groc's bloggette

...and how many years

groc — 2009-10-25T15:33:06+00:00

on since this blog has been updated and yet the comments spam still keeps coming in in little flurries - they never learn.

blimey

groc — 2009-08-18T05:33:42+00:00

I know I've not touched this blog in a while but where has happened to all the stylesheet layout stuff. Why has everything fallen apart? Just one more reason for me to hate style sheets I guess...

Oh I've found out why - I somehow ended up with both a index.html file and a index.htm one and the default was going to the old broken one. Sigh.

MMM - and after all this time

groc — 2008-06-26T10:00:14+00:00

of not using this as my main blog - that's over at blogger - I see that comments spam is alive and well. But forget it comment spammers. 1stly. No one reads this blog - it's pretty dead. No links for you. and 2ndly. Nothing gets posted without my approval. Duh. I've learnt my lesson after comment spammers nearly killed this place last time.

mmm

groc — 2008-06-11T17:17:39+00:00

still not updating anything am I?

yeah - I know

groc — 2007-06-14T20:12:03+00:00

not been updating here much. Keep meaning to pull it all down and do something else with this site - but life keeps getting in the way.

you need to be looking here:
groc.blogspot
tumblr
and here on zooomer and on flickr.

I wish...

groc — 2007-01-02T07:10:10+00:00

...I had somewhere to archive this blog for free. I'd like to clear off my web space here and use it for other things. These days I've found myself using blogger more and more. Especially now that all my reasons for not wanting to rely on it have gone since it's folding into google.

1. The naff blogspot banner with adverts was replaced with a perfectably acceptable non-ad bearing narrow strip.

2. It's stable now - it's never eaten a post on me. Years ago I read of people complaining of blogger eating their posts - that just doesn't happen anymore.

3. They let you upload pictures now.

4. It has a spell checker!

5. Although I don't get many comments anymore - at least with blogger I don't have to moderate the comments like I have to here for fear of comment spammers running rampage like they have here. Which has the knock-on effect of killing off any comments whatsoever now...

6. no worries about bandwidth and using up all your webspace (my host seems positively stingy nowadays and they charge extra for mySQL so I can't do a dynamic blog -so can't try out the blogging tools the other kids are using. Being stuck with static html pages - thousands and thousands of them is a right royal pain in da butt.)

Actually the only thing that puts me off now is the default blogger templates - I know you can modify them - but I have a hard time with CSS and all that stupid coding nonsense. I just haven't got that sort of a brain. Oh and not being able to have your own favicon.

Um - and so. There is is...

gardening

groc — 2006-12-23T23:54:39+00:00

Teeny tiny garden.

Dance little Squirrel Dance

groc — 2006-11-28T12:13:12+00:00

closetted MPs

groc — 2006-11-26T09:15:56+00:00

Just what is it with closeted gay MPs? Seriously though. Doesn’t it show up how utterly backward they really are? I mean -fancy getting married to give that air of homely respectability in this day and age - doesn’t this smack of something out of the pre-legal 1950s? It’s bound to give their political opponents ammunition too, because they can safely say: ‘how can his voters ever truly trust him -when he’s so obviously a hypocrite and if he can lie like this to his wife… then what else is he capable of?’

Gah.

I still say *all* politicians are just flat out weird and none of them should ever be trusted enough to be put in any position of power.

weeping whimpering

groc — 2006-11-25T00:09:33+00:00

Dear sweet Jesus - please send a plague of boils upon those in the Tee Vee advertising world who every year think it's compulsory to use a cover version of 'it's Christmas' by Slade for their commercials. It's NOT clever, it's NOT funny - but it is bloody irritating. While you're at could you ensure Slade get a good long slow excruciating disemboweling for ever having written the song in the first place, oh and could every single last branch of ASDA please be struck by meteorites repeatedly until only craters remain - thank you. Love Groc.

Torchwood

groc — 2006-11-21T13:09:31+00:00

Um. Oh. OK.

First Day.
The sex-starved mist alien. This reminded me way too much of an episode of new ’Outer Limits’ where a meteorite containing an alien intelligence crashed into a young woman’s bedroom then took over her body and turned her into a veracious nymphomaniac sex monster who absorbed men into her body (Absorbaloth style) as she was bonking them.

Cyberwoman.
Seven of Nine in a hi-tech basement in Cardiff. Oh well, since Star Trek NG did sort of nick the idea of Cybermen for the Borg - nicking their extension of the idea back again seems fair enough.

Fairies.
Oh. Meh. I wasn’t keen on this episode. You know what would’ve been more scary? That if they’ve kept the whole original fairy look as they went around killing people instead of making them into big ugly gangly demons. That was too easy, too cheap a shot. Written by Peter J. Hammond too - he of ‘Sapphire and Steel' fame. I expected better somehow.

Countrycide.
The sci-fi channel showed the remake of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ only last week not so long after Channel 4 had shown it a few weeks before. So y’know, already I was a bit burnt out on the whole cannibal family thang -especially as it was better done there. Not much made sense in this episode - why where bodies being left out in the open all over the place? Isn’t that going to call lots of outside attention to the village? A whole village gone cannibal? There seemed to be something missing from the plot there. It smacked of a quick re-write having been done on the fly -maybe they'd originally had an alien monster but the budget ran out so they had to remove it at the last minute?

I think another problem I’m having is that I’m just warming to any of the characters so far. They’re all a bit monochromatic.

So now the big question is… are they building up to do a Doctor Who style big two part finale - or is it just going to plod on like this? I.E. The Cardiff version of the X-files -just reworking old horror film clichés every week? If you ask me it needs a bit more Doctor Who and a lot less nicking from other shows.

Oh well - it's early days yet.

Junk food advertising ban for under 16 year olds.

groc — 2006-11-17T14:42:19+00:00

This is going to be interesting. Are we really supposed to feel sorry for the TV stations losing so much revenue? Which already has steadily been losing money over the past few years anyway as the advertisers look to spend their money polluting other parts of the media - notably the internet and mobile phones etc. Which leads me into my next pondering - will junk food advertisers start getting crafty (and maybe artsy) like the tobacco industry had to when they got banned from TV and had to rely on print ads. Leading to such oddities like the famous Benson and Hedges and Silk Cut series of rather surreal adverts. Obviously if their marketing at kids they can’t be so oblique in their approach, but they’re bound to come up with something that gets past the concerned parent’s radar and hits directly at the kids…

Am I

groc — 2006-11-11T18:27:58+00:00

the only person in the world who's noticed how much Ben Linus of 'Lost' looks like Nomi Klaus?

If there was ever going to be a film biography - I'd know who I'd be casting in the lead role....

So much spam

groc — 2006-11-10T01:49:41+00:00

So much retarded stupid spam. It's gets me how 'puters can generate any amount of utter nonsense - but can't ever recognise any of it itself. I'm sure there's a message for us all in there somewhere.

Anyway - don't buy penny stocks.

all you need is ...hate

groc — 2006-11-09T10:43:24+00:00

This is from the Popbitch newsletter:

>> Love thy neighbour... <<
...Unless he's in the gays

The warring religions of the world have finally
found something to unite them - gay bashing!

In Jerusalem, ultra-orthodox Jews and Muslims
have come together to try and stop a gay rights
march in the city, slated for Friday. There has
been burning barricades, stone-throwing and a
bomb bearing the words "sodomites out". Muslim
politician Tayseer Tamimi said " All religions
discredit gays because it is against the decent
human nature created by God."

And in Scotland Muslims and Christians are
spreading a little homophobia together. The
Christian People's Alliance and Muslim groups
are together "secular values" and pro-gay laws,
The CPA even has Muslim candidates standing
at the next election.

And this is partly why I loathe and despite those big three religions that have come out of the Middle East - because at the end of the day - it’s all comes down to bigotry, narrow-mindedness, ignorance, stupidity and cruelty.