Here come the lawyers.  I’m pretty certain I know which low life is behind his, but I’d better not say just in case he runs to the nearest lawyer and starts bleating.  I have just been threatened by lawyers representing Random House, the publishers of the Tim Ferris Four Hour Work Week.  As a result of this I have made a change to this post

Hopefully they will be much happier now.

Unfortunately for them, the book they are trying to protect is available for free on every single bit torrent site I have ever heard of.

Not that I would know anything about that of course…

I’m building a Wordpress theme. A magazine style Wordpress theme with an optional blog style home page. And I’m standing on the shoulders of some of the best Wordpress designers to ensure I make the best theme I possibly can.

I had planned to release a modification of Chris Pearson’s Thesis theme but I’ve changed my mind. That theme had good SEO but was aesthetically lacking.

I’ve searched the web for the best Wordpress themes, premium themes, SEO themes, magazine themes, minimalist themes and even overused themes, stripped them down to their component parts and have developed them all into one super theme.

Many Wordpress theme designers have made this project possible and I will be sure to credit them all when the theme is launched. More specifically, the open source principles underpinning the Wordpress community are the reason a project such as this is possible.

It’s nearly finished with just a few code tweaks left to implement and is running right now on the screen in front of you currently powering this blog. Furthermore, it will also power every other blog that I intend to launch in the future, including The Invasion Of The Z List Bloggers and a few others that are waiting to spring forth from my cluttered drawing board.

Provocateur is the name I have given to this Frankenstein’s monster of a theme. It will be released as a free open source Wordpress theme, on this page, on November 1st 2008.

I have been contacted by Tim’s lawyers.  Or at least the lawyers of his publisher, Random House.  So I’ve edited this post to reflect the conversation that I had with them.

I find it absolutely deplorable that a copy of the wonderful book, The Four Hour Work Week by the equally wonderful Tim Ferris is available to download via a number of very naughty bit torrent sites.

To my absolutely amazement this brilliant and fascinating book is being given away by shameless pirates and thieves on sites like mininova.org.  All that hard work that the honest and 100% genuine Tim Ferris put into that book, all the time he could have been winning Ultimate Fighting Championships, all the time he could have been breaking world records, all for nothing because his book can be found for free by searching for it on the reprehensible mininova.org.

Take that as you will.  If you want to read sarcasm into it be my guest.  But, from a purely legal point of view, I’m not giving the book away, I’m just reporting the fact that other people are.

I’ve redesigned. I got tired of the old standard look and decided to make some big changes around here. The design you see in front of your eyes will be released in the next few days as a free magazine style Wordpress theme.

Hopefully this new magazine style layout will allow me to move forward with my monetization strategy whilst at the same time providing a rolling demo to the free theme.

You’ve probably already figured this one out.  I got hacked a week or so ago and I’ve been trying to fix things ever since.

I have no idea who did it but I can only presume it was someone who didn’t like my gung-ho approach to things.

For over a week I’ve locked out of my Wordpress admin panel because the hacker decided to come in, start redirecting visitors to various nefarious sites, and then finish off by locking me out to prevent me from fixing it.

As you can see, I’m back in now and I’m working on locking things down.

Thanks for your patience.  I’ll do everything I can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.  And don’t worry, the gung-ho approach won’t change, I promise!

Google have just given me my first Page Rank, a paltry but not unsurprising, 1.  If I’m honest, I’m really pleased.  Getting Google to rank a blog in just a few weeks is pretty good.  My traffic is up to around 350 unique visitors per day which I’m tickled pink about.  Next stop, 500 uniques.

Thanks to everyone who has linked to me in the last few weeks.  I’ve got some big surprises for you over the next week or so!  Really big surprises that should make some really good money for me and for anyone involved with the invasion.

A handful of emails have just informed me that some of you are seeing a different site when you try to load avonblake.com.  I’m not seeing the problem myself but I’m a little concerned.

If you see anything weird please send me an email to avon@avonblake.com so I can look into things further.

Searching for student accomodation isn’t fun.  It’s hard work, it makes your feet hurt, it makes your brain hurt and it makes your wallet hurt.  Seriously, what the hell is up with prices for student accomodation in London?  All I want is somewhere clean to live near the place I choose to study.

Thank goodness I’ve got a year before my course starts.  At this rate it will take me that long to find a place to sleep!

Worse than that, all this time spent looking for a decent place to live is taking away valuable blogging time.  I shouldn’t grumble though, my traffic is rising day after day so I guess the almighty Google doesn’t mind me disapearing for a few days to house hunt.

I’m off again over the weekend to have another look around but from next Monday it’s all blogging, blogging and more blogging, and the long awaited start to the Invasion.

Recently I announced my plans to invade the blogosphere along with a hand picked bunch of hungry Z list bloggers.  Today I’m very proud to announce the working title of the project and it’s associated domain name.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the title is Invasion Of The Z List Bloggers and the blog will eventually be found at invasionofthezlistbloggers.com.

The domain name has been purchased (along with a handful of other really exciting domain names, but that’s for another post) and the blog will go live in the next couple of days once everything has propagated correctly.

There are still a handful of places left so if you want to participate email me or leave a comment before it’s too late.  I’m only taking 12 bloggers onboard this time around.  In the future the blog will grow and more bloggers will be taken on but, for now at least, 12 is the magic number.

The idea is simple.  You write a blog post once a week, I already have a number of high ranking links agreed for the project that will bring in boat loads of traffic, your posts keep the momentum going and the traffic increases and increases.  You get traffic back to your blog from every page of the group blog, pushing your own blogs traffic through the roof.

Had enough of all the A list idiots controlling the blogosphere and getting all the money?  Together we can wrench the traffic out of the hands of Chow, Rowse, Shoemoney, and all the other cronies who push the same tired old junk around and around, interbreeding and interlinking amongst themselves to keep the A list closed.

It’s time to smash the established order.  Let the invasion begin!