Category: Human Nature

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Talking geek stuff on Purser Explores the World

Angry Beanie logoA curious article claiming that We are in the final years of our internet — I disagree — led to a conversation on Twitter which led, in turn, to me appearing on a podcast.

The podcast in question was in James Purser’s series Purser Explores the World, and the episode was entitled Tomorrow’s Geek.

I ended up talking about my path into geekery via an interest in the space program, railways, and the Angle Park Computing Centre; old-school programming styles; my thoughts on how the internet is changing power relationships; my opinion of consumer pseudo-geeks; how future geeks will be hacking DNA and drones, and other stuff.

Also appearing in this episode are network engineer Mark Newton and notable geek Liz Quilty.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:12 — 31.7MB)

That audio is precisely as posted by Mr Purser, i.e. I haven’t turned it into my usual Conversations format.

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On Twitter, the Silly Season, and a certain list

Twitter logo with Christmas hat“It really does seem that it’s now that time of the year on Twitter when I could admit to raping a nun no one would notice,” I tweeted in the early hours of New Year’s Eve. “Or even fucking a pig, for that matter.”

The traditional media Silly Season seems to apply to all these new-fangled media operations as well. On and on about the goddam cricket, they tweet.

Meanwhile the traffic levels, and hence the potential audience for any tweets you might tweet, are way down. Hence my coenobitic considerations and porcine ponderings.

“Maybe I should just tweet about all of the things that you shouldn’t fuck until it turns 2013,” I tweeted, despite what Charlie Brooker might think.

And so I did. For the next hour and forty minutes.

Here’s the list. I reckon that just reading it here, without the real-time performance aspect, diminishes it. Nevertheless, enjoy.

Continue reading “On Twitter, the Silly Season, and a certain list”

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Fine posts for 2012

AWStats screenshot: click to embiggenAs in previous years, the list of most popular posts for 2012 was rather disappointing, so I’ve hand-curated this list of eight stories for you to consider.

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

  1. Two casually racist encounters concerning Auburn, being the most recent of my essay-style posts.
  2. Insulted, ASIO? That’s not really the problem, surely?
  3. ASIO’s got it easy, says terrorism expert
  4. Consilium: Social media is destroying society? Good! This is the recording and transcript of my opening and closing remarks at Consilium, and I think I said some good things.
  5. iSpy: Talking total surveillance at Sydney Writers’ Festival, being the recorded audio of the panel discussion I did.
  6. Why tweeting my movements isn’t a safety risk, which is what it says.
  7. Stilgherrian’s advice to a PR student, uhoh, which is some useful if unconventional material.
  8. Twitter Discourse 1: Fuck off, swearing is my birthright. Because it is.

If you’d like to compare this with previous years, try these:

[Photo: Screenshot of AWStats from this website. It’d make more sense for this image to be on the most-popular story list, but I have my reasons.]

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Most popular posts of 2012

Is it that time of year already? Yes, it is. This is the first in a series of posts looking back at what I’ve done and how people reacted, being a list of the most-read posts on this website from 2012.

Like last year, there’s not a lot to choose from because most of my writing is done elsewhere these days. Indeed, there are very few posts apart from the Weekly Wrap posts and the Conversations podcast that contains the radio and TV spots I do. That means some rather mundane pieces of writing, such as the Weekly Wrap, end up on the list. I intend to change this in 2013.

  1. Twitter screwed up TweetDeck, so here’s the old version, being a place to download the old Adobe AIR version of the popular Twitter client, the last one before Twitter screwed it up.
  2. Weekly Wrap 101: Codeine and counter-surveillance. I’ve no idea why this routine post proved more popular than usual.
  3. Two casually racist encounters concerning Auburn, the first item on the list that’s something like the essay-style blog posts I used to do.
  4. Flame gets me talking cyberwar worms on The Project, containing video of my first appearance on the Channel TEN program, The Project.
  5. cPanel’s new EULA: more software industry arrogance?, in which I complain that it’s a bit rich to present a new end-user license agreement at the moment new software is being installed on a production server.
  6. Insulted, ASIO? That’s not really the problem, surely?, an essay that continued my thoughts from that week’s Patch Monday podcast.
  7. Separated at birth: Bob Katter and Ben Grubb?, which is reasonably self-explanatory.
  8. Talking new internet domains on ABC RN Sunday Extra, which is also self-explanatory.
  9. Weekly Wrap 118: Planes, pains and delays
  10. Twitter Discourse 1: Fuck off, swearing is my birthright. I never did get around to writing Twitter Discourse 2.

Continue reading “Most popular posts of 2012”

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Talking #activatedalmonds on Balls Radio

I was so irritated with the idiot pseudo-science being peddled by “TV chef” Pete Evans last weekend that I went beyond helping turn the #activatedalmonds hashtag into a thing. I also made it the topic for my regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio this week.

I won’t write any more about it. It’ll make me cranky. Just listen.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:13 — 7.7MB)

If you’d like more Balls Radio, have a listen to the full episode. You can subscribe over at the website.