more of my soul before I'm able to leap onto the Facebook bandwagon?


P.S. I was going to illustrate this post with a nice picture of a fulsomely filled bra. A rope bra. 'Cos it would fit the gag I made above. I typed "rope bra" into Google's image search.

Sweet Gee Zus. I thought I'd seen everything and could stomach about the same.

You learn something new everyday.

I need to start practising my double carrick bend.

It's a type of knot (in case you were wondering).

Shameless Plug

In an example of totally shameless plugging I hearby present an excerpt from the current home page of my personal web site, Pocketropolis:

So there I am walking along the main shopping thoroughfare of my own home town when suddenly the crowds part like some sort of Biblical miracle (the parting of the chav sea) and with an awful demonic whirr a shape both diabolical and familiar approaches my terrified form at a speed which must surely induce immediate suffocation in its rider. Amid the red and chrome glint of this monstrous beast I perceive a weapon of perverse shape and engineering aimed inexplicably at my quivering heart. I have a split second to dive out of the way and with the adrenalin still pounding in my ears I hit the carpet of the Pound Shop to my left as this pavement behemoth trundles blindly passed without even a by-your-leave or a thank you. As I pick myself up and wander dazedly back out into the sunlight I watch as other poor pedestrians are likewise terrorized by this path hog. Not content with owning a mobility scooter built like a Chieftain Tank, it’s driver has also seen fit to attach a pair of crutches to it in such a way that the vehicle is now equipped with a pair of state-of-the-art lances. I strongly suspect that this scooter also had full mine laying capacity and side mounted scud missile launchers beneath the seat but due to the speed of its acceleration I really can’t say for certain...The rest of the article can be read via Pocketropolis.co.uk.

Thank you for your kind attention.

It’s Getting Hot In Here

It’s interesting to watch the theme of global warming slowly but surely gathering pace and momentum on all the major news channels on TV at the moment – at least on the UK ones anyway – helped I’m sure by the idiotically mild winter that we’re "enjoying" at the moment.

Scientists are both amazed and concerned that all over the country daffodils and hosts of other spring flowers are already appearing months and months ahead of schedule. Bees have also been spotted in various places - looking very confused and sluggish (mind you if you were a bee and you looked like a slug you’d be justified in your confusion). None of this is good.

One good frost could either wipe out the lot or severely stunt future growth.

Such advance flowerings and early insectoid awakenings have other more fundamentally worrying knock-on effect too: they upset the whole balance of the ecosystem which runs itself based on the timings of a million different variables. If those variables are now messed up then the whole system is liable to crash. In today’s computer age it’s an analogy that I’m sure we can all identify with.

The question is no longer: "does global warming exist?" but "what are we going to do about it now that it’s here?"

It’s about time that the politicians of the world realized that we no longer have the time or the leisure to debate the issue. We have to act now. The pendulum is already swinging...

For those of you that are interested, I’ve written more on this topic on my web site at www.pocketropolis.com

Pocketropolis.com Is Back

Done it!

Up yours Web-Warehouse!

Finally after much emailing and document swapping, after numerous faxes and photocopying of "Government issue photographic IDs", after much wrangling with various US based domain name registrars and complaining to www.icann.org... finally www.pocketropolis.com has been fully reactivated and placed totally back under my control.

Full victory has at last been achieved.

I realize this news won’t mean diddly-squat to anybody else but me but I am crowing loudly enough about it this morning to want to share it with the whole world. It is the attainment of the glorious cup of success that I’ve long been thirsting for. And proof positive that perseverance in the face of big anonymous companies can sometimes get you what you are striving for.

On a more sober note I have to say that this experience has taught me how little protection there is for the "little guy" on the World Wide Web... but it’s nice to acknowledge the positive role that www.icann.org played in this particular mini drama. Cheers guys... whatever you did nudged certain somebodies in the right direction and got things moving...

My world is now as it should be.

Sigh.


Fix bayonet. On with business...

Pocketropolis News

As some of you will have noticed www.pocketropolis.com has been off the air now for the best part of three weeks. My attempts to recover it continue apace. Without going into the nitty-gritty Web Warehouse (the current hosts) have continued to be totally incommunicative leaving me to go it alone in figuring out a solution. Emailing the various US based registrars that Web Warehouse do business with merely resulted in the usual game of informational ping-pong whereby I was pushed from pillar to post and back again until, finally, an email sent to www.icann.org flagging the problem finally produced some concrete results. In response to this a Registrar in America (who I won’t name) then sent me a form to fill in which should - in a week or two - hopefully see www.pocketropolis.com placed completely back under my control.

I will keep you posted.

Victory

Wow. Result. Pocketropolis.com has been fully restored.

I’m almost gobsmacked. It’s amazing what you can do with a horse’s head and a computer.

This means I am now operating my cerebral circus of internet buffoonery from two web sites - Pocketropolis.com and Pocketropolis.co.uk. Could this be the start of a web based, globally ambitious evil empire?

Mwuh ha ha! Mwuh ha ha! Mwuh ha ha ha!

Hit Man

The battle for Pocketropolis.com has commenced.

I have just issued Stuart Conroy, the erstwhile director / technician of Web Warehouse, a not very veiled threat that if he doesn’t restore full ftp access to Pocketropolis.com to me by the close of business tomorrow I will initiate the transfer of the domain name elsewhere.

Yeah, that’s right! You don’t mess with me! You wanna start, eh? Do ya? You wanna start? C’mon then! C’mon!

Of course, given the appalling service that Web Warehouse has been spitting my way of late I should just commence transfer proceedings forthwith... but even in the midst of my Ray Winstone-like rage I have this lame desire to give Mr Conroy yet one more chance to make good.

God I’m so soft.

“Yes, Giuseppe, I appreciate that you have the horse’s head all ready and waiting. Yes, I know you’ve risked life and limb to get into Mr Conroy’s bedroom. Yes, I’m well aware that a horse’s head in Mr Conroy’s bed will terrify him into immediate compliance. I just feel that giving him one more chance won’t do any harm and will reflect the better on us. Bring Dobbin home and we’ll re-schedule for Wednesday. Bad-a-bing.”

Yeah, deep down I know that I’m wasting my own time. Nothing will have changed by Wednesday and ultimately I’ll have to make good my threat to transfer Pocketropolis.com (a whole new can of worms in itself). I guess I just lack the killer instinct.

Mind you if he refuses to allow the transfer then I WILL get mean. I’ll be directing some pretty stiff complaints to the www.icann.org ombudsman, I can tell you.

Yeah.

Bet ya scared now, eh?

The Death Of Pocketropolis.com

Cheesed off isn't the phrase.

Due to an incompetent and infuriatingly incommunicative web host - Web Warehouse - www.pocketropolis.com has effectively been disabled. For the time being it is suffering the internet version of a coma. It's there to look at but I can do eff all with it.

I won't bore you with the details but needless to say I'm about to commence what will probably be a very protracted process (given that the support team at Web Warehouse seem incapable of answering emails or publishing a telephone number that actually works) of transferring www.pocketropolis.com to a brand new web host... most likely the one you are utilizing now to read this blog. Once I've achieved that - and frankly I'm not confident given the contempt Web Warehouse show for their customers - www.pocketropolis.com will rise again.

In the meantime I have had to hastily set up a new domain name from which the legend that is Pocketropolis can operate: www.pocketropolis.co.uk

Welcome to the new world order, folks.

P.S. You'll see from the reply to the "Curse You Courier!" entry below that the blogging article isn't now due to appear in The Courier until Friday 20th. Just as well, really. It's given me time to set up this alternative domain name. I've emailed the journalist and hopefully he will be kind enough to update my web address in his article...

The Birth Of Bloggertropolis

Ok. Technically it should be “re-birth”. After nearly 2 years of hand coding my own blog on Pocketropolis I’ve finally taken the plunge and got me one of these here new-fangled third-party software driven automated blog things which means I can concentrate on the laughable quality of my writing while some clever programming script does all the necessary back-flips and butt slapping to get it presented on-line in a fashion both ship-shape and aesthetically pleasing. All at the click of a button.

Marvellous.

I love technology me.

Especially when it’s slapping my butt.

Seriously. Don’t knock a bit of html S & M until you’ve tried it. I love nothing better than being <> tagged to within an inch of a massive header.

Damn. First entry into my new blog and I’ve already fallen into the techie pervert trap... somebody better come and smack my script up. And fast.