I just made a few changes to the blog

I haven't done much today due to a slight illness (basically, I ate more peanuts than any human being should ever eat in one go and suffered the consequences), so I took things fairly easy, didn't do my scheduled podcast, and just played around with my blogger layout instead.

The result was that I have now not only ditched Disqus (and started afresh with the comments), but I have also temporarily removed LinkWithin (which has been annoying me for quite some time by forcing me to add pictures when I really didn't want to and showing posts which I've deleted), the "Most Popular Posts" (which haven't changed in over a year), and the completely useless "Blog Archive" (which just took up space and nobody used anyway). If you need to find something, I recommend the page links on the navigation bar under the logo, and, of course, you can use the search box.

I also deleted a lot of the monetising mainly because I'm not making anything from any of the adverts. Unfortunately, I'm not a pretty girl blogger who you all want to fall over yourselves agreeing with or supporting with donations just because you think you'll get something in return. Reality check, people, that isn't going to happen on those mediocre blogs by pretty girls who use the angles for their one good profile picture either.

More Changes

I am no longer pandering to the popularity contests (not that I ever did much) so I'm not going to play the number of GFC followers game. I'll follow who I want to if they interest me or not follow others if they don't. I'm lazy with it though so the chances are that if I'm already following your blog, I'll stay following it unless you give up writing.

As tempting as it was to remove the GFC gadget, it's there for your benefit not mine. If you have a Blogger account then it will always be the easiest way to subscribe. Of course, the RSS feed itself, Twitter and my Facebook page for this blog are just as useful for keeping up with my latest posts.

Having said all that, I have cleared a lot of dead blogs from "The Bloody Blogroll" earlier - the current total is 80 - mainly because at least 200 horror bloggers have given up. It's very sad, but there just aren't that many of us left now.

Time for a Reboot

My blog, although still definitely geared towards the horror genre, is changing to be about whatever I damn well feel like posting or reviewing whether it's an old movie from the 1940s or the latest remake. I can't compete with the teams of reviewers on the bigger sites and, truth be told, I don't really want to either. If I find something interesting then perhaps you will too.

I've written approximately 1000 horror movie reviews so far. Most of them are as crappy as the movies themselves, some are longer and more informative than others, but they are all 100% honest. I may go back and rewrite a few of them one day even though it would be more work than necessary, but I'm not going to change my mind about anything which I've already said.

Anyway, hopefully, at the very least, my blog will load a bit faster now, and I can concentrate on writing rather than trying to satisfy the requirements of the less than helpful widgets.

A day off from horror... sort of

Today, for the first time in far too many weeks, I simply couldn't find anything to write about. It's not that I haven't got at least a dozen unfinished drafts waiting for my attention including various horror movie reviews, something about one of my favourite horror authors, and a top ten of "the sickest films ever", but I just couldn't get into it.

Last night, I stayed up late watching "Spellbinder" (1988) which I discovered deep in the bowels of the Neflix horror section, but no matter how many times I tried to review it, all I kept wanting to write about was Kelly Preston's norks, so I gave up.

So tpday, like all good procrastinators, I decided to fiddle with my blog layout some more. Usually when I do this, I end up breaking something and driving myself mad putting it all back the way it was, but these were only subtle changes this time. I changed the font size on the gadget sidebars, made the tab text bold, hid the annoying empty box on the right hand column which was added by Disqus, added a links box for some old "celebrity" interviews which nobody has ever read, and then became a total sellout by adding a few affiliate links.

Yes, I finally decided to do some monetising just to see what was out there. I already had a CafePress store which I've only ever sold one thing from and an Amazon "aStore" which is equally as pointless, so I decided to get myself a new AllPosters affiliate account and add some horror posters which nobody will ever buy either. It's fun playing with all the "link builder" pages on these sites, but honestly, people already know these big names already, and if they want something, they'll just go directly to the relevant website and search there.

Monetising (or "monetizing" - the spell checker hates that word) a blog is, in my opinion, completely useless and often simply annoys readers who are sick to death of blatant advertising all over the internet already.

Anyway, that's how I wasted yet another day. Now I'm trying to relax with an icy cold Monster (the dentist fixed my teeth on Wednesday for an enormous amount of money, by the way) while the world's smallest but loudest cat is demanding attention.

In other news, Netflix have doubled their prices for anyone who wants to continue watching streaming videos and DVDs so I've cancelled the mailed DVDs part of their service. They don't have anything that I want to watch that badly on DVD now anyway, and there's always a plethora of "Megaoctocrap versus Shitasaurus" films to hate on my Roku box. Have the new Netflix prices angered you? I bet they have.