The price of fame

"Fame" may be rather overstating it, but "The price of Not-Being-Absolutely-Entirely-Unknown" doesn't scan so well.

I also realise if you're reading this, you're likely to read the latest first: that does seem reasonable. So because I've done two entries in quick succession, let me say:

Previously on this blog... so many people listen to my podcast UK DVD Review show that my website was shut down. Now, read on.

I've coughed up the cash and - hang on, let me check, Apple said it'd take a mo but yes, www.williamgallagher.com is back. They're dashed clever, these Apple types: the cost of upgrading my .Mac account to 2Gb of storage and therefore some greater amount of data transfer ought to be £35pa but because it's an annual subscription and my renewal date is in July, the nice shiny total at the bottom of the form was just the fee from now until renewal. Who could resist £8.32?

Come July I'll be thinking about it again, but there you go.

And it's funny, I don't think I know many people who pay for their email account anymore. But there was one day, three years ago now, when I badly needed to get a large document off my PowerBook and onto a PC at Radio Times and there was nothing I could do. The BBC email system was croaking, I could hook my PowerBook onto the RT network but only for internet access, I couldn't see any of the same servers the PC could. So I tried a trial version of .Mac which allowed me to send the document immediately.

I thought that would be it, get that document across, forget about .Mac entirely. But it proved so reliable-as-a-rock, so much quicker than the BBC's webmail, that I paid up at the end of the trial. And in those three years or whatever it is, I've received fewer than 30 spam emails. I don't mean my junk filter caught 'em, I mean I didn't get any, they were stopped at Apple's end. It's a bit annoying that I'm getting any at all but then I use my .Mac address a lot, I bandy it about, whereas I have a Google Mail account that I exclusively use for archiving work (at the end of the day I email myself the document) and though I've never given that address to anyone else at all, still I get more spam through it than I do my .Mac address.

So I'm happy for about 360 days a year; I ponder the fee for about five days a year but so far always pay up.

Next time, even more exciting details from my finances,
William

Closed by popular demand

Now, am I popular or have I just been secretly downloading umpteen Hollywood blockbusters and for some reason parking them on my website?

I'm afraid that if you go to my site now, www.williamgallagher.com, you don't get in. Apple's switched it off because I've exceeded the limits on how much data can be transferred from it. I have to say that makes me feel great: enough people are grabbing my UK DVD Review podcast that I've been shut down.

From a quick look at Apple's finger-wagging email, it looks like there's nothing I can do until May 1st, the next time they check these things. I suspect in fact that if I pay the right people the right amount of money I can get the site back up, though, so I'll look into that and my bank balance.

It's definitely an embarrassing thing that one can't get to my site. I suppose it ought to be cruel, cruel world that I have to pay more because the site's a success.

But I just can't help grinning.

William "Intolerably Smug" Gallagher

UK DVD Review prices

Folks,

As I write this I'm still making this week's UK DVD Review podcast but within it I promise to tell you on here the prices for the DVDs I rabbit on about. I tell you this after I've mentioned all the myriad permutations of RRP and online prices, I could at least have mentioned it before and saved you getting out a pencil or telling your local DVD shop "Listen, this geezer, he says you should be selling it for a fiver off", which always works.

Well.

Here's the prices for this week. If you'd care to join me over here with the show itself, then I'm on iTunes - er, or I will be when I've finished this episode - at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73802571

Or on my own site at http://homepage.mac.com/william.gallagher/pod.htm.

And those prices, at last, go thisaway:

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is £16 retail, £11ish online
Doom costs £20 RRP, £15 online.
King Kong (2005) is out for £25 in a two-disc special edition –is online at a mere £13
King Kong (1933) came out last year for a tenner, is now online for about six quid

And The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is in three versions. There’s a single-disc film-only DVD for £20.99 (weird price, isn’t it?), which is online for £12.99.

Then there’s a two-disc special edition which has an RRP £24.99 and is online £14.99.

Lastly, Amazon co uk claims a world exclusive with its RRP £50 set and online £35.99 which is the two-disc DVD plus books and the like, all in a wardrobe-style box.

William