Simon Little

Hello folks,

For some reason today my Twitter account has been inundated with spam messages. It’s all very odd. But it doesn’t stop there…

It never fails to astound me when I check the spam filter for my website (wonderfully provided by the Akismet plugin) at the silly nonsense that people try to post in the comments section. Now obviously there are little internet robots that trawl through google and send out auto-spam like a machine gun, but it really does make me giggle sometimes. And more often than not these spammers target photos. Very odd. Here is a little selection currently lurking in the spam box…

On my Christmas Eve post, somebody thought this would be a fitting comment

I was trying to buy a belt, based on the criteria that I wanted a % of the damage dealt converted to life, but that doesn’t appear to be a listed criteria

Okay then. Particularly enjoyed that one. Why somebody buying a belt was interested in my end of year roundup I have no idea. I also had comments about Obama and Occupy Wallstreet. As you do…

I had what at first might be construed as a kind comment on my writing style, using some kind of pidgin English

I’m sure this can be the single most info to me. And im glad reading your article. But should remark on few general things, It style is wonderful, the articles is actually excellent : D. Good job, cheers

Now what piece of gloriously-constructed prose could have prompted such a response I hear you ask? Well actually it was this picture from the Double Feature at the National:

I also had the following comment for my photo of my good friend Dave Ohm guesting with the Paintframe Band:

Thank you for the auspicious writeup. It in fact was a amusement account it. Look advanced to more added agreeable from you! However, how can we communicate?

“How can we communicate?” asks ‘Fredricka Shammaa’. Erm.. how about we don’t?! Oh dear. I despair…

Quite what the point of these spam comments are I cannot fathom. Obviously I’m meant to click on some link and then they can hack my site, my Twitter account, my Facebook and post all manner of meaningless drivel on my behalf. Well, guess what? My spam filter makes quite sure that none of these little gems actually make it onto the site. Just means I get to have a giggle at them and post them here properly without the spammy links so we can all point and laugh.

Until next time… I shall save the best ones and do another naming and shaming post some other time. Hope you’re all having a nice Christmas holiday 🙂 x

Good morning everybody,

Hope you all enjoyed the Royal Wedding. It served as the ideal prelude to the big news of this weekend… The long-awaited release of my Rejectamenta EP. Oh yes indeed folks; the time has come.

This is a collection of five tracks that didn’t quite fit onto the forthcoming album The Knowledge of Things To Come, which I’m looking at releasing around June/July. Rejectamenta serves as a little teaser for you. It’ll give you some idea of what to expect from the new record.

Rejectamenta is exclusively available from my Bandcamp page (It’s right next to Mandala, if you haven’t bought the CD yet…). You can stream the whole album from there if you fancy having a listen…

It’s available on a ‘pay what you want’ basis. You can have it for free if you like. Or you can pay what you feel it is worth to you as a listener. If you want a guide, 50p per track is a good starting point on a lot of download sites..  Anything you do pay goes towards me making new music 🙂

I really hope you like the EP. I’m really excited about the album and the new direction the music is taking…

Click the Music tab and you’ll be right there 😉

Simon

Thought I’d write a quick post after spending a couple of hours this afternoon faffing about trying to customise the custom header on my Bandcamp page with the addition of an image map.

It’s actually much easier than at first it may seem and with just a few simple steps you can have your Bandcamp page integrating with your main website in a far more effective form. The addition of a custom url for your Bandcamp page means you can use the site as a shop-window for your music which forms part of your main website as a sub-domain. This is what many artists are doing now to promote their music, using their own site as a hub and using external sites such as Bandcamp for additional functionality.

This is how I created the image map…

First you need the actual image for the custom header. I did a screen grab (command-shift-4) from the home page on my main website. Here is the crucial piece of information (which cost me two failed attempts): Bandcamp custom headers are required to be between 975 pixels wide and 40-180 pixels tall. What I should have done was check the dimensions when I did the screen grab. Third time lucky…

Here is what my custom header looks like. I included the menu at the top so I could superimpose the image map later…

I then went to the excellent Image Maps site and uploaded the image. I shan’t bother to fully explain how to use the site as it is incredibly easy to figure out and simple to use. Basically once the image is uploaded you can create boxes around whichever blocks you want to add links to and away you go. Starts looking a little like this:

Once you’ve finished marking up the image, just click the Get Your Code button and copy the generated HTML code to your clipboard.

Then you hop over to Bandcamp and upload your custom header image on the main page. The final step is to go to your Profile page and paste the HTML into the Use an image map box in the Custom Header section.

Then you’re laughing.

Hope that was useful to somebody. This post could’ve saved me a good hour this lunchtime 🙂