YouTube Advertising Standards in the Gutter

 I'm no prude, I quite like a bit of fun, but I do think that the YouTube advert algorithm is a bit poor; since I get censored for saying rude words and even a video of me IN A HOT TUB... yes Me... ME... In a hot tub talking got pulled....

But this is their advert....

Discover more eh?  She's not much more to reveal

And as you can see, it totally fits my stream of suggestions... (facepalm)

Wood Working Noob - "Cheap" Video Frustrations

I'm sick of this... These YouTube channels purporting to show how to make a "cheap" custom desk and then proceeding to pull out hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds worth of equipment.

Yes, yes "this" project cost you $100, but only because you already had the $12,000 of supporting tooling and kit ready for use.

Worse still are those videos showing them using something - like "biscuits" to connect cheap planks into a surface - and then they say "you don't need to use these"... Oh yeah, so WHAT DO YOU USE?

It is so frustrating!

I am in a quandary as to how to proceed in here and until I have a plan for the desks I don't want to start the job.

My current thinking is to find a cupboard, oak or oak veneer finish, have it stood to the right of the desk as a right hand support and float a worktop or bonded set of planks as my main desk surface, and this is to go from wall to wall on this particular wall, and this is my home desk for projects and modelling I undertake.

With my free standing ikea cheap desk being replaced with another free standing compute desk just for work purposes.

This duality of purpose to the room is important, I need to be able to just look at the desk and work not being distracted by my own home projects.

How to ignore all the stuff?  Well, I want to put things out of sight, hence the cupboard use at one end.

I also want to wall mount a book-case with French Cleats and put doors on the front of this, it might only have to be a piece from Ikea for cost purposes, but this is all a secondary from the main worksurface, and I am honestly frustrated with these "easy" or "cheap" projects all using so much expensive kit.

My equipment list is:

* Chop/Bench Saw

* Jigsaw

* Sander

And a modest budget for clamps... Stain and the like.

I can maybe get my hands on a router and a few other tools, but this is a pain to figure as a total noob.

Preach at the Bar?

Oh its been a long hard fortnight, delivery of project at work and the World Cup took up most of the last week, my cars (yes both of them) have cost me a total of £1,100 so far and one of them is still broke... Hence I'm broke.

However, I've been working on a project this very evening and whilst doing so I spotted something rather odd.

You might have thought the Preacher was busy sorting out the festivities at PreachCon, however, I think he's been moonlighting on us... No he's not been playing a game other than Warcraft... Oh no... He's literally IN another game... Take a look...

From NeebsGaming's video of Drunken Bar Fight... Uncanny Valley or what mate!

That's the Preach!  No-one knows where Ghosty is though...

Is YouTube Advertising AI Imploding?

As of May 2025 you can no longer read this post..... Shame on you Alphabet!

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On February 28th, 2023, this post was somehow highlighted and marked by blogger as being in violation of their adult content policy; I do not believe this post at all to be in violation of their policy, specifically:

Your content has been evaluated according to our adult content policy. 

I do not find any of my content below to be in violation, I do not know what algorithm, person, or perhaps company flagged my content on this post, I could take a guess from my commentary that the company in question is the issue.

However, I would point out that I clearly show these in appropriate adverts were embedded in YouTube pages, which is a google company, and I have had my post censured on blogger; also a google company.  The irony of this is now lost on me.

I therefore repost my content, with this new passage at the top, to be clear that I will not be silenced.

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We've all see the adpocalypse and it's effect on our YouTube Channels; not only from advertisers pulling out of YouTube and google cutting us small fry video makers out of the monetisation features but also this new strange wave of advertisers.

Now, I have no objection to Udemy, but really do I have to see their advert every five minutes?  I have some objection to Polish government based advertising I've seen as well both pro and con sides of other political advertising.

However, today, YouTube has hit a new low for me, watching a video related to second hand server hardware, look at the advertisement plastered on the bottom of the page!

Yes you're not mistaken, this is a category in appropriate, audience in appropriate, utterly and totally in appropriate for YouTube advert for Mature Women who always want to fuck... Yes, that's the long and the short of it, or the schlong of it....

And I am utterly flabberghasted this is the bottom of the barrel from YouTube in their advertising campaign, if this is the depths of depravity they're willing to stoop to then one really can't help but feel they've totally lost their way.

It seems the YouTube evil AI has intrinsically linked server or home networking enthusiasts with wanting to date mature women who have no moral compass, because going to another page, here's ANOTHER example of the same advertiser...

I'm interested in whom is able to post this inappropriate advertising to YouTube, and I want to confront them with it, when they themselves are willing to censor and judge others, when they're willing to kick people off channels, and when they're seemingly not in control of their own systems; as any human would surely have spotted these are perhaps not the most wholesome things to advertise on a platform like YouTube you can understand why people currently have so much hate for YouTube's policies...

Clicking the think then where do we go?

The bottom of this page we can then find a company name:

Who are Bulova Invest Ltd and how do they get away with advertising this junk on YouTube?  Well, there's no contact or company information on the page beyond this copyright notice so lets take a look what a search turns up.

A post office box in the British Virgin Islands... Oh My... They have a whole gaggle of unsavoury sites... "upforit.com", "sexeronde", "fattychaser", "bediscreet", "yolovers" to name a few... And they go to some lengths to hide who they are, if you copy the above text (from the yellow screen shot) you will not get "Bulova Invest Ltd" you will actually copy the text "dtL tsevnl avoluB" obfuscating easy paper-trail checking & accountability.  It is just so seedy, so dodgy, its below bottom feeding.

So YouTube allowed out of control posting of any content, which had a lash back to loose advertisers, their reaction was to restrict those few inappropriate posters, but the social media cat was out of the bag so they lost mainstream advertisers, and so now they have more work to police a minor few for stupid video posts, less revenue, and hence are forced to take on inappropriate advertisers like this, it seems like the trip down the rabbit hole is only half complete... Is YouTube self imploding?

Its a farce, bad posters got rewarded to went off the rails, advertisers fell out of line, small video producers got "punished" for this really and now the advertising is inappropriate?!?!  Its a positive feedback loop in that YouTube AI to just really really turn me off of the platform, or perhaps worse still for their bottom-line, to reinstall an adblocker...

I've tried always to avoid blocking adverts, as a small producer myself I know how important those ads were, but now... I'm not going to have this kind of crap advertised in my face.

When Software Tries to be Cute

Developers of the world, unite, and stop listening to sales-folks who say that variety is the spice of life, that you need to make your programs do cute things, like vary the replies it gives.  You are only causing yourself more trouble testing, debugging and annoying your users.

Users of the world, unite, and stop wanting stupid cute differentiation replies from programs to make you feel special.  You are not special, you are one of very many using the same program, be like normal people and expect the action of something to have the general same reaction so you can see when things go wrong.

I bring this up, as I recently had the Ultimate Ears Blast App, and it was too busy being cute with "just a moment", "hang on in there", "be right with you" bullshit replies to actually work!  Yes, it looked to me they were trying too hard to be hip that actually hit the mark!

And YouTube has just done the same thing, check this out....

Same machine, same time, same browser, same YouTube account target... Two different replies... Just to be cute, and one is broken!... GG YouTube, GG Google...

Oh, and has anyone actually ever worked in the YouTube website?... It's a nightmare to navigate, with things hidden and changed, as a content creator, you go to try and get your own home channel, it's a nightmare, you have to view the whole site, select "Library" and then "Home"... You used to be able to press one thing "My Channel/My YouTube", so simple?  Why change it?.... To be evil of course.

People: I am Xelous (Someone else has an Identity Crisis)

I bring this to the public attention of these pages as I had what could only be described as an ill conceived lecture last night about my name, now let us be clear we all know "Xelous" is not my actual name, it is however a name I have use and evolved online since 1996.

If you google "xelous" you will find me.. I admit also a young lady on Picorama... but you find me....

If you google my actual name you will find the Gillingham Goal Keeper, and a well known film franchise, you will not find me.

You will like-wise NOT find me vaunting myself on LinkedIn, again I have been challenged about this.  My first reason for not really embracing Social Media in this manner is that I get a lot of spam, an awful lot of spam, the second is that it's simply not mature enough for me yet, Facebook is too much a dictatorship and not professional and LnkedIn is not mature and insecure.

I noted how that LinkedIn hack disappeared from the radar pretty quickly in the Summer... I however remembered it.

I've had the comment that "Xelous" is a silly name, it's a name... It is actually a name, I thank "Nacel Xelous Elal Ybab" of the Philippines for letting me make this point.

I have worked professionally in the Entertainment Software industry under the pseudonym "Lord Xelous" as well, and it is the name on my YouTube channel.

So to that nay-sayer, you were wrong, and sounded silly.  Indeed I looked you up online, with your buttoned down collar supposedly "correct" name, you were WWAAAAY down the google search listings and even came second on the LinkedIn listing and your surname is quite unique in of itself!  FAIL!

YouTube : Logo/Banner Design

I have been working hard to update the styles and appearance of both here on the blog and my YouTube channel.  I figured with some videos having 10K views it was time I made the effort.

The problem however is I'm not artistically able, at least not on the computer.

So I figured I'd pay someone to do it, I figured a couple of hours of someones time, an hour to jazz through with me what they can give and taking my ideas on, then an hour to do the job.

The problem... No-one out there seems to read anything, which bodes pretty badly for my blog here.

I posted the job to "freelancer", and waited, within seconds I had people professing to be able to deliver.  They'd not read the job spec, they'd just bid.  And assumed based on the title, what was required.

People, let me share with you a nugget of wisdom: "Assumption is the mother of all muck ups"... Feel free to exchange that 'm' with an 'f'.

To assume what I want based on three words was utterly wrong... the three words were "Design a Logo".  But the meat of the task was "YouTube Channel Banner".  No-one got this.

When I took a screen shot, stuck arrows on it, and posted the spec from google, and even recorded this video:

Look at that carefully, can you spot what I spotted?... yes, despite making the video, and giving the link to 3 potential designers of my stuff, NONE of them watched it... NONE of them read the job spec.

It go so bad an experience so quickly that I pulled the plug on the task.

No-one read the job spec, no-one read what I wanted, and even the later applicants for the task hadn't read anything I had posted.

I may try again, but certainly not on Freelancer, I might find someone via deviantart.

My Reviews, CPU's and Books

Well folks you'll have no-doubt noticed I'm getting a fair few reviews out there, mainly through my YouTube channel, but also via Amazon where you'll find me fiddling and filming many items.

However, I wanted to just take a moment, to say; even though I get these items, if they are rubbish, I'll tell you.  I reserve all my own editorial rights, and though you can see something as cheap or free as a viable worthy thing, I'm still going to tell you if they fail miserable; simply because that's what people need to know.

You need to know if the items you're getting are utterly rubbish or not, whether it's worth spending money on, or even if it's cheap and decent, or just "good enough"; you know as a stop gap measure.

So expect many more things to float this way soon... I have an Android Tablet to review, a pretty nice looking Carry-All for gaming/software purposes; as someone on the move with many software facets, it'll be nice to have a bag with actual pockets for CD's or DVDs... and yes, I still use optical media!

I am also looking at filming a new-updated series about writing your own CPU, my previous posts here about it are perhaps my most viewed pieces, and the YouTube videos about them (which are silent) are pretty popular too.... But they're not perfect, they are as I say, Silent, they are perhaps incomplete, and to be honest they need updating to C++14.

There is also another reason for me to push out a new software series anyway, and that is that I'm constructing a book, yes me... An author!... I've been toying and trialling different styles for a technical book for sometime, a book for office use, to teach others to think and code as I do.

The reason being, we're hiring graduates, and they don't have the experience firstly, but now they're all very much younger than myself, and they don't have the grounding in computing.  When they're sat in front of an eight core, 3Ghz PC with 16GB of RAM, and they describe it as "slow", I just want to slap them around the back of the head with a rolled up news paper.

So, I started a document about how they should perhaps approach programming, gave some algorithms as to how they can see how something can be slow, but actually their machines are quite fast!... This was a success, and at least two of the people hired around me have stuck around, despite being very young graduates with very narrow fields of experience, they've become pretty good jobbing programmers.

I feel therefore I might make a more experience orientated programming book, many of them out there are tutorials, or "beginners", or even expert friendly, and many of them impart good knowledge, but I don't believe many expand or impart skills to the reader, and it's that skills bit which is difficult.

Difficult because in text, you're reduced to being very verbose, a picture speaks a thousand words, but a picture is not going to explain how to code all the time, so I'm struggling with word count and audience attention span at the moment, at least with my initial drafts.

Drafts?... Multiple?... Yes, because, like with my blog posts, I'm breaking this whole thing down in to different texts, a basic, a couple of middling and one expert tome, it what I'm aiming for at the moment.  Backed up with an initial FREE! Introduction set.  I also plan to perhaps have a free book about cross-platform work too, or the cross-platform development environment, and then a paid for book about actually doing cross-platform work.

The idea being, the reader can boot-strap into my text for free, then cherry pick what sections they may want.

I'd not want the whole series to cost more than a few pounds, we're not even talking tens of pounds, literally the whole lot for less then £9.99.  But each individual part I do want to charge for, a few pounds at a time, so to speak.

And why read my stuff?.. Well, if not to get a job with me, to at least feel more than just a programming, to take that step towards being a developer, to being better, and thinking better of the work you do.

Also to let me feel a little self-important... Right?... that's the best bit!... Be Xel trained today!

The World Reacts to the Mighty Jingles - #11 United Kingdom

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, we find David Cameron getting his fix on the move.

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

The World Reacts to the Mighty Jingles - #10 Germany

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, we catch the German Chancellor receiving her fix via Mobile

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

The World Reacts to the Mighty Jingles - #9 India

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, India and this one cool dude is Swapnil Desai.  Some say he's developed a voice command recognition system; I however say he's ready to get his Jingles Fix!

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

The World Reacts to the Mightly Jingles - #8 France

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, France, and it seems Mr Sarkozy is not that interested, like most French Tank drivers.

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

The World Reacts to the Mighty Jingles - #7 The Third Reich

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, The Third Reich...

And is it me, or does the chap at the keyboard look suspiciously like our hero himself?

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

The World Reacts to the Mighty Jingles - #6 Langley, Virginia, USA

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, I'm led to believe this is inside a building in Langley, Virginia...

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

The World Reacts to the Mighty Jingles - #5 Space The Final Frontier

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, the Final Frontier

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

The World Reacts to the Mighty Jingles - #4 USA (The Obama Years)

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, the United States

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

The World Reacts to the Mighty Jingles - #3 Leeds (UK)

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, the city of Leeds in the UK

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

The World Reacts to the Mighty Jingles - #2 USA (The Clinton Years)

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, the United States of America

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

The World Reacts to the Mighty Jingles - #1 North Korea

We've all wondered, haven't we, what happens when Jingles releases a new Video?... In this new series I aim to help solve that mystery.... This week, North Korea

Check back each Friday at 18:30 UK time for the next thrilling instalment, where might we find Jingles being Enjoyed?

YouTube Search Results

Just watching Jingles latest offering, and I was very surprised by one of the Thumbnails in the "What to watch next" shown by YouTube at the end of the video...

Quite what the lady is up to, we can only leave to our imagination, but why is she there?... Well it's a classic miss-leading thumbnail (very annoying) and is a documentary about torture.

This isn't the first time a search I've invoked because of Jingles has lead to strange search results... Anyone remember the result of the search I did regarding searching for WarThunder Ground Forces before they were released?