Synchronium » About This Site

Intermission

Synchronium — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 20:43:43 +0000

Sorry about the lack of activity. We’ve been dead busy since the new year — Coffeesh0p’s had more orders for legal highs and such so far this year than for all of 2008, and I’ve been optimising like a bastard, among other things.

Hopefully, I’ll write something soon about what I’ve been up to when I’ve the time, but for now, here’s some music while you wait:

Post from: Synchronium

Intermission

Who The Hell ARE You, Anyway?

Synchronium — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:01:35 +0000

So apparently there’s this trend going round a few blogs where we, the blog authors, ask you guys some stuff about who you are, why you’re here, etc. I can’t believe I haven’t asked you all sooner, to be honest. We’ve certainly got some interesting characters here, so let’s hear all about you!

This could be you. I have no way of knowing unless you tell me!

Pleeeeaaase copy ‘n’ paste the following questions into the comment box at the bottom of this post and type in a few words for the benefit of us all. If you’re bothered about your details being made public, you can make up an email address, so long as it’s in the right format, and post under a pseudonym, so, no excuses!

Who are you and what’s your background?
When and why did you start reading?
Why do you come back?
What do you like here?
What do you wish I did more of?
What do you wish I did less of?
For lurkers: If you don’t normally comment, why don’t you?
For regular commenters: What do you get out of commenting? What do you think might encourage lurkers to comment?

If you can think of anything else to add, please do so! This is also a great time to tell us about any websites you may be involved with, just don’t be too spammy about it!

Post from: Synchronium

Who The Hell ARE You, Anyway?

What Do You Lot Think About The Odd Vendor Link?

Synchronium — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:00:53 +0000

Yes, I’m A Capitalist Pig.

So, I keep getting emails from vendors of various substances offering increasing amounts of cash for advertising on this site. To be perfectly honest I could use a bit of extra cash since we’re saving up for a wedding. But, I’m not about to start advertising without asking your opinions first.

Here’s what I propose for the best outcome for us all. On individual pages, such as Mephedrone:
The Facts and JWH-018 Toxicology, for example, I was thinking of including a single link to a single vendor, clearly marked out as an advert. Then, I’d be happy for people to email me with any bad feedback on those vendors, and we could get rid of the link together and wait for a better vendor to come along.

That way, there’s no hidden spammy links or otherwise tricking people into visiting a vendor’s site. It would be completely transparent and you lot all all get some say.

So what do you think? Love it? Hate it? Got a suggestion to improve the idea for everyone? Plz leave a comment!!1

By the way, if you hate it, I’ll have to look at other options, like a “Donate” button next to every awesome joke. Like that side-splitter below the image above. Or, how about this one:

Why did the mushroom go to the party?

Because he was a fungi.

Or this one:

A load of scientists are playing hide & seek in heaven. Einstein’s on and has nearly finished counting. 98. 99. 100. He opens his eyes and sees Newton standing there in plain view. Einstein immediately tags Newton — “Got you, you sociopathic alchemical bastard!”

“Not quite!” exclaims Newton. A smug grin starts to emerge. “You see, I’ve drawn a box around me on the floor who’s sides are of length one metre”.

“You’ve actually got one Newton per meter squared, so Pascal’s on!”

Ho ho ho!

Quick edit: Thinking about it, a donate button might be another great way to benefit a few more people other than myself (not that I need your money to spend hundreds of pounds on several pairs of shoes for our wedding…). How about a single donate button down the bottom of the right hand side, but then we’ll give say 20% of each donation to charity, or at least a worthwhile organisation. 10% could be given to one of your choice from a select few and 10% could be given to one of my chosing, again from those select few. Some that spring to mind include Erowid, Drugs Forum or the Richard Dawkins Foundation For Reason & Science (very much like the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too).

Quick Edit #2: Perhaps we could earn a few donations… Like writing “[Your name] does drugz lolmayo!” in the sand of the Dominican Republic and taking a picture of us next to it. (Yes, we’re going there for our honeymoon…). We could even get those pix printed out on a mug or something for anyone particularly generous.

Other silly ideas welcome.

Post from: Synchronium

What Do You Lot Think About The Odd Vendor Link?

I Hate You All

Synchronium — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:34:04 +0000

Nice one, guys. Seriously.

You’ve all just cost me a shitload of money. Once again, I’ve been forced to hand over more cash to upgrade my web hosting packages, due to the blog’s precipitous, yet perfectly predictable peak in popularity.

“Would you like to host a blog?”

I suppose you aren’t the only ones to blame. If my logical, well thought out, excellently articulated ideas and opinions require upgrading the infrastructure necessary to pipe them to the masses, I suppose I’m at fault too, if only a little bit. If I was wrong about something just a fraction of the time, or I was a tiny bit less modest, then maybe I could have kept the money for that death ray I’ve had my eye on.

Actually, running out of bandwidth timed rather nicely with my JWH-018 Toxicology write-up receiving over 100 mostly sensible comments. Neither is worth writing about on its own, but both things happening within a few days of each other practically forced me to write a bit of an update post. So here’s a graph, some stats, and a few mediocre blog-related achievements:

Here’s the site’s traffic for every month since time began (I certainly can’t remember a time before Synchronium.net, and neither can you) to the end of January 2010. No actual numbers, but that’s some nice growth.

Sexy Statistics:

We’ve written 87 posts between us
Posts have rated 235 times with an average of score of 4.55
There are 714 comments approved so far
9,178 spam comments have been dealt with
Tim is our top commentator, closely followed by MauiGreenDragon
Jo’s Hash Brownie Recipe has been viewed just over 100,000 times
My first post has only had 27 views to date
There are almost 10,000 links pointing to this site

Awesome Achievements

I’ve somehow convinced people that I know what I’m talking about

Thanks to my recent mephedrone coverage, I’ve given interviews and/or helped with research on the subject for BBC Radio, DrugScope and AOL, as well as a handful of smaller things like local or university newspapers or local radio stations. We also had the privilege of telling Jeremy Kyle to fuck off when he wanted to interview us for some (presumably terrible) legal highs “documentary”.

People keep nicking my shit

A lot of people have republished articles and images on their site without asking or linking back — the bastards. It seemed that every dickhead research chemical vendor who set up shop recently in an attempt to get rich quick has used my rather snazzy chemical structure images, and I’ve read more copied blog posts than I care to count. While definitely annoying, it’s also pretty cool to have created something worth nicking. One blog even had my entire RSS feed running down the right hand side for a while, but that was great, since each item linked back here multiple times. Which brings me onto…

People keep “licensing my content”

That’s basically the same as the above, but they ask me first and link back to the original article. (If you’re planning on nicking my shit, ask me first!)

We’ve stood up for the industry and druggies everywhere

Since Jo’s review on the second worst documentary ever made, Can I Get High Legally (the recent Horizon about infinity has to be the worst), we’ve published the views of a couple of interviewees, which tell a completely different story. Journalists occasionally mention that review when they get in touch, agreeing with us, or using that as an example of what they’re not trying to do. Are they trying to earn our trust? Maybe. I think the real reason is that my “Internet powers” scare the shit out of them. Well, maybe not.

We’ve had some interesting results in Google

First off, we immediately began to rank number one when searching for “synchronium”, above Synchronium.com, which has been there since 2004. Funnily enough, that guy probably gets more traffic now than ever, since no one ever actually searched for “synchronium” before this site came along.

Google Image Search is where all the fun is at though. At one point, our picture of Neal’s Yard Remedies superimposed with a giant rubber duck was on the first page of results for their name, but not any more. When you search for Daniel Siebert (“the salvia guy”), near the top is a picture of Kenny G, thanks to this post. Finally, Mephedrone Cat has shown his cheeky little face on the first page of results when searching for “mephedrone”.

If things continue like this, I reckon I’ll be king of the Internet in approximately 4 years. Thanks to all of you for participating!

Post from: Synchronium

I Hate You All

Lots Going On

Synchronium — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:04:12 +0000

Since me ‘n’ the misses have finished our degrees (just waiting on the results now…) & almost finished moving house, hopefully we’ll be doing some cool blog & Coffeesh0p stuff soon.

For the blog, firstly I intend to do a couple of interviews with some interesting people. While I like to talk a lot about drugs, medicines, pharmacology, etc, I’m also a bit of a nerd, so I’m looking forward to talking to a few like-minded people who run drugs-related sites. I’ve also got a bong I’d like to give away, but I want to do it in a much more awesome way than the last competition. I’m thinking …joint rolling contest? Would that be something you guys would be interested in? The details (and legality) would need to be worked out, but that sounds like it might be a laugh. I figure before you should be granted bong access, you must first appreciate and master the art of rolling.

Any other suggestions? If you can suggest anything better, I’m all ears. Well… mostly.

Now uni has finished and we’ve moved into a bigger house, we can finally give Coffeesh0p a go full-time, something we’ve been looking forward to for ages. Firstly, now we have more space, we can start buying entheogens (such as Salvia & Kratom) by the kilo directly from their source. That should mean we’ll be able to sell them to you for much cheaper. Also, we’ve got the room to expand our range again, so keep an eye out for loads of new products. If there’s anything we don’t sell that you’d like, leave a comment and I’ll try and hunt it down.

Since I’ll now be making Coffeesh0p (and this blog, of course) my number one priority, I’ll be able to make some interesting changes. I’ve already done a bit of housekeeping stuff, like made the basket page look a little friendlier and put some cooler buttons on all the forms. I also had a go at adding a delivery address option on the checkout, but that’s not working right. (If anyone wants stuff sent to an alternate delivery address, btw, just email me. ) I’ve got a few ideas on what to do next, but I’d also reallllly like your input. In fact, here’s your chance to be a harsh as possible — what looks shit? What’s completely defunct? How could I make it look 110% more awesome? What essential, must-have features are we missing? If you can think of anything at all, please enter a comment below!

In case the idea hasn’t sunk in yet, I’m looking for your opinion on all these things. Leaving a comment couldn’t be simpler — just enter a name & email (don’t worry, no one but me will see your email address, and it doesn’t have to be a real name), and then pour your opinion all over the comment box. Hit submit and you’re done. Even if you’ve never left a comment anywhere in your life and this is the first bit of communicating you’ve done online, please write something!

Post from: Synchronium

Lots Going On

First Day

Synchronium — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:53:02 +0000

The first day back at university and the first day owning a blog! Hello, everyone, and welcome.

About Me

I’ve just started my 3rd year at university, studying medical science, with a particular emphasis on pharmacology. I also run Coffeesh0p with my girlfriend — we sell all sorts of stuff, working from home. I’ve always got little sideline projects on the go, too, so never a dull moment.

About This Blog

I’ve set this blog up for many reasons. Firstly, it seemed like it might be fun. Secondly, I thought the stuff I do is really interesting, so perhaps others might like to read about it. It will also provide me a much more casual opportunity to talk to a public audience than through the more business-orientated Coffeesh0p.

So, I’ll be posting on all sorts of things, mainly on drugs and Internet marketing, and my unique position where I can combine the two.

Right now, I’m currently learning how to use WordPress — I’m not quite sure how all this blogging stuff works yet. I guess the first step is make it look half decent. I’ve already found myself a nice green theme, and added my own header and a massive RSS button (please subscribe!), but there’s a lot more to do!

That’s all for now. Another day at university tomorrow, and hopefully some more developments here!

Post from: Synchronium

First Day

Synchronium » About This Site

Intermission

You Might Be Interested In:

Who The Hell ARE You, Anyway?

You Might Be Interested In:

What Do You Lot Think About The Odd Vendor Link?

You Might Be Interested In:

I Hate You All

Sexy Statistics:

Awesome Achievements

You Might Be Interested In:

Lots Going On

You Might Be Interested In:

First Day

About Me

About This Blog

You Might Be Interested In: