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Gonzo Twitter 1: Saturday Evening in Newtown

Twitter bird cartoon by Hugh MacLeod

I’ve always thought that my essays are my best work, even if I say so myself. I’ve done observationals before, like Saturday Night at The Duke and Burnt out sofa, burnt out life. But this one’s different.

As I walked home through Newtown last Saturday evening, I started sending little observational comments to my Twitter stream:

Actually still on Darlington Rd, a long-haired woman plays melancholy guitar on the terrace-house balcony as a currawong flops past.

As I moved into King Street, I kept going. As I went to Kelly’s On King for a beer, I kept going. I discovered that a rapt audience was watching my comments — although not everyone liked the volume of material. I suggested they use Twittersnooze to unfollow me for a while.

The 140-character limit imposes a certain staccato style which I quite like. I was chuffed to be compared with Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw and (especially) Hunter S Thompson!

Here, then, is my first attempt at Live Gonzo Twittering — as others decided to call it, though I’m not sure the label is quite right myself — across about 90 minutes last Saturday night. the only changes I’ve made have been to fix some typos. Is this the best way to present it after the fact? Enjoy!

Continue reading “Gonzo Twitter 1: Saturday Evening in Newtown”

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Links for 18 October 2008 through 21 October 2008

Stilgherrian’s links for 18 October 2008 through 21 October 2008, slightly burnt at the edges:

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Safely home in Sydney

’Pong and I have returned home safely from Cowra, a 655km round trip, thanks to the wonders of Matthew Hall and the Success Whale. All hail the Success Whale! (Except Stephen Stockwell, unbeliever.)

The journey home was enlivened with an interesting experiment. Instead of me broadcasting Stilgherrian Live — bright TV lights in a moving car at night would be a plan full of FAIL — we created an inside-out radio station. Some of my followers on Twitter took up the offer to send us links to music — which we streamed live from YouTube. The audience chose the music and we listened to it.

This experiment in crowdsourcing a playlist was remarkably successful. I’ll publish the music later. But even more remarkable was the power of the hyperconnectivity. Even though we were driving through rural New South Wales, we were still in touch with our friends — wherever they were too — doing the usual things we do of an evening, like swap links and tell each other bad jokes.

I’ll have much more to say about this soon. But for now I must rest.

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Success Whale protects us in Cowra

Success Whale with the towels at the Alabaster Motel, Cowra

We’re made is safely to Cowra, thanks to our driver Matthew Hall and our trusty new mascot, Success Whale — but I think I’m going colour-blind.

The photo above shows Success Whale sitting on the bed at the luxurious Alabaster Motel. As you may see, all three and a half stars of colour are certainly on display! The clash of styles almost makes me vomit — but at least that proves we’re arrived. Somewhere.

So many things happened along the way. We saw cows. And sheep. And crows. And currawongs. The Navman satellite navigation toy told us to “Go to nearest road”, despite being on a rather fine highway. We did the world’s slowest lap of Mount Panorama race track (thankfully I forgot to press “record”). And much more I’ll tell you soon, I promise.

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Links for 12 October 2008

Here are the web links I’ve found for 12 October 2008, posted not-quite automatically.

  • ABC overtakes Ten in audience share | AdNews: Australian television turned upside down! The traditional pecking order of Channel Nine, TEN, Seven and ABC is now Seven, Channel Nine, ABC and TEN. SBS is still in 5th place, but amongst the “main four” things are very different.
  • The Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies: A nice structural map of the various logical fallacies, with links explaining them.
  • Long Pig the Movie: I stumbled across this new movie website. It’s won a few awards so if you’re into horror it might be your thing.