BMW Short Movies - basicly long ads for BMW’s cars - all of them (well, the ones I’ve seen so far) star Clive Owen. This series of seven shorts are all excellently filmed, and actually quite entertaining.

Elephants Dream (1080p HD DivX Version) - short 3D animated film by a community project. www.elephantsdream.org

Yes, these are links to the 3FL File Mirrors - anyone with an ISP who peers at PIPE or WAIX, can probably get them without using download quota.

(I’ll put up a better description later…)

I do a regular review of my web stats - partly I suppose it could be called ego stroking (Hey, I got over 800 “Unique Visitors” in November) - but also to check out who’s linking to me, and whether there’s anything abusing my domains.

Part of the stats package I use (AWStats) lists Search engine spider information.

Here’s a quick summary of Spider activity from October, just for http://will.hughesfamily.net.au/

1. Inktomi Slurp
   Hits: 2676
   Hits on robots.txt: 1141
   Bandwidth Used: 17.01 MB
2. Googlebot
   Hits: 3685
   Hits on robots.txt: 33
   Bandwidth Used: 15.14 MB
3. MSNBot
   Hits: 786
   Hits on robots.txt: 231
   Bandwidth Used: 10.84 MB

Now, here’s November.

1. MSNBot
   Hits: 2475
   Hits on robots.txt: 133
   Bandwidth Used: 484.59 MB
2. Googlebot
   3441
   Hits on robots.txt: 32
   28.63 MB
3. Inktomi Slurp
   Hits: 2990
   Hits on robots.txt: 1001
   Bandwidth Used: 18.95 MB

There hasn’t been any major increase in posts to my blog, referrals, or any significant number of new photos posted.  What the heck are MS doing??

Seriously — wtf?  I’m just glad I’m not exactly worried about bandwidth usage.

Well, after looking at all the working visa situation, it looks like I won’t be able to actually move to the UK to work.

I was looking at a Working Holiday Maker visa, and the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme - the problem is, the working holidaymaker visa only allows you to work for 12 months. Which, if I was going to the trouble of actually moving any of my stuff over there - probably isn’t long enough for it to pay off.  The HSMP is also out - since I’d need a degree as a minimum, before I would have enough points.

That’s really annoying, since I was looking forward to the Banana and Nutella Crepes in France.  (Add some chopped peanuts, and a drizzle of raspberry sauce… mmmm - chocolate banana split sundae crepe).

So, instead I’m going to see if I can complete my HSC (finally) and then finish all those half-completed TAFE courses. Then, I’ll look at Comp Sci or something like that at University.