EAGLE-eyed readers may have noticed this blog has opened an exciting new revenue stream after concluding a mega-bucks deal with Middlesbrough College, Teesside's largest community educational asset with 13,000 students spread over four sites and catering for every aspect of learning across a broad range of academic and vocational studies.
But don't worry. The only difference to the product is that I am now tapping the keyboard wearing a stylish new strip with the neat logo plastered proudly across my chest.
And at least it is some socially worthwhile institution being promoted, rather than the binge drinker's lager of choice or on-line gambling that seems to be all the rage in football .
I admit I was wary of grubby commercialism intruding and my acre of cyberspace being tied in some way to a product of dubious value, or a company with a poor public image or a reputation for sourcing goods from cheap teenage labour markets with poor human rights records. But hey, my wooly Guardianista conscience is salved at a stroke.
Middlesbrough College is great so I have no qualms. I went to Marton Sixth Form a lifetime ago and then went back to do conversational Spanish a few years ago when I had foolish hopes of regularly swanning around in tapas bars as a dominant Boro took Europe by storm. Plus my hand-springing, back-flipping boy has attended Gym World at the Prissick Base site in the past and of course the highly-rated centre for football excellence is churning out technically talented and tactically astute Northern League players by the coachload.
And readers may have noticed a few other additions too, a bit further down the right hand side: a bunch of new links to a few sites that are on my favourites. Come On Boro, the graphic-laden robust rival to Fly Me To The Moon has been added along with the essential, definitive database that is BoroStats.com and the BBC football homepage which apart from being a good source of news from other clubs is also just about the most user-friendly comprehensive guide to fixtures, results and league tables across the game. There is also Borodownloads.com, a prodigious slogan shouting source of photoshopped delights that capture the moment.
And there are also two evocative image based sites. Paul Thompson photographic archive covering Ayresome Park and the Riverside is brilliant and the long time lensman has an wonderful archive of beautifully framed, well observed and superbly lit photographs that will provoke wistful nostalgic musings and flames of passion (as this one of our spiritual home by floodlight), while the Ayresome Park Galleries has a collection of iconic images drawn from a variety of sources (not least the Gazette).
If you have any other good Boro site links that you think should be added let me know.
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