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November, the month leading up to the Christmas Cruise, the month where my employment status changed, and the month where page views skyrocketed due to rather unusual publicity.
The month started with me talking about how it took 20 attempts at taking a school photo until the photographer was satisfied, which was followed by Melbourne Cup fever, with me announcing that Makybe Diva would not win, showing you just how wrong I was, bringing you official TAB dividends, bringing you the complete running order, and finally reviewing the race and how it was covered in Canberra.
The website suffered a little bit of downtime, and a letter to the editor in The Chronicle agreed with my ideas for public transport in the ACT.
I then showed you a picture of the birthday card I gave to 2CC.
I had a dream about eating plates at Christmas.
2UE changed their schedule on a whim, something which 2CC managed quite well, although they did subject us to the Sydney Gardening show.
I had some dreams about fires and bicycles.
October’s Blog View Stats showed a steady increase is page views.
Dinosaurs, my high school canteen, John Mangos and Glenn Wheeler became parts of my dreams.
Then, what is probably the biggest event in the history of Samuel’s Blog occurred. I don’t think I could have ever predicted what was going to happen, or the huge increase in page views that it would bring, but the day that a commenter at The Spin Starts Here made reference to this blog as “the worst blog you’ll ever find”, and I received a Google Alert about a related matter, was the start of a very interesting and annoying chain of events. Most of it occurred on other websites, but it did bring an awful lot of people here, setting a new monthly record for visitors and page views. It also brought a lot of unhelpful comments, which forced another post about editorial policy.
Reading many of the comments left in the weeks after the link from The Spin Starts Here would show you why it was such an unusual and mildly annoying time in the history of Samuel’s Blog.
Anyway, moving on from that, I had a dream about a missing schoolbag, 2CC had some transmitter problems and Kane Bond left 2CC.
I then found out that the New Day Australia Christmas Cruise was going to be held on the same day as my Year 12 Formal…the decision was obvious, go to the Christmas Cruise. I had already paid for it, made travel bookings, and knew that it might be my only chance to meet John Kerr and some of his listeners, so I made up my mind, I was going to Sydney that day. As it turns out, I might be going to another one of John’s functions later this year, and if I knew that back then, I would still have made the same decision.
I had a scary shower, and followed it with a dream about a bicycle race.
Then the rumors of Stuart Bocking taking over New Day Australia from John Kerr started to come partially true, with Stuart replacing George on the weekend version of the show.
I decided to start a podcast, and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire made another millionaire.
I then became effectively unemployed and started looking for another job, and later confirmed just how arrogant my employer had been about it all.
Canberra’s radio ratings were released.
I showed off some of my artwork.
I also showed you some photos of my main portable radio.
2CC announced that they would be at the retirement expo, and I appeared on the John Laws Morning Show.
Click here to hear my conversation with Lawsie.
This was followed by my call being part of The Best Of The John Laws Week. (Click here for the audio).
Spring in Canberra is a lovely time of the year, and a nice garden in Reid caught my attention.
The 90 minute Frasier Finale aired in Australia.
I thought about the connection between 2CA/2CC outside broadcasts, and Mike Frame said he heard me talking to Lawsie.
Dickson College had their year 12 breakfast, which was quite good, and just before it the canteen manager told me that she heard me talking to Lawsie.
After this, we were one week out from the New Day Australia Christmas Cruise, and I started publishing daily weather reports for it. The forecasts were for thunderstorms, then cloudy, and cloudy again, it got better and became mostly sunny, and stayed that way, before becoming possible thunderstorms, then just thunderstorms. More on that in the December summary.
I had a dream about whinging whiteboard owners.
Then I announced that I was leaving for the retirement expo, and then provided a report about it.
I then brought you an update on the Section 84 development.
2CC and 2CA suffered power failures, which reminded John B1_B5 of his time working at ABC transmitters.
The Spin Starts Here fiasco continued, with me agreeing to a photo with Loadedog over coffee.
ACTION sold some of their busses.
I announced my playlist for the trip to Sydney and Back between 2CC & 2UE reception areas.
I then became employed again, and the blog passed 20,000 page views in a month for the first time.
That pretty much wraps up November. December will be up for review tomorrow morning as we get closer to the birthday of Samuel’s Blog.
Samuel
April 11th, 2006
October started with Nattie barking nationally, and the Blog View Stats for the previous month showing a 283% increase in the number of page views.
City Ads were up to their usual tricks, and 2CC were celebrating their 30th birthday by giving away a 1975 Kingswood, I said that I would meet Mike Frame in Erindale.
On that particular day, Mike Jeffreys had a story about a man who really does live in a fridge, and I rang in and told him about the story I wrote called “The Fridge”, and as Mike Jeffreys was also going to be making an appearance with the Kingswood at Video Ezy Erindale, I decided to print out a copy of “The Fridge” for him.
I made my way out to Erindale and took the camera with me for a photographic journey, among the highlights:
The items I took with me
You could see from Bunda Street to Ballumbir Street back then
I avoided a green bus, and caught a nice orange bus instead
Mike Frame posing with the Kingswood
John B1_B5 sitting in the Kingswood
Mike Jeffreys arrives
And Ainslie Avenue
I also documented the excessive amount of noise those horrid green busses create.
I was forced to write my first editorial policy post.
Google followed up on a suggestion of mine.
I had a long, but enjoyable, day in which I went to work, had a very long lunch, and also took copies of my photos of 2CC presenters out to 2CC.
I had a really good idea about the future of public transport.
The ACT Government started planning for the centenary of Canberra in 2013, I gave them a good suggestion for a feature attraction.
I summarised some feedback, and outlined some new comment spam protection measures.
ACT Chief Turnip Jon Stanhope released a confidential document, and got an appropriate serve from Piers Akerman.
Australia’s version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire finally gave away a million dollars.
John Kerr started talking about his Christmas Cruise, and I had a strange dream about it.
Some children are just plain obnoxious.
John Kerr (a different John Kerr) had a snake in his taxi.
I made my booking and announced my plans for the New Day Australia Christmas Cruise.
I also brought you a classic 2CC jingle and showed you the catamaran being used for the Christmas Cruise.
Mike Welsh ran the Trading Post, and a policewoman considered suing John Laws.
I won a Home Improvement DVD as part of 2CC’s birthday celebrations, Nattie visited the vet, and I had a dream where I yelled at Jon Stanhope.
2CC had their birthday, and I had a special picture for the occasion.
That was October, tomorrow morning we will take a look at November.
Samuel
April 10th, 2006
I could tell you that September started off with a bang, but that would be a fib, as it actually started off with snoring, both from myself, and from the rostered air traffic controller at Canberra Airport. I did eventually wake up and write a brief Blog View Stats post, where we found out that there were 196 views of the new site’s front page in the short time that it was on the Internet in August.
I had a very nice lunch and afternoon with my bus driver friend, which included me getting a new radio, I later converted the afternoon into german and back to English using the Google Translator, with some very amusing results.
2UE moved to new studios, with a couple minor glitches, which not only caused issues for most network stations, but compounded calamities for (the now nearly defunct) 2LT. The proper technical changeover to the new studios took quite a bit of network programming away from 2CC temporarily, but Mike Frame had a good afternoon show. The new 2UE studios do look nice though.
Google decided that I’m a penguin.
Wayne Mac had a very interesting chat with the people over at 6PR.
I summarised a week in one veeeery long post, so summarised probably isn’t the right word.
City News continued their incompetence by publishing an opinion piece from a website as an “editorial” in their so called newspaper.
One of the people who lives near me decided that leaf blowers are good at cleaning houses.
I wrote my first restaurant review, for the Majura Cafe, and became very annoyed with the way government lawnmowers operate.
Google Earth is good, but I’m glad the pictures aren’t live.
I had a dream about oranges that taste like pineapples.
I found a good definition of a modern pop star.
I showed you a story I wrote called “The Fridge”.
One of my clocks gained half a second.
Channel Nine announced 50 years of television a year too early.
Sadly, Don Adams passed away.
I spent far too much time thinking about having radio live in each and every house.
The Coffee-Cup-O-Meter made a temporary return.
I wondered how immune government cars are to road rules, posted the first ever Tape Highlights Package and grumbled about tablecloth sized catalogues.
That more or less wraps up September 2005, We’ll look back on October 2005 on Monday morning (can anybody see the pattern yet…or better yet work out the reason behind the pattern?).
Samuel
April 8th, 2006
August started off with me outlining some of the reasons why I don’t like Internet Explorer, and celebrating the Horse’s Birthday (thanks to John Kerr’s show for informing me of this interesting event).
The first Blog View Stats post appeared, but was just a copy of the Webstat stats, with no analysis.
It was around this time that I started to become annoyed with the services of Blogger.com, and contemplated moving to WordPress.
I also rang George Gibson for the first and only time, attempted to solve his brain teaser puzzle, and amused him (for the record, the answer was that the swimmer was naked).
Lawsie had his 70th birthday and got quite a nice cake.
I had some fun with some scammers on the phone, who insisted that they wouldn’t stand on me…but still wanted my credit card number.
Windows Media Player asked me the same question ten times in a row.
Samuel In Dolgnwot ended with a double image finale.
Schnappi reached sixth on the ARIA charts.
I declared City News to be the worst newspaper in the country, whilst Queensland Parks and Wildlife went on a shooting spree.
Tree Of Life wanted to hire an acting assistant manager and experts contemplated releasing tigers and elephants throughout the US.
I officially Joined AIR News and bought the domain name samuelgordonstewart.com as well as some hosting, and eventually moved the blog over to it.
Just before the move, SBS continued their downward spiral with a very odd and impossible to answer viewer poll question, which they changed when they showed the responses.
I spent a fair bit of time fixing up the new site and the old posts, something I’m still slowly doing.
I found out that the video from my Linux.Conf.Au seminar would not be able to go ahead due to further audio problems.
Somebody decided to put some shopping baskets on street lamps.
I spent a bit too much time thinking about the answer to the previously mentioned brain teaser question.
Statistics on the new site went haywire, informing me that 295% of people added the site to favourites/bookmarks.
After nearly eight months, PC User sent me my prize for writing the letter of the month, supermarkets employed some very odd and covert methods of checking competitor prices and I stapled myself.
There was some further proof that Coffee is good for you and I noticed some of the odd spammer names.
The month ended with the CSIRO conducting sheep intelligence tests and me finishing the categorising of old posts.
Tomorrow morning we will look back on September.
Samuel
April 7th, 2006
The week that spanned across the months of June and July saw me doing work experience at the Capital Radio Network (2CC/2CA), which saw this website grind to a halt. Upon my return I mentioned that I hadn’t vanished, and did not have a Musician(s) Of The Week award.
I was still very annoyed with the stupid things that people do, and brought some rather unusual rubbish bin activity to your attention.
I soon realised that I had missed the Musician(s) Of The Week award, and gave it to The Beatles, I also offered my condolences to those affected by the London bombings.
I did some calculations involving bus tickets, and then brought you some information about Linux.Conf.Au 2006.
This was followed by the good news that John Laws would be returning to work, after recovering from a back operation, on July 27, a date which was later ammended to July 25, two weeks before his 70th birthday (more on that tomorrow).
My shipment of Ubuntu Linux CDs arrived.
Television cricket coverage became competitive and Nattie wasn’t interested in navigating strange bits of Canberra design.
I started the Samuel’s Artwork category by showing you a picture I had shown you before, this lead to me starting the Samuel In Dolgnwot series. I also announced the start of the Blog View Stats, and even started tracking Schnappi’s progress on the ARIA charts.
Somebody called “Thought & Humor” left a very long piece of comment spam, which was odd and interesting. I then proceeded to talk about a few reasons why I like Mozilla Firefox and explained the process of making patchwork art.
I explained in great detail why I think the Ginninderra Super School is a huge mistake.
The first ever online Samuel Salute was awarded to Bob Carr after his retirement, and I suggested that John Laws should be the next New South Wales premier, Carl Scully promptly dropped out of the race, but alas, Morris Iemma became the premier.
I then found a way to run Windows Update without Internet Explorer and told you about the announcement of a leap second.
The month ended with Visual Basic being described as silly string, and Schnappi becoming Casanova.
Tomorrow morning we will be looking back on August 2005.
Samuel
April 6th, 2006
June 2005 saw many exciting changes on Samuel’s Blog, in fact it started off with a new feature, the Musician(s) Of The Week award, which went to Boney M. Later that day I announced two more changes, the addition of a Google search box (something which I didn’t carry over to this site), and advertising. I particularly like my quote about the ads
The other improvement is advertising…hmmmm, I hear people moaning…look, it isn’t that bad, it is actually quite good. I could have gone with any number of advertising providers, but I don’t want ads that flash, flicker, buzz, popup, popunder, squeal, annoy or interupt. That rules out a lot of advertising sites. I also don’t want ads for “Pills & Potions ‘R Us” or those annoying ads that appear on Yahoo Mail and Hotmail “You can live and work in another country”…who cares??? I don’t want to move country, and I doubt many of my readers do, if you want to move country then call a travel agent.
I then reminded people about my Birthday and said that I would be getting a mention on John Kerr’s show, and intended on ringing him, something I later did, and even posted an MP3 of.
Another change was having a link back to the homepage of the blog, something the blogger.com template lacked, but I added.
Nattie and I both have our birthday on June 2, and Nattie loves cake.
My head didn’t turn lime green with polka dots, but that didn’t prevent somebody from gawping at me in Civic.
And then we had another change, the Step-O-Meter came into existence, or was supposed to, and eventually did, with the first Step-O-Meter report counting 6927 steps for part of the day.
I then made a further announcement, I joined Skype, and then Firefly, which seemed to annoy one of the readers, who went and dragged out the discussion into another post.
I then had a grumble about Fireworks and the way people use them during the Queen’s Birthday Long Weekend.
Then, on June 6, I brought you the story of rumors that Stuart Bocking would take over John Kerr’s program later that month.
I even showed you a picture of Steppy, the pedometer that makes the Step-O-Meter possible.
It was then time for the Dickson College open night, I invited everyone along, and then documented it as part of what was a very busy day, I also rang Mike Frame on that day to voice my objections to the arboretum that the ACT Government had planned. I also debunked the theory that I drink too much coffee and brought you real life pictures of flying fish, one of which is shown here
More news about Stuart Bocking’s supposed move to nights, and then I added Webstat.com stats to the blog, which was very important as blogger.com don’t provide visitor stats.
The Stuart Bocking/John Kerr move became a bit more murky, I became very annoyed with Microsoft, had my record SmoothWall uptime, and showed some of the dangers of computer power saving.
Gmail changed domain from gmail.google.com to mail.google.com and then switched between the two for a while.
John Laws had a rant at the expense of 2UE Management, and I held my breath as John Kerr was due back on air, in case Stuart Bocking took over. He didn’t take over, and John Kerr was back with many stories from his holiday, but the rumor turned out to be true later in the year.
Garfield had his 27th birthday and Blogger.com added image uploading.
And that pretty much summed up the month! We’ll look back at July 2005 on Thursday morning, as we continue to get closer to one year of Samuel’s Blog!
Samuel
April 4th, 2006
I received an email from somebody going by the name of “pintail” today, unfortunately they used the contact form with a bogus email address so I am unable to reply to some of the things they wrote, but there was one point which interested me, and might interest you.
why dont u link to blogs when they link to u, u are selfish
As you can probably tell “pintail” wasn’t very impressed with me for one reason or another, but they have made an interesting point here, so I will do my best to explain.
As I’m sure you’re aware, many blogs contain a “blogroll” or similar, linking to many other blogs which the author thinks make good reading, this is their choice, and I appreciate the links when I notice them, however I see no reason why I should have to give them a return link. If they have linked to this site in an interesting article, I might decide to link back to that article in one of my posts, of course there are also times when I won’t link back for whatever reason.
I do, however, recognise links on a monthly basis as part of my blog view stats, I generally link to the top three referring sites for the month, although this may grow to the top five. I think this is a fair way of linking back to sites which deliver readers, whilst retaining my own editorial control over who gets a special mention.
I will make a mildly unbalanced comparison here to Slashdot. For those of you who are unaware, Slashdot is an IT news/blog site with a bit of an emphasis on Open Source Software. Due to the large readership of Slashdot, a link from there has been known to overload webservers, this is known as the Slashdot Effect. Slashdot is a fairly respected site, and as such, is linked to an awful lot, imagine if Slashdot maintained a blogroll, according to Google, this would require approximately 210,000 blogroll links. There are already enough complaints and conspiracy theories surrounding the selection of stories on Slashdot, imagine how bad it would get if they had to list these 210,000 links in some order…which site goes on top? Which site on the bottom? Perhaps they could have a random link similar to my random quotes…far too hard to be bothered with.
I wouldn’t have to deal with 210,000 links on this site, but it would still be a hassle, and then what do I do if a site which I don’t like links to my site? I’m happy with my system for now, but what do you think? Is “pintail” right? Should I continue with my system? Or do you have a better suggestion? Let me know, I would love to know what you think about this.
Samuel
January 11th, 2006
For the first time on record, this site exceeded 20,000 page views in a month, thankyou to everyone who visited, commented, and otherwise took part.
This does mean that Webstat stopped reporting due to me using the free version, this happened yesterday afternoon at around 3:30. Webstat reports will resume at midnight, when the new month starts. This does mean that the monthly stats will be slightly skewed, but for this month that will probably be OK, and I can always use the hosting reports as well. If the site is going to pass 20,000 page views regularly I may consider upgrading to a paid webstat account.
Once again, thankyou to everyone who has taken part in this site, I couldn’t have done it without you.
Samuel
November 30th, 2005
Yes, the changes continue, and they are all for the better.
One question I have asked myself is “Why do are all these people interested in my rantings”, I still don’t have an answer to that question, but what I do know is that some people like to see what I’ve been up to, and others find answers to questions, for example, a look at the Blog View Stats would show that some people have found my information on getting a Canon MPC400 printer working under Linux to be useful…but whatever the reason for coming to my blog, I want to make it enjoyable, and as such, I have added some new features to the blog.
You may have noticed that there is a Google search box at the top of this page (and every other page on the blog), this has been added for your convenience, you can easily search my blog from there which would be very useful for finding one of those archived posts, or you can search the web from the Google search box. I shouldn’t really need to explain that “Google Is Great”, I think you already know that.
The other improvement is advertising…hmmmm, I hear people moaning…look, it isn’t that bad, it is actually quite good. I could have gone with any number of advertising providers, but I don’t want ads that flash, flicker, buzz, popup, popunder, squeal, annoy or interupt. That rules out a lot of advertising sites. I also don’t want ads for “Pills & Potions ‘R Us” or those annoying ads that appear on Yahoo Mail and Hotmail “You can live and work in another country”…who cares??? I don’t want to move country, and I doubt many of my readers do, if you want to move country then call a travel agent.
So I made a decision, I decided to use Google Adsense for a few reasons:
1. The ads are relevant because they are based on the content of my blog.
2. They don’t violate my “flash, flicker, buzz, popup, popunder, squeal, annoy or interupt” rule.
3. They fit nicely on the side of the page in some nice blank space.
4. They are controllable, if I don’t want a particular ad, I can block it.
5. It’s Google, and “Google Are Great”
(Note to Google Adsense people who are likely to be alerted to my saying “Adsense” a zillion times: This is not designed to promote the ads or draw unnecesary attention to them, I do not believe that I have violated the Adsense terms and conditions, and if anything, I beleive I have promoted Adsense as a product that others can use.)
I think these changes will make the blog a better place, and I welcome your comments.
Samuel
June 1st, 2005
According to page 4 of this document from Nielsen Media (the people responsible for radio ratings), the results from the recent Canberra radio ratings are due for release today. I’ll get the details online ASAP, which will probably be this afternoon at some stage.
And just for the record, the long forgotten Blog View Stats for last month will be online tomorrow. They slipped my mind as I was too busy concentrating on work…they appear to have a reduction in visitors compared to previous months, but that’s probably not such a bad thing.
Samuel
June 15th, 2006
You may recall that in the Blog View Stats for January I noted that a website called Syndicate Motor Sports were the 2nd top referrer for the month, delivering 295 page views. I also mentioned them about a week ago, when one of their readers recognised me.
During a recent check of the referring sites for this month, I noticed an unusual spike in the number of people coming here from that site, and decided to take a look and see what was bringing them here, as it turned out, they had managed to confuse themselves over the details of their reader’s encounter with me.
For one reason or another, despite everything I had written, some of them were convinced that I was talking about someone yelling out of a car window. First, take a look at what I wrote.
Today, as I went to have lunch at Coffee @ Helen’s, one of the staff recognised me.
I went on to say
upon walking into Coffee @ Helen’s, I was greeted by this person with “You’re the infamous Samuel Gordon-Stewart”.
Now, let’s have a look at what Syndicate Motor Sports member “DRAG DIS” said
Hahahahah that was me who spotted him. I was with a mate who screamed out summernats.
I think though he may have a small brain, and might be quite unintelligent.
Because:
1. I do not work at coffe @ helens. The only male that does works behind the counter (not buying food) and is Of Asian appearance, and I am of caucasian appearance. I do not know how this point can be confused.
2. He also mentioned he had not seen me working their before. Thats because i have never worked their. This guy is delirious.
2. I am unsure why he did not mention the summernats roar my friend made , and his disgusted look. He neglected to mention that.
What a tripper
I don’t know who this “DRAG DIS” is, although for someone judging the brain size of others he certainly has a lot of talent when it comes to spelling and numbering lists. There are two possibilities here, either I imagined having lunch and meeting a Syndicate Motor Sports reader, or they are referring to the wrong incident. As you probably guessed, it is the latter.
The person who recognised me was working for Coffee @ Helen’s, he was the person who served me and many other customers and, contrary to the assertions of “DRAG DIS”, Coffee @ Helen’s have more than one staff member.
I do vaguely recall the incident referred to by “DRAG DIS”, although it could be any of a number of similar incidents. I think “DRAG DIS” is referring to an incident which occured somewhere around the Civic Bus Interchange where somebody in a moving car made a loud noise, whether this was them yelling something or just making a noise I do not know. I doubt that they understand the fact that simply because they know what they are yelling does not neccessarily mean that anybody else does, especially when they are on the other side of the road in a noisy area yelling out of a moving vehicle.
In related news, as I was taking Nattie for a walk today and waiting to cross Ainslie Avenue, somebody driving a white commodore which had just taken a left turn onto Ainslie Avenue from Limestone Avenue moved into the right hand lane without indicating, put their right arm out the window and started making unusual arm shaking gestures towards me, which they ceased shortly after passing me. It is a pity that I didn’t have a video camera to record the incident and hand the tape into the police so that they could penalise the driver for not indicating when changing lane.
Samuel
February 25th, 2006
As I write this, it is late at night on Tuesday in Petaluma and I have comfortably settled in to the Quality Inn.
It started before this morning (Tuesday Australian time) in a way as my last decent sleep of any sort before I departed was on Monday.
On Tuesday morning I left for the airport. I have posted intermittent messages since then, but the day deserves a proper summation. Getting through Canberra Airport was fine and it was fairly quiet there as well given that it was early in the morning. Sydney Airport was also fairly easy to get through…it helped that I had already checked in my luggage in Canberra and thus did not have to see it again in Sydney. I had roughly four hours to spare in Sydney so I stopped for an early lunch at Pie Face, and then proceeded through the next round of security screenings to the international waiting area and bizarre sprawling duty free shopping area (which felt like a larger, less organised version of Myer if they were to hire a bunch of foreign actors to make the place look busy). I listened to some of Inga Barks filling in for Mark Levin via the stream of Inga’s station KNZR in Fresno) and occasionally listened to the somewhat amusing messages about certain people with very unpronounceable names needing to go to some gate immediately. It was particularly amusing when the person making the announcement could not work out the gender of one of the names and referred to them as “passenger [name]” rather than “Mr. [name]” or “Mrs. [name]”.
I think I came close to dozing off a couple times in the waiting area, but didn’t have that problem while standing around waiting at the gate where there was a catering delay.
Once the Sydney to L.A. flight got underway I decided to try and get some sleep with minimal success. I think I dozed off a couple times, but on most attempts I woke up just as I was starting to drift off to sleep either because my mind suddenly doubled the volume of the aeroplane noises, or because I was stupidly and unwittingly applying logic to the often nonsensical thoughts which occur in that state and catching myself not making sense.
I decided not to have lunch on the plane as I was not hungry. I did have a couple snacks though.
Annoyingly, at 3pm Canberra time, with direct sunlight still beaming through the windows, all the lights were dimmed and the cabin crew requested that the window shutters by closed “for sleep”. At the time, I was reading a very thought-provoking part of Mark Levin’s book “Liberty & Tyranny” which explains why direct election of federal US senators was not part of the original constitution and why Mark believes it should not be in there now…unfortunately the personal overhead light spills a bit too much light on others for me to be comfortable using it for an extended period of time, so I stopped reading. I instead, listened to Mark Levin’s podcast of his show from Friday and most of TWiT.tv’s This Week In Tech podcast, plus a little bit of music at one stage. I also took the time to draft a letter which I have been meaning to write for a very long time, and attempted to get more sleep without success.
Thankfully the person next to me (I chose a seat on the A380 which is in a row of two seats rather than three) also did not sleep much during the flight, and thus didn’t mind my constant activity. By the end of the flight we had (perhaps unwittingly) gotten ourselves in to a habit of getting up and having a little wander if the other person had to get up for one reason or another.
The A380’s in-flight entertainment system (which kept the person in the seat next to me entertained for most of the trip) had a flight tracker which showed the plane’s current location and stats such as current speed and altitude, plus estimated arrival time and the current temperature outside the plane. It also had a view from a camera mounted on the plane’s tail. I had planned on taking a photo of the tracker and of a view from out the window just prior to the “please turn everything off” announcement so that I could use those in the blog post upon my arrival at Los Angeles Airport…but I made a little mistake. As the sun started to come up and the lights were returned to a useful level of brightness, I went to change the SIM card in my phone, forgetting that iPhones have to re-activate when they receive a new SIM card (which is usually a simple process as it is done via the new SIM card’s data connection). With AT&T’s network being out of reach (and proximity being irrelevant given the restrictions on the use of phones outside of “airplane mode”) I had effectively bricked my phone for the rest of the trip. Not a big deal, but an inconvenience. Once on the ground in LA, the phone was happy to activate itself and all started to work, and I was able to finalise my call diversions on my Australian numbers knowing that the US number was correct.
One thing which I had planned on mentioning prior to the flight was my plan for keeping my Telstra SIM card safe while I’m in the US as it is such a tiny thing and four weeks would give it plenty of options to get lost.
I have a bunch of SD cards for my camera, but until recently I did not have enough cases for each SD card and had left some of them in their original packaging, unopened and unused, instead. While ordering cases for those SD cards, I realised that such a case works well for a SIM card as well.
On the left, the SIM card in a case. It doesn’t lock in to a position in the case like the SD card does, but it has limited scope for movement so as long as it is not placed in checked luggage it should be fine (the AT&T SIM card was fine). The next case has a paperclip, which is needed to eject the SIM card tray on an iPhone, and the third one has an SD card.
After the SIM card was changed in my phone, breakfast was served on the plane. Sausages, scrambled eggs, spinach, a hash brown blob, and some as-yet unidentified substance smothered in tomato sauce. It was actually quite nice, although opening the packet was an art in which I am not trained and so I just cut the packaging to pieces until I could rip it open.
The early morning arrival in Los Angeles meant it wasn’t too busy and was relatively quick to get through Customs. Customs processes happened in the opposite order to what I was expecting…first up was the “who are you, what are you doing here, how will you react if I bluntly ask you a couple seemingly random personal questions in an accusatory tone” interview. I thought I was going to get dragged in to an office for a moment there when I was asked if I have any family in the US and I said “no”…a few moments passed and then just as he was about to say something I jumped in with “actually…ummm…I think I have some relatives on Mum’s side of the family somewhere in California, but I’m not sure who they are or where they are”…but he just went on and stamped my passport and away I went.
After that I collected my luggage so that it could go through Customs inspection…or in this case a quick look at the declaration form I had filled out on the plane and one very quick question about it. My baggage may have been scanned before I picked it up, but it certainly wasn’t check at all as I went through Customs. My detailed list of the values of all of the gifts (including the multiple different prices of Tim Tams from the various purchases I made in the weeks prior to the trip) and to whom I had allocated the gifts seemed like a waste of time and effort…but I’m glad I did it anyway as it was a useful document for my own reference.
I had expected that I would pick up my luggage and then go through Customs where both I and my luggage would be examined…I probably looked a little lost and confused as a result.
After this it was off to another terminal to check in my luggage again and wait a few hours for my flight to San Francisco. For this, I made my first ever purchase with physical US currency: a cup of coffee, and put the batteries back in my radio (I had removed them prior to the first flight and stored them in a separate compartment of my carry-on backpack so as to prevent accidental switching-on of the radio) where I tuned in to KEIB 1150 AM “The Patriot” (an almost new station in Los Angeles in that the same people who run KFI run it, and recently flipped it from progressive to conservative talk, allowing them to clear shows in LA which were dropped by Cumulus and a few other shows too, and allow them to expand the local content on KFI). I listened to most of the last hour of Glenn Beck’s show and roughly the first half-hour of Rush Limbaugh’s show, but I was quite tired by this stage so I decided to walk around for a bit instead which helped a bit.
Samuel’s Blog file photo: Samuel’s WM-F57 walkman
The flight from LA to San Francisco was delayed for an unspecified reason, and was then further delayed on the tarmac for another unspecified reason. Neither occasion was too long, adding up to about 45 minutes in total. I got quite a bit of sleep on this flight. During the delay on the tarmac I dozed off…I don’t remember dozing off, but I do remember the 20 minute delay feeling like it took about three minutes, and I remember the Captain’s message at the start and end of the delay where he noted the same amount of delay in both. The plane then taxied around LAX for what seemed like an eternity of maze-like craziness, and I dozed off during this as well as at one stage we were taxiing and the next thing I knew was that my seventh sense woke me up to obtain a cup of coffee which was about to be offered to me by the cabin crew.
San Francisco airport was, for me, an interesting series of escalators and automated trains to get from the plane to the rental car facility via Baggage Claim. My original plan had been to drive straight to Petaluma and then make the necessary phone calls to home to advise of my arrival, however the scheduled time for this call was “somewhere between 10am and 11am Canberra time”. It was close enough to 1:30pm in San Francisco and 9:30am in Canberra, and knowing the approximate morning schedules of the people I had to call and knowing that I might not get to Petaluma by 3pm, I decided to call from the rental car prior to driving off, which worked out well.
After this, the fantastic website Radio-Locator.com came in very handy as auto-tuning was not very effective from within the carpark and I wanted to find the frequency of Sean Hannity’s affiliate in the area KSTE 650 AM and avoid the pseudo-conservative Michael Savage who occupies that timeslot on KSFO these days.
From there, the interesting fun of getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car. This was a little harrowing when it wasn’t possible to get in to the correct lane for an exit and I had to drive through some busy roads in San Francisco for about twenty minutes, which well-and-truly fixed any confidence issues I had, corrected the instinctive “move the car a bit to the right so the lane markers look like they’re in the right place for where I’m sitting” thing, gave me plenty of pre-freeway time to re-learn mirror positions, and mostly get rid of the instinctive “when turning left, aim for the left of the road” habit. Evetually I got on to the freeway and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and all the way to my hotel in Petaluma, the Quality Inn. On my way I passed an electronic message board advising people to save water due to the drought, and as I got closer to the hotel and it passed 3pm and the end of Sean Hannity’s show, I tuned in to KSFO 560 AM for Mark Levin’s show, which was interrupted by an amber alert (I’ve heard the automated alert system used for weather warnings, but not an amber alert before…it caught me by surprise).
My Mustang (well, it’s mine for ten days) parked at the Quality Inn, Petaluma
My room at the Quality Inn, Petaluma
The Quality Inn has some really lovely staff and the rooms are very nice. The free wifi is a useful added bonus and I’m particularly impressed by the semi-automatic lighting in the bathroom which turns on when you walk in and turns off a little while after you leave if you don’t override it…and the lighting in the main living area is functional, effective, and can be controlled on a light-by-light basis, which means I don’t have the problem I have in many hotels where the lighting has two options: two bright and too dim. The tap system used on the bath and shower which controls whether water flows to the bath or shower via a pin and water pressure system of some sort is quite interesting and effective too. I’m also a fan of the coffee-bag based coffee machine in the room. I also quite like the interesting layout of the hotel which makes it look and feel like a mini town of a bunch of little cottages…it looks and feels both pretty and relaxing.
One thing to note is that the hotel has a breakfast service, but not a lunch or dinner service, not that it matters as there are plenty of great food options nearby. I took the five minute (or thereabouts) drive to a Mexican restaurant (Don Pancho‘s) and had a fantastic dinner…and it gave me the excuse to get in a bit of night-driving.
Prior to dinner, I relaxed for a little while in the hotel room and flicked through the local TV stations. (Alas their DirectTV lacks Fox News Channel…oh well, it is California). I turned on the TV and was greeted by the local Fox station running Dr. Oz…apparently I can’t escape from him. Some of the stations were running continuous coverage of the amber alert while others were running updates on it, as well as a traffic snarl caused by a police officer getting injured after stopping to assist a broken-down motorist.
I was flicking through the stations so I forget who said what, but I noted two stations, at roughly the same time, informing their viewers that they knew about the amber alert before everyone else because they were under a police helicopter when an announcement was made from the helicopter about it…they both showed roughly the same footage of it. One of the stations even had a story about that electronic message board sign about using less water (yes, I did mention it earlier for a reason) which unfortunately ran in to a few minor issues…the first of which was the amber alert which took over all of the electronic signs and ruined the live cross to the reporter standing in front of the message…the reporter’s package about using less water had an unfortunate but predictable shot of the reporter talking directly to camera about practical ways to use less water such as having shorter showers, illustrated by having him present this piece in front of a running shower which was running for very long time before he stopped talking about it.
While I have been writing this, I have had the radio tuned to yet another station. KKSF 910 AM for George Noory’s Coast To Coast AM. The relevance? Two reasons, my blog post upon reaching LA mentioned George Noory, and more importantly KKSF is Leo Laporte’s “The Tech Guy” San Francisco affiliate…today (I started writing this when it was still Tuesday, but it’s now early in the morning on Wednesday) I’m visiting Leo’s TWiT.tv studios, so I should probably go to bed now and stop making a supposedly short blog post even longer.
Samuel
February 12th, 2014
I have recently been thinking about the idea of having transcripts of Samuel’s Persiflage, there are multiple reasons for this, including making the content of the podcast easier to find (search engines are good at reading text), making it easier to quote where needed, providing a means for people with hearing difficulties to access Samuel’s Persiflage, and even as a means for avoiding distraction whilst listening.
I generally listen to podcasts whilst in front of the computer, this unfortunately makes it very easy to become distracted, and I find that I follow podcasts with transcripts better than I do podcasts without them…in fact some podcasts which occasionally become complex and technical (such as Security Now!) are even easier to comprehend and understand when following along with the transcript.
I quickly dismissed the idea of writing the transcripts myself, as I am very slow at transcribing audio, and quite frankly I don’t have the time to do that, so I went in search of a transcription service, and after trialling a few of them I have settled on Tech Synergy’s podcast transcription service.
There is a small cost involved, and as such I have decided to stagger the production of the transcripts of the older episodes. The current plan is for one transcript to be delivered per week (starting with the latest episode and working back). Episode six is being transcribed as I write this, and I will have it online later this week.
This is very exciting for me, and I think it will provide a valuable service to existing listeners, as well as a more efficient way to attract new listeners. I will probably include the transcript download stats in the monthly Blog View Stats.
Samuel
July 25th, 2006
By now I suspect that most of you have noticed that I have been absent from this site almost all week…a number of you have emailed me about that as well, and I haven’t quite got around to answering all the emails yet, but please do keep them coming.
To summarise the common questions and answers, yes I’ve been away from the site, no I haven’t left the Internet, no you may not take over the website (you know who you are…), yes I do have a good reason for not being here, no it will not continue during your vacation next week (again, you know who you are), and yes I’m very glad you’ve enjoyed reading the archives.
I will elaborate on the reasons why I haven’t been here much lately. Firstly, work is keeping me as busy as ever and I (generally) can’t check the website, or update it, from work…that is no excuse though. The main reason behind my absence is that I have recently been suffering from back and shoulder pain which has, at times, rendered sitting an impossible task…I have had some treatment for this, and will have some more, some adjustments have been made to some seating and sleeping arrangments and I am now, for the most part, feeling much better. Unfortunately though, the entire incident has cost me a lot of sleep, and I have been unwittingly catching up on the lost sleep.
So now I’m back, my sleep cycle is cactus for the moment, but that gives me an opportunity to get to work on keeping the site up to date whilst I mend my sleep cycle.
Another question that people continue to ask is if there will be any more episodes of Samuel’s Persiflage. I can assure you that there will be, the next episode is in planning at the moment and is expected online by the 20th. I have had a potential guest pull out for the moment due to his own work commitments, but he will probably appear in a future episode…right now I’m concentrating on securing guests for this month’s episode.
There have been a couple emails about the lack of photos of late. Regular readers may recall that my camera developed a nasty “black semi-circle in certain corners” fault, the camera has recently been sent off for repairs and should be back soon…which is just as well as I have a few things I would like to take photos of.
I continue to receive emails about various upcoming (and overdue) posts, including Blog View Stats, Canberra radio ratings, ACTION changes, etc…they’re coming, please be patient.
I would like to thank everybody for their emails, I should reply to most, if not all, of them within the next 48 hours.
Samuel
July 14th, 2006
Before you get your hopes up, no this post does not contain download statistics, they will be delivered in the monthly blog view stats.
In the last few weeks I’ve received a bit of correspondence from the guests who have been on Samuel’s Persiflage, about the monthly statistics I send out. You see, not only do I post the download statistics each month in the blog view stats, I also send statistics letters to all of the guests, with details about the downloads of their episodes.
In general the response has been very good, the guests are pleased to know approximately how many people have been listening (these are download stats, they don’t prove exact listenership), and are looking forward to the monthly updates.
This is pleasing for me as I decided that it would be a good idea to do this from the start. Basically, when you do a radio or television interview, you can find out pretty easily the approximate number of people listening/watching. TV ratings are published daily, and radio ratings come out to a set schedule. Unfortunately the same is not true for podcasts, and as this is a relatively new form of media, some people are skeptical of there being any point in appearing on a podcast.
There is also a problem with the fact that traditional broadcasts are generally instant or mildly delayed, but are usually broadcast once, with no ability for the end viewer/listener to replay what happened if they didn’t record it. Basically, you speak, people hear you, the world carries on. With podcasts though, you speak, a bit later the podcast is published, and for the rest of eternity people may hear/see your message. This obviously isn’t any good for a message you need to deliver right now, but for non-urgent messages this can be quite effective.
This changes the way ratings need to be measured though as you can’t just say “250,000 were listening when you spoke”, you effectively have to say “250,000 heard you on Monday, 75,000 on Tuesday, etc etc”, and of course you can’t really measure the exact size of the audience due to the very nature of downloads, so you measure downloads and call it an approximate audience size, which it is with the law of averages (some will download part of a podcast, some will download a full podcast and share it with others).
As podcasting matures, I think we will see more and more podcasters providing download statistics, as it is something which interests most of the audience, is useful for future guests, and good information for previous guests.
I’m by no means the only podcaster doing this, but I am one of the leaders in providing statistics, and I get the feeling that one day I will be able to say “I helped to start that!”.
Samuel
April 26th, 2006
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