Ariana upgraded warrenellis.com to 2.1 overnight, and sure enough, there’s some rank stupidity in the new version. As with every major overhaul release of WordPress, actual useful functions have gone entirely missing and there are six new things that only a crackhead would shove into internet publishing software. Forgive any weirdness over the next few days, as I work out how to (for one thing) post regularly now that WordPress have removed the pop-up Press-It posting bookmarket…

Yes, the website’s changed theme again. There’s actuallly a good reason for this, but I can’t get into it yet. Text sizes will be adjusted during the course of the day.

The place will continue to look shambolic until tomorrow, I should think. You can cope. You’re tough.

Am commencing live reconstruction of website now. As longtime readers will know, this can make the place look shambolic for days at a time. Be patient.

At some point over the weekend, I’m probably going to push the main RSS provision for this site over to Feedburner. So if your warrenellis.com RSS seems to have magically vanished on Monday morning, just pop back here and reselect. I believe it should just replace the site RSS in your feedreader, but anything can go wrong…

• Official Linden Blog » Blog Archive Embracing the Inevitable «
  The virtual world Second Life has released its source code under the GPL free software license
  (tags: secondlife second+life 2l web)
• styleskilling.com » Blog Archive » Margaret Brundage: From Fashion to Pulpmags
  Nice primer collection of Margaret Brundage images. Useful links at bottom of article.
  (tags: art design covers)

• This year will be Britain’s warmest since records began, say scientists
  Temperatures logged by weather stations across England reveal 2006 to have been unusually mild, with a mean temperature of 10.84C:Temperatures in central England have been recorded since 1659
  (tags: eco vidirian dooooooom)
• ModBlog – Branded Nipples – Body modification and ritual blog sponsored by BMEzine.com
  Shannon, you have ruined tits for everyone.
  (tags: bodymod)
• ModBlog – Implants with scars over them – Body modification and ritual blog sponsored by BMEzine.com
  serious arm implants.
  (tags: bodymod)
• ModBlog – That is some extreme play. – Body modification and ritual blog sponsored by BMEzine.com
  “It’s all right, son. I’m from the Internet.”
  (tags: bodymod)

(Aha. Found that Bad Signal straight away. Here it is, from last night in the pub:)

So the word is that Hillary Clinton is now sounding out supporters for a 2008 Presidential bid. I thought she was smarter than that. If she runs, those of us who treat US presidential politics as a spectator sport are going to be treated to a snakepit fight unlike anything since ’72. There’s not even a guarantee she’ll lock the Democratic nom. Evan Bayh can call on old, old Democratic powers: his father wrote two Amendments, was the principal behind the ERA and saved Ted Kennedy’s life. There’s another good story in there — as I’ve said, Americans like their political stories — Bayh Sr was going to run in 72, eventually ran in 76 and was defeated for the nom by Jimmy Carter, losing his senatorship some ten years later to a maggoty right-wing political hack called Dan Quayle. If Hillary and Evan Bayh both run for the nom, then Barack Obama almost begins to look like a uniting force.

(Since writing this, I have received a note which read in part, “Barak Obama will not run for Prez. To suggest so means one doesn’t have an understanding of the racial politics in America.” To which I replied, I’m not sure if anyone’s told Obama that yet.)

Thank God there’s comedy relief coming. On the left, John Kerry is talking about running, and on the right, Newt Gingrich, now plainly crazier than a monkey fucking a lion, is also considering a run. Which, if it happens, will be the greatest political suicide in years. I mean equivalent to someone setting themselves on fire in the middle of town at rush-hour.

Someone once asked Newt what the hardest part of his struggle against Bill Clinton was. Astonishingly for a pro pol speaking on the record, he said it was face-to-face meetings. Apparently Bill’s great personal charisma made Newt’s knees give way. “I melt,” he cooed. This man wants to run for President.

This is going to be my favourite campaign year since Bush/Clinton. I mean, Clinton/Dole was funny. But this one promises to have it all.

In November 2006, this website was abused in the following ways:

Unique visitors: 129362
Number of visits: 412551
Pages served: 794894
Total hits: 3620487
Bandwidth eaten: 57.39 GB

Be aware: warrenellis.com may temporarily vanish. Looks like I may have to move website hosts again. After Globat’s customer service system pretty much collapsed, I moved to Dreamhost. Dreamhost are now freaking out about the amount of traffic this site gets (150,000 hits/2GB a day, on average), and are currently requesting that I either pretty much reduce this site to a .txt file or pay them $400/mo for dedicated hosting.

We’ll see how it goes. But, you know… don’t pound me with email if the site suddenly vanishes. It’ll just mean that someone’s pulled a plug and I’m having to go elsewhere.

• SF Cover Explorer
  covers from the visual index of science fiction cover art, courtesy Terry Gibbons/ – move the mouse over the covers to see more information, click to see the cover full-size /- covers are arranged horizontally by time, and vertically by average hue
  (tags: web sf covers design)

For those who might be just joining me:

My name’s Warren Ellis. I write comics and graphic novels, among other things. I’ve done quite a lot of them. I have several comics works floating around on the internet for free:

TRANSMETROPOLITAN: “Another Cold Morning.” | FELL: the first story. | JOHN CONSTANTINE, HELLBLAZER: “Shoot.” | SUPERIDOL. And a very early one: LAZARUS CHURCHYARD: “Lucy’s Drowning.”

These are the places you can find me on the internet. There’s a fair few of them, too:

Bad Signal is my email journal. It’s announcement-only style, which means you only get email from me, not the 10000 readers and counting who are on the list. I use it for thinking out loud. Sometimes you won’t hear from me for a week. Sometimes you’ll hear from me five times a day. Often I will be drunk. Sometimes I will be naked. People on Bad Signal tend to cry a lot.

http://www.myspace.com/warrenellis = I add anyone, me. I also abuse the bulletin system terribly. I’m tempted to start a religion there, but Rupert Murdoch would come for me. And nobody needs that. In any way.

http://www.flickr.com/people/warrenellis/ = where I store my photos. Feel free to add me there — I need new feeds. My friends-and-contacts list there is usually full of interesting stuff, as I know many mentally ill lovely people.

I run an online community. THE ENGINE is devoted to comics (and music and other stuff). For those reading on LJ, the Engine is where the Saturday Night Open Mics and other things happen now.

I still have an account on Xpeeps, mostly, I think, because a friend of mine worked on the site. I also have an account at Subkultures that similarly doesn’t get used much, though I do listen to the radio there.

http://www.bloglines.com/public/warrenellis = my daily reading list.

I don’t use IM. I can most easily be found on warrene @ aol.com.

– W

• China Holds Sex Culture Festival
  the director of the Guangdong Sexological Society told that “many people do not have a right attitude towards sex issues.”
  (tags: sex)
• Cooking up ‘nanorust’ could purify water
  A new recipe for “nanorust” could give developing nations a cheap tool for removing arsenic from drinking water.
  (tags: sci tech eco)
• Himalaya mega-quakes likely every 1000 years
  A colossal reservoir of energy stored up under the Tibetan plateau has been discovered – and it can only be fully released by mega-earthquakes striking about every 1000 years
  (tags: sci)

• Can the US trust its voting machines?
  Millions of people will expect to hear the US mid-term results within hours of the close of polling. But could problems with new voting technology prolong their wait?
  (tags: pol)
• Editorial opens fire on Rumsfeld
  Four US military journals have called for Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to quit, accusing him of losing control of the situation in Iraq
  (tags: pol)
• Plan to create human-cow embryos
  UK scientists have applied for permission to create embryos by fusing human DNA with cow eggs
  (tags: sci)
• Fast condoms on sale in S Africa
  Condoms, which promoters say can be put on in just one second, are going on sale in South Africa this week.
  (tags: sex)

• Rainer Luxus
  “Kosmonovic Cowboy” just makes me smile.
  (tags: music)

• Key Evangelical quits amid gay sex claim | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle
  Influential Evangelical Christian leader Ted Haggard resigned his position as head of the New Life Church, after his gay lover outed him. It’s reported that he “talks to… Bush or his advisers every Monday”
  (tags: religion pol)
• Lost Moon landing tapes discovered
  For years ‘lost’ tapes recording data from the Apollo 11 Moon landing have been stored underneath the seats of Australian physics students. A recent search has uncovered them.
  (tags: space)
• Former Agent Says Google and CIA in Partnership
  Steele cites his contacts within the agency with the information that Google and the CIA are involved with one another.
  (tags: pol conspiracy mad)
• Miami zoo hosts poop exhibit
  Now on display is a 5,000-square-foot exhibit on excrement titled “The Scoop on Poop,” which invites visitors to explore the science of scat.
  (tags: mad)
• Viral Fossil Brought Back to Life
  In a controversial study, researchers have resurrected a retrovirus that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and now sits frozen in the human genome.
  (tags: med sci)
• Kent Hovind, ‘Dr. Dino,’ guilty on all counts
  Kent Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, was found guilty of 58 counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes. He faces a maximum of 288 years in prison.
  (tags: crime religion)
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Reporter’s Log: A day out in Second Life
  The BBC’s day out in Second Life.
  (tags: 2l secondlife)
• Greenhouse gases hit record high
  The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide rose by about half a percent in 2005
  (tags: viridian eco)

• FL, TX e-voting machines select GOP ticket in error
  Greg Palast must be smiling today.
  (tags: pol crime)
• ‘Only 50 years left’ for sea-fish
  There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue
  (tags: eco dooooom)
• Fantastikoi Hxoi
  I think this is a remix project: Greek freakbeat surf music.
  (tags: music)

• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law : SF Indymedia
  “President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law”
  (tags: pol paranoia)
• BBC NEWS | Politics | Abortion time limit cut rejected
  MPs have voted against a bill calling for the legal time limit for abortions to be cut from 24 weeks to 21 weeks.
  (tags: pol)
• Liver cells grown from cord blood
  Scientists in the UK say they have grown tiny sections of human liver using stem cells from umbilical cords
  (tags: med)
• Siberia
  Despite the name, this is warm, organic, living guitar ambient.
  (tags: music)

• Diver deaths spawn rumors of underground waterway – Culture
  “…Six months later, the body of that diver finally surfaced, but not in Santa Rosa. It was discovered, the story claims, in Lake Michigan – more than a thousand miles away – naked, waterlogged and with much of its skin scuffed off…”
  (tags: weird)
• Homeless celebrity courts an unusual profession – MSN-Mainichi Daily News
  Daifunka Asozan, 32, is a “homeless star,” a performer who proudly brags of having no place of his own, but appears to be getting his 15 minutes now because of his self-proclaimed “hobby” of court-watching.
  (tags: crime culture)
• Loose laws leave adoption trade vulnerable to sexual predators – MSN-Mainichi Daily News
  Unwanted Japanese babies are being sold for huge prices to rich foreigners and, thanks to a lack of laws, possibly even pedophiles and organ harvesters, according to Josei Jishin (11/7-14).
  (tags: crime)