Sorry to all of you who’ve posted comments recently that I’ve not yet had chance to respond to. I do read all comments that come in (yep, even the really long ones), and I try my best to respond to most of them – I’ve just got a little bit behind recently. I will try harder.

Just to let you know, the site will be down for a little while from 7am UK time tomorrow (21st May) while a server upgrade takes place. The site should be back shortly afterwards. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Now running WordPress 2.2.

Instant Opinion, the new book collecting together over 120 of the best political posts from this very website, is available for readers of this site to order now. It will go on general release in bricks-and-mortar bookstores and also at online bookstores within the next few weeks, but pre-release copies are available direct from the publisher right now.

The book is available in paperback, for delivery around the world, and also in a snazzy ebook format. It’s 260 pages long, and covers a diverse range of political topics – as well as a few of the best non-political posts thrown in at the back. You can see a preview of the book here, order it here, or read more about it on the special page at instantopinion.co.uk.

Get ’em while they’re hot: Grab your copy now!

Today is my ‘blogging birthday’.

It’s four years since I started blogging with this post on The LBSC. And since then, I haven’t stopped.

To mark the occassion, thanks to the genorosity, confidence, and support of the team at Lulu Publishing, I’m launching a book containing over 100 of the ‘best’ political posts featured on the site.

I had hoped that the book would be published today, but unfortunately a hold-up at the distributor means that it’s not quite ready – but it will be available both online and through your local bookstore within the next few days.

It will also be available internationally, so my large cohort of US readers needn’t miss out. And if you are some kind of paper-shunning eco-warrior, there will be an ebook version published simultaneously. And readers of this site will exclusively be able to get their hands on copies before the book goes on general release. There’s a little bit more information for you here.

In the time sjhoward.co.uk has been around, it’s received more than six-and-a-half million hits – of which almost two-and-a-half million have occurred in 2007 alone. The site has won awards, been featured all over the place, and received over a thousand contributions from its readers.

So thank you for reading, thank you for contributing, and thank you for your ongoing support. As they say in the USA, here’s to “Four more years!”.

Thanks to an improved relationship with Amazon.co.uk, you can now browse and buy tens of thousands of books, CDs, DVDs, and other bits and bobs right here on sjhoward.co.uk, at sjhoward.co.uk/shop.

Every item reviewed on this very site over the last (almost) four years is available, with a snippet of the review included to help you make your choice. And, if none of those tickle your fancy, everything else in the Amazon catalogue is also available – and all at the low prices you love, and with the renowned Amazon customer service you expect. Links have been added on sjhoward.co.uk/work to ensure that every time a book is referenced, a link to buy the book from the new sjhoward.co.uk/shop is on hand, and it’s also been added to the fabulous sjhoward.co.uk toolbar.

Because of the expected revenue this development will produce, I’ve been able to reduce the price of every product in the sjhoward.co.uk merchandise range, and also introduce a new product to the range: The umbrella (impressive, eh?!). So there’s somewhere else to dispose of your disposable income.

And to promote these new services, along with a few of the older ones, little ‘tips’ have been added to the bottom of all posts. These change dynamically from an initially selection of eleven to help keep them fresh.

Now, as far as I can think, that should be the last of these parochial self-serving nonsense posts for a while, and normal service should be resumed tomorrow. Hopefully.

After an unexpected and unprecedented level of expression about the change of masthead (emails and comments abound), the old one has been restored… albeit with a slightly tweaked design, to fit in with the slightly tweaked design of the rest of the site which came online in February.

As for the whole site, the following describes the situation as assessed a little over a year ago:

It won’t win any awards for creativity, but it’s well organized and doesn’t fuddle your mind with complicated graphics and font. Consistent font sizes and logical formats make reading both easy and relaxing.

Is that still true today? Is there anything that annoys you about the design, or that doesn’t quite do it for you? Let me know.

A true landmark vote in the Commons tonight gave a result that surprised many – including Iain Dale, Dizzy, and (errr) me. A vote in favour of a 100% elected House of Lords. Of course, quite how (if?) that’ll work remains to be seen, and it’s not quite what I would’ve gone for, but it’s probably a positive move. Are we on the brink of true bicameralism?

An interesting, but much more parochial landmark also passed tonight – over 100,000 spam comments caught by Akismet on this blog alone. Again, I’m not quite sure what that means for the future of humanity, but it’s interesting. On the one hand, it shows that spam is well and truly alive – but the fact that the filter caught it shows that their tactics aren’t quite so strong any more. It’s an interesting dichotomy – an increase in spam being used to mark its decline.

I’ve uploaded more stuff over on the Work pages for the first time in a while. I think it’s worth highlighting this piece, about the public health effect of speed cameras, which I think from previous posts that some of my readers might find interesting. It’s hardly crucial seminal research, but I think some people might find it an interesting read.

So there you go – three utterly different topics in one barely coherent post. It’s a while since I’ve done that.

This site is now running on WordPress 2.1.2. If you’re on 2.1.1, the upgrade is very strongly advised.

I’ve just updated to the newly released WordPress 2.1.1 from 2.1. I usually use Mark’s Changed Files ZIP to make this change, but he doesn’t appear to have come out with the new one quite yet, so I’ve put one together for use in the meantime.

Obviously, I can’t guarantee that everything’s right in there, but I’m fairly certain it is, and (of course) this isn’t an official WordPress download. I’ve just found Mark’s so useful in the past that I hope someone finds this useful so that I can get a warm altruistic glow from feeding back into the community. Or something.

Download it here