After a break for an office move and holibobs, here are some things I should have blogged about but didn’t get around to:

The Rocketbelt Caper was selected as one of ShortList magazine’s 25 greatest summer reads for men, alongside books by Antony Beevor, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk and Malcolm Gladwell. “What happens when you mix three men, a crushing ambition to build a Buck Rogers-style jet pack, murder and a $10 million lawsuit?” asks the mag. “The sound of Hollywood falling over itself to snap up the film rights to this bizarre story.” If only…

In the Unofficial Football World Championships, Scotland lost 1-0 to the Netherlands, allowing the Dutch to retain the UFWC title. The next title match is Australia versus the Netherlands on 10 October. SBS have a piece about the match here. The UFWC website is currently looking back 80 years to the resumption of international football after the Great War. In the Irish Independent, Aidan O’Hara wrote a piece about the UFWC, using material from the UFWC website, most likely prompted by a UFWC press release, but neglected to actually mention the UFWC…

Russ Routledge got to see his friend Muhammad Ali on the Champ’s final visit to the UK. He showed Ali his photos, and handed out copies of my Ali feature, but was saddened by his hero’s declining health. My account of Russ’s friendship with Ali is here.

Spotify is now available on the iPhone (and Android, and soon on S60). As expected, it features an offline mode that allows users to store 3,333 tracks on your phone. The iPhone app has just been updated, and Spotify have also added an offline mode to the PC version. You’ll need to be a premium user, but £9.99 a month for virtually unlimited music seems a small price to pay.

Lots more content has been added to the TV Ad Music website, including this interview with Slow Moving Millie, who provides the music to the Virgin Media backlot advert, and an explanation of why the track on the Land Rover advert is NOT by Noah and the Whale. See the latest ads here.

I’ve yet to receive my free copy of Free, the book by Chris Anderson. Almost 3 months on it doesn’t look like I’ll be reviewing it any time soon on these pages.

In related news, the Rocketbelt Caper free ebook download offer will be ending in the near future, and if you haven’t yet downloaded it for free you can do so here.

Books, Music, Technology, Websites

There have been some big games in the Unofficial Football World Championships over the last few months, and on Wednesday there is another one as current UFWC title holders the Netherlands (some say Holland) travel to Glasgow to take on all-time UFWC champions Scotland.

The game is also a crucial qualifying match for some tin pot competition to be held in South Africa next year, but obviously the player’s minds will be on the UFWC…

Scotland are the all-time UFWC champions, having won 86 UFWC title matches – more than any other nation, ahead of the likes of England, Argentina, Russia – and the Netherlands, who have won 38 title matches and are ranked fifth overall.

Scotland have not had an easy time of things in UFWC competition in recent years. The Scots last held the title in March 2007, having ended a 40-year drought by beating Georgia, only then to lose out just four days later to official world champions Italy.

The UFWC website has all the build-up to the game, and will cover the action on Wednesday night. The game will be shown live in the UK on Sky Sports 2.

If you have no idea what the previous 200 words mean, you can read an explanation of sorts at www.ufwc.co.uk.

Football, Websites UFWC

The Church of Scientology is currently running a huge advertising campaign across the web (and on US TV). Part of the web campaign involves serving ads through Google’s AdSense service. AdSense serves ads to millions of websites, including this one, and my TV Ad Music website, based on website content, location and other factors. That’s an AdSense unit at the top right of this page.

Usually this works out OK. I’ll write a post mentioning the iPhone or Sky TV, and Google will serve ads relevant to the iPhone or Sky TV. (And if readers click those ads I’ll get a few pennies – hooray!) But recently, particularly over at TV Ad Music, the AdSense units have been overrun by Scientology ads. This seems to be happening across the web, and some website owners are having problems filtering the ads.

Up until today, none of my websites had featured any content that was in any way relevant to the Church of Scientology. And so there was no reason for Scientology ads to appear here. Also, like a lot of other website owners, I don’t want to use my webspace to promote this organisation.

If people want to believe in a religion founded by a science fiction writer – with the specific intention of making money – and based on sci-fi staples involving past lives, UFOs and alien overlords, then I have no particular problem with that. Each to their own.

If people want to believe in a space ruler called Xenu and ancient extraterrestrial societies called the Helatrobus and the Marcabians, and that when people die their souls go to the planet Venus to be re-planted into a new body and then dumped back on Earth in the ocean off the coast of California, then that is their prerogative.

But I would rather they did not attempt to recruit members via my websites.

If you’re an AdSense user who is being plagued by Scientology ads, here’s how to block them using the competitive ad filter and the AdSense Preview Tool:

1. Find the ad URL. To block specific ads you’ll need to determine the display or destination URLs. It’s not sufficient to use the organisation’s main URLs, for example scientology.org and dianetics.org. My Scientology ads don’t show display URLs, and clicking on your own ads violates Google’s policy, so this method uses the AdSense Preview Tool, which works with Internet Explorer.

To install the Preview Tool, right-click the link below and save the registry file to your desktop. Then double-click the file from your desktop to install it. You’ll then need to close and restart Internet Explorer.

AdSense Preview Tool

Open your website and right-click anywhere on the page outside of the your AdSense units. Select “Google AdSense Preview Tool” from the context menu.

A window will pop up showing adverts that AdSense will serve to your website. Tick the Scientology ad(s) and click “Show selected URLs”. The destination ad will appear. For example, for an ad offering a Scientology video on my website, the destination was at (Google-owned) YouTube (FYI: youtube.com/watch?v=zgsFh87RCU0). Copy the destination URL, and now we’ll block it.

2. Block the ad URL. Log in to Google AdSense and click “AdSense Setup” and “Competitive Ad Filter”. Paste the ad URL into the box under “AdSense for Content filters”. You might also want to paste it into “AdSense for Search filters”. You can also add Scientology’s main URLs, scientology.org and dianetics.org, to the filter lists. Click “Save changes”.

And you’re done. Google say it could take 48 hours for the changes to take effect, but the ads disappeared from my sites within a few minutes. You can confirm that the ads have been filtered using the Preview Tool again. If the ads reappear for another destination URL you may need to run through the process again.

Like I said earlier, this isn’t an anti-Scientology issue. It’s an anti-irrelevant and/or unsuitable ads issue. I’m sure that all Scientologists are very charming, very good-looking, and not at all bonkers. All I know is I would rather have red-hot knitting needles poked into my eye sockets than ever watch Battlefield Earth…

Technology, Websites Scientology