/ blog · archive
Archive
Posts from 2004 to 2017. This was a personal blog during a fairly chaotic decade in independent publishing — some of it tech commentary, some of it Australia, some of it ephemera. It’s kept here in full for anyone who arrives via an old link.
Current writing lives at SiliconANGLE.
Hey Bob Brown, shut the fuck up
Up to 60 people dead, hundreds, possibly thousands of homes lost, and Senator Bob Brown (leader of the Australian Greens) uses the opportunity to warn people about global warming More fires to come as climate change continues: Bob Brown Global warming is predicted to make this sort of event happen 25 per cent, 50 per […]
Autumn leaves in the middle of summer
The Age confirms what I observed the other day: THE leaves may be turning brown and falling, but it’s not an early autumn…. Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens have been undertaking a program to save plants and director Richard Barley said they were in reasonable condition, but he is concerned about the long-term prospects for Melbourne’s established […]
TwitterCounter
I must have been living in a cave, or just forgotten, but TwitterCounter tracks your Twitter followers (via Ross Hill on FF) Conclusion from my stats: Twitter works best if you be yourself. I quite often share inane things, weather, finance, stuff I find, and sometimes what ever pops into my head, and I wouldn’t […]
Melbourne Tree Armagedon?
The photo doesn’t do it justice (hard while driving) but I noticed today that around Hawthorn, Canterbury and Camberwell that all the trees are dropping their leaves….in January, and not Autumn. One of the best parts of living in the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne is just how beautiful the streets are. In Autumn, the trees […]
Michael Hill Jewellers FTW
A big shout out to Michael Hill Jewellers. She who must be obeyed’s rather expensive 1ct diamond ring I gave to her for her 30th birthday (back when I could still afford to buy something like this) lost a diamond last week. They’re replacing the diamond under warranty, and were highly apologetic. It is insured, […]
We’ll all be rooned, said Kevin Rudd
Whoops. Rudd reveals $115b loss I read last week that Keating’s giving economic advice to Rudd, no surprise when you read this stuff. Sorry in advance about the language, but we’re now officially fucked. – $115 billion. Projected surplus in November was $5.7 billion. See the magic difference, and that’s before yet another stimulus package. […]
Win
Meg updated her Top 100 Australian blogs, the best and fairest top Australian blog list (we can’t even get added to some of the others, go figure) Australia Day. Here’s the result Win. It doesn’t pay the bills I might add, but to be up there after just short of 9 months with the Allure […]
Bleg: Please browser makers, show a where the audio is coming from button
I’ll admit it: I’m a tab fiend. I switched away from IE6 to Firefox all those years ago (when I was still a Windows user) for tabs. Tabs were, and still are the miracle of the modern internet. They allow you to open content and come back to it later. In my case, that’s opening […]
A Proposal to Filter Christian Churches
This is in response to Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby in the SMH (via Stilgherian) Hon Kevin Rudd MP Prime Minister of Australia Parliament House CANBERRA ACT 2600 Re: proposal to filter Christian Churches Dear Prime Minister I write to you about the utmost urgency of protecting children from pedophilia and other deviant […]
Online Inauguration Video Fail
My experience at 3:45 AEDT this morning: Hulu: audio/ video out of sync, could only be fixed by closing the stream and restarting it…then slowly the same thing would happen again CNN/ Facebook: people are gushing over this. I’m sure it was great, except that I got a message that it was full and I’d […]
Inquisitr comes in at 7th on Australian Startup Index
The definition is probably a little fluid, but we get included with sites that may be arguably less deserving. Very nice though. The full index here. BTW, anyone know what’s happening with the top 100 Australian blogs index? Meg hasn’t updated since November. I in part understand why: manually calculating the totals must be a […]
Obama to the Right
Via Larvatus Prodeo an interesting piece from The Monthly Review placing Obama to the right in a world sense with this nifty graph. Money quote: “In other words, Barack Obama does represent change from the era of the Bush administration. He is the limited change that’s possible within the logic of the current system.” More […]
King St. Newtown the Song
Via FullTimeCasual, King St. Newtown the song. Besides what I think is an XC Falcon early in, not much has changed on the street. Well, the Hub closed down, long the Sydney Adult Theatre location of choice, and Coles New World doesn’t look that way anymore…but the rest looks very familiar. Still, I’ve only done […]
Inquisitr December 2008
Pageviews: 1,962,105 (per Google Analytics) Traffic profile: highest post accounted for 13.5% of traffic. Finances: profitable (that is, more income than the cost of paying writers excluding me). However unbeknown to us, the ad figures we were working with were make believe from one provider. We’re profitable, but not by as much as we’d believed. […]
Testing Blogo
so far so good….or maybe not…. image didn’t upload. Lets try again.
Even at Christmas, Digg still sucks
The good news going into Christmas for me was strong traffic for The Inquisitr at a time I honestly worried that we might drop right off. Christmas Eve (US time, so my Christmas Day) delivered us our 4th best day for December, and our best day since December 11. We’ve never had any luck with […]
Bleak Shopping Christmas
I’ve so far managed to avoid Christmas shopping, not helped by the fact that I can’t stand crowds….probably some sort of medical thing, but I feel claustrophobic in large crowds and ill to the point of near panic. Only at Christmas I might add, I wonder if there’s a phobia for that? But I digress: […]
How long now for the Australian Car Industry?
The above chart comes from Key Automotive Statistics from the The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. With GM likely to file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy before Christmas with the bailout package failing to pass the US Senate, and Chrysler and Ford not far behind it, how long now for the Australian Car Industry? […]
Fence sitting on an Australian Bill of Rights
So the Governments latest shiny media promotion tool is an Australian Bill of Rights, starting with a “nationwide consultation on human rights.” I’m not quite sure where I sit on it, at least until what’s going to be in it becomes clear. The Libs have come out hard against it naturally, and any over extension […]
More sloppy newspaper reporting on job ads
You’d think it was the end of the world when you see things like this crap from The Oz “Ads in newspapers suffered the biggest two-month fall in the 30-year history of the ANZ job ads survey.” Of course the newspaper figures are always quoted first Jobs ads in newspapers fell by 12 per cent […]