I doubt many people have noticed it, but on the right-hand side of each Elitist Review page, just under the photoblog widget, is a search box. Until about ten minutes ago there was practically no point in using this; the way my blog software implemented searching was just laughably poor. As I always strive to serve my readers better I have managed, with only moderate amounts of farting around and swearing, to get Google to power my searches. This will allow you, dear reader, to search the sites more effectively and find exactly the piece of vastly opinionated lunatic ranting drivel you are looking for.

Attentive visitors may have noticed the other changes that took place over night. In the hope of having a more consistent look to the sites I have fiddled about with the colour-schemes of the Twitter and photoblog widgets. They now should be less strident and blend in more with the rest of the pages. I hope both my readers view these changes as improvements.

Today I was supposed to be meeting people for lunch at the brilliant Franco Manca pizza establishment which would have been, no doubt followed by some reports on quality beer from a decent drinking venue. However, on Monday morning I developed a cold of such impressive nastiness that it resulted in me spending the last 34 hours in bed. I feel absolutely rotten. Normal service will resume as soon as I feel less like death warmed up.

Today two unconnected people suggested that I should be using Twitter, and it has been mentioned by many people in the past. So I have followed their advice and signed up; I must now only be a couple of years behind the curve. My Twitter address is http://twitter.com/elitistreview . You can see my latest tweets in the widget on the right hand side of each Elitist Review page. I am sure the technical whizzes who read my site will be signing up for the RSS feed or perhaps doing something even more baroque that I have no understanding of (yet).

My old photoblog at whatinterests.davidstrange.net was all very nice, but sub-optimal in many ways. Also, the webcam software for my phone stopped working after a ROM upgrade…

Rising up to replace that site is the Elitist Review Photoblog hosted by that kind chap Mr Flickr. I can upload pictures from my phone, tag them and so on. Each blog will have a link to pictures tagged specifically with ‘drinks’, ‘food’ or ‘wine’ in the white box under the calendar to the right of the page. There is also a link to all pictures in the navigation section to the right.

After having Google click-through adverts on my site for almost exactly two years I have finally earned enough from them to get paid. Wehay! This means my monthly income from writing Elitist Review is a staggering £2.51. I cannot quite paint the town red with that amount.

I would ask that all those who come here click on an advertising link, but I am just flattered that people come here and read my spume of drivel in the first place. All the same, many thanks to those who have clicked on a link. I’ll buy a bottle of wine with the cash and write it up.

I started this website four years ago with a rant and a Burgundy (what else) tasting note. Alas I have not kept count of the number of wines I have reported on, but I’d venture it has been quite a few. I hope there have been a few jokes as well.

I’m gong on holiday tomorrow. I probably will not have regular internet access so updates will have to wait until I get back in 13 days time. And there will be reports on my return: in Alsace we are going to Boxler and Sorg then we head to Burgundy for Dujac, Mugnier, Roumier, Lambrays and Arlaud. This is where I say “Ho ho ho, that’ll be fun!”

A few people have said I should sign up for Twitter. I know little of it, but I seem to be aware that I have more to say than it allows, and I don’t say it that often. It wouldn’t really work.

Moreover, I like to run my own sites, it is good to keep control of what you write. In view of that, I wondered if I could keep my Twitter-happy readers content if I set up my own website based on a similar idea.

Serendipitously, I found an application for my phone which would automatically upload pictures you take to an FTP server. Daniel kindly wrote a ASP.NET application which presents the pictures, and with that a photo-blog is born!

If you want to see the latest thing to interest me head over to http://whatinterests.davidstrange.net/. Descriptive URL, eh? There is also a link on the right of this page.

At the crack of sparrow-fart tomorrow morning the partner and I will be going to Edinburgh. We’ll check out the wine merchants and, even better, we will go and visit Sarah-Jane Selwood’s studio. She is my favourite cermicist, she has new ideas on a regular basis. You can see some of the pieces of hers we own here. Beautiful, eh? Holding and fondling such beautiful things pleases me in a way I find hard to express. It maybe true that, after silence, that which expresses the inexpressible best is music, but a beautiful bowl does a pretty damned-good job.

Although you'd never have guessed, eh? We have switching hosting companies to a faster, cheaper provider. The transition should have been seamless.

Well, for two days leave, at least. If all is well I'll report back to the bin on Wednesday morning and get discharged. I'm feeling pretty good. Over these past few days I have been able to read books, something I haven't been able to do since November, my mind has been in such a mess. One of the things I started reading today was a book of Kafka short stories. In one of the turgid tales one of the turgid characters says, "You don't impress me, everything you say is either boring or incomprehensible", and that pretty much sums up the Kafka experience for me. I've fought my way through The Castle and The Trial and that is enough to realise I despise Kafka. He is really crap.

Tasting notes will follow when I go wine shopping next.

Tonight I am drinking a couple of margaritas, the perfect recipe is here. This means no posts tonight. And none for a while, I'm afraid. Tomorrow I will see the doctor and ask to get locked up in the 'nicer' bin. Sadly, I am now feeling really suicidal and that means bin time. See you when I get out.

I managed to talk my way out of a trip to the bin, which is good, and I have medication to cheer me up. And if it doesn't cheer me up? Well, then, I suppose, it'll be bin time. This means wine notes will continue to appear for the time being at least. Ah, wine, it is quite good, you know? I suppose I should be thinking "Result!", but I am afraid I'm still quite unhappy.

I'm seeing the doctor this afternoon. If he knows what I've done to myself he'll lock me up, but there is a chance I can stay out. If I get locked up I am no-longer allowed my computer in the bin so there will be no posts for a while. Strangely, they don't allow booze in the bin, either. Send thoughts of good fortune, if you'd be so kind.

I've been locked up in the horrible, horrible Woolwich nut-house; things were just getting too fraught. Obviously, this means no tasting notes until I get out. Many apologies.

Thing is, for these past few weeks I've been really rather ill. This has led to me thinking I don't deserve wine. This is quite upsetting, as wine is one of my favourite things.

However, I saw the doctor earlier and I am now quite heavily medicated, and this is making life a lot easier to deal with. Maybe, after a few days, especially if I can manage some sleep, I will feel I deserve wine again and the tasting notes will flow once more.

Many apologies for the hiatus, I feel remarkably bad that I am not providing my regular reader with plenty of drivel to read to help them fritter their days in the office away.

On New Year's Eve we opened three bottles of Champagne. They were all completely ruined. This was particularly annoying when one of them was Salon 1990 and another was Salon 1988. I knew the other would be shagged out. It was a gift from my mother, a remainder from the stash she purchased in 1999. It had been kept in a wine rack in her kitchen since then. I felt bad every time I saw it.

Last year was a bumper bonanza year for wine.elitistreview.com. For viewed traffic (as opposed to bots, crawlers, spiders and the like) this year I have had 8100 unique visitors who visited 21477 times to display 63673 pages. These numbers are up from the previous year's 6516 visitors coming here 18207 times.

I still haven't earned enough from Google click-through ads to actually be paid. Maybe in a few months' time that will happen.

My promised bottle of wine didn't appear last night, alas. I had a beer in the afternoon and was violently ill so I thought I'd better not. Hopefully I'll be able to drink soon, I've got some good stuff planned for chrimbo.

Things have been wild. I've had a cold, then my cyclical vomiting syndrome flared up (that was really nasty, I can tell you), and for the past couple of days I've had unspeakable side-effects fro my anti-psychotics. Even time I stood up yesterday I passed out.

The good news is there will be wine written up tonight. Nice wine, too. The start of a few days of dissolution.

Tomorrow I am off to Burgundy, Alsace and Champagne; oddly enough these are three of my four favourite wine regions. To dine we will be revisiting La Ferme de la Ruchotte and going for two meals at the best place I have ever dined, l'Arnsbourg.

Of course, there will be wine tastings: Roulot, Roumier, Lambrays, Dujac, Arlaud and hopefully Mugnier and Pernot in Burgundy. Only three tastings in Alsace, but we are super-high-grading: Trimbach, Sorg and Boxler.

All of these I will write up, along with the general drinking that will no-doubt occur, but it seems unlikely I'll be able to post these whilst I am away. I'll be back on Tuesday 8 July and will post two postings a day from my trip until the site is up-to-date

I've been told my RSS feeds contain too much. This has led me to fiddle with my blog software and discover that I can just put summary descriptions in which then link back to the main article. From now on my RSS-feeds will contain less. If you have no idea what an RSS-feed is then don't worry about it. I'll test it with my last post.

Just a quick post to say many thanks to the 6516 unique visitors I have had to this site last year (not including non-viewed traffic), This is up from 3678 unique visitors in 2006. These 6516 visitors have made 18207 visits to my site and I have served up 74279 pages last year. I am touched that so many people have dropped by this spume of drivel and many of you keep coming back repeatedly. That being said, only 56 people have clicked on my advertising links; since they only pay out when one has earned $100, Google are yet to pay me anything. I may be an underground hit, but not with people who need wine tours, want to buy cheap wine, think they are drinking too much, or whatever Google chooses to advertise next.

Many thanks for stomaching my bonkers-ness and visiting so often. Happy New Year, one and all!

The blog software is now upgraded and seems to be running fine. Hopefully, dear reader, you will not have any more problems accessing the site.

I am upgrading to the latest version of my blog software, which requires me to move to an ASP.NET v2.0 capable server. There may be some downtime whilst this happens. Don't worry, you won't miss anything.

I've signed up for Google AdSense, in the vain hope it'll earn me a few pennies toward a bottle of wine. I suppose this means I should now try to ditch my eccentric style and be really populist so I get lots of hits, but it just isn't going to happen.

Click on those links, boys and girls.

On Monday I am going into hospital to have a hiatus hernia fixed. Apparently I'll be in for five to seven days, so there will be no wine notes for the period I am incarcerated. I'll be looking forward to my first glass of wine when I escape.

Thanks to my neighbourly friends at co:edit, Elitist Review has a new homepage. It is a very good piece of design, I am sure you'll agree. It is certainly a lot better than my own hopeless effort that used to grace the site.

I suppose I just have too much time on my hands, but after a very polite and charming email asking if Elitist Review was a family of sites I decided to make it just so. New additions are food.elitistreview.com (for all good things foodie I encounter) and drinks.elitistreview.com (which will cover non-wine drinks). When writing for these I will continue to stick to the tenet that nice things are nicer than nasty things, so even if I am writing up a home-mixed cocktail that turns out to be awful it will be classified as 'sub-interest'.

As I write food.elitistreview.com is empty, but when I encounter a note-worthy meal it will be written up. I am very pleased to report I will be co-blogging about food with my witty, charming and articulate partner Daniel Lindholm; I am sure he will be a civilising influence to hold back my excesses.

If you wonder what I drink when no fine wine is available, drinks.elitistreview.com has a first entry.

I hope you enjoy my new sites. Thanks for dropping by.