Another week, more footy tips.
AFL Round 2
Tigers V Saints
Cats V Kangaroos
Bulldogs V Demons
Lions V Bombers
Dockers V Blues
Swans V Power
Hawks V Magpies
Crows V Eagles
NRL Round 5
Cowboys V Tigers
Broncos V Rabbitohs
Sharks V Roosters
Dragons V Knights
Warriors V Eagles
Eels V Panthers
Raiders V Bulldogs
Samuel
2 comments April 7th, 2006 at 09:30am
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
2 comments April 7th, 2006 at 07:00am
It’s that time of the month again, so here are the stats for March.
The Webstat reports for March can be found here
There were 15,478 page views in March, down from 18,327 in February, and 4,710 visitors, down from 5,025 in February.
There were 5,955 views of the front page on all of its URLs.
The most popular articles were:
Google remained the most popular search engine, followed by Yahoo, and MSN.
The search keywords were mostly various combinations and misspellings of my name, and variations of “schnappi video”. Among the odd keywords were
Internet Explorer dropped a couple percentage points but was still the most popular browser with 62.98% of the readership, Firefox gained nearly as much as Internet Explorer lost, and was next with 32.27%, and Safari seemed to pick up the slack on 3.75%. Opera, Netscape, Mozilla and Konqueror were all under 1%.
Windows was the most popular Operating System with 86.67% of the readership, followed by Mac with 12.53%, and Linux with 0.78%. Windows had a minor drop, as did Linux, which seemed to be picked up by Mac.
Australia, The US and Japan and The UK topped the Countries, with 83.76%, 5.59%, 4.52% and 2.09% of the readership respectively, which seems to show that people in countries outside of Australia are taking a growing interest in this blog.
The most popular files for the month were:
The top referring sites for the month were:
Bandwidth
March 2006: 12,350MB
February 2006 9,280MB
January 2006: 14,240MB
December 2005: 14,010MB
November 2005: 2,870MB
October 2005: 657.85MB
September 2005: 519.89MB
August 2005: 82.93MB
Samuel’s Persiflage Statistics
| RSS Feed Downloads | |
| Month | Downloads |
| March 2006 | 1392 |
| Febrauary 2006 | 815 |
| January 2006 | 1661 |
| December 2005 | 150 |
| Total | 4018 |
| Downloads in March | |||
| Episode | High Quality Version |
Low Quality Version |
Total |
| 3 (February 2006) | 84 | 43 | 127 |
| 2 (January 2006) | 125 | N/A | 125 |
| 1 (December 2006) | 71 | N/A | 71 |
| Total | 280 | 43 | 323 |
| Episode 3 Downloads | |||
| Month | High Quality Version |
Low Quality Version |
Total |
| March 2006 | 84 | 43 | 127 |
| February 2006 | 81 | 39 | 120 |
| Total | 165 | 82 | 247 |
| Episode 2 Downloads | |
| Month | Downloads |
| March 2006 | 125 |
| February 2006 | 98 |
| January 2006 | 144 |
| Total | 367 |
| Episode 1 Downloads | |
| Month | Downloads |
| March 2006 | 71 |
| February 2006 | 64 |
| January 2006 | 291 |
| December 2006 | 80 |
| Total | 506 |
Samuel
April 7th, 2006 at 04:26am
Thursday
3 x Standard Mugs (1 Point Each) = 3 Points
Total = 3 Points
Samuel
2 comments April 7th, 2006 at 02:43am
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
40 comments April 6th, 2006 at 07:00am
Wednesday
2 x Standard Mug (1 Point Each) = 2 Points
2 x Standard Shop Coffee (1 Point Each) = 2 Points
Total = 4 Points
Samuel
2 comments April 6th, 2006 at 01:00am
I spotted a rather interesting article on Slashdot yesterday about The National Archives of Australia announcing that they are moving their digital archives program to Open Office 2.0, and therefore the Open Document Format.
I personally use both Microsoft Office 2000, and Open Office 2.0, and I have to say that an awful lot of work has been done to make Open Office an almost perfect converter between a multitude of formats, and I think ODF is superior to the MS Office formats for a couple reasons.
The National Archives are by no means the first government agency in the world to convert to Open Office, but they are arguably the first one with such a major role in maintaining historical documents to do so. They cannot risk damaging these documents, and they also cannot risk losing them through technological obsoletion, and I think they have made the right choice in choosing Open Office, and they will now probably lead the way for many more government and private organisations to do the same thing.
Samuel
7 comments April 5th, 2006 at 10:48am
Now that Greg “Robbo” Robson has left 2CA and Daniel Gibson has quite happily filled the void on a temporary basis, the question of who will take over the show permanently needs to be answered.
I suppose it is quite possible that Daniel will just keep going, and the fact there really aren’t any “filling in” lines to be found anywhere on the air could be proof, that being said, I do have to wonder about his full time position at Prime if he did decide to take on Breakfast radio on a permanent basis.
I do find it curious that there haven’t been any ads on radioinfo for the position, especially seeing as 2CA did say that Daniel would only be there “until a permanent replacement is found”, and Capital Radio tend to advertise just about everything on radioinfo.
This got me thinking about the recent ad for a Senior Journalist at 2CA/2CC, and the timing of it in relation to the announcement of Robbo leaving. I have no idea about the details of Robbo’s contract, but I would imagine that there would have probably been at least a 2 week notice period, which considering he finished on Friday would have started on Friday the 17th of March, only three work days before the Senior Journalist job was advertised on Wednesday the 22nd of March.
As I suspected that the Senior Journalist ad was indicating that one of the existing newsreaders was leaving, it all clicked…Kris McKenzie has been filling in on a couple of 2CC’s shows recently, he is great talent, upbeat and bubbly, and would probably fit right into 2CA’s “New Sound” format. The three workday gap between the dates listed above would be more than enough time to sign a presenter up as the new breakfast host, and file a job advertisement for the new host’s old job.
Naturally I’m speculating, but I’m not pulling names out of the air, as you can see I have given this some careful consideration, and it works…whether it turns out to be true or not is something we will just have to wait and see.
Samuel
43 comments April 5th, 2006 at 09:46am
Tuesday
5 x Standard Mug (1 Point Each) = 5 Points
2 x Regular Shop Coffee (1 Point Each) = 2 Points
1 x Large Shop Coffee (1.5 Points Each) = 1.5 Points
Total = 8.5 Points
Samuel
15 comments April 5th, 2006 at 01:00am
As many of you would be well aware, Eddie McGuire is the new CEO of Channel Nine, when he took on the job, there was much speculation about whether he would continue presenting television shows or not, and we then found out that he would not be.
We have previously seen Eddie on this website giving away a million dollars for the first time, which was a peice of Australian television history unto itself, and I think last night’s episode also fits into that category, as it was a momentus occasion in the history of Australian Television.
Last night was Eddie McGuire’s final episode of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”, and there was a special tribute to Eddie throughout the show, with a highlights package at the start, a voiceover introducing him “for his final episode”, and then a big tribute at the end of the show.
I have videos of this tribute online, and have listed them in quality order from highest to lowest. The multiple formats should be enough for compatibility for everyone. There were a couple minor hiccups in the middle of the video, which appear to be WIN Television’s fault, but nothing major.
Windows Media Video (WMV) 24.3MB
Real Player Video (RM) 23.5MB
MPEG-4 (MP4) 23.6MB
Quicktime Video (MOV) 24.0MB
After wrapping up proceedings from the night, and not mentioning who the host will be next week, Temptation co-host Livinia Nixon dropped by to present eddie with some gifts.
It’s not every day you get to kiss the boss on national television, with his wife in the audience!
There’s also a bottle of something, probably wine or champagne.
Eddie runs through some statistics of his time hosting the show
And they are:
Eddie used to joke about giving away the bosses money…I guess it is no fun when you’re the boss and you’re giving away your own money!
Eddie then showed us the picture Livinia gave him
and was given a standing ovation
Eddie’s wife and son were in the audience
And Eddie gives us a final salute goodbye.
The Samuel Salute is a rare honour, but today I salute Eddie McGuire with the Samuel Salute, for excellence in his 7 and a bit years hosting Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Well done Eddie, may your time as Nine CEO be rewarding and successful.
Samuel
12 comments April 4th, 2006 at 03:00pm
Not a great week in the NRL for my tips, but I did pretty well in the AFL.
AFL Round 1: 6/8 (75%)
NRL Round 4: 3/7 (42.86%)
Week Total: 9/15 (60%)
Totals:
AFL: 6/8 (75%)
NRL: 10/28 (35.71%)
Total: 16/36 (44.44%)
Samuel
1 comment April 4th, 2006 at 01:33pm
I have some strange dreams sometimes…this is most certainly one of them!
Last night I had a dream that I went into some building and went to reception, I greeted the two girls working there and asked to see someone (I mentioned their name, but I don’t remember who it was. I also got the impression in the dream that this is something I do daily, and the person I asked for was a friend of mine), the girls smiled and looked at each other and then one said “Well, actually, we’re not supposed to talk to you any more…(they mentioned the name of the person I was going to see) found out that you’re a stalker and doesn’t want to see you either…we’re really sorry, but you will have to leave.”
I then protested that I’m not a stalker, but they said “You will have to leave, or we will have to call the police.” So I left and started walking home wondering why they thought I was a stalker when I’m not…how could they think that?
It was a very strange dream…a very very strange dream.
Samuel
4 comments April 4th, 2006 at 10:58am
My backyard is a place which some small gecko lizards have decided to call home. They were first spotted about a year ago, at which time there were probably two or three, and have since multiplied. Baby lizards have been spotted a couple times, but overall the lizards like to live in the nice leafy and plant covered sections of the backyard (which is most of it). I have been waiting for a good photo opportunity for a while, and was very pleased to get one on Sunday afternoon, when one of the lizards spent a bit of time on the garden path.
Nattie is, for the most part, at peace with the lizards, although she does occasionally try to chase one, but they manage to scurry off under the vegetation before the “big furry monster” gets to them. Nattie probably looks like some kind of big furry monster to the lizards.
Samuel
4 comments April 4th, 2006 at 09:08am
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
1 comment April 4th, 2006 at 07:00am
Monday
2 x Standard Mugs (1 Point Each) = 2 Points
Total = 2 Points
Samuel
4 comments April 4th, 2006 at 12:10am
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