I have finally gone to the webstats4u (not to be confused with the good people at webstat.com) site and removed my account. I have also sent them an email outlining the reasons I have left, mainly the recent popup fiasco.
Reason for account cancellation
Dear Sir/Madam,
I have now deleted my Webstats4u account and wish to inform you why I made that decision. I have been mildly satisfied with your service for the time I have been using it, however I stopped using it as my primary stats generator a while back when I realised that it is unable to keep long term statistics for search keywords or visited pages, I found the services from webstat.com much more appealing. I did, however, continue using your service as it provided me with a useful set of short term statistics.
The reason I have decided to leave you is the popup advertising which you recently started to use. It has been my policy for a very long time to never serve popup advertising to my visitors, so you can imagine my horror when I discovered that my website was generating popups. After a little bit of troubleshooting I came to the conclusion that it was your service which was annoying my visitors and myself with ads. I understand that you are perfectly within your rights to do this, but I am quite disappointed that you decided to. I have now removed my account and have no intention of ever returning.
I would not be surprised to find many others leaving your service if I were you. Popup advertising is the bane of Internet advertising, as are those slide in flash ads which I understand you make use of as well. May I suggest, for your companies sake, that you consider other forms of advertising, such as replacing your stats counter button with an ad, I’m sure many webmasters would thank you.
Thanks for the memories, both good and bad, it is unfortunate that our working relationship had to come to an end like this, but that’s life, and I think we’ve both learnt a lesson.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
https://samuelgordonstewart.com
Naturally I will keep you up to date on the replies, if any.
Well, this is just fantastic, Telstra Bigpond are now blocking emails from Gmail, which means that a lot of the people I regularly communicate with are now out of reach by email. I tried contacting Bigpond via their online question form, but you have to be a bigpond member to do that, so I’m just going to have to make up some information and send it that way. They claim to try and respond to emails in one working day, so they can have 24 hours to answer my question, and if they don’t, they can get a phone call instead.
I would really love to know why they have blocked emails from Gmail, I wonder if they’ve done the same to Hotmail and Yahoo Mail…maybe to Yahoo Mail, but Telstra love Microsoft so they would be unlikely to block Hotmail.
Anyway, the email I have sent to Bigpond via their online form
Hi,
I’m not a Bigpond customer, but I can only send you feedback with this form if I tell it that I am.
I use Gmail for my email, and have recently started having issues sending emails to people using Bigpond. It would appear that your email servers are setup to block email originating from the Gmail servers. All the emails are bouncing with the following error:
TEMP_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 8): 451 Mail from this IP address blocked due to DNS block list.
Is there any reason why Gmail’s servers are not allowed to send email to bigpond users? This has really stifled communications with a number of my regular contacts.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Will they reply? Only time will tell, but I suspect that they won’t.
For those of you who use Bigpond and have been expecting emails from me, sorry but I just can’t send them at the moment, the Gmail servers will keep attempting to send them on my behalf for a couple days. As far as I can tell this does not affect email coming directly from samuelgordonstewart.com, so registration emails shouldn’t be a problem, but all of my email forwards to Gmail as I prefer Gmail over other webmail services, so don’t expect a reply if you’re using Bigpond and you send me an email.
Ricky Gervais, the person behind what is apparently the most popular podcast on iTunes is forcing people to pay to listen. Apparently it will cost USD$7 or GBP£4.50 per month, which will get you four episodes running at 30 minutes each.
The question that immediately sprung to mind when I read the story on slashdot was “Doesn’t he realise he will lose listeners?”
I suppose, in his case, losing even half of his audience would still make him a lot of money, but I just can’t see this form of podcast money making taking off. More “traditional” forms of making money out of podcasts make much more sense to me. This Week In Tech aka TWiT, another rather popular podcast, makes some money out of voluntary donations in exchange for donator benefits, and many other shows such as dl.tv and You Are The Guest contain short ad breaks.
In the case of TWiT, I decided to donate because I enjoy the program, and appreciate all the work that goes into it. In the case of dl.tv and You Are The Guest I listen to or watch the ads because it takes too much effort to find the exact point where the ads finish and the program returns, and I feel like I’m supporting the program by sitting through the ads.
I suppose that the people who have listened to the Ricky Gervais podcast might consider paying for it, but I doubt that many, if any new people will consider paying for it, I know I won’t. To the same extent, any new podcaster considering requiring people to pay to listen is deluding themselves, unless of course they have some kind of “big name” or “big product” behind them, but even then they will only have a very limited audience.
I can understand podcasters wanting to make a bit of money out of their podcasts, I know just how much work goes on behind the scenes, and the money that also gets spent by the podcaster putting the podcast together and distributing it. Many of the larger podcasts wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have the support of advertisers, listeners or bandwidth providers. My podcast is still small, and will probably remain that way for quite a while, and whilst it remains small I will be happy to cover costs as they are fairly small, especially considering that they are shared with my blog in terms of hosting, bandwidth and domain name services. If my podcast does gain a much larger audience, then I might consider advertising or optional donations, but until then I am more than happy to pay for it all myself.
Samuel’s Persiflage episode number three, the February 2006 edition is online. There is also a low quality version for the bandwidth impaired here.
This episode kicks off with Samuel somehow managing to call it “episode number two” and make very little sense in the process. This is followed by an interview with Danny O’Brien from the Electronic Frontier Foundation talking about the privacy issues in the new version of Google Desktop, Internet companies in China, as well as various other things about your rights online.
The person who was going to be up next on the show got lost in a timezone conversion and hasn’t been seen since or heard from since, thankfully John Kerr’s birthday saved the day, my conversation with John can be heard here in lieu of the missing interviewee.
We have four unusual news stories, including something about fluorescent pigs.
That concludes Samuel’s Persiflage #3, there will be another episode in March.
I did make mention near the end of the podcast that there will be a “Best of 2005/2006” episode after the December edition. What I have planned is that, once the December edition is online there will be a webpoll where everyone can vote for their favourite interview of the year (I’m including 2005 because it only has one episode) and the top two (or possibly three if I’m feeling generous) voted interviews will form the “Best Of” episode.
The Samuel’s Persiflage #3 file itself is available here, and is 41:15 in length (37.7MB) at 128kbps stereo. The 128kbps format was decided upon because it produces a very good sound quality, and doesn’t “flatten” any music used in the podcast. I do, however, acknowledge that this is just unreasonable for dial-up, so a 16kbps mono file is also available here. The sound quality is pretty dreadful, but it is understandable for the most part. The low quality version is 4.72MB
For those of you who are using podcast software to receive your podcasts, the feed can be found here and if you are using iTunes you can subscribe to Samuel’s Persiflage by clicking here.
Podcast related questions and comments can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com or left in the comments section of this post.
This week we leave the semi-alphabetical awarding of Musician(s) Of The Week awards and present a special Musicians Of The Week to the beatles as part of the celebrations of John Kerr’s 64th birthday. No prize for guessing the feature song!
When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine, birthday greetings,bottle of wine?
If I’d been out ’till quarter to three, would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I’m sixty-four?
You’ll be older, too.
And if you say the word, I could stay with you.
I could be handy, mending a fuse, when your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside,
Sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty four?
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight if it’s not to dear.
We shall scrimp and save.
Grandchildren on your knee, Vera, Chuck, and Dave.
Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely wasting away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty four?
As was expected, John Kerr’s show was inundated with jolly people wishing John a happy 64th birthday. John kicked off the show with The Beatles’ “When I’m 64”.
Unfortunately the Southern Cross Network suffered from technical difficulties during the show, starting sometime a bit before 1:30am, where strange digital artifact noises could be heard instead of programming, with the occasional recognisable quarter second of programming. At one stage the problem was that bad that the satellite feed started issuing random news pulses (which had the effect of local stations playing their news intro three or four times in the space of a few minutes). Eventually the feed died completely at about 1:50am, which prompted emergency tapes to swing into action, including 2CC’s infamous emergency tape.
An ad break, followed by two music returns and “Down Memory Lane”, 2CC’s collection of vintage music featuring the alphabet song. From the bits I remember of this song, I think I have the correct version quoted below.
Anyway, the 2UE and 4BC webstreams didn’t want to work for me, so I decided to record my phone conversation with John Kerr straight off the phone line. I made the call around 2:15, set up the recording about 2:30, and eventually chatted with John just after the 3am news, by which time the Southern Cross feed had resumed normal operations and John was on in Canberra again, none the less, I had the phone line recording going, so I stuck with it.
Now, the alphabet song, proudly played by 2CC whenever the emergency tape plays for more than 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
A – You’re adorable
B – You’re so beautiful
C – You’re a cutie full of charm
D – You’re a darling
E – You’re exciting
and F – You’re a feather in my arms
G – You look good to me
H – You’re so heavenly
I – You’re the one I idolize
J – We’re like Jack and Jill
K – You’re so kissable
L – Is the lovelight in your eyes
M, N, O, P – I can go on all day
Q, R, S, T – alphabetically speaking
You’re OK
and U – Made my life complete
V – You’re so very sweet
W, X, Y, Z – it’s fun to wander through the alphabet with you
To tell you what you mean to me
A – You’re adorable
B – You’re so beautiful
C – You’re a cutie full of charm
D – You’re a darling
E – You’re exciting
and F – You’re a feather in my arms
G – You look good to me
H – You’re so heavenly
I – You’re the one I idolize
J – We’re like Jack and Jill
K – You’re so kissable
L – Is the lovelight in your eyes
M, N, O, P – I can go on all day
Q, R, S, T – alphabetically speaking
You’re OK
and U – Made my life complete
V – You’re so very sweet
W, X, Y, Z – it’s fun to wander through the alphabet with you
Although it seems a silly thing to do
It’s John Kerr’s birthday, and I’ll be giving him a call to wish him a happy birthday, if all goes to plan I should the audio shortly. I’m sure plenty of people will be ringing and emailing John for the exact same reason between Midnight and 6am GMT+11 (Sydney time). You can ring John on 13 13 32 (+61 131332 from outside Australia) or email him jkerr@2ue.com 2UE have a webstream of John’s show, and 4BC have it on a one hour delay except for the final hour
Lauren Jackson has spearheaded the Canberra Capitals to their fourth women’s national basketball title in seven years with a 68-55 victory over Dandenong Rangers.
Jackson scored a game-high 24 points and 12 rebounds in the WNBL final with 13 of her points coming in a blistering second quarter performance as the Capitals raced to a 14-point halftime lead.
The Rangers powered back early in the third quarter, closing to within three points and keeping Jackson scoreless for the entire term.
But Canberra steadied and closed the match out in front of a sellout 2,200 crowd at the Dandenong Basketball Stadium.
Jackson received great support inside from fellow Opals giant Jenny Whittle (12 points and nine rebounds) while guard Kellie Abrams scored 14 – including two important late third quarter baskets.
For the Rangers, Caitlin Ryan and Carly Wilson top-scored with 17 points apiece.
The defeat ended the Rangers’ recent dominance of the WNBL after they had won the past two championships.
For the Capitals, this season’s victory adds to their 1999-00, 2001-02 and 2002-03 titles.
The grand final is expected to be Jackson’s final WNBL match for the foreseeable future as she concentrates on her American WNBA commitments with Seattle.
I caught the last ten minutes or so of the TV coverage on the ABC, and was rather surprised to find erstwhile AFL commentator for Seven and ABC News Radio was the main commentator and host of the ABC basketball coverage. It’s good to see Drew still doing what he loves, and I hope he comes back to Seven when they resume coverage of AFL in 2007. Drew was looking well too.
Update: ABC2 (Available on free to air digital and possibly pay TV) will be replaying the full two hours of live coverage tomorrow at 11am. I’ll probably tune in as I would like to see the match.
By now you will all have noticed annoying popups (or your browser constantly telling you it had blocked them). I noticed them too, but just thought it was my computer containing spyware or adware. It wasn’t until I had the same issues on another PC running Linux that I realised this was really coming from my site. I had previously suspected this, but dismissed that theory when I found no reference to the popups in any HTML.
After spotting these popups on the Linux PC, I went to the WordPress theme editor page and disabled Google Ads and Nedstat (now known as Webstats4u or some such nonsense)…the ads stopped. I enabled Google Ads again as I doubted Google would risk the bad PR from having popups…still no popups.
When you use these free services, you agree to allow WMS to display advertising, including third party advertising, through the Products and Services. WMS reserves the right to modify the Products and Services from time to time, for any reason, and without notice, including the right to terminate the Products and Services or to change the nature, style, or form of advertisements displayed through the Products and Services.
Up until now, they have only had the advertising on their own website, now that it has changed, they have lost me for life.
I sincerely apoligise to everyone for this incident.
Please note that this is NOT webstat (the service I base the monthly stats on) that I am talking about here, but another stat service that has been with this site virtually from day 1. Their service isn’t great, and doesn’t keep stats for very long, I only kept using them because they provided interesting and detailed recent stats. With no regret, they have now been pulled off the site, and will not be returning.
(Update: Thanks to Tiepo and John B1_B5 for their assistance in troubleshooting this problem. It turns out that some browsers and ISPs have a stale cache containing the popup code, see the comments for instructions on fixing this problem)
I’ve received and email from somebody going by the name of “Spacious Lossless” asking me about what podcasts I listen to.
You have a podcast but do you listen to other podcasts?
I’ve replied to “Spacious Lossless”, but I though I would share the answer will all of my readers.
Naturally, I listen to my own podcast (Samuel’s Persiflage), often multiple times due to the fact that I have to do all the production work, and I must say I am very proud of turning a raw product into a fully fledged podcast episode.
I also listen to This Week In Tech with Leo Laporte and a cast of many alternating others, as well as Security Now! with Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte. I’ve grouped these two together as they are both really Leo Laporte productions.
Insatiable Banalities with Jim Boots, Johnboy, Candy A, Gertrude and extras, another Canberra based podcast is also on my listening list, although I would have to admit I listen more for the talk than the music. (Warning, some people may find this podcast offensive).
You Are The Guest with Bill Grady, containing one listener interview per episode, with the interviewees being from all corners of the globe.
I also watch the twice weekly video podcast, DL.TV, a tech podcast containing Patrick Norton, Robert Herron and occasional guests.
There is no RSS feed for The Best Of The John Laws Week, but it fits the criteria of a podcast in every other way, so it counts. I have class during the broadcast copy of this, so I listen to it online.
Today, as I went to have lunch at Coffee @ Helen’s, one of the staff recognised me. I can’t say that I’ve seen him there before, but that is beside the point. Apparently he is a regular on the Syndicate Motorsport website and recognised me from their recent coverage of my opinion of Summernats.
For the record, upon walking into Coffee @ Helen’s, I was greeted by this person with “You’re the infamous Samuel Gordon-Stewart”. He was probably correct given the amount of strange publicity I get from other websites.
Also for the record, I had a sausage roll and a cup of coffee for lunch, which was fantastic.
The strange dreams just keep on rolling, this time we have one which takes place on the grassed traffic island at the intersection of Doonkuna St & Corranderk St, Reid.
On this traffic island is a cyclist standing next to his bike, complaining about the fact that he only has motorbike clothing to wear for his bike ride. In the end he decides that this is a good thing and rides away.
Here we have another dream, this one takes place in a newsagent where I am looking at the extensive range of sleeping tablets when one of the shop assistants walks over and asks me if I need anything, I reply with “I can’t sleep”.
All of a sudden a female doctor dressed in white comes out of the back room and glides over, throws some dust in the air and looks at me through a magnifying glass, she then gets a sleeping mask from behind the counter and starts informing me that “What you need is one of the sleep inducing systems”, which I purchase for $49 for some reason.
As many of you, especially those of you in Australia, would already know, the so called “Bali Nine” are receiving their penalties for their drug smuggling activities. So far these penalties have either been a life sentence or a death sentence. Considering the misery and suffering that the substances which these nine people were attempting to smuggle would have caused if they had been successful, and especially considering that they would have made a profit from this suffering, I feel that the sentences are fair and good.
With the apparent corruption and other problems with the Indonesian justice system taken out of the equation, I think there are many lessons which the Australia justice system could learn from the Indonesian justice system. Harsh but fair penalties for illegal activities is something which I believe the Indonesian justice system carries out very well. If judges here took a harder stand on things, perhaps we would have less criminal activity.
Of course many other factors need to be taken into account when considering what would lower our crime rates. More police visibly on patrol is one such factor, and I must congratulate the ACT branch of the Australian Federal Police as I saw yesterday, for the first time in a very long time, two police officers actively on foot patrol through my suburb of Reid.
Illegal activities often stem from an addiction to illegal drugs, and a need to steal in order to finance the acquisition of said drugs. It is my firm opinion that the way to counter this situation is to retain the hard stance on drug smuggling and dealing, but to also have a government funded drug addiction reduction program, where drug users are required by law, to receive their drugs from the government, and from the government alone, as part of a supervised program to wean them off the drugs. Whether this would require specialised institutions or not is something which I haven’t quite worked out, although I think this would work best on a merit system, where drugs addicts are free to remain in the outside world as long as they follow the rules, but are placed in a drug rehabilitation institution if they violate the rules.
Certainly this would require a lot of funding initially, however the long term reduction in drug use, crime, and the associated burdens they place on society as a whole, would be well worth the effort and funding. After all, if we didn’t need to spend all this money on court proceedings for drug related offences, we would have an awful lot more public money available for essential services such as health care and schools.
