Numbers 326 to 350
[Numbers 351-375]

Monday 5th April. Heh heh.. this is fun! I get an email / paypal contribution Ross Grant (#326) today, who it seemed had decided that he wasn't going to give me any money, but then found the the whole thing so silly, he couldn't resist. As he says - "I went onto your site with the intention of NEVER giving you 50p, but then got absorbed by the whole story and realised how entertaining it is!"

Ross also tells me that he's an actor looking for a work, so can I give him a shameless plug at this management website here - no problem Ross!

Later, he emails me back to tell me of his nominated tune - Michael Jackson's classic "Billy Jean", and writes again: "I figured you can't pay for this quality of entertainment, but realised I could by sending you 50p, so bit the bullet and sent it - and I am proud to be a number!" Hurrah! See how easy it is? And it's another convert to the cause.

Next, I get an email from Stefano Pisoni (#327) from Italy. He saw the article about me in MacWorld which was published there (see below) and describes himself as "A 20Gb iPod owner and retro-computer collector".

And best of all is that he had a 50p piece sitting in a jar of English coins that he had after a trip to Cornwall here last year.

And for his song? He picks "In my defence" by Freddy Mercury. Cheers Stefano! He then emails me a neat picture of himself that he took using his camera-phone of the reflection of him in the back of his iPod - I like it!

Also, it made me laugh today when contributor Susan (#267) at work comes up to me and just starts to berate me (in a nice way, I think) about the whole 50p-collecting-thing. "I have to say" she says, "I thought it was a bit stupid at first and I didn't think you were going to do it. But when it looked like you were going to do it, I thought I'd better chip in and be part of it all". Marvellous - that's the spirit Susan!

It's Tuesday 6th April - good morning! And Stefano (#327) emails me through some photos of the article containing a mention to this site that are in MacWorld Italia.

There's a whole article about iPod's etc.. and in the bottom left hand corner on one of the pages, they've nicked a sceenshot of my site and put a bit up about it. Hey - can they do that? Can they just nick a grab of my website and publish it without telling me? Just a thought.

My knowledge of Italian goes as far as knowing how to say "Ciao!" and "Grazie!", oh and also "Volontà mi date il pence 50", but for the rest of it, Stefano kindly translated for me...

HOW TO GET THE iPod FOR FREE - MAYBE

An English gentleman decided he wanted an iPod but, checking his personal finances, the amount for it was a little bit high. So he built a website at www.geofftech.co.uk, asking the whole world for a voluntary charge of half a pound (80 eurocent roughly) in order to buy the iPod.

Inside the site you can find the progress of this 'campaign', statistics on collected money and donors, curiosity of the donated pieces and so on. You can also make a request to put on the iPod your favorite song. They say that the percentage of the collected money, since now, is about 20 percent of the total amount. Will he be able to do it?

Excellent! Which would account for all the hits & emails I've been having from Italy recently- still think MacWorld should have told me that were doing it though! Hey ho.

Stefano mails be back later "No! No!" he exclaims. And apparently what I've written above (courtesy of AltaVista's Babelfish translator site) isn't umm.. entirely accurate. Literally translated, it reads "Will-power you give me the pence 50?", and instead I should be saying "Mi dareste 50 pence?" which is asking for 50p.

Stefano then goes on to give me a very thorough breakdown of the verb 'volontà' - which means will or will-power, and is - apparently - substantive. In English the word 'could' and 'would' are used to do the conditional mood of a verb, whereas in Italian they decline the verb itself: the verb 'dare' (to give) become 'dareste' in conditional plural. So now you know! And blame AltaVista for the bad Italian ... not me!

I get to work and find the welcome sight of some envelopes waiting for me containing septagonal coinage.

The first (which easily wins the prize for most colourful envelope ever - 50p on it's way in the post back to you Megan for that) is one I've been expecting from Megan Williams (#328) and her iPod owning sister Lizzie Williams (#329).

Megan attaches the 50p's the piece of paper using "Nameless gloop droplets", which is also a first, and I've just wondered I can't remember if they've nominated tunes or not! I'll check later tonight... but thank you guys! (Well, girls to be more accurate).

Next in the post is a £1 coin (But that's two 50p's! I hear you gasp) sent in from James Daly (#330) and his mate (nameless, but in the photo here) (#331) and turns up in a rather excellent envelope, as James has addressed it to "Greedy Bastard" instead of my name on the front.

In fact, it seems that James is caught in a quandary over the whole affair. On one hand he thinks that .. well .. I'm a greedy bastard, but on the other he finds it funny and so wants to contribute.

"I knew it, I just knew that I'd end up donating you 50p." he writes, "Why do I do this? Why am I so easily swayed? A bloke on www.cpfc.org posts a link to which my immediate reply is 'Greedy bastard, I want an IPOD too!', yet 15 minutes later here I am donating you 50 english pence. The thing is, secretly I'm just annoyed I didn't think of it first!"

It turns out that James is indeed a Crystal Palace fan, who runs the Fan website Five Year Plan Fanzine, and is pictured here in a Blackburn Rovers shirt, due to a slightly complicated story involving Matt Jansen which I won't go into here! Anyway, thank-you James, top man! He also later chooses his two songs... Supergrass with "Sun hits the sky" for his mate, and then for himself is the excellent LemonJelly's "Nice weather for ducks".

The rest of the day is quite quiet, until I bump into Mark (#332) who works down the corridor. Now Mark is a good, honest, decent, Christian bloke and he's probably been too polite in the past to tell me to piss off everytime I've mention the 50p thing to him, but I suspect that that's what he wanted to say, but didn't, as he never contributed.

That was until a few weeks ago when I hit upon a plan - by reminding him that he could nominate a song - any song, including a nice christian-based one if he wanted, and I would plug it for him. So he thought about this - and agreed! But it's taken him until today to decide which track, and to bring in the CD for me.

So wen he sees me today, he pulls out a Keith Green CD, and tells me that I've got to have the track "So you wanna go back to Egypt", which I'm more than happy to do.

Thanks Mark! Oh... but he's a bit shy about having his photo taken, and wants to remain anonymous, so we're just calling him "Mark" here, and not revealing his full name. Also, we've given him a crimewatch-esque protective eye blackout strip, so that he won't be chased by hordes of screaming girls.

And whilst in his office, I also bump into contributor Tony (#244) who reminds me that he's running in this years London Marathon.

"You seem to be be really good at getting people to give you money" he says, "How about helping me get some money?" he asks.

And so that best that we can come up with is that if you'd like to sponsor Tony for running those 26 miles (his money is going towards RAFT) then you can email him at: sw1ss_tony2000@yahoo.co.uk

And he would love to hear from you!

What's your favourite day of the week? For some reason, I quite like Wednesdays and today, the 7th April - brings me more 50p's in mail!

First up is something that amuses me, because it was the result of a cheeky request which I thought might not work - but it did! Basically, a short while after I got the geofftech.co.uk domain, I discovered the other "Geofftech's" on the web, including Geoff at er.. geofftech.com, and a vehicle security company also called 'Geofftech' who have the domain geofftech.org.uk

They're based in Bolton, here in the UK and I figured I had nothing to lose by sending them a cheeky email that went along the lines of "Hi! It's Geofftech - your internet namesake here, I'm doing this thing to get 50p's for an iPod...", etc.. you get the idea.

Well, that was a couple of weeks ago and I'd completely forgotten that I'd emailed them until today in the post I get £1 of contributions off of Geoff (333) and Gary (334) from Geofftech, for I which I thank you guys very much, to the point where it'd be rude not to plug their company again, wouldn't it?

So - Geofftech.org.uk are a Sony prestige dealer, and they were originally the technical department of Waso Limited - the well known manufacturer and distributor of vehicle security systems.

They've now expanded their operations to include car alarm and tracking systems, in-car entertainment products and navigation systems as well. They are pleased to offer a comprehensive supply and installation of all Sony in-car products, both at their workshops, and a mobile service throughout Greater Manchester!

Next in the mail is a cheque - and not a physical 50 pence piece, and I haven't one of those for a while, and it'll alter the statistics as well for the 'cheques' column. It's from a nice lady called Cristin Flynn (335), a South African living and working here in Camden in London, who found my pages through the tube thing, as she's going to be doing it herself later in the year.

At lunchtime I pop down to the Oxford Street branch of John Lewis to buy my mum a present, and whilst I'm there wander by the audio/video department and of course go and have a look at the iPods - and look! The 15Gb version is now just £249, which technically means that I only need 498 contributors - 2 less! And - even more tempting is the fact that the 20Gb model is on sale for £296, which would would only be £46 of my own dosh on top of the £250 target to get the next (better) model up with dock connector 'n' all - Hmmm...!

I get back to work and find that the afternoon post has turned up, bringing with it a 50p from Ben Pesic (#336) - a friend of contributor Neil (#286) who obviously told him about this. Ben sent me a very nice note that was actually really hard to read as it was done in black biro on a very shiny piece of blue paper which meant I had to hold it at a very funny angle to read it without the light glaring in my face!

He writes of his song choice "I thought of choosing something naff or embarrassing, but then the sensible head took charge and I'll go for the Beatles with 'A day in the life' as it's a huge personal favourite of mine". No problems Ben, and thank you! He also threatens to send me a photo of him, along with another of of Neil (#286) with hair, which is somewhat lacking if you go back and look in the first one.

And that brings me to the end of Wednesday. Oh, except of course it would be rude (as a Tottenham fan) not to mentions Arsenals exit in the Champions League wouldn't it .. but, well, beyond saying that I should mention it, I'm not actually going to mention it. But I had a smile on my face last night. And have I mentioned it yet?

Finally, the day wouldn't be complete without an email from George, who tells me today his latest iPod 'find' on the 'net - a site which contains a lot of fun alternative Apple products, which they don't actually make, but the creator of the site wished that they did. It's good - go have a look!

Thursday 8th April - George emails me this morning with some more iPod related movies that he's found. This is quite scary, as this man must spend more time on his computer than I do - and that's saying something!

Also, I've got round to updating the statistics page for the first 300 contributors at last. What I really should do though is 'stagger' the statistics, so that you can compare 300 against 200 against 100, etc.. but that'll take ages.

I get more 50p's today! One is from a lovely lady here at the BBC, but up in Glasgow called Sara Harkins (#337), who chooses Orange Juices "Rip it up" as her nominated song. She says "I hate pictures of myself though, so I won't be sending you one", and also mentions that her husband is an iPod owner. (I'm sure I had a "My Husband Is An iPod Owner" icon somewhere, from a previous contributor, but I can't find it!)

One other thought I've had today. Look at this from the apple.com website:

That's right.. the 15Gb model on the Apple store website is priced at £299 US dollars. I've just checked the current exchange rate (1.84 USD to GBP) which equates to.. £162.50 - in other words, I've got the money NOW if I bought it from the 'states!

But! I won't be doing this! Because...

i. I set my 'stall' out a long time ago that I wanted to get to 500 contributors, and I'm standing by this

ii. I want a UK model, for the warranty, etc.. just in case anything goes wrong!

iii. (Most important reason) - I want to buy it in a UK store, purely so at the point where the shop assistant says "How would you like to pay, sir?", I can hand over a big bag with five-hundred 50p's in it!

I get another 50p via contributor Sha (#10) as he's still feeling guilty about a favour that he said he'd do for me, but hasn't yet fulfilled his promise.

I won't go into details of what he hasn't done here, but he's obviously feeling guilty because when I got to my desk this morning, he'd taped down 50p to my Dilbert desk calendar, and emailed me a note saying that it was from his mate Daniel Milne (338) and he chooses Outkasts "Hey ya" as his tune. Cool!

Later in the day I get an email from Jack Welsby (who's still refusing to contribute) pointing out that I might have trouble paying entirely in 50p's, as it is actually set in law that transactions in coins have upper amont limits over which a shop can refuse to accept your money! It's all here on this webpage it you don't believe me, but basically £10 (twenty 50p's!) is the limit! So my big plan to pay entirely on 50p's might not be able to happen!

Contributor Miles (#320) emails me today - he says that because I wrote such nice things about his kids, his mum has now decided to give me 50p too! Hurrah! So that's another one coming through next week. He also points me in the direction of the most bizarre website I've seen for a while, at http://www.subservientchicken.com/

It's Friday 9th April, and it's Good Friday - part of the Easter 4-day weekend which means a holiday for most people (including me) here in the UK. Weird because it feels like a Saturday but it's not! Anyway, I'm just about to go away for the weekend, and will be back on Monday, so this'll be the last update until then.

I have just one 50p to report on, and that's from a very funny guy by the name of Kevin Lee Selzer (339) from Richmond here in the UK, who emailed me last week, saying that if I put up another eBay auction then he'd buy into it, so I did, and he did, and I have another 50p! But I have a lot of plugging to do to 'earn' it!

First there's Kevin's website, which has got some rather nifty stuff on it, including a weird and wonderful photo collection of himself that he's made. He also chooses the song 'Steamboat Bill' by Arthur Collins which he describes as a kind-of folk music track, the full lyrics of which are here.

He also want me to have a sly dig at his mate MuteMode who's website isn't as good as Kevins! He also recommended that Kevin shouldn't give me 50p, and hence Kevin is happy for me to plug his site, and not his mates! No problem! Thanks for your 50p and for your tune nomination.

Oh, and one final thing - he emails me back saying that he saw (above) how I was deliberating over buying now the 20Gb model, just to get the dock connector. "No need!" he says "When you can make your own", just like this guy did.

Saturday 10th & Sunday 11th April, I was away for Easter, (if you've ever wondered why Easter is when it is, then have a read of my own pages about 'When is Easter?'), and before you ask, yes I got an easter egg because you're never too old to stuff yourself on chocolate as far as I'm concerned, and so I'm back today on Monday 12th to a stack-load of emails in my inbox, which go like so...

Firstly is someone new to go on my reserved list of future contributors, so thanks to Anjool Malde (493) for putting himself forward for that. He does online work for BBC Radio Oxford, which i'm happy to give a plug to, as well as his own website at www.anjool.co.uk  Also he chooses Michael Jackson 'Give in to me' as his nominated tune. Thanks mate!

Then I get an intriguing email off of someone just calling themselves 'Laurence'. No idea of a surname, or where he's from, but he says:

"Ok how's this for an idea? Instead of giving you a 50p straight off I'm going to go to a casino. If you tell me a number, I'll place it on that number (a picture will be taken) then if it wins you'll get the winnings - e.g on black you'll get £1 but if you bet on a single number then that's x35 so you're looking a nice £17.50! Let me know what you think."

Well, I think it's a neat & novel idea .. but! I can only accept 50p from one person, so I've emailed Laurence back saying that he can do it, but if I win £1, then he needs to find someone else for the other 50p to be from. If he wins £17.50 for me, then he needs to find thirty-four other people for the 50p to be from! I'll let you know what he says, and what happens.

On with some 'proper' contributions then, and Helen Blaby (340) and her friend Kellie's cat Molly (341) send me in two lots of 50p via PayPal - thanks you!

They later get back to me with song nominations of "Don't look down" by Go West as Helen says that she's "Having a big old lust fest over Peter Cox at the moment", but manages to almost redeem herself with Molly's choice (the cat) of "Jimmy Jimmy" by the Undertones. No problemo ...

Next as I work my way down is a nice chap by the name of Jim Floyd (342) who says it's from him "And on behalf of the Rock FM Forum, which if you could give a bit of a plug that would be excellent". No worries Jim, here:

GO AND VISIT THE ROCK FM FORUM
GO AND VISIT THE ROCK FM FORUM
GO AND VISIT THE ROCK FM FORUM

etc.. You get the idea. Oh and he nominates the Beenie Man track "Dude" as his song as well. Cheers Jim!

Next up is another contributor that's PayPal'd me - one David Smith (#343) who has provided a picture of himself spinning the wheels of steel being a Radio DJ somewhere!

He says he thinks the whole thing is a great idea, and nominates any Kraftwerk track as his chosen song, to which I'll be ever so predictable and chooses their classic 'The Model', as his song. Thanks David! Much appreciated.

And just when I was wondering why I was getting a lot of media related contributions, it's all answered when I read an email that I've got from contributor Chris (#300) who tells me: "I am a member of a media forum called mediauk (www.mediauk.com). A topic has been ongoing for a while about bizarre eBay items for sale, and so I mentioned your iPod challenge."

Only he doesn't say where exactly it is, and I can't find it! There's a whole load of forums at: http://www.mediauk.com/discussions/ but where? It must be in there somewhere...

So I'm looking forward to having a nice warm sunny week where I can get away with just wearing a t-shirt to work all week! Let's see shall we? I have to say, that looking out of the window right now, it's seems rather dark and dreary and not at all 16 degrees and sunny at all!

Anyway, I got a letter in the post from John Lewis this morning! And they replied about my request to film in their shop paying for the iPod in 50p's, but you'll have to wait for later until I scan it in for you to see what it said!

I do get another 50p via an eBay auction at work. As per contribution number 273, I sold my 'this months' lot of Yorkshire Grey vouchers via eBay, and got a lot more than 50p for them, but am only putting 50p of the sale towards the iPod fund. So that's (344).

And just when the day was coming to an end, someone unexpectedly plonked down that afternoons internal post on my desk, within which contained an envelope with 50p in it!

It's from Jon Gregory (#345), another colleague based up in Manchester who'd kindly sent it. He failed to send me a reasonable photo of himself, so was hoping that I had one of him looking horribly drunk from last years Christmas party, but in the only one I could find of him, he does actually look quite sober... damn! Oh, and pick a song, Jon.

Finally, I must just give a plug to a site sent to me my contributor Ross (#13) today. It's www.musicplasma.com, and basically if you type in the name of a band that you like, it will go away a 'link' you to other bands of a similar genre. Try it! It's really very entertaining if you're into your music.

Wednesday 14th April 2004

John Lewis wrote back to me ...

They said 'No' !

Bollocks! See for yourself :

(Click on image to launch full sized version, and remember that Internet Explorer does that bloody annoying thing of squeezing the image down to fit the screen, so you may have to still 'expand' the image to see it properly...)

Ok, so do I:

i. Buy it somewhere else?

ii. Ask them whether it's just the 50p thing or the filming thing (or both!) that they have a problem with?

iii. Write back to Maureen, and ask her for 50p?

Whilst I ponder the quandary of what-to-do-about John Lewis, another 50p has come my way. Eventually.

Let this be a lesson to any of you out there reading this now who are thinking of setting up your own money-grabbing websites. If someone mails you saying "I would like to transfer you 50p, please give me your bank account number so that I can transfer it direct", then for fcuks sake make sure you give them the right account number!

That's what happened when Chris Parker (346) from Aldershot here in the UK got in touch. He's a fellow lillywhite, so I instantly liked him, and he runs his own Spurs Blog here as well.

Anyway, we've been chatting now for a week on email when I realised that his 50p still hadn't actually turned up in my bank account.

So I mail him again:"Are you sure you sent it?", I ask, "Over a week ago!" he replies, and so I go and check - double check in my sent items that I really did give him the right account number.

Oh Arse! What a twat I am! I've made a typo, and realise that I put 7171xxxx instead of 7172xxxx ! Doh! And so I never got the money -but someone out there must have done!

So if by a small miracle, you're reading this and you've recently had a mysterious 50p put into your bank account, then this could be why!

I've mailed back Chris, and told him that I'll put in the 50p into the pot (and it really is a pot too! See below...) and he doesn't have to pay me again, as he has technically already (albeit to someone else). Oh, and he chooses "The day we caught the train" by Ocean Colour Scene. Thanks Chris!

It's late on in the day, and I fire up my Hotmail inbox to check out any mails I've got, and I get rather excited when the first thing that I see is:

"Fantastic!" I think. It's going to be an email from them saying "Hello Geoff, we've had a re-think and actually, we love your idea. If you haven't got your hands on an iPod elsewhere yet, then we'd love for you to come in store after all and buy one from us".

Yes... yes... yes ???

Argh ...

No!

It's a bloody generic advert which they're just sending out to all their customers who have previously used their online shopping service. Bollocks! (Again). This is getting annoying.

Thursday 15th - and I get the funniest email I've had for a while since I've started this, from someone called Karl Mercer. It reads:

"Hi Geoff, I've just stumbled upon your site, and I think your plan is bloody terrific. Here's the deal though - I won't not will won't not won't will perhaps might consider actually not definitely maybe never give you 50p.

I think your plan is great and if you can somehow manage to get to Folkestone at some point then email me and i will give ya 50p for some minor pluggage on your website and just to say I was part of it.

Or - if you want me to magically come to you paying my own travel expenses as well as for food whilst travelling etc.. to give you bloody 50p so you can indulge yourself in your 50p bath with a new iPod you're mistaken. Good fucking idea though!"

Now I think therefore, that Karl things that we've got to meet in person - so I mailed him back explaining that he doesn't actually have to meet me to give me 50p, but the more I think about it, the more I'm thinking that a day trip down to the sunny-seaside town of Folkestone might be a nice day out. Hmmm.

Then, Karl surpasses himself completely by sending me an animated GIF file that he made, click on the still shot > here > to see it in all it's moving glory!

Later in the afternoon, I go and see contributor Miles (#320), as his mother Leonore Mendoza (#347) also kindly contributed 50p as I wrote nice things about her grandchildren! For her song, she chooses Louis Armstrong's "Hello Dolly" which I am reliably informed was a Top 10 hit back in 1964! Actually, I've just checked this out on www.everyhit.com and it is indeed the case - it made No.4 in the charts in June of that year. Anyway, thank-you Leonore!

I get home in the evening, and get just one more from Kelly Moore (#348) who stumbled across my website whilst searching for something else, and then got drawn into 'The 50p thing'. She writes: "I’ve also seen the 50p bit of your website and well, how could I resist? And I nominate REM 'At My Most Beautiful' as my song. Good luck with the rest of your campaign!". Nice one, cheers Kelly!

Karl Mercer (above) also emails me back, and it looks like I'm not going to get any money off of him unless I travel to meet him in person - down to Folkestone, which'll probably cost me about £15 on a train fare or petrol in my car. Ok! I could do that.

I must also make special mention to a guy by the name of Rob Griffin - a chap who's in our office for a couple of weeks. He refused to give me 50p when I asked him. Then he actually bothered to read the site, and he started to like it, but he still refused to give me 50p.

Then a few minutes later he said "I think it's really funny actually", but still refused to give me 50p. Then I told him that if he gave me 50p, I would give him a pound (two 50p's!), but he still refused! Honestly, he would have been 50p up on the deal! There's just no winning over some people is there?

Also today, I did write back to Maureen at John Lewis, asking if it was just the 50p payment option or filming (or both) that they couldn't agree to, and thanked her for the reply. And then right at the bottom I put -

"PS. - Would you like to give me 50p?"

I'll let you know what she says.

Friday 16th April 2004 and a 50p turns up in the post at work which I've been expecting from Alan Stott (349).

He's the webmaster for the site www.ckd.org.uk where 'ckd' stands for Choi Kwang-Do, which looks suspicously like a martial art to me! Have a peek at the website to find out more.

Alan has an excellent sense of humour as his chosen tune is Carl Douglas's "Kung-Fu Fighting" -I like it! There have actually been several versions of it, but I'm going to go with the 1974 original. Thank you Alan.

And there were no more today, sadly - just need that one more to get me to 350 !

Saturday 17th April and how domestic am I? This much:

I've just spent the best part of an hour using Polycell's Squeeze & Seal bathroom sealant to tidy up my new bathroom floor, except it reminded me that I never understood the attraction to solvent abuse because it's given me a blinding headache. Obviously, switching on my PC, checking my emails and staring at my screen for equally as long is going to help, isn't it?

Well, yes actually because I got my three hundred and fiftieth 50p to take me to the contributed 70% mark (i.e. reserved contributions excluded), and so a huuuuge thanks to Eleanor Blair (#350) from Cambridge here in the UK, who chooses Jackson Browne and "Fountain of Sorrow" as her song. Thanks Eleanor! You've made me a happy man.

She sends me this piccy of herself, and also asks me to plug her own website blog/journal called LNR, where she's currently giving me a mention.

And that's pretty much Saturday, but look! How exciting, you can now click on the 'next' button below to take you to tomorrow and the next 25 ...