Archive for category Blogs

Date: September 28th, 2010
Cate: Blogs, ICT, Politics

A Passing Note on Grog’s Gamut

Until a few days ago, I’d seen ‘Grog’s Gamut‘ appear in my twitter feed from time to time as someone I follow retweeted him, but never really paid attention.

Of course since then James Massola has revealed the identity of Grog’s Gamut and the interwebs have spewed forth huge volumes of work on the man and his anonymity. This is hardly surprising given that it is an issues that just about everyone that blogs or tweets has put some thought into from time to time.

For the record, I don’t think it was unethical to out Grog’s Gamut. However, I do think it’s quite boring and I question to value in doing so. There is probably a little public interest, not because he’s a public servant, but because it is gossip. I don’t see how traditional media expects to be taken seriously when it prints boring rubbish like this.

To make matters worse, the boringness of this sort of reporting is further punctuated by the fact that the only reason anyone is interested in Grog’s Gamut is because he’s quite good at what he does and is yet another example of new media are out performing traditional media.

But for me the more interesting question the issue raises is on of trust and legitimacy. In traditional media, what is written falls under the banner of the once respected masthead of the paper they are writing for. New Media practitioners have to actually earn the trust of their audience and that is even harder to do if you are anonymous.

Grog’s Gamut was clearly a good read – so good he managed to influence the ABC’s the managing director Mark Scott. By all accounts he was insightful and that cut through the cacophony of other blogs that are less insightful (like this one). To have your writing noticed, acknowledged and trusted* when no one knows who you are or what your credentials are is quite remarkable.

*The same issue presents itself to wikileaks and I think it’s fair to say that there is currently a concerted effort to undermine the trust that the organisation enjoys that legitimacy by a range of people.

Date: June 12th, 2008
Cate: Blogs, ICT

WordPress

As I was running WordPress 2.2 until five minutes ago, this post at techcrunch caught my eye:

Due to its popularity as a blogging platform, WordPress has become a prime target for hackers looking to take over blogs for search-engine optimization (SEO) of other sites they control, traffic-redirection and other purposes. Recently there have been a spate of automated attacks which take advantage of recently discovered security vulnerabilities in WordPress.

To date, WordPress has been keeping up with the security holes by releasing updates within a few days of new exploits being found, but in the past few days new exploits have appeared that nobody seems to have answers for.

If you are currently not running the latest version of WordPress then there is a very high chance that your site has already been compromised.

So I quickly updated wordpress and thought that you would like to know about this.

Also, it means that my awe inspiring plug in has now been tested on two versions of wordpress!

Date: June 10th, 2008
Cate: Blogs, ICT, Me
2 msgs

Donations Plug-in complete

Well my donations plug-in is complete.

I’ll release it properly on the WordPress site when I get a chance – but I thought you lot would like the scoop first.

In the mean time you can download it from here.

It’s a plug-in that let’s people know who you’re donating to at the moment. I try to donate about $50 a month to different organisations. I think the world would be a better place if more people did the same thing. So, with my plug in you can see who I’m donating to and why.

Installation instructions:

  1. Download the plug-in from here
  2. Put ‘< ?php donations(); ?>‘ in the code of your side bar where you want to see the text displayed
  3. Activate the plug-in in the plug-in menu
  4. Go to the ‘Donations’ menu on the options page and enter in the details of the latest organisations you donated to

If you have any problems or suggestions please let me know by emailing hammy [at] goonanism [dot] com.

Please note: This should be considered a beta release (probably even an alpha release). I’ve only tested it with WordPress 2.2.

Date: June 6th, 2008
Cate: Blogs, ICT, Me, This Blog

Donations Plugin

I’ve decided of late that I don’t give enough money. So, to remedy this I’ve decided to donate $50 a month to different organisations whose work I admire and wish to support.

Then I thought that I’d like to encourage others to do the same. I’m also teaching myself php.

These things combined have lead me to my first wordpress plugin. You can see it in my side bar, the “organisations I donate to” bit is a plug in.

It’s still probably not even an alpha release and I’ve got to figure out how to do the back end for it but as soon as I do, I’ll make it available for all of you to use. Hopefully this will encourage you to give a little more and promote the great work of the groups you are giving to.

Also, please be patient with me, this site has had a range of weird errors lately as I experiment.

Date: April 29th, 2008
Cate: Blogs, This Blog

FAIL

I’ve updated my blog roll a bit. Mostly I’ve removed a couple of webcomics that just weren’t doing it for me.

However I’m going all the way back through the xkcd archives at the moment and love it.

The other thing I’m loving at the moment is the FAIL Blog. It’s probably my favourite blog at the moment. Get on board before they become main stream and sell out.

Date: July 10th, 2007
Cate: Blogs
2 msgs

Radical Cross Stitch

At the risk of being a little premature, I’d like to welcome Kakariki to the Goonanism fold.

Check out Radicalcrossstitch.com

Date: May 2nd, 2007
Cate: Blogs

Ooops: I give you ‘Thinking Bloggers!’

For the first time in a long time I actually checked where links to my blog are coming from and came across this post over at Bloggreen.

Now, I do regularly read Bloggreen so was surprised to have missed the post but there you go. The problem is it was about a month ago. But perhaps this is a good opportunity to point out a few blogs that I particularly enjoy – and ones that seem less known (although how I judge that is anyone’s guess).

So I give you:

  1. What’s this on my hand – possibly the second funniest blog around
  2. A Live Toad Every Morning – a former colleague of mine. It’s inconsistent, often not updated for weeks, usually obscure, at times quite personal but always very sharp
  3. Buggery – again, always really sharp and usually pretty good fun, and if memory serves me correctly a fellow Keatingite.
  4. Suki – What can I say, John Howard could learn a lot from this woman.
  5. Finally Lawrence Lessig because intellectual property is something that really fascinates me and he is undeniably a world leader on the topic. Plus where else do I turn in the absence of Kim Wheatherall?

So there you go.

Date: December 14th, 2006
Cate: Blogs

An new member of the family

The Goonanism family has just expanded a little.

Vitriolics Anonymous* is now hosted on Goonanism and makes for some fine reading. Add it to your bookmarks and daily reads people – you will be rewarded.

Is it just me or is Kool Thing about the greatest song ever written?

* Please note I take no responsibility for the quality of posting, nor do the opinions expressed at VA necessarily reflect those of the management and stakeholders at Goonanism – they do swear a little from time to time, sorry about that.

Date: November 10th, 2006
Cate: Blogs, Politics

A new blog

I’ve been asked to contribute to the G20 Alternatives blog. Please go over and have a bit of a read.

Don’t forget that large contingents of people will be converging on Melbourne to protest the G20 meeting next weekend (18th and 19th Nov). There’s lots going on, not least of which is the Alternative G20 hosted by the Melbourne Social Forum on the Saturday.

Date: August 30th, 2006
Cate: Blogs
2 msgs

New Link

I know it is a poor excuse for a post but I have added a new blog to my blog role.

That said I’ve no idea what it is like but it is the blog of someone I met here in Dublin the other day. We went on a day trip to Kilkenny together.

So I give you: Steal this Moment, live from Philadelphia.

I’m sure my blog role needs considerable updating but I’ve hardly had a chance to check them while I’ve been away. One of the things I’ll have the pleasure of doing once I get home. Hopefully my favourite blogs haven’t disappeared though.