the newts.net

More breaking news, Alan Shearer stays on for another year at Newcastle, after what seemed a definite end to his playing career and possibly his embarkation into managership. The 34-year-old, who has insisted all along that he would go ahead with his decision to retire at the end of the current campaign, has negotiated a contract extension which will give him even longer to get the nine goals he needs to equal Jackie Milburn’s club record of 200. A press conference is due in the morning.

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12:15 am and I read with sadness that the already unwell Pope has taken a turn for the worse, and it’s now just been broadcast on Sky News, although unconfirmed, that he has been read the last rights. I fear if he hasn’t passed away by the time I wake up in the morning, it’s only a matter of days now.

And sadly it was only a matter of days.

The obituary of a remarkable man.

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The first of our yearly golf competions between the Ornz, Brian Capindale, Peter Clarke and Mr Bov was held at the lovely Selby golf club today. Not the best course we’ve played but a very well looked after one. The first tee shot had us all shaking at the knees but after four great shots we were on our way. The weather was fine with the odd sunny spell and the rain managed to hold off all day. Having not played much golf due to injury and bad weather, we all supprised ourselves and played well.

Results as follows (the P C Trophy)

1st place with 39 points playing off 14 was Mr Ornz (prize the pete clarke trophy and 20 quid)
2nd place with 36 points playing off 13 was Mr Clarke
Joint 2nd place with 36 points playing off 11 Mr Bov
4th place with 31 points playing off 13 was Mr Capindale

Bov managed to get nearest the pin with a cracking shot just 1.2 mtrs from the pin and won a bottle of whiskey and six golf balls for 2 birdies.

Pete won a lovely cut glass vase for coming 2nd in the guests section

Ornz won a water proof top for coming 3rd in the nrgs members competion

Brian won fuck all

After Bov winning three of the competions last year it was about time we had a new winner

BOV your time is over!!!!!!!

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Well folks it won’t be long before the first trip of the season, out wetting a line in search of the hardfighting overwintered monster troots.

And just to whet the appetite, how about this photo of a gorgeous rainbow trout taken from a high mountain lake in Colorado, US.

What an absolutely stunning looking fish. Gorgeous!

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It didn’t start off well. 2 days before we left for Portugal Rach was taken to hospital with severe stomach pains. A large dose of pethidine cured the pain but several tests and such couldn’t locate the cause and she was kept in for 2 nights observation. Luckily, they gave her the ok to go on holiday just hours before we due to leave. We made it.

Upon our arrival at East Midlands airport we got our boarding passes and queued up for 45 minutes to checkin. Get to checkin and and we’re asked for Ben’s boarding pass. He hasn’t got one. Several tannoy announcements later and after a frantic rush round of Easy Jet chekin staff they sort the problem out and we’re away. Huzzah. Things can only get better. And they did.
Read more

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A Gravatar or Globally Recognised Avatar is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums and now on a growing number weblogs including the newts.net.

Gravatars are free and signing up for one is pretty simple. All you need is your email address, your chosen password and little 80 x 80 pixel picture that you want to be your gravatar. You can sign up for one right here at www.gravatar.com or next time you post a comment on the newts.net just click the sign me up for a gravatar box and you will receive an email telling you what to do.

You can use any picture you like although all gravatars are given a classification (like film ratings) which allows webmasters to prevent ‘18′ rated / pornographic / gorey pictures etc from appearing on their websites. No fear of that here though!

Once you’ve signed up for a gravatar it will automatically appear on your posts and comments, not just here on the newts, but on any gravatar enabled website anywhere in the world. It works by linking the email address you provide on sign up with the picture you uploaded. You must therefore enter the email address you signed up with when posting on blogs & forums etc for your gravatar to show up.

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The long awaited riposte to Wez’s latest piss take of the newts & crew is now available for download! A finger pointing, piss taking masterpiece featuring Wez’s original work “Healing World”, the lads from local band SOUTH PARADE, live music, stunning video and of course webmaster newts himself.

Ladies & Gentlemen, may I introduce to you…

THE BOY IN THE PURLE SHIRT!

Download link

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The lads of local band South Parade are currently building and maintaining their own NEW website. It’s early days yet but things are coming on at a pace and it’s filling up daily.

You’ll find them at: www.southparademusic.co.uk

Follow their progress on stage AND on the net!

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Well that means it must be about a year since I posted this, so to commemorate the occasion I have been requested to re-post this little gem I made last year featuring Animal Rights Protester WEZ and a hungry Tiger.

Circus Wez —> [207KB .swf file]

It’s only 207KB, small fry for the newts.net, so you may as well just left click and play it. If you want to keep a copy on tour desktop though you’ll need to right click the link and save target to desktop.

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The publishing platform that I use to run the newts.net, Wordpress, on has just released a major upgrade. The new version of Wordpress (Version 1.5 “Strayhorn”) has tons of new features that make the admin and running of the site a lot easier for me and other user who post on the site. There are also a whole host of add-ins and features that are available to enhance the site. It all takes time to download and set up though so bear with me during the process!

Basically it just means to you, the reader, that the site may look a little different from day to day while I impliment all the cool new features and play with new designs and styles. The content and posts will continue in the normal way though, so there will still be the usual array of interesting and amusing stuff appearing on the site.

You can still, and we love to hear them, leave your comments to posts in the normal way. You can also log in and register as a user on the newts.net. You may just have to look a bit harder to find the right buttons and links!

Sit back and enjoy the ride!

newts.

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Well folks we are back home safe, sound and refreshed from our sojourn in the Algarve. A great time was had by all and as soon as I can I’ll be posting a review and pics etc of our time in Albufeira.

It was of course a bit of a close shave wether we acually made it there or not as Rach was taken seriously ill and had to go to hospital with severe stomach pains 2 nights before we left. Thanks to Bov & Trace who rushed her there quickly, where a surgeon checked her out and couldn’t find anything wrong. After a dose of pethadin and 2 nights in hospital she was fine and we just managed to get off on holiday in time!

In the mean time I’d like to thank Wez for keeping the newts.net up to date with the latest eco news and gossip. Two of his posts I note making the top 10 most commented posts list. A great testament to his thought provoking blogging. Well, either that or his digs at Gaz. I haven’t had time to read all his posts yet but I will, and replys will be imminent.

Thank you to Gaz & Jo who between them have virtually lived in my house protecting it from the scum of the earth thieving b***ards who broke into our Oli’s house while I was away and virtually cleaned him out.

Thanks go to my Uncle Steve who funded and oversaw my pc undergo open power supply surgery while I was away. And I’m very pleased to say that upon my return, newts & newts power pc have now been reunited in full working order. This of course means that I can get on with the backlog of stuff that I have for you newts.netters.

There’s some great stuff coming up, and other than a few holiday snaps I’m going to share with you, priority has to go to getting the video finished to our song in riposte to Wez’s piss take of us all. Now I’ve got the pc back this shouldn’t take too long. Although after Wez’s sterling work at the head of the WEZ.net as he coined it in my absence, It’s going to be difficult to unleash this piss taking masterpiece on him. But not THAT difficult :0)

So keep watching the site, There’s lots comming up!

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Well thats me signing off and I’ll let the webmaster take over.
We’re off to see Hemswell Court tomorrow to check out the venue, Kirts off to Spain on Monday for 5 months, and its a pissup for Saturday as it was Mark and Tom’s birthdays.

Its been fun, and if I’ve actually got one person to think about something, anything, then my time has been worthwhile. I’d like to thank my agent, my mum, god… :)

We are what we do.Not what we buy, earn or how clean our house is…

and more Bill Hicks. You can never have too much Bill Hicks.

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say kids what time is it?
one for you

and one for numpto:
Simon developed a variety of techniques for stopping blogspam and tried them out on some heavily spammed blogs, then tallied up which techniques stopped the most spam:

1. Renamed the page that handles form submissions to stymie any bots that just assume it’s in the default location.

2. Preceded the form where you enter comments with two dummy forms – an empty one (for really stupid bots) followed by one that looks identical to the real one. Both these forms submit their info to the wrong page. They’re hidden from real people using the magic of CSS.

3. Did the same thing after the form, in reverse order, in case any bots start at the bottom of the page and work their way up.

4. Added a hidden field to the form which gets sent along with the other stuff. When a comment’s submitted, it checks that this field has been sent, and that it has the correct value. The value is based on the current date, so changes every day. To get this far, then, bots would have to parse the HTML to locate the correct form (and not be thrown off by the dummy forms surrounding it), and extract the names and values of all the fields. But – and here’s the evil part – the value of the hidden field in the html is wrong. It’s replaced by the correct value after the page has loaded by javascript…

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I’m with the terrorists.
OK ok, so I just want the comment counter to rise a bit…

Also, ION, the animal circus is shortly coming back into town.
May I remind everone who sees a poster or leaflets for the not-so-great british circus to ask the shop to take it down. If you think its OK for lions and tigers to be in cages and transported across the country to please families of chavs, read up, EDUCATE yourself and then come back to me.

And to those that say “well, I went and they appeared well looked after”, exactly what vet/animal psychology school did you attend?

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Well, I’m just trying to fill up database space really. :)

After my recent post regarding fairtrade, apparently its Fairtrade Fortnight, so all you peeps go check out these products (available from oxfam to tesco’’s) .

Thank you to Dan as well for the announcement:
This time next year Rodney…

And finally, not a BBC news article, its from the guardian! : )
Garden of Drugs
So, these plants from cannbis to opium are illegal in this country. Does anyone know why?
“Yeah, its because if someone tried to kill a person with henbane or belladonna”
“OK, so what about killing them with rat poison or caustic soda?”
“Er, “
Thats right folks, throughout the ages we’ve used plants to cure us and now we’re not allowed. Magic mushrooms are off the list.
They’re plants. They grow on the planet. From Asia and China smoking opium, to peyote and mescalin used by the Native Indians, and Hemlock and Pagans, they’ve been used for spiritual enlightenment and herbal remedies for years. But now we’re not allowed.

We’re far more happy to spend millions on companies products developing chemical susbstitues just so we can get a headache remedy in a little packet, rather than chew the root of a plant, and in turn these companies have vast patent departments to protect their intellectual property, so you can’t manufacture the same drugs but 10x cheaper. Viagra is a recent development, but I think it was hemlock they’d chew to supress the libido, and this was 500 years ago.

Got MS? You can’t smoke cannabis or make a tea out of it, you have to subscribe to this course of Bayer or Glaxo made drugs which don’t actually work and the NHS pay for anyway, so then you have to pop round to Freds house on the corner who’s risking his pension by growing the stuff.

So in this drug ‘war’ we’re involved in, the usage of heroin/cocaine/crack has gone up over the past twenty years. Good job we’ve been cracking down on these drug dealers eh…

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