Up in Smoke
December 13, 2006
Over the years, and as recently as earlier this year, I’ve spend a fair amount of time camping in the north-east of Victoria and around the Alpine National Park. It’s such a beautiful area (see for yourself) and one of my favourite places on the planet. So, as the whole thing goes up in smoke, my thoughts and well wishes are with the residents and all of those battling the fires. Let’s hope the fires can be ‘managed’ and that the area makes a speedy recovery.
To put this into perspective, the fires have ripped through an estimated 400,000 hectares, which is nearly 10 times the area of greater New York City. It’s beyond comprehension.
links for 2006-12-08
December 8, 2006-
What is being lost as technology kills off the Renaissance man? Our souls, perhaps? A nice commentary piece by Tony Long.
Giving It Away
December 7, 2006I’ve been an advocate of open source for a number of years now, and the number one ‘objection’ I encounter is “but you can’t make money out of open source”. Well, who say’s so?
I’ve been giving away my books ever since my first novel came out, and boy has it ever made me a bunch of money.
Cory Doctorow is certainly a shining example of how giving it away CAN reap huge rewards, both financial and otherwise. Cory tallked a little bit about this when he visited Melbourne recently. You can see my wrap up if you missed it.
Massive!
December 5, 2006melbourne massive 06
Begins: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 at 6:00 PM
Ends: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 at 9:00 PM
Location:
Horse Bazaar Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne, VIC 3000 Australia
Link: Melbourne Massive
Marty and I are planning to go to melbourne massive ‘06 (an end-of-year function that brings together web professionals from around Melbourne) next week. If you’re coming along, then be sure to say hi!
State of the darylcook-osphere
December 5, 2006I don’t place too much emphasis on webstats and I don’t have an inflated ego, so I’m not all that bothered about them, but I am curious about who’s visiting the site, what is of interest to others that I’ve written etc. I also noticed that–even with light posting over the past couple of months—somehow I managed to make it to the AustralianBlogs list at 659. No, I’m not the noisiest blogger in Oz, but not a bad effort considering.
November has been one of the best months I’ve had blogging in terms of my site stats – if you can really read anything into that! My stats show high numbers for me in terms of ‘unique visits’, and have by far been the best month I’ve had this year for ‘number of visits’.  I think that the stats go to prove one thing – that regularity of posting definitely has a positive effect on the number of people hitting your website. My Tasmania series of posts probably helped with that. I had some positive feedback about it too, which is nice. I enjoyed writing it — it provided me with a welcome distraction from the perils of flying, and having to make sandwiches for the following days trip.  I’ve still got a tassie wrap-up post to write, so stay tuned for that one (I’ll get there eventually).
