Welcome to Ad Fundum

Welcome to my blog! It started off as a place to post my free-to-download DJ mixes and bootlegs, but since then it’s grown and now covers loads of different things.

You can select from the categories on the right or if it’s the music you’re after, check out the “Downloads” menu on the right-hand side of the page. Alternatively you can just listen to the music tracks by using the audio player on each post.

You can post any of the entries you see on this blog to your Facebook and MySpace pages, or book mark them using StumbleUpon, Delicious, Technorati, Digg, and lots of other sites by clicking on this link at the bottom of a blog post:

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Ad Fundum music blog back up and running!

My other blog, Ad Fundum, has been relaunched as a music blog. I wanted somewhere to upload my mixes, talk about my favourite music sites, and show off obscure music videos that I found on YouTube.

Ad Fundum - just music. http://adfundum.wordpress.com/

I only started last night, so there are only a few mixes and it’s the early stuff, but please drop by, have a listen, download some music, watch some videos, check out the links to other music sites etc. I posted the video for Stephen “Tintin” Duffy’s song ‘Icing on the cake’ last night, so if you feel like a bit of eighties nostalgia, click here to check it out!

What the…?

One of the great features about WordPress (and there are many great features, if you’re thinking about starting your own blog WordPress is amazing and it’s free!) is that you can really analyse your blog’s statistics. Not just how many hits on your blog or which entries get the most traffic, but much more than that. I can see which sites have got a link to us, how many peopl have clicked on the links in my blog, and – most entertainingly – I can see what search terms people have used to find my blog in a search engine.

This is not a football story, but I thought it would be funny to list some of those search terms here:

• Cristiano Ronaldos teeth before he had
• Smith grumpy old men sunderland santa
• orgy spit roast
• the game game,s pain
• amr zaki world’s deadliest striker
• footballers named carlo in edinburgh
• chelsea+portsmouth+james+hair
• real you are my obsession
• ootballers(sic) roasting videos
• famous german footballers at middlesboro
• word that begin with real
• ashley cole spit roast

More to follow when you provide them!

Dodgy prediction time again!

Can you smell it? That’s the waft of a pointless over-hyped match on Sky Sports. No, it’s not Fulham vs. Middlesborough, or any of Newcastle’s games, but rather the Charity Community Shield. Which means that we no longer have to pretend to care about rugby or golf, or stoop as low as watching the Olympics through sheer boredom – the football is back! And in the spirit of celebration it’s time to put my neck on the line and make a series of rash predictions about the forthcoming season’s winners and losers, all obviously unbiased and impartial:

Champions League

Heart says Manchester United, head says Inter Milan

Premier League

• 1. Manchester United
• 2. Chelsea
• 3. Liverpool
• Relegated: West Brom, Stoke City, Hull City

Coca-Cola Championship

• Promoted: Sheffield United, Birmingham City, QPR
• Relegated: Southampton, Barnsley, Blackpool

Coca-Cola League 1

• Promoted: Peterborough, MK Dons, Leeds
• Relegated: Hereford United, Scunthorpe, Carlisle

Coca-Cola League 2

• Promoted: Darlington, Bradford, Grimsby
• Relegated: Bournemouth, Luton

There you have ‘em, folks. If anyone else is brave enough to leave their predictions in the comments, I’ll post them on the blog.

… and Smith must score …

“… and Smith must score …”

Four immortal words that kicked off my love affair with football. Up until the 1983 FA Cup Final, I’d been a follower of football; I was twelve at that time and I played in the park and on the playground, and I guess I was sort of a Manchester United fan, but I think this was probably the point at which the game really gripped me. I held my breath as Gordon Smith took his shot, and yelled a triumphant ‘Yes!’ when Gary Bailey blocked the shot (or, more accurately, when he failed to get out of the way).

Exactly two years on from that day, I was hopelessly besotted. Through the TV I pleaded with Peter Willis not to send Kevin Moran off. I stood on the touchline with Ron Atkinson exhorting the team forward. When Mark Hughes sent the ball down the right-wing to Norman Whiteside, I was ready to skin the full-back and put a cross in. But when Whiteside cut inside and curled the ball into the far corner, completely against all expectation, I knew my life had changed forever. From that day on football had a hold on me that I’ve never quite managed to shake off.

Norman Whiteside scores the goal that changed my life. Image from http://www.manutdzone.com/

Which brings us to the present day. As a thirty-something fighting vainly against becoming a forty-something, I’ve played a lot of games, seen a lot of games, and seen a lot of changes in my beloved game, and the internet is the perfect medium to sound off about it all.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Footballers.