BenPaddon.co.uk

I’ve been looking at the webstats for my three primary websites - Dream17, Jump Leads (currently my priority project), and this blog - and there are some interesting network locations popping up in my stats.

For example, did you know that Jump Leads has been accessed by no less than seven computers at Marvel, and a further 20 at Midway Games? It’s also very popular with Disney Worldside Services, but when you consider that my Dad works there it doesn’t count. The comic has also been accessed by people at Dell, Hudson Soft, Ask.com (which is more likely than not a web crawling spider), Hewlett Packard, the Ford Motor Company, Microsoft, Team17 (woo!), United Airlines, Tesco, Universal Studios, Vivendi Universal, California State Government (has the Governator been reading our comic?), the BBC, Sky Television, an Air Force testing facility (perhaps they’re looking into developing JumpShips), MTV Europe, Nvidia, Sony North America, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and any number of American Universities.

My blog has largely seen visitors from ISP networks, which generally means that people are reading it from home. There are a lot of people reading Jump Leads from home too, natch, but my blog doesn’t appear to be “read it at work” material. There have been a handeful of people from the Ford Motor Company and, bizarrely, a higher number of Tesco visits here than to JL which leads me to ask: when the Hell are you guys going to open a Krispy Kreme counter in the Dunstable branch? I may not live in the UK anymore but my family is still local and if they want to yield to their Krispy Kreme desires they have to make a 45-minute journey into Milton Keynes. You have the power to remedy this grievious injustice!

Dream17, meanwhile, gets a lot of hits from German web users and a variety of German-based companies. A lot. Still, it’s nice to see regular visits from Codemasters, THQ and Team17 employees.

Dream17 has gone down, most likely because more than one person has tried to download the new Worms Armageddon BETA update. Heart Internet have piossed me off for the last time, and so I have begun enacting a plan that was set in motion hundreds of years ago. Or possibly a couple of months ago.

I just watched “Father’s Day” again, and I found myself welling up during the last five-to-ten minutes. Brilliant episode, that. One of the finest episodes of the first series.

Still, I wasn’t blubbing for long. I came down to check my email before I cracked on with this Jump Leads script I’m working on (incidentally I’m still looking for an artist, or an animator… any takers?) to discover that I’ve been emailed by a chap named Stuart, who made the Worms-themed birthday cake that was recently featured on Kotaku, and he’s offering be more photos of the cake to put up on Dream17. Is that fantastic or what?

Those lovely chaps at Cloanto have very kindly furnished me with a free copy of Amiga Forever 2006 Plus Edition, which I think was very generous of them.

Just thought I’d share that.

I’m sick to the back teeth of Heart Internet, the hosting company who provide webspace for RealVG, Dream17 and this very blog. Y’see, they took Dream17 down late last night and now they refuse to put it back up unless I remove the Worms 3D demo and the Worms Armageddon 1.00 > 3.00 patch. It’s bloody stupid of them to advertise as “unlimited bandwidth” and then sneak a little clause in the Customer Agreement saying that if a website receives excessive bandwidth then they will take the site down. Even more stupid that they do not provide any anti-hotlinking tools to their customers. What a stupid way of doing things.

That seems pretty golly gosh darn shit, if you ask me. I’m fairly sure there are laws against that sort of chicanery as well, so I shall have to do my research.

As a temporary measure, I have no choice but to take the “offending” files down. As soon as I can afford it, I’m switching to a different host for Dream17. Heart Internet are about as much use as a sponge cricket ball.

Heart Internet, who provide my friend Adam with the Reseller account he sold me the webspace through, have seen fit to take my fucking website down again because of “excessive bandwidth usage” despite the fact that they advertise unlimited bandwidth.

I am not a happy man.

So the Heart Internet issued is resolved. Ish. I had a conversation with “Bob” on the phone, and I learnt:

• The Terms & Conditions state that “filesharing” websites are not allowed, which is probably why they have an upper file limit of 50 MB in the first place.
• The Terms & Conditions say this because large demand for large files can impact other websites on the same server.
• “Bob” says that “Robert” told Adam about the relevant section of the Terms & Conditions.
• Heart don’t care about the smaller zip files with the Amiga floppy ADFs/IPFs in them. It was the high demand for the ISOs and Worms3D/Worms 4 patches (yes, I sort of knew that, but “Robert” made is sound like he wasn’t the smaller files gone as well).
• “Bob” is more of an Atari man.

I asked “Bob” if we could perhaps set up a script to limit how many people are downloading the files at a time, and he said they can’t budge on the matter. So I have temporarily removed the files from our server, and I’m likely to move again. I’ve had aa couple of interesting offers which I am heavily considering taking up. I’ll keep you updated.

Hallelujah!

Dream17 has been taken down temporarily because our new hosts seem to think that by hosting Team 17’s entire Amiga back-catalogue for download we are in breach of copyright law. They are shutting us down, perhaps indefinitely. We are clearly in the wrong.

When Dream17 launched my original aim was to provide an online “factfile” about all of their games. It wasn’t until late in the development of the site that the idea of having their Amiga games up for download on the site popped into my head (although it may have been a suggestion from someone else, I forget). I emailed Martyn Brown who gave me the thumb up, and so the ADFs went online. Later I decided to ask the Software Preservation Society (at the time known as CAPS) if I could obtain the IPFs for hosting. They asked for confirmation from Team 17 that this was okay and, again, I contacted Martyn Brown who gave me the green light once again.

Dream17 has been given authorisation to host the files not once, but twice.

This isn’t enough, however. Heart Internet, who host not only Dream17 but this blog, are now saying that the fact that we have authorisation is irrelevant - as the games aren’t “freeware” and as Team 17 have asserted themselves as the author, we have to remove the files or we’re not getting our precious website back. I am reminded of the fun that The Weekly had with their hosts last year, and I am getting scared that this may happen to us as well.

I’ll keep you updated.

Edit: Here is how the story has developed so far.

• Adam emailed the company to say, in brief, “You’ve got no legal grounds to demand Ben removes the files, so put the site back up or we’ll take the legal action.”
• “Robert” at Heart says, “Remove the files.”
• Adam informs him that we can offer conclusive evidence that we have authorisation to host such files.
• “Robert” at Heart says, “Remove the files.”
• Adam says, “You didn’t answer my question.”
• “Robert” at Heart says it’s irrelevant as such files are against the Terms & Conditions of hosting.
• I ask “Why?”. Robert can’t actually hear me, and Adam says Heart refuses to speak to me because I am “just” the end-user. What a lovely company.

Edit II: Someone has put forward the possibility that they may be able to host Dream17 for free, although it’s largely dependant on space and bandwidth requirements. I’m very strongly inclined to take this offer up should it prove acceptable, as Heart(less) Internet really have proven themselves to be most arrogant, pig-headed and foolish concerning this issue.

Edit III: So the “wp_user” table on my blog vanished under mysterious circumstances about half an hour ago. Thankfully I’m no idiot - both myself and Dan make regular back-ups of the database so it was no difficult task for Dan to go in and re-insert the missing database.

I can’t help but wonder if this was a calculated effort to stop me from writing about the dispute with Heart Internet. I find it very hard to believe that the user table would just vanish like that. This has expanded into the realms of Internet Insanity, and I will be expanding upon this issue further in a whole new page. Watch this space.

The above screenshots, incidentally, were kindly taken by CyberShadow. This one was taken by Hosma, as I want to make sure I’m not the only person who saw this. I also took screenshots but they will be made available later, hosted someplace else. Right now I don’t trust Heart Internet not to “accidentally” delete or remove other segments of this website.

Sometimes I check my email and despair.

I get spam. Everyone does. I doubt there’s a single email account in the world that doesn’t get the occasional bit of spam, whether there’s a filter in place or not. But I also get email that is quite clearly not intended for me, email that under normal circumstances I wouldn’t even have to read at all. This is because people find Dream17 on the Internet and assume that it’s the official website for Team 17 Software, and so I get email from people who’ve bought games but have trouble getting them to work. That’s not terribly irritating as they’re generally far and few between and I can usually either offer them assistance or point them to the English Amiga Board is one thing but when you see people talking about Dream17 on the Penny Arcade forums or at Something Awful that can be a tad overwhelming. The internet knows about my little website, and that means I have to actually put effort into it! Lawks.

Still, Dream17 is probably the project of which I am most proud. It’s taken us eight years to get where we are now (if you include The WormsDC Experience and The WorMatriX in the Dream17 Timeline) and I can see only good things in the future. The new layout looks superb, and Sup’s done a splendid job of bringing my concept for the new look to life as well as adding more than a few of his own ingenious ideas. I’d like to get to the point one day where we may even produce a fan-game or two, but that’s a way off. I’m just glad to have been able to bring life to the web’s first and, to date, only dedicated Team 17 fansite - the only place you can legitimately download Team 17’s entire Amiga back catalogue - and I’m looking forward to seeing how the site grows and evolves over the next few years.

A while ago my Dad, after seeing this drawing of Squirminator2k, asked me to draw him from the other side, which I did. He asked because he wanted to make a model of the character (who is, of course, a worm) and needed some more reference material. So I drew it, coloured it and stuck it up on DeviantArt as well because I thought it looked good. It answered at least one of my friends’ questions, namely “What does S-2k look like on the other side?”

That was June. In November, or possibly October, my Dad told me he’d finished the model and would send it to me in the post along with the tee-shirt he’d pick up for me, and Teri’s birthday present. He forgot (d’oh!) and as instead taken some photos of it. Seeing as I’ll be there in three months I can pick it up.

I wanted to share the photos with you, so here we are:

Swanky, eh? Also included in the picture is the cell phone I will have in the States (those of you I am close will will, of course, get the number before I go).

Every so often I will Google Dream17 to see who’s linking to it, if anyone. Now I know I have a lovely Stats interface will provides me with that information, but unfortunately it’s blocked from work. Scandalous, I know. I’m glad I Googled Dream17 today, as I discovered it has been used as an actual news source by QJ.net’s Xbox 360 Channel. Twice.

I’m not overly impressed with their describing of the website as “dubious”, though. Strong words must be had.

Edit: And here’s another one. Spook!

Edit II: There are more than a few sites, actually. In a variety of languages. Apparently Worms HD is big news, even though it isn’t called Worms HD anymore.