I am an Absolut Rockstar…Well, at least i have the bottle. Limited Edition bottle of Absolut, last one i had was a mirrorball, this year the people at Absolut have gone for this studded leather pouch for your bottle. It is rockstar or bondage? Supposed to be rockstar! It makes no difference, i will still drink it with my Redbull

For the boy with the .EU domain name comes the 1 Euro chocolate…Taste the euro-ness!

I always buy King of Shaves shaving gel, it is really nice to use, makes my face feel smooth and the razor glides nicely on my skin. I ran out of my old stuff, and nobody seems to have it anymore, so i got this new kind, which was expensive, and i assumed it must of replaced the kind i used to get. I HATE foam, it feels horrible and its like ripping out your skin. It says gel, but when i use it, it is clearly foam I bought 2 of these cans, which i have now thrown out.

The big media companies/websites are taking something which should be free, and available to everyone; The Internet. If you dont know, Geo-Targeting is basically a way of a website to identify where you are from. It can then give you content based on your location, sounds nice right? That part may be, but what else it brings is a limitation on the World Wide Web.

It used to be the World Wide Web, now it is feeling more like the country wide web. We get blocked out of websites because of the places where we live, we get redirected to websites we never wanted to visit because they think its what we wanted to go to.

In the past the only real medium of delivering media to a worldwide/European audience was TV. It became possible to receive TV from other countries via satellite, watching European TV from the UK came popular and normal in the 90s in the analogue days. It was interesting to see what other people watched, not only that, if you could watch UK TV in other countries and if you come from other countries it was possible to watch that tv here. This all changed in the digital age, where you can only legally watch TV from your own country, others would be blocked out. I remember wanting to watch a game of football on BBC Northern Ireland via Sky (part of the UK) but the game was blocked out for England.

The same thing is now happening on the Internet. We used to be able to go to any website, freely, type in the address and go. Now you cannot do that. For example, i have just gone to the MTV European website, which i cannot access, because of my location (being in the UK). This is stupid and ridiculous. I am a EU citizen and should have access. Sites are being blocked out, and it is not right. If you go some websites which are American and a .com, it will redirect you their UK site if they have them…MTV.com now asks you if you want to go to the UK site, and “strongly suggest” you do. The worst thing about the MTV European site is that the site itself, and the TV station, is in ENGLISH!!! Which is spoken as a 1st language in more or less 1 area in Europe…The UK!

The whole idea of the internet is that its a global thing, the clue is in the name, WORLD WIDE WEB. The big media companies/websites can say “we arent allow to show some content outside of ‘x’ country” which is fine, but dont block the WHOLE site. It is supposed to be the UK, not China!

Other websites which i have noticed this on:

VIVA TV. – I used to go here to check the music charts, now that the UK has a VIVA channel, it directs me to that site. I have to go and tell them i want to go to the German site.
Google- If you visit Google.com for the first time on your computer, it redirects you to your local version (.co.uk in my case). It will then remember your preference. Yahoo is the same.
MTV Euro – This does not let you in at all.
YouTube – Block content often for certain countries.

Some of the good websites, for example UPS.com, give you the choice, and ASK YOU your location. It can then set it as default so it remembers what you have chosen.

Ways of beating the Geo-Targeting fools

Unfortunately for the people using the technology to keep us out, there are ways to get in. One of the obvious is going through a proxy (basically connecting to a website through someone else’s server) so for example, you want to watch the football highlights on the BBC website, which is available if you are in the UK, you could connect through a UK proxy from anywhere in the world. Its hardly ground breaking, and easy to do, so why try and block out the Internet for people!?

Well, it could be worse

Yes it could be worse. But i think thats a negative way of looking at things. If you live in China, you are far more affected, as websites blocked there include: Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, and many more. The big sites usually get unblocked and then blocked again. This blocking is not by the websites themselves though, but by the ISPs in China, which they are ordered to do for their policy of Internet censorship.

So far for the UK ISPs dont block any websites, or a minimal amount; It is the companies themselves which are trying to lock us out because of where we live which is wrong.

Geo-Targeting is wrong, and a bad thing. The people who use it will tell you it “make a better experience for the user” but it does not. Give me the choice, if i want MTV UK i will go there, if i want MTV US i will go there!

if you want a quick look, all you need to do is look at the cache page in Google, like so….

HAHAHA I LOVE IT!!! If you search for ‘english girls’ (without quotes) in google.co.uk image search look at what the first result is…

So if you have never encountered an English girl before and search for some on google, this is the first thing you see! Gotta love that! Binge drinking charvas = English girls LOL!

Check it out: google image search results (note: if your SafeSearch settings are off, then you might get the odd porn image, set it to moderate!)

Whats your plans for New Years eve? I have none! I think New Years is over-rated, it is people forcing themselves to enjoy a night because of what date it says on the calendar. Organised parties are normally rubbish, and over priced too, house parties can be cool though

The town (Newcastle) is usually pretty dead, unless you go to a club or bar which has some event on, which you have to pay to get into and they overcharge by a huge amount. I have been out a few times in Newcastle on NYE and it wasnt anthing special.

If you have never bought any Ed Hardy stuff but want to, you might wanna go a size lower, or maybe even 2! When i was looking at the t-shirts they were massive. I ended up getting a hoodie, size medium. I couldnt find a small, but wanted to try one on to see how it fits. a small…..i am 182cms! (6ft) LOL!

She looks terrible with her boy hair, but she has been papped in Barbados looking mighty fiiiine. Bumberella ella ella ey ey ey.

I hope we get some good music in 2010…2009 was amazing for music, in fact the past few years have been really good in my opinion. It feels like every top artist was big in 2009, with hit after hit coming out, no gaps with terrible music. I hope that 2010 will bring us great music from the good artists who are out there.

Here is my car, in the snow. I had to clear the snow off most of it, and start it up since i havent drove anywhere for a while. I thought it would be funny to write my name on the roof, turns out it was quite thick, and not as easy as i thought to do! As you can see, i got all the way to the letter ‘e’, then my frozen fingers got the better of me and i messed it up