GrumpyDaddy

2011 has been a great year for rock music, in particular for progressive rock and melodic death metal. While I still hold that 2009 was the best rock music year of recent times I still think there are plenty of great records that should be on your shopping list when those Christmas vouchers come flooding in next week.

Check out my musical review of the year over on my music blog Grumpyrocker.

Keen-eyed observers may have noticed that the address of this site has changed over the last few days. This doesn't signal a change in editorial direction - not that one really exists - it's just a recognition of how my blog has changed in recent years. The change is also due to me realising that a URL based on my name tells the visitor nothing about what the site is about. I think the new name sums things up much better.

Of course it's not the first change to this site's address. We're onto the third iteration now. I wonder what it will be in ten year's time.

I've got a new website. Me and some of the other writers that have been shat upon by AATec (owners of Boomtown.net) have got a new videogames blog on the go. As we're ex-Boomtown we've cheekily called the site Boomtown X.

Do check it out. We've been working hard on it the last week or so.

Most of my first time visitors don't get what they're after when they arrive at harryneary.com. Judging by the statistics from Google they are most likely fundamentalist nutjobs looking for evidence that dinosaurs didn't exist and God created the world in six days.

Alas what they find is me taking the piss of their stupidity. No doubt this post will add to the Google confusion. Look folks, the Earth is billions of years old and humans are descended from a common ancestor to today's apes. It's a fact. You looking for lies about it makes a mockery of the commandment about bearing false witness.

Other popular posts include nonsense about Bagpuss, wildlife programs and a rant about the witch McKeith. Anyway, without further ado here is the list of the most popular posts on the site this month:

1. That's Not My...
2. Master & Commander Sequel?
3. We've Been Streetviewed
4. What is a Dadda Cheese?
5. Dinosaurs Didn't Exist
6. The Perfect MP3 Player?
7. Bagpuss - The Chocolate Biscuit Episode
8. Annoying TV Personalities
9. Dear Barclays Bank
10. The Wussification of Planet Earth

And no, there's still no sign of that Master & Commander sequel.

Crikey it's been a huge day of changes here on the site. As you may have noticed the site is now harryneary.com not cartmel-bar.co.uk.

Why the change?

Well the old name has been less relevant for some time now. When originally set up this site was the home of our university reunion stories and mostly a place for uni friends to converse.

This is no longer the case.

...at how many people read my little blog. Surely you've something better to do with your day. But no, my stats hover around one thousand hits most days.

But what brings you here?

I know friends and family read the site, but that's only going to count for a handful of visits. So too the number of people who read this blog after having a nosy Google of my name to see who their curate was marrying. Again numbers there would be too insignificant to alter my stats.

There's the legacy of the tragic events that befell my family in early 2007. I'm a member of various online communities that supported me during a difficult time - and they would often visit this site and communicate with me using it. Many of those are likely to have bookmarked this place.

In many cases though I expect much of my readership comes from people who have no idea who I am. Instead they Google searched on some topic that brought them here.

It's often interesting to see how people find this site. In most cases looking at the top ten of searches that brings folks here new visitors must be awful disappointed.

1. Me
2. Cartmel Bar
3. Bagpuss Chocolate Biscuit
4. Fundiewatch
5. Dinosaurs Didn't Exist
6. I Smell of Poo
7. Spider Wasp
8. Frostbitten Penis
9. Tattooed Females Over 70
10. Gilian McKeith Annoying

Meanwhile it's also quite interesting to see which pages here have been the most popular over the month of February.

1. Family Parking Spaces
2. Going Rather Swimmingly
3. Amost 11 Months Old
4. A House Divided
5. Cacophony Redux
6. Dinosaurs Didn't Exist
7. I Smell of Poo
8. Bagpuss: The Chocolate Biscuit Episode
9. Journey to the West
10. Annoying TV Personalities

We'll have none of your Sun reading hoi-polloi here thank you very much. Today the Cartmel Bar Blog has gained a mention of the Daily Telegraph website. On a page showing what bloggers think of Tony Blair's nutty new "respect" policy this very website gets the final mention on the page due to this story I posted yesterday.

If you read it, you'll notice we're pretty much the "And finally..." comedy entrant, the bit at the end of the news, the windsurfing hamster if you will, but it's good enough to me. In fact It's inspired me to change the blog's motto, which I shall do in a few moments.

So a big welcome to the Telegraph Readers, I hope you find something here of interest. And thanks to the Torygraph for the mention.

Have we just fallen back in time? Why has the blog regressed a couple of weeks? Has a wormhole opened up here in North London? Nope. I just did something very stupid.

I managed to delete the database for the blog. Thankfully I had a backup. But unfortunately the backup was a little old. That'll teach me to backup a little more regularly. D'oh

However, I do have some good news, thanks to Google and MSN Search I've managed to find the lost entries in their cached pages and so have put the missing entries back in. The only problem is that it's lost the last few posts from Jimbo and Rhythm - guys if you'd like the text that you'd previously entered, so you can repost your entries (it's only about two posts each) then let me know.

Alas the problem with the site has also meant we've lost the comments from the last few days, but that's less important than the posts I think.

So we're in good shape now, thanks to Google and MSN Search. I have to say I found the latter even more comprehensive and I'll be pimping it as much as possible thanks to it saving my bacon today.

Has it been a year already? Yes www.harryneary.com is one year old today. Of course, long time readers will know that my webpage has been around much longer than that, but only on my own personal ISP homepages.

It began when Jimbo and I decided to write about our adventures one weekend in Lancaster. I decided to put this story online in some form. It was so popular that many of the old Cartmel Bar crowd joined us the year after for the next adventure, and the one after that.

New content quickly followed, such as my songs and many other wafflings. The site was certainly growing and I felt the need for a proper home for this content rather than just relying on my personal homespace. I spent a morning trying to think of a good name for the site and was surprised to find that no-one had nabbed www.harryneary.com or www.cartmel-bar.com - so I registered both. As you may have noticed though, I like to make most use of the ".co.uk".

Since then, the site has changed a lot. We've had changes of artwork over the year and of course changes of content style. We've had a photo album, a forum and lots of fiddly HTML pages. In it's current form the site is much more manageable. But I am considering other content for the site - perhaps the return of a forum, or maybe another kind of photo album.

I'd like to thank the regulars for continuing to visit and for those of you who contribute to the site, most notably L, Jimbo and Rhythm.

Cartmel Bar M'Lord, Cartmel Bar.

Or donate even, thought donuts are always welcome.

I want to move 193 miles southwards to be in the vicinity of my gorgeous girlfriend L. But I'm in a bit of a sticky situation regarding planning and executing the move.

I have a job I really love and would like to keep. But it really doesn't allow me to save the money I need to make the move. I'd dearly love to keep the job (I work from home) and make the move, and take on more work when I moved to southern climes.

And so dear readers I'm appealing to your romantic spirit. L and I really want to be together living in the same city, rather than miles apart. So to the right you will see a donation button. This is for a secure, totally safe, Paypal donation.

Please help keep two soppy romantics together, so only one city is nauseated instead of two.

I'm only concerned with raising the money to move house, so any monies over that requirement I receive would be donated to Christie Hospital and other cancer charities in memory of my mother. Oh and I'd probably buy a donut. But only a small one.

Thanks for reading.

I'm feeling rather clever right now. My knowledge of PHP is pretty minimal. But if you look at the top of this post and all the posts in the blog, they now display the name of the author and the time it was posted. I did that. You can even click the name and see all posts made by that person. Woohoo! Small things amuse small minds.