robwoolford.com

Sup.

I got a tonne of shit in my bookmarks that I want to share. So here goes.

The Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations - a website dedicating to taking cartoons such as the smurfs WAY too seriously. You know when people tell you such a minute detail in a film is a comment on the war, or society, or 9/11, or whatever… well imagine that in cartoons. It’s funny to see the smurfs labelled communists, mind.

‘Don’t Stay a Virgin’ - some girl has decided she will sleep with virgins if they help her save the internet. Yep. Watching nerds desperately apply is rather entertaining.

25 Strange Collections on the Web - including things like belly button fluff and some guy who has over 700 posters of fish.

The Twenty Most Awesome Mothers on the Web

Bad Spock Drawings - errrr… this is one of the weirder ones… a website dedicated to drawings of spock from star wars. Yeah, that’s it.

200 Comics in Under 12 Hours. On the subject of comics - I don’t frequently fuck with online comics but some really good ones are ‘Overcompensating’, White Ninja Comics and my personal favourite The Adventures of Dr McNinja.

That’ll do for now. Back to boredom.

The other day I wrote about how this ‘blog’ was the 5 million and something-th most popular website on the net.

I’ve just this second checked out my uni project, www.worldhiphop.fm, to see how popular that was out of curiosity.

3,635,501st is the answer. Up 5,000,000 in the last few months!

And its the 1,145,277th most popular site in the United States!

Damn!!!!!!!!! I might have a think about launching that station for real. Shit more people are interested in that than what I’ve got to say on here haha! Hmmm… certainly food for thought…

In yesterday’s Observer Review, Robert McCrum was trying to evaluate the effect that the last decade has had on the world of books. Whether broadcast media and new forms of technology have hindered the progression of literature, or whether they have improved the written word.

Of course, the internet has to be at the heart of this discussion. And an apparently true statistic that I have seen banded around numerous times is that 175,000 new ‘blogs’ are launched everyday – which equates to around two new blogs per second.

In the time I write this post there will be hundreds of new blogs scattered across the internet. Whether they will be any good or beneficial to our children and our children’s children, well that’s another matter.

While many will point to the deteriorating grammar that now litters the internet (the endless LOLz!!! and text speak) as a detrimental effect on the written word, this new age of self-expression is something that I find very exciting.

This ‘blog’ is something I do in my spare time for around 10 minutes a day because throughout any given day there are thoughts that you want to share with the world. And ideas that you don’t want to lose. In ten years time I don’t suppose anybody is going to care about my commentary on culture, books, film, music or sports or any of that jazz, nor should they, but self-expression is important for every one of us – and for me blogs help me from talking shit in every day life.

It’s been a pretty strange experience at times having this website. I say this because whenever I write I don’t think about anybody reading this. I don’t expect any feedback and, to be honest, I don’t write for other people (that might sound weird seeing as I publish it all on the internet). I’m always writing for myself.

Recently I’ve had people talk to me in public about the things I’ve wrote on here, and I’m always taken back at first like “you actually read that?” or “how do you find it?” when in actual fact I know that anybody googling my name is likely to land here. More recently than that my girlfriend told me that her mum was on here have a mosey around.

This month alone I have had 1,206 visitors here on the website. That’s 1,206 unique people who have found their way here. And it’s been consistently over 1,000 per month since the turn of the year. It’s bizarre to think that that many people ending up here reading about my every day commentary on pop culture, or my uni experience, or family, or whatever it is I’m writing about. Why they should care I don’t know, but I guess whatever form of self-expression you want to pursue there are always going to be people around who will be interested in it.

I’ve kind of lost focus on what I wanted to say with this, but I guess it goes along the lines of ‘blogs are brilliant’. While the internet came around as a communications medium, what has developed has been a gold mine of educational and personal development. Whether people sift through wikipedia and google aimlessly, or whether they try to find themselves once a week by publishing their own thoughts, its something that is hugely beneficial to the human race.

But I guess the next generation of young adults will be best suited to comment in a decade or so’s time.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA’s highest scoring player of all time and six time MVP, has joined the ‘blogosphere’.

And it’s a very well written, clever corner of the internet from a guy who is so much more than an NBA great.

Kareem is also a bestselling author as well as a basketball coach and actor nowadays.

Check out his blog over at the LA Times.

Denaun Porter, a producer/rapper and member of D12, has launched a new website - www.mrporterbeats.com - to sell his beats, some for as little as $50.

Mr Porter, who has produced for artists such as Eminem, Dr. Dre, Xzibit, Busta Rhymes, Method Man, Snoop Dogg and Pharoahe Monch, is looking “to give back” to the rap community by helping indie artists.

As of tomorrow the website will go live and members will be able to browse a huge selection of Porter’s beats with the chance to obtain full ownership of the instrumentals.

Speaking to XXL, Denaun said: “I’m always getting demos from people who want to work with me or just want feedback. Unfortunately a lot of their work is not good because the music lacks quality. I can’t work with everyone but this site provides opportunities for them to have a direct link to my production.”

“If the music industry was driven by more innovative producers and visionaries, I believe there wouldn’t be drastic drops in sales. I have a tone of beats in my arsenal for artists that want to be creative and don’t want to sound just like everyone else that’s out there. One of the biggest problems of the music industry today is that majority of the artists being pushed are carbon copies of each other. There’s no creativity. All the production sounds alike. It’s time for people to step outside the box and go beyond the norm.”

Good idea. Wish DJ Premier would do the same :D.

If you’re reading this website I’m guessing there’s a good chance you know how to use the internet. And if you know how to use the internet yet waste it reading my site, I’d say there’s a good chance you also waste your time on the ‘net talking to mates via MSN.

“I’m” is a “new initiative from Windows Live Messenger (or MSN) where every time you start a conversation with someone, Microsoft shares a portion of the program’s advertising revenue with some of the world’s most effective organisatons dedicated to social causes.” The organisation is up to you. There’s no limit or cap on how much they’ll donate to each organization. So basically, you’re giving to charity just by talking to your friends. Hence the term “I’m making a difference”.

How much of a difference it doesn’t say. But whether 0.001p or 0.000001p of profits are made per contributor per conversation, 100,000 people starting 10 convo’s a day up will add up in no time.

I’m not trying to be mother Theresa by bringing this to your attention. I’m not really the charitable type. I’m always a believer that your money never goes directly where you want it to (someone has to pay for TV ads, and the lunches of workers in the offices, and the electric bills, etc.) infact by doing this scheme Microsoft will gain new users anyway, so it probably won’t harm their profits in the slightest BUT if you can help give money to these organisations just by talking to your friends as you do anyway, why not do it?

To do it you need Windows Live Messenger 8.2, which I’m assuming most people will already have, and you place a bit of code in your display name which becomes the “I’m” logo. That’s all there is to it. The code you put in depends on the charity you want to donate to.

Put in…
*red+u for American Red Cross
*bgca for Boys & Girls Club of America
*hsus for Human Society of the United States
*naf for the National AIDs Fund
*mssoc for National MS Society
*9mil for ninemillion.org
*sierra for Sierra Club
*help for StopGlobalWarming.org
*komen for Susan G. Komen for the Cure towards Breast Cancer
*unicef for the U.S. fund for UNICEF

Whichever you feel is the best cause, or the cause you want to attribute Microsoft’s money to.

I will be donating all mine to unicef. I think it’s a marvellous charity, but then again, there are no bad charities out of that list.

A big thumbs up to Microsoft for this theme. The cynics will say it’s a way to bring in users, but whatever the case good causes will benefit. I remember reading that Bill Gates will only be leaving a very small portion of his fortune to his children when he passes and the rest will go to charities (something crazy like 90% of his wealth). Apparently he also donates very generously to charities every year. So well played Bill Gates and everyone at Microsoft, I wish more companies would do the same.

For more info visit - http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/

Yeah she did.

Without steering this website in the direction of nudity and pornography… it’s Mischa Barton, and she’s fit, and she’s a celebrity… so I’ll point you in the direction of another site so you can see her boobies. I say boobies. I mean slightly see one boobie. It’s a bit pervy really now that I’ve typed it down. But whatever. If you’re interested, click here.

P.S. Surely the ugly guy holding her hand renders this unattractive in any way, shape or form?

Bonjour! Ca va?

- I am in a delightful mood, despite it pouring down with rain outside, because I have just finished one of my last essays of my 2nd year of uni. I have to do a presentation on friday, and then I have two weeks with very, very little to do! The downside of that is I need a job, but the upside is that with a job comes money, and with money comes smiles.

- I have just signed up to Facebook. Not sure of why I should when I already have a Myspace, I preferred it almost instantly. Myspace looks like something a kid drew in a scrap book, except with adverts on top. Facebook looks rather clean, almost dull but not quite, and is full of pictures. My profile can be found here. The groups are great. I have joined the Clayton Donaldson and Emmanuel Panther appreciation societies, something I thought would never exist. But it does!

- I also discovered a new favourite site. www.overheardeverywhere.com, which branches off into overheardinnewyork, overheardattheoffice and overheardatthebeach is a collection of bizarre/stupid/hilarious conversations that people have overheard on their travels. And some of them are fantastic. It’s not often I laugh out loud at my craptop, but this site has me giggling all the time. It’s so addictive too. I get to the bottom of a page and assure myself that the next page will be even better. Go and read the site now. It is great.

- I just read that Lost is going to end in 2010. :(. 3 more seasons of 16 episodes. That means it’ll only be on for four months at a time, and we’ll have to wait eight months for the following season. I sense a lot of future frustration. Lost is currently ascending towards the brilliance of its past, and I’d like to think that the finale in a few weeks time will throw up some interesting answers to a lot of questions… whilst throwing a new spanner in the works. I’m sure it will.

- Hayden Panettiere of Heroes is gorgeous. You should read about her on wikipedia.

- Have you ever wondered how dildos are made? Well, now you don’t need to wonder.

- I just found this in my bookmarks from ages ago. Type a command in and these girls may or may not do it. This was all the rage when I was about 16. But you know what, it’s still worth five minutes of my time.

- There are lots of drinking games on this site. Maybe you will find one you like.

That is all I want to share at this particular time. Au revoir.

After writing my guide to watching sports online I thought I’d write another one. It’s been a while since I’ve posted a round up of the week’s TV and links to download them because I was planning to write this guide (eventually).

I always get asked how to get hold of movies, music, tv and all these types of things on the net. It’s actually VERY easy.

To do it we use things called torrents. A torrent is a tiny little file, smaller than a word document, but it allows you to download whatever you’re after from other people.

You have to have a program to make use of torrents. There are plenty of programs out there, such as BitTorrent, but the one you’re going to learn (because it’s the one I use) is called Azureus. It’s great. You can download Azureus by clicking here. Bookmark http://azureus.sourceforge.net too for future updates.

Download it.

Now install it.

Open it up.

Make sure your firewall is set to allow Azureus.

You should then see this screen…

Do you see it? Good. Now onto the next step.

Now you need to find your torrent. For this guide we’re going to be looking for an episode of Lost. Season 3, Episode 19. Now we head over to a torrent website and search for Lost. We’ll use TorrentSpy.com, but also worth using are MiniNova.org, Pirate Bay, Iso Hunt and a whole host of others that you’ll become familiar with very quickly. Head to Torrentspy.com and there’s a search bar at the top. Enter “Lost” and this is what you’ll see.

Lots and lots of different things come up for Lost. Not all of them are what we’re after. Some are season 2, some are season 3, etc. We’re looking for Episode 19 of Season 3. So we need to look for S03E19 (Season03Episode19 if you will).

Ok good. There might be a few choices. Now we come onto things called Seeds and Leechers. This will help you get files faster.

Imagine a Seed as a party host, and a Leecher as people attending a party. The best party would be the one with the most hosts and guests, right? So if you see 5 seeds and 80 leechers you know you shouldn’t have many problems downloading whatever you’re looking for. If there’s 1 seed and 0 leechers you know it’s a pretty shit party… but if there’s nothing better on, it’ll do. What 5 seeds/80 leechers means is there’s 5 people sharing what you’re after and 80 people downloading from these 5 (but also 80 people sharing a small amount at the same time) whereas if there’s 1 seed/0 leechers there’s 1 person sharing and nobody else. If that 1 person decides to go offline, or has a crap internet, then you’re not going to get your movie/album/whatever very fast.

I hope that makes sense.

Also. Green means healthy (no trouble downloading). Yellow/Amber means its ok. Red means unhealthy (will struggle to download).

Now that you’ve found the torrent you want, with the right seeds/leechers click on it. And you’ll get its information…

Make sure to check the language (you don’t want to get Lost in Italian if you can’t speak it, do you?) and sometimes its worth checking “Comments” by scrolling down. If its not what it says it is (I remember once I spent ages downloading Rush Hour 2, and it turned out to be “A Knights Tale”… I was pissed) then people will leave comments saying so.

Now click Download. Save it wherever.

Open the torrent in Azureus by pressing the following button.

Then it should be added to your list… (yes, I’m downloading Mariah Carey’s discography, and no, I’m not embarassed by that… although I probably should be)

Yes?

Now lets examine some of the columns and things.

Done - obviously tells you how much of the file you’ve downloaded.
Status - if you’re waiting for the download to start and it’s set on ‘Stopped’ or ‘Queued’ then this is where you’ll see. Right click to stop/start/force it to start/etc.
Seeds - what we talked about earlier… the amount of people sharing the file(s)
Peers - the amount of people downloading the file from the ‘Seeds’

Download Speed - how fast it’s downloading
Upload Speed - how fast it’s uploading (this is you sharing it with others)
ETA - how long left until it’s downloaded…….

Once its done the file will appear in the circled section.

To clear it right click.

Then go down to Remove… torrent only. Right clicking on a torrent gives you loads of options. Which you’ll come to get used to the more you use them.

Now that you’ve cleared the file go and find it wherever you saved it.

Ta da!

Now you can watch Lost in Windows Media Player or whatever.

It’s the same process for movies, music, books, games, porn… whatever! It’s really that easy. Just make sure you get a good amount of seeds (a green bar if possible), you make sure the torrent is what you’re after and you read the comments so you don’t spend 6 hours only to realise you’ve got to watch the season finale of Lost in german!

As a rough guide, hour long TV shows should be about 350mb, movies should be between 700mb-1gb, albums should be between 40mb-100mb and games should be around 1gb or more too.

Mininova.org and Torrentspy.com are the sites I recommend.

Now go try it out.

A website has been launched with the revolutionary aim of recruiting 50,000 fans to take over a football club.

MyFootballClub wants people to pay £35 in a bid to raise £1.4m to buy a team, with each member an equal partner.

Members will have a vote on transfers as well as player selection and all major decisions affecting the club.

“I’ve created a vehicle that will pool fans’ opinions, passion and wealth and turn fantasy football into reality,” creator Will Brooks told BBC Sport.

A former football journalist, the 36-year-old Brooks, who now works as a copywriter, has spent the last two years developing the idea.

“I’ve met several club owners and ex-managing directors of Championship and Premiership clubs, all of whom were captivated by the concept and believed it to be workable,” said Brooks, who is a Fulham supporter.

“I remember in the 1980s going to Craven Cottage when the club was broke.

“I looked around at the 3,000 fans who had turned up and was left thinking that if everyone chipped in we could buy the club - but then there was no way of mobilising that feeling. The internet changes all that.

Over the last few years a number of Premiership clubs - Manchester United, Aston Villa and Liverpool - have been the subject of corporate takeovers and Brooks hopes his scheme will allow fans greater participation in the running of a club.

“I’ve always had the notion of a group of fans putting money into a club and not taking it out - it is a potent force for good as most owners look at clubs as a way of making money.”

“I think some supporters of some big Premiership clubs feel as though they are a little out of touch with football these days.

“So this is an exciting opportunity for someone who has fallen out of love for the game to rekindle their passion and get involved on a whole new level.”

Only a couple of days after being launched with minimal publicity, the scheme has already generated enormous interest on the Internet and Brooks has been fielding calls from journalists as far afield as Spain.

The website has a list of 15 clubs - including Manchester City and Arsenal - which supporters want to buy, though Brooks says it is more likely the money raised will be used to buy a lower league club.

Brooks added: “I read on the BBC site last week that the Torquay owner is desperate to sell and I’m sure there are others, so I don’t think the members will want to launch a hostile takeover!

“A great number of those registered with the site have stated they don’t have a preferred club to buy - they just want to be part of it.

“Voting is close and that table of 15 is likely to change. When we reach our target, we will make our way down the top of the list, until the most suitable club is found.”

Brooks acknowledged the scheme could encounter teething problems, particularly as regards to members picking the team.

He stated: “Before members voted on team selection the head coach would provide a briefing on the previous week’s game, the next opponents and potential players and formations he suggests.

“Then the owners would vote and the head coach would have to follow their decision, although I think the owners would probably follow the head coach’s advice.

“The head coach would know that this is a club with a difference - where the owners have their say - and, in many ways, the pressure will be taken off him because of this.”

If the website is successful in taking control of a club, Brooks expects the day-to-day running of the business to go on normally, with members only voting on the most important decisions.

“The board will be made up of existing supporters and will possess the breadth of skills and expertise that all club boards should have.

“These board members will have the same voting rights as everyone else.

“Members’ opinions on transfer targets and on other issues will be different. In the same way popular content rises to the top of YouTube, the most-supported member opinions will be the ones that are eventually put to the vote.”

My Football Club.

I’m yet to decide if this is a good idea.

On the one hand, it’s a decent little experiment and gives people the chance to be a shareholder in a club. A democracy where fans make the decisions is a good idea.

On the other hand, with 50,000 people involved your say means very little, when the idea eventually gets tired and boring then the club is left in a mess and there’s no guarantee this will live up to everyone’s fantasy that they’ll be making the deisions. Plus, there’s a reason why coaches and managers are there, fans don’t get to see all the work that goes on behind closed doors… they only see what they want to see.

I’m going to monitor how the website gets on, apparently thousands have already registered. They’re destined to buy a Conference club (which ain’t bad) but it’s gonna be a long time before there’s any real progress with this idea. And even then I’ll be surprised if the interaction is anywhere near as good as they’re making it out to be.

Hmmmm.