Well, not really, but that heading probably got your attention. I really hope that I haven't deleted anyone's legitimate comments but it's distinctly possible I have because, for the first time, I've just deleted the comment spam blocked by Akismet without checking for "false positives". I did this because in the last 24-48 hours 610 comment spams have been blocked. And I'll be fucked if I'm looking through a list that long manually.
That number is five times higher than I'm used to. I guess that means I'm popular. I remain forever indebted to Akismet but I can't help but be horrified by this onslaught. It was only a week ago that I mentioned Akismet had blocked around 7,500 spam for me, that figure is now almost 9,500! Without Akismet I would literally have given up on blogging. It simply wouldn't be any fun to deal with that tsunami of spam manually. Actually, just putting up one of those stupid "captcha" things seems to work as well. But I really like being able to let people comment on my blog without any barrier.
On a related note, Spamhaus (who I've covered in one for my Blogging Times vlogs) have published a list of the world's worst spammers, a comparatively small group of people responsible for 80% of the world's spam. I've said it before and I'll doubtless say it again - I want these fuckers dead. They'd better hope I never score a big lotto win because I'll be using the money to hire hitmen.
While I'm doing a self-indulgent blog post essentially about my own blog, I think I'll share the news of the successful execution of the next stage of my plan for world domination. At each 100 post milestone I've publicly set myself a challenge to achieve in the next 100 posts. I do this publicly to prod myself to keep trying to achieve more. Left to my own devices, I'm incredibly lazy. At post 100 I said I'd start doing podcasts of my written posts and I actually took it one step further and started doing videos. At post 200 I said I'd start doing live performances and I did that. At post 300 (the most recent milestone) I said I'd cut a new deal either with someone I didn't already know or one that made me some significant money.
I'll be honest with you, this most recent one scared me a bit, it was out of my comfort zone. I'm a mass of contradictions, one of which is that despite brash appearances on this blog, I'm actually not very good at self-promotion. And I deliberately made this a "stretch" goal (as annoying management types say) that would be a challenge to actually reach. I could have made it much easier in a way that none of you would have been any the wiser about but this goal-setting is for me and what's the use of lying to myself?
I knew Howard was launching Wallstrip during this goal period and I knew I could convince him to let me do posts for Wallstrip. So if I had just said "I'll get Mr Angry published anywhere else" it would have been too easy. Wallstrip was a lock and I wasn't going to cheat - I already knew Howard so I deliberately ruled Wallstrip out of the list of acceptable achievements. Having said that, I do actually feel quite proud of being included in the Wallstrip conversation, I think this is going to be quite big. And in case anyone is worried I'm being exploited, yes, I was offered payment for both The Blogging Times and Wallstrip but getting in on the ground floor of an exciting opportunity is way more important to me right now than short-term money.
You might have worked out by now that I'm building up to something. Anyone who spends time on YouTube (or pays close attention to this blog) is likely to have seen "Mr Safety". This popular YouTuber (real name Cory Williams) is going to be HUGE! Mark my words, you'll be seeing him on mainstream TV or movies soon. You can already see him on DirecTV in the states if you get that service because he's hosting a show built around online videos. The people who produce that show saw one of my responses to a Mr Safety video and invited me to contribute to the show. For money!
So, I've already achieved the goals I set at post 300! A deal with someone I don't know AND being paid. The money they're offering per appearance is quite reasonable, not enough to quit my day job (unless I do about a dozen appearances a month) but enough that I feel sorta professional. For anyone interested in sponsoring me, I'd need to be making about a grand a week to feel like it was worth doing full-time. That's a LOT less than I get for my day job but it would be enough to dedicate myself to something I love doing.
So you might see more frequent posts from me now than the one daily written post I've been doing. I'll be honest with you; I wasn't sure I could actually reach this goal, it was bit scary. I was going to stretch out the time available to me for as long as possible while keeping to my minimum one post a day. And I might post videos more frequently as well rather than occasionally putting four videos in a single post. I think I know the challenge I have to set myself for post 400 but that's at least a month or two away so I'll keep it to myself for now.
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