Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone, welcome to Two Thousand and Great!

PS. Cath was the one that coined the above phrase, I’m not that smart!

End of the 2007, bring on 2008!

Well it’s the end of 2007 and it’s been a pretty good year, but instead of doing what every other blogger has done and write an entry on what’s happened this year I’ve decided to write a blog on what I’d like to see happen next year with my blog. I’m going to keep this short and simple as its New Years Eve and I’m getting ready to go out and play a round of golf.Anyway, lets get this little list started.

More Traffic - my average has been around 80 uniques a day, though I’ve had a few spikes of 400 a day throughout the year. I’d like a modest rise to an average of around 200 - 250 per day

More Subscribers - at the moment it varies, one day I have 30 the following I have 4. I’d love there to be atleast 100 subscribers to my RSS feed

More Advertising Revenue - currently I’m making around $10 AUD a month from the advertising on this blog. Those little ads at the end of each entry and the other ads on the right hand side of the blog, well if you click them and buy something or even sign up to your own Widgetbucks, Bidvertizer or Google Adsense account I make a few dollars, and so can you. I’d like to get that well above $100 a month.

More Links - I get a handful of incoming links each day, basically these are where other bloggers link my posts in there blogs. I’d love to be getting quite a few per day, this will also help get more traffic too.

Higher Page Rank - Google has a little algorithm which ranks different websites / pages on their relevancy, basically this Page Rank helps their search engine weed out the spam and what not. Currently my page rank is 0, though if you enter this site through www.mpimagery.com then I have a PR of 3. I’d love to increase my Page Rank in 2008, 5-6 would be really nice.

More Content - all of the above is achievable if I’m providing new and original content, particularly the sort of content that people want to read. So basically this part is completely up to me and only me, hopefully I can do it and if I can it’ll influence all of the above ‘wants’..

So now that you’ve read what I’d like to get done next year, tell me what are you hoping to achieve in 2008?

Anyway, I’m about to head out to golf and hopefully have a better game than I did yesterday. So have a fantastic New Years everyone and I’ll catch you next year.

Cheers Matt!

Top 10 Albums of 2007

In a year where pretty well every song on the radio, mtv, channel v, etc. sounded like a ringtone it’s been quite difficult for me to find something really outstanding this year. Emo and Punk kinda fell off the map this year, well to be more correct it morphed into a dance-punk-pop kinda thing with way too much synth action for my taste.

Anyway, after going through all the CDs we were sent at I’m With The Band and the multitude I bought on iTunes and at JB Hifi I’ve come up with a bit of a list of what I think are the best albums I heard this year, oh and it’s in no particular order as I was finding it hard enough to narrow it down to these 10 alone.

• Funeral For A Friend - Tales Dont Tell Themselves
• Alkaline Trio - Remains
• Bayside - Walking Wounded
• Fall Out Boy - Infinity On High
• Motion City Soundtrack - Even If It Kills Me
• Atreyu - Lead Sails Paper Anchor
• Enter Shikari - Take To The Skies
• Brand New - The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me
• Dropkick Murphys - Blackout
• The Hives - The Black And White Album

Interesting list hey. There were a few bands that only just missed out on making the list, ie. Parkway Drive - Horizons, Silverstein - Arrivals and Departures, As I Lay Dying - An Ocean Between Us, and Evergreen Terrace - Wolfbiker to name but a few.

Anyway I’m not going to bore you with the details on why each particular album made the list as music is such a personal thing, however many of these bands have been amongst my favourites for the last couple of years, and even though I own and play editor for an online music magazine and listen to a pretty diverse range of music, it’s still quite hard for a new band to really really impress me.

If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, or are looking to kill some time, then check out those above artists on iTunes and have a quick listen. You never know, you might like something I’ve listed.

Take it easy.

Wordpress 2.3.2

WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations.

Get 2.3.2 now to protect your blog from these disclosures.

Head on over to the Wordpress site now to download the latest version!

New Car

My 9-5 job provides me with a new car every 3 or so years, and just before Christmas my boss mentioned to me that when I get back from my long service leave in February I can sort out my new car… Oh yeh!!

I’ve been looking around for the last couple of months in an effort to check out what’s in the market, and more importantly, what’s within my price range which is around $40,000.00 Australian dollars.

My shortlist is a mixed one so far, I’m a big fan of the following vehicles;

• Dodge Nitro - Diesel
• Jeep Wrangler 4 door - Diesel
• VW Golf GT - Petrol
• Subaru Forester XS - Petrol

All 4 vehicles have enough space for me, though the Golf is a little on the small size, they’re all reasonably good with their fuel economy and they’re all within the range of my budget.

Now here’s where all of you can help me. If you own any of the above vehicles let me know what they drive like, what their service costs are like, whether you’ve had any problems with them, etc. Leave a comment and let me know about your experiences..

If I’ve missed any vehicles that you think I should be considering then leave a message and let me know as well, I’d be interested in hearing anyone and everyone’s thoughts on the whole new car purchasing thing.

Cheers and Thanks!

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