In a fit of idleness I spent a bit of time today tidying up the template for this blog, I even added a logo - like it? I also went down the list of links and noted that a good third of the blogs I'd been linking too seem to have vanished. I'm always amazed at how many people who have blogged away for some significant amount of time then just let their site die completely. I wonder if these people have actually been required to remove their sites or maybe they ceased to be and the hosting and domain registration fees no longer got paid? For my own part I intend to keep this site up, even if I stop blogging for an extended period. But that begs the question - even if I could prepay hosting for, say a hundred years, just how far into the future will a web site remain accessible? What is the longevity of the HTTP protocol and today's HTML formats?
You may also note some Google ads down the left side - yes in the long dark tea-time of the soul anything is possible, even selling your soul to shameless advertising. What better way to plumb the depths of darkness? As it happens this venture is largely to justify paying for some of the aforementioned "professional" hosting so that hopefully any time soon LDTT will be available at much greater download speeds. Also I will no longer have to live in fear of a time called "the coming of the great SlashDot". No word yet on how long this will be, but it could be "real soon now".
Actually it's been kind of interesting to see what ads Google does spew into the left margin, and rather gratifying that when it has nothing better it falls back on Hitch-hikers Guide stuff which hopefully with end up, by the fundamental interconnectedness of things, putting a few pennies into the estate of the late, great Douglas Adams. And remember, even if you think advertising sucks our souls and wastes our money (by adding an intangebile "marketing" mark-up to everything we buy) don't forget that it only sucks your soul if you actually click on something and buy it. It remains to be seen when some bright spark will get the idea of creating a massively prolific virus that turns millions of PCs into ad-clickers and makes someone, or everyone, richer than sin - or at least richer than most advertising executives. Perhaps then the advertising industry will then see the folly of web advertising and give it a rest, or... more like the consequence of such a virus would be to force you to supply a biometric identity verification every time you click on an advert. I wonder just how popular that will be?
In the mean time if you want a completely ad-free Tea-Time experience just use one of the many feed readers such as Bloglines to subscribe to it. If you regularly read more than one blog its really the only way to keep up and will save you from visiting a whole bunch of web sites every day to see if they have been updated. Judging from the site statistics it looks like most of the 50 or so people visiting this web site every day (as opposed to reading the feed) are arriving here from Google searches anyway, so it wont be a big impact on anyone.
Finally, if you're feeling really benevolent then go ahead, make my day (or at least pay for my tea) and click on a few of the advertising links, even better do a search and then click on some links - that seems to be even more lucrative. I promise all revenues will be ploughed back into keeping this blog and me alive.
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