Category: General

Well, I f@cked up. It wasn’t nice, a bit tired and emotional so to speak. So sorry Jason. We all make mistakes, sometimes I do tend to more than others 🙂

Yes, its not dead, but its time for a fresh coat of paint here at duncanriley.com and a bit of a fresh start after some time away from the person blog as many, many other things have gotten in the way.

I’ve got a new project on the way shortly as well which is great stuff. No word from me yet, but hopefully sooner rather than later.

The new look: well its the Weblog Empire plate with a new header, myself and Declan at Perth Zoo. Its funny really, v2 of duncanriley.com was the first WordPress site I ever ran with. I’d abondoned 1.0 in 2003 because like this site alot it gets forgotten from time to time. Its rebirth was an experiment in using WP 1.2 before I implemented it on the Blog Herald. It came complete with one of the very first versions of the Kurbick template (which of course is now standard on WP1.5) and the comments didn’t work…and I never got around to fixing it. Good news in the comments are working again and unlike the last experiment I’ve probably got a dozen and a half WordPress blogs under my belt now.

I stupid question to be sure, but why plant frost intolorent grass in an area that gets the occasional frost? its a serious question I’ve been asking myself as the grass in my temporary residence whilst my new house is being built turns a yellow-white colour due to the nasty frosts the ridiculously cold weather this winter has delivered.

Check out Donklephant for a different mix of politics, the latest from Weblog Empire.

Spotted this one on kuro5hin.org today in an article about Google Aquisitions –

Where2 – This Australian mapping company was also mentioned in the 2004 annual report, but not much is known about it. It also had something to do with Google Maps.

Maybe at long last we are going to get a mapping service from Google for Australia, I really hope so.

Working draft, but I like it. Now for the slogan ideas:
“Why stop at just 1″
“If Calacanis can do it, why can’t I”
“If Denton can do it, why can’t I”
“First the blogosphere, then the world”
“because weblog democracy would require tanks”

This article at Wired about a multi-player online game “There” sparked an interest and I thought I might take a look. Site looked nice and clicked on the free trial. Then, to my horror, the “we only support Internet Explorer”page appeared. Oh well, you not here nor there if you don’t support Firefox…..

The National Library of Australia has digitized Captain Cooks Dairy of the Endevour Mission which lead to the discovey of the East Coast of Australia available here. You know, I was raised in the Sutherland Shire in Sydney where Cook landed and attended the commemerations of the landing regularly. I hear do-gooders are trying to get the memorial site taken down due to some politcal correct rubbish about invasions and the like. Sad what the world is coming to…after all, would they have preferred the French?

The Terri Schiavo case seems to be the only thing many want to talk about State side at the moment, and although living a long distance away the case has also made news here, although about 20 pages into The West and the second part of the 6pm news. I’m not aware of all the sides for or against, but I have one observation, proabably made by others, isn’t letting her starve to death cruel and unusual punishment? I mean, if the State has ruled that she should die then wouldn’t pumping her full of morphine be a nicer way of doing it? Personally I do have some concerns about the state allowing the death to happen full stop but essentially torturing someone, leaving them to an excrutiating death is a terrible thing to do. Am I advocating euthanasia, well no, but essentially in turning off the her life line US courts have essentially advocated for voluntary euthanasia, but if you must have it, shouldn?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢t it be done in the most humane way possible? I mean, seriously, I wouldn?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢t let a dog starve to death, brain damaged or not, and neither should the State of Florida or Schiavo?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢s husband. Pump her full of drugs and be done with it, or put the foodline back in.

Time for a little blego on my little posted to personal blog: The Blog Herald just achieved its first No.1 placement on a major search engine for our key search term: “Blog News”, on MSN.

It’s currently sitting at No. 2 on Google for the term behind the pesky, useless, computer generated Topix, but this is up from positions as low as 4 in the last 6 months, and more importantly, like MSN, puts the Blog Herald ahead of its main competitors, of which I admit there aren’t a lot, and I’d like to stay that way for ever!

Yahoo! still maintains its position as the dumbest of the Top 3 search engines, continuing to return Blogger at 1 and Dave Winers Scripting News at 2, neither of which deal specifically with blog news. Topix sneaks in at 3 yet Google News is listed at 4! The poor old Blog Herald sits at 8. I might need to sharpen up my Yahoo! SEO reading over easter, but then again, who needs Yahoo! when you’ve got Google and MSN.

The search engine in the spotlight at the moment Ask Jeeves isn’t even worth asking, returning the Blog Herald at 7 after 6 non-blog news related sites.

Enjoy Easter everyone!