A bit of boring admin

Once a year I look at this website and think, “Jesus it’s looking tired, perhaps I can jazz it up a bit?”

I then spend a few hours teaching myself basic CSS code, testing a few things, fucking it up royally, before finally admitting that I am never going to be a website designer. So I look at other ways to spice things up in my relationship with I Am Livid dot com.  I could try role playing, I could do that thing it only let’s me do on my birthday, or even have a bit of an open relationship for a while, but that doesn’t appeal, as I am the jealous type.

So instead I tinker with a few things in the background to give myself the impression that I am a proper “hands-on” kind of web publisher.

So tinker I have.  This really doesn’t make much difference to you if you are reading this post through a browser with the website up in front of you.  Little will change for you, until I can find a decent widget-friendly WordPress theme I can steal borrow.

However, if you are one of the majority of people who now reads this through the RSS feed (the number of you varies around 350-400 depending on how boring I have been recently) then there are going to be a few minor changes.  Firstly, all of my feeds (posts, podcasts, and comments) are all now burned through Google.  Everything has been redirected so you don’t need to change ANYTHING, the posts will still be there in your RSS reader of choice until the day you unsubscribe because, “he’s gone all shit”.

What you might notice is that every few days an RSS feed item from here will have some Google adverts at the bottom of it.  This is not an attempt to extort money from you, but merely a way to try and make this website pay for itself.  Last year the Google Ads I carry above the comments section paid for my hosting and about five pints at Christmas (thanks for that).  However, with extra costs from hosting the podcast, I am now losing a few quid every month.  It’s not a lot, but it would be nice if this little corner of cyberspace at least paid for itself.  It is bad enough admitting to people that I am a blogger, without admitting I am a loss-making one at that.

I have never been one for those virtual tip jars, Paypal donations or Amazon wishlists, as I don’t expect you to fork out actual cash money for this drivel.  You’re not stupid.  Plus, it is slowly dawning on me that all publishers are blind and a book deal is pretty much out of the question.

So, should an advert catch your eye, and you are interested in looking at it a bit further, I would certainly be grateful if you did so.

And finally, everything I write on here is now available via email!  You no longer even need to go on the Internet to read my generally pointless witterings.  There will be an email subscription box on the homepage, or if you are interested, you could just fill it in here:

So that’s about it. All will be back to normal tomorrow, or maybe the next day, as I am in London all day today until late this evening (unless some arsey cockney has annoyed me enough to give me sufficient motivation to find a web cafe).

That is all.

Tagged as: email subscriptions, Google Adsense, rss feeds