Mutley Musings Movings

tim — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:18:15 +0000

I have decided to integrate various web projects that I have been playing with in recent weeks into a single project that will hopefully provide me with the scope to cover work-related material, general musings and anything else that I feel like writing about. So, Mutley Musings is not going to receive anymore material now as I put all of my efforts into the new project – you can find this here: http://timohare.wordpress.com

Arsenal blogs… So?

tim — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:05:23 +0000

When I log onto the WordPress site to update my blogs I get to see a list of the most popular WordPress blog entries at the current time. Over the weeks I have noticed that there is something odd going on. At every minute of every day there is an entry on an Arsenal Football Club blog in the top ten and often ranked number one. This point has particularly struck me over the last few days because my team, the mighty Plymouth Argyle, happen to be playing Arsenal tomorrow in the FA Cup and I am booked on a coach with my elder daughter to go up to London as part of almost 9,000 away fans to witness what is going to be quite a historic event (for starters it will be the biggest away following ever at the Emirates Stadium).

Anyway, back to the apparent popularity of the Arsenal blogs… it just can’t be right. Arsenal blogs cannot be the most popular reading material on WordPress at all times. I can easily imagine that they might be some of the time (e.g. when something particularly spectacular or interesting happens at the club – like it will tomorrow afternoon…), but they can’t be all of the time. Why are there no highly-rated WordPress blogs for other big teams in England like Manchester United, Chelsea or Liverpoool? Can the fans of those teams not read or not use the internet? (actually, I supposed that could be right). One of the popular Arsenal blogs is about youth players at Arsenal which is definitely not going to be the most read topic on the whole of WordPress now is it?

So, I am rapidly led to one or other of the following conclusions, either 1) there is some kind of conspiracy going on in which a small number of Arsenal fans (probably the blog authors) have set up bots that repeatedly visit the Arsenal blogs and keep the hits high or 2) someone high up in the WordPress community is an Arsenal fan. I think that conclusion 2) is the more likely explanation, especially as the top posts are worked out using a special WordPress formula which I have not yet been able to find a description of. I reckon that the WordPress formula goes something like this:

1) count the number of hits on a blog entry and rank entries accordingly so that there is a realistic looking set of entries in the top ten

2) check to see if blog entries include the word “Arsenal” (or other relevant terms such as “Gunners”, “Gooners” and “soon to be FA Cup 3rd round failures”) and place the entries in the top ten if they do

If I am right then we’ll soon find out…

…and if by any chances a load of Arsenal blog readers suddenly descend on this entry then all I can do is to apologise in advance for what is going to happen to your beloved club tomorrow afternoon.

Mamma Mia, what an experience

tim — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:55:13 +0000

I think I should start this entry by making the statement that I am a 43 year old man with an all female family – one wife and two daughters – it’s quite important that I get this point straight at the outset.

On Christmas Day our family acquired DVDs of various films. Since then, we have been working our way through the titles and, so far, we have watched three DVDs together. This probably sounds innocuous enough, but let me tell you the titles of the films first before you make a judgement – in watched order:

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging
Wild Child
Mamma Mia

The first two titles were the selections of my daughters who had seen both films in the cinema with my wife a few months ago. They were adamant that I would hate them because they are basically films about teenage girls either, having crushes on teenage boys or running wild at boarding school. So, there was much merriment at home as we settled down to watch the films and lots of sideways glances at me to try to gauge my reaction. The third title was a big favourite of my wife when it came out in the cinema and had been viewed at least once by everyone else in the family on the big screen but which I had somehow avoided at the time. Still, as the fastest selling DVD of all time (apparently) it is obviously a much loved viewing experience for many people. I was told that the film “would make me want to go on holiday to Greece” (where it is set), “would bring a smile to my face”, “would make me feel good” etc.

So what did I think. Well, I have to say that apart from “Soccer Dog”, “Mamma Mia” is probably the worst film I have ever seen. My words at the end when asked what I thought were ” It was an experience” (with an accompanying muttered “dreadful” and private and prolonged shake of the head). Actually “Soccer Dog” (which is about a dog belonging to an american boy that joins a boy’s football team in Scotland and helps them beat an all-star team of professionals in a specially arranged match) was rather good fun because it was so bad that it was good (you can see the string that controls the ball in some of the action shots…). But, “Mamma Mia”…? Truly dreadful, with almost no redeeming features. Even “Wild Child” had its merits – a plot and some dialogue for example. Best of the three though, and actually quite good, was “Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging”, a film which made Eastbourne look like the sort of place it would be nice to live. The one real negative point of “A, T and P S” though, was that it gave a glimpse of what it might be like to live in a house with teenage daughters, something which will begin to happen in less than one month’s time. Save me.

Welcome to Mutley Musings

tim — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:59:42 +0000

During the last three months of 2008 I completed a sponsored swim (the Aspire Channel Swim) that involved swimming the width of the English Channel (22 miles) in a swimming pool over a 12 week period. To help to keep me going on this challenge I wrote a blog (timswim) describing my progress and found this to be both an interesting and a fun activity. Surprisingly, a number of people enjoyed reading my timswim blog entries which described my exploits in the pool and my observations on loosely-related topics, and even more surprisingly, some of these readers actually found the entries funny. So, inspired by this initial blogging activity, once I had completed the swim I decided to set up a new blog in which I could write about whatever I felt like writing about whenever I felt like writing about it. The result is “Mutley Musings” – the Mutley part of the name comes from the region of Plymouth in which I live and the Musings part is intended to describe what I am doing as I write entries and also to be suggestive of the word “amusing”.

The blog title also pays homage to the character Muttley from the children’s cartoon TV series Wacky Races that I remember from my childhood, although sadly (I didn’t realise this until I was setting up the blog), Muttley the dog has two ts in his name. Muttley was a continuously grinning dog with a mischievous chuckle and was the companion of the sinister but incompetent Dick Dastardly.

Anyway, I have no clear idea how this blog will develop over time, exactly what I am going to write about (anything and everything probably with a generally humorous slant) or whether anyone will look in on my efforts and enjoy reading them, but as long as I enjoy writing the entries it doesn’t really matter.

The Mutley Muse