We got suspended by our ISP, probably because the publishing system we still use was supposed to be a temporary one, but we have now had it 18 months. We've removed all our contact forms until further notice, as our ISP suspects that they can be used by spammers. The new look site is still planned, but it's anybody's guess as to when that will actually happen. The news these days takes the piss out of itself, and there's little we can add to ridicule it. The site will be two years old this summer, and we have about 250 artticles. Recently activity has been low, but we are planning to continue and the amount of new content should start to see a rise again as we move into the spring.
Joining us on "Rock Desk", ex-Toilets and Pool Party guitarrist Johnny Di Spencer, although I suspect he mainly just wants to plug the latter Band's recent re-union.
The staff are now all back from their annual holidays, and so is Tony Blair, so things should start getting interesting again soon. All the staff except Gilly that is, whose barely intelligible, spectacularly drunk voicemail left few hints as to her whereabouts. She'll turn up eventually, she always does, and in the meantime has agreed to send in a few of the poorly written excuses for travel writing that are essentially just anecdotes about her and her insane and blue-bloodedly inbred family. As for the rest of them, it's time they all started producing a bit more of the rubbish they think passes for content.
London's been a flurry of activity in July as a bunch of brainwashed young men have tried (with a partial, yet no less horrifying degree of success) to blow us all up. We joined the crowds of people on the 14th, to stand in the street for the 2 minutes silence in remembrance of the victims. As the IRA made their long awaited declaration of the end of their armed campaign, another potentially more difficult campaign seems to have hit its stride. Nobody in London is quite sure how things are going to pan out as the scale of the threat has yet to be understood.
It's our Birthday on the 6th of July, when we'll be one year old. We were planning on offering gin miniatures as prizes for various things, but this is now looking in serious danger of being illegal, since we can't do this without having established entrants' ages. This is only the first of many obstacles. To summmarise, we have been told, or strongly advised, by our solicitors that we cannot mail out alcohol to people, willy nilly. This is a shame because that represents by far the most fun way in which to drink it.
We also do not keep any details of people who email us, so the other thing we would have to do is keep details and to register with Data Protection, etc etc etc. We'll have a look at doing other stuff, but competition law is quite a killjoy, so it seems we can't just offer prizes without a proper structure. we can't give out gin miniatures any more, so if you have had one, keep schtum and throw the empty bottle over next door's fence, just to be sure.
I've been away, leaving my deputy Simon in charge. This explains the increase in swearing in articles as well as the fact that Wiggy has had one of his generally unpublishable pieces put on the site. It's countdown time to the Election, so my staff have upped the level of their drinking accordingly. Gilly knows the Parker-Bowles and hasn't appeared back at the office since Saturday's wedding, which means that she's either still on a cocaine and drinking binge with Camilla's ex-husband and their son Tom, or she's in Police custody. Or both. She also knew Prince Rainer, so it's possible that she's popped down to Monaco and been arrested there.
We're also taking on another staff member, Amanda Shadbolt, who will mainly cover the sort of popular celebrity stuff that the other staff think is beneath them. Her profile will appear on our staff page imminently
Today we launch a new section of the site for election 2005 coverage. The remains of the old graphics from the original prototype site have been replaced at last with proper anti-aliased ones. Individual staff columns will be launched later this month.
Nearly a month into 2005, and still no sign of our new publishing system. Lionel has promised to deliver this soon, but has been distracted by the many high quality games that have been released recently. The prospect of Resident Evil 4 on the gamecube means that the delivery date is likely to slip yet again.
Hopefully there's going to be a lot of good things we can take the piss out of in 2005. We're all very excited about the upcoming election campaign, and we're planning an election special section for the site.
November has brought with it a lot of things that have disrupted the quiescant ebb and flow of Eclectic House. First there was Doom III, closely followed by Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and of course, Half Life 2, which has proved to be by far the most serious dent in the staff work-rate. Actually, this game really is The Shit, pissing all over Doom III, and even I'm hooked after being a bit skeptical for the first couple of levels.
Wiggy's output is not affected, although this has more or less nothing to do with his professionalism and everything to do with the twin facts that he hates computer ganes and does next to no work anyway. Gilly's been a trooper through all this. She's done no work, as such, but she has run gamely back and forth to the off licence and back, bringing us cans and take-aways while we play. We let her spend any change on whatever she likes, and pretty much the only thing she does like is gin.
As the end of October approaches, we are still using our original, creaky publishing system, but we are about to launch our RSS feed, which we hope to have ready in the next couple of days. We are also just starting to exchange links with other websites, so our links page will also appear in the next couple of days.
From November, each of our columnists will be tasked with providing a monthly column, which will include Simon Coggeshall's Angry About ..., Dear Gilly and World of Wiggy, in which our very own Sir Michael Wiggy will delight and enchant none of our readers with the unique charm, wit and sophistication he alone thinks he has.
As our second month comes to an end and our content grows, our web publishing system which was hacked together by Lionel in a couple of hours on the first afternoon, is beginning to creak under the strain. Lionel tried his best to interest the rest of the staff in how it works, patiently explaining that it's only a simple Perl/CGI engine, and then promising to sort us out with a proper solution with a database just as soon as he's completed Doom 3 and Dark Magic Fantasy XIII.
To mark the publication of our one hundredth article, which will happen in the next few weeks, we are going to be producing a small number of our very tasteful mugs, the very ones that we use here at Eclectic House. They're made of nice thick china, and are all white with the four-colour (official names: Four-leaf Clover/Seventies Fanta/Austin Allegro Seats/Key Lime Sorbet) square logo on the front and are suitable for all hot drinks, or if you're like Gilly, warm gin. There'll probably be a competition in which you can win one of these superb mugs, plus a half bottle of Co-op brand London Gin to try it out, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
We've been online for about a month now, and most of this has been in the holiday season when there isn't a great deal of news happenning. For this first editorial, I shall answer a few frequently asked questions, then go on to say a few things about upcoming features. First the questions:
Q: Where is your apostrophe?
A: Well, of course in most European languages, our title would contract to L'Eclectica. However, the "la" part of our title is not really intended as a definite article as such, and is really just a piece of nonsense, introduced to help get a domain name that wasn't already registered. If pressed, I would say that our apostrophe has been stolen and is already in use on a sign outside a cafe in Mark's Tey advertising: Breakfasts, Lunches, Tea's.
Q: Can I contribute an article?
A: You can send electronic missives to "editor" at the obvious address. It's not explicitly listed here because of the nuisance of the SpamBot. A form will eventually appear to allow staff to be contacted.
Q: There's quite a bit of swearing
A: In future, I shall be editing articles, particularly from Simon and Alex to ensure that swearing is kept to the confines of the Opinion pages, which is the appropriate forum for drunken ranting.
Q: You don't have any links, why not?
A: Partly because we're new, and partly because we do not wish to associate with us any sites, without gaining their prior permission. We are happy to link to other sites, but we deliberately haven't assembled a list of our favourite links just in case those sites might be unhappy about being associated with a site that is mostly about taking the piss.
Q: Are the columnists always drunk?
A: Yes, of course, they're journalists after all. When they're not hard at work at their desks here at Eclectic House, they can invariably be found in the saloon bar of the Rat and Conker.
We've got lots of stuff planned, which we'll be rolling out over the next couple of months. Our online forums and games, such as "Genius or C**t" and our competition "Devil's Advocaat" in which the best article on a chosen topic stands to win a bottle of Supermarket Brand Advocaat.