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Twitter avatars for Empire Day

13 March 2012 in Blogging, History, Personal by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

On Monday I discovered by accident — well, by a 5am media release from the Prime Minister — that it was Commonwealth Day. Which used to be called Empire Day. Or even British Empire Day. I thought I’d celebrate by using a selection of avatars on Twitter. These are their stories.

From left to right, a slightly retro illustration of Britannia stolen from the Daily Mail; a model showing off the Fever Rule Britannia Sequin Dress, which you can hire from Bryony Theatrical; some random British military beefcake; Angus Stewart’s photo of Rule Britannia Pete; the DeviantArt profile picture of Britannia–Angel, a male of unstated age from the UK; and some random picture from Sodahead that you can trace back if you can be bothered.

Fine posts for 2011

26 December 2011 in Blogging, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Since the list of most popular posts for 2011 was pretty disappointing, just like the previous year, here’s my personal selection of seven more timeless posts for this year. Happy reading!

As usual, this does not include the material I wrote elsewhere, for Crikey, ZDNet Australia, ABC The Drum, Technology Spectator, CSO Online and the rest. That’s all listed on my Media Output page.

  1. Right, Google, you stupid cunts, this is simply not on! This was my first critique of the Google+ Real Names Policy, and still the most widely read.
  2. LinkedIn’s inadequate response to privacy stupidity, which was when they opened up people’s profiles for use in third-party advertising without asking first.
  3. Twitter: a guide for busy paranoids, adapted from a piece I wrote for the NSW Local Government Web Network.
  4. Tweeting your way out of Paranoia, a video of the presentation I did for the NSW LGWN conference. Yes, it’s related to the previous item.
  5. 50 to 50 #9: The Space Age, and the companion piece…
  6. 50 to 50 #9A: The Real Space Age. They’re about my personal experience of the Space Age.
  7. Goodbye, Artemis, a very personal experience.

You might also like to check out my personal favourites from 2010, 2009 and 2008.

[Update 27 December 2011: Minor corrections to text and HTML markup.]

Most popular posts of 2011

26 December 2011 in Blogging, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

As has become my wont, at the end of each year I do a series of posts looking back at what I’ve done and how people reacted. This is the first, a list of the most-read posts from 2010.

There’s not a lot to choose from this year. Most of my writing has been elsewhere. But there’s some interesting results nonetheless.

  1. Right, Google, you stupid cunts, this is simply not on! I’m not surprised this is the most-read, but it simply wouldn’t have gotten the attention it did if it weren’t for the c-word. I’ve actually received quite a few compliments about this post.
  2. I just don’t get LinkedIn, do you?
  3. Follow Politics & Technology Forum people on Twitter.
  4. Patch Monday: There are no NBN apps: Turnbull. Given that this is actually just linkage to the podcast site, I’m surprised it got this many views.
  5. On stage for the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum, being my plug for the event.
  6. Goodbye, Artemis. I’m hardly surprised this one generated so much traffic. There was so much interest in the demise of this much-loved feline.
  7. So LinkedIn is a giant Rolodex, eh?
  8. Twitter: a guide for busy paranoids
  9. And so begins 2011… in fear, being one of my rare personal pieces.
  10. Google+ gives me grief, generally

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The ghost of Octobers past

03 October 2011 in Blogging, Personal by Stilgherrian | No comments

Three posts in a row from my ABC Radio spots? That’s too many. So until I get around to writing something original, how about we ponder some previous Octobers when I used to write a Letter from Newcastle, or about antlers, or just the random thoughts from an altitude of 11,700 metres.

Three years ago I even managed to tweet some interesting observations and compile them into blog posts. But these days Twitter has completely taken over the role of recording my personal life and this website has, I think, suffered.

I used to post long, thoughtful essays. Now, such essays tend to be about the things I write about for money, and published elsewhere — and there’s nothing wrong with that, except that I’m possibly becoming typecast as a “tech writer”. But between writing several pieces a week for money and maintaining a high-volume Twitter stream, there isn’t time or energy left for much else.

My other podcast The 9pm Edict has disappeared. So has my little video program Stilgherrian Live. So have presentations like the one I did for PodCamp 2007.

Have I got the balance right? I think not.

That’s not all I’ve gotten wrong this year. But I won’t wallow in the mistakes here. Or at least not now. I’ll merely note that perhaps I do need to disconnect more, provide more time for reflection. And maybe those thoughtful essays will reappear.

Goodness. Nothing posted in more than a week. Not even a Weekly Wrap! I am aware of this. You’ll get a Weekly Wrap late today, and something new tomorrow.

11 July 2011 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Busy week, much media, and some changes

25 June 2011 in Blogging, Internet, Media, Personal by Stilgherrian | No comments

What a week! I’ve written five articles. Another two are due for Monday. I’ve done my usual Patch Monday podcast. I’ve done five radio appearances on five different topics. I’ve been interviewed for Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast, and that’ll appear next week.

I’ve even been interviewed by an anthropologist for his PhD project. I’m talking to a new editor about more writing. And even — this is weird — to a television production company about a TV project.

That all comes after a month or, really, six weeks or more of travel, intense work, intense and deeply personal events and the tightly-tangled ball of stress, depression and anxiety that can trigger. Which it did.

I’m knackered.

And there’s still plenty of work to do and decisions to make over the next couple of weeks.

I mention all this for a variety of reasons…

  • While I do have Weekly Wrap posts, I’ll also do individual posts linking to things like major articles and radio spots. This should make it easier for people to find things they’re interested in, and quite frankly it’s better Google juice. It also gives me more of an opportunity to reflect on each item — like adding a quick personal view to supplement a story that was a straight-news piece.
  • There’s about to be a flurry of small posts as I process the week’s radio spots. Consider that a warning.
  • I wanted to post at least part of the background before more reflective posts started appearing. I haven’t written much from a deeply personal perspective lately — certainly not like the essays that I was doing a couple years back. This is part of the head-clearing process before I return to that.

I write in so many places these days — ZDNet Australia, Crikey, Technology Spectator, ABC’s The Drum, even occasionally at places like CRN Australia. And, as I mentioned, there’s probably more to come. That’s all writing for other people.

This here is my place, and it’ll be about writing for me.

No, I’m not sure what form that’ll take.

I’m not sure what it even means.

Do those bullet points flow from the intro? No, not really. But that’s where my head is this morning. I’m sure things will become clearer as the day unfolds.

[Photo: That's me (embiggen) photographed with my webcam just now at Rosella Cottage, the somewhat bigger house that's the "family home" of the owners of Bunjaree Cottages. It isn't normally rented out to punters. I've been here at the cottages alone for a week, and I haven't bothered shaving. I'm staring to look like I did before ’Pong and I shot that short film The Shave back in 2008. It's not a good look.]

Iain Dale on politics, Twitter, radio and authenticity

29 May 2011 in Blogging, Conversations, Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Earlier this evening I recorded this interview with Iain Dale, who’s keynoting the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum in Canberra on 1 June. He’s one of the UK’s leading political bloggers, a former Conservative Party politician, publisher of Total Politics magazine and host of the evening show on London’s LBC Radio — amongst other things.

I’d originally intended to use a slab of this in the Patch Monday podcast I do for ZDNet Australia, but it’s not really about technology. Our conversation did touch upon the way political parties use social media such as blogs and Twitter — or, really, why they don’t. But we also covered the attraction of broadcast radio as medium and why it’ll survive, authenticity and much more. So I decided to post the entire recording here as a podcast.

I began by asking Dale about a piece he wrote for The Guardian earlier this month, Is this really the death of political blogging? It turns out the headline is misleading.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:10 — 29.8MB)

For more on Iain Dale, read his Wikipedia entry or follow him on Twitter.

I’ve been thinking of doing a more podcasts of interviews along the lines of this one — not necessarily about politics or technology but whatever strikes my fancy. Indeed, I created the blog post category Conversations for this purpose, although so far I’ve only used it to post random audio I’ve been involved with. What do you think?

Fine posts for 2010

31 December 2010 in Blogging, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Since the list of most popular posts for 2010 was pretty disappointing, here’s my personal selection of eight more timeless posts for this year — listed in chronological order. Happy reading!

As usual, this does not include the material I wrote elsewhere, for Crikey, ZDNet.com.au and ABC Online. That’s all listed on my Media Output page.

  1. 50 to 50 #1: Born in Gawler, the first of what was intended to be a series of 50 posts leading up to my 50th birthday. Well, I got a few done, and you can find them in the 50 to 50 category.
  2. Internet hosting: the cost of support, the first in a series of three articles to help people understand how internet hosting services work from a small business perspective.
  3. Internet hosting: the cost of reliability. The second. Alas, the third article has not yet appeared.
  4. Why I’ve deleted my Facebook account, which is self-explanatory.
  5. Jetstar, Powderfinger to exploit fan’s enthusiasm, one of my rants against the evils of “crowdsourcing” that’s really just unpaid labour.
  6. Homophobic beat-up by Sun-Herald’s Heath Aston. Sometimes the popular stories are also the good ones.
  7. Return of the Hallucinating Goldfish: Help! Another brief piece about my little metaphor for government.
  8. Problematising the discourse: clear communication fail. A stumbled across an unfamiliar word while reading newmatilda.com, and that triggered an essay on choosing appropriate vocabulary for your audience.

You might also like to check out my personal favourites from 2009 and 2008.

Most popular posts of 2010

31 December 2010 in Blogging, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

As the first of my new-year posts, here’s a list of the most-read posts from 2010.

  1. HTC Desire to OS X tethering via USB. Hardly the most general article, but it shoes how you can attract website traffic if you have useful how-to information. Of course this article is irrelevant now that the HTC Desire runs Android 2.2, which has tethering as a built-in function.
  2. Cheap fake tan and fat thighs? Snooki! This is embarrassing, really, but I get traffic to this post because Google Images lists it as one of the first few results for “snooki fat”.
  3. ICT Election Forum: what questions? This one puzzles me. The post just mentions that the pre-election forum was happening, and I asked people to suggest questions. Maybe they’re really looking for something else.
  4. Why I’ve deleted my Facebook account, which is self-explanatory.
  5. Homophobic beat-up by Sun-Herald’s Heath Aston, about a very grubby tabloid attempt to smear a politician.
  6. Senate to re-open Bloggers versus Journalists. When I write about journalism, it usually gets retweeted heavily through media circles. It certainly makes a difference to website traffic.
  7. Jetstar, Powderfinger to exploit fan’s enthusiasm, one of my rants against the evils of “crowdsourcing” that’s really just unpaid labour.
  8. Adam Schwab’s NBN reply, which is Mr Schwab’s response to my article Adam Schwab’s NBN “analysis” arsehattery.
  9. Time to dump 20th Century “leadership”?. The main point is that you can’t just bolt some sort of “government 2.0 module” onto steam-era bureaucracies and magically bring them into the 21st Century.
  10. Selling the NBN: couldn’t you do better?. I have no idea why this, of all the things I’ve written about the National Broadband Network, was one of the most-read. It’s certainly not the best.

Just like last year, many older posts also continued to be popular. Indeed, as I worked down the website traffic report, I filled all ten slots in the non-2010 list while managing to find only two stories from the current year. Yet more proof that the more material you have on your website the more visits you’ll get. Don’t delete your old material, people!

However something that worries me is that so many of the items are listed not because people were reading the posts, but because other internet users had hot-linked to the images — that is, included them on another website — or robots attempting to post spam in the comments.

OK, the Top 10 posts of 2010 that weren’t written in 2010.

  1. 67 Australian SAS captured airbase defended by 1000 (March 2008). I think this one only makes the list because the photo keeps getting embedded in various military geek forums.
  2. Live Blog: Internet censorship forum, which is only in the list because for some reason or other it was hit heavily by the spambots. Who would read a live blog from a forum back in 2008?
  3. Julie, I want to make you a star (in a Samantha Fox kind of way) (September 2007) My ode to Julie Bishop, popular because of its photograph of Samantha Fox.
  4. Hello Kitty, you’re dead, and other surprise products (October 2007) People link to the (fake) photo of the Hello Kitty AK-47. Few seem to realise it’s a joke.
  5. Apple iPhone parodies (January 2007). Another embedded photo, I reckon. I must make sure my traffic reports filter out that stuff.
  6. Spaceport America, designed by Foster+Partners (October 2007). I’m puzzled why this one is on the list. Maybe people linking to the photos again?
  7. Live Blog: Politics & Technology Forum 2009 (February 2009). Another artefact of the spam robits, I think.
  8. The Madness of Corey Worthington Delaney (January 2008), proving once more that the lowest common denominator wins.
  9. My new hero: Hideki Moronuki (January 2008). Whenever the work of Sea Shepherd is in the news, people stumble across this post and discover that — shock horror! — I’m no a fan of that organisation.
  10. Oz soldiers design own recruitment ads (April 2007).

None of that surprises me. The most common searches which brought visitors to my website were “steve irwin jokes”, “stilgherrian”, “heath ledger jokes”, “julia gillard”, “hideki moronuki”, “snooki fat”, “sas”, “fisting”, “snooki is fat” and “hello kitty ak 47″.

You might also like to check out my own selection for what I think were the best posts from 2010, plus the lists for previous years:

Senate to re-open Bloggers versus Journalists

07 November 2010 in Blogging, Internet, Media, Politics by Stilgherrian | 16 comments

That tired “bloggers are not journalists” debate looks like it’ll surface in Australia’s Senate soon, thanks to The Greens. It’ll be annoying. But it’ll be a Good Thing.

At the end of October the House of Representatives passed the Evidence Amendment (Journalists’ Privilege) Bill 2010, which is all about protecting the confidentiality of journalists’ sources. In the usual jargon, it’s a “journalist shield law”.

Australia was apparently the only major democracy without such a law in place or in progress, so it’s welcome. And, in the words of the new Greens MP for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, “this bill is a good example of how all parties can collaborate on a worthwhile initiative in a way that would not have happened without the currently composed parliament.”

Bandt continued:

To facilitate its passage, the Greens will support the bill in its current form in the House, but I indicate now that we will seek minor amendments to it in the Senate. In particular, we believe that it should be made explicit that the bill covers bloggers, citizen journalists and documentary filmmakers, and that the privileges provided by the bill cover anyone engaged in the process of journalism, no matter who they are or in what medium they publish.

Well I reckon it’s great that the new law might cover more people, not just those who work as employee-journalists in the industrial media factories. It’s great that it might be technology- and medium-neutral. But…

What the heck is a “blogger” or a “citizen journalist”?

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