  Let B(X,L,s) be the twisted homogeneous coordinate ring of an irreducible
variety X over an algebraically closed field k with dim X > 1. Assume that c in
X and s in Aut(X) are in sufficiently general position. We show that if one
follows the commutative prescription for blowing up X at c, but in this
noncommutative setting, one obtains a noncommutative ring R=R(X,c,L,s) with
surprising properties. In particular:
  (1) R is always noetherian but never strongly noetherian.
  (2) If R is generated in degree one then the images of the R-point modules in
qgr(R) are naturally in (1-1) correspondence with the closed points of X.
However, both in qgr(R) and in gr(R), the R-point modules are not parametrized
by a projective scheme.
  (3) qgr R has finite cohomological dimension yet H^1(R) is infinite
dimensional.
  This gives a more geometric approach to results of the second author who
proved similar results for X=P^n by algebraic methods.
