Posts filed under 'Blog News'
Regular readers would remember an email I sent to 2UE’s John Kerr about Ishmael, one of 2UE’s regular callers. The email was not in the least bit flattering.
After publishing that email, I copped a bit of flack from some people pretending to be Ishmael, however since then the real Ishmael has contacted me and we have had some discussions. I have come to the conclusion that whilst I disagree with a lot of Ishmael’s opinions, he isn’t the stark raving mad lunatic I portrayed him as, and actually seems like a fairly reasonable individual.
My description of Ishmael as a “serial pest caller” was harsh and unwarranted, especially seeing as there are plenty of callers who actually do fit that category, and it is unfair to compare Ishmael to them when Ishmael actually calls to make a point rather than a nuisance.
I still think the choice of timing of Ishmael’s exchange with John Kerr was poor, but I do now see where he is coming from.
Whilst Ishmael understands that I won’t be taking down any of what I wrote, I would like to publicly apologise to Ishmael for being a bit too harsh in my comments.
Samuel
January 10th, 2007 at 01:26am
Occasionally I get emails from people who want to send things to me via the post, and with the exception of a select few people who I actually know, I have had to turn them down as I did not feel like giving out my home address.
For that reason, and a few others (including missing/stolen mail in my neighbourhood) I have taken out a post office box, and I have added the address to the contact page. But to save you going there, I will copy it in here as well.
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
PO Box 1272
Dickson ACT 2602
Australia
“Why Dickson?” I hear you cry…well quite simply Dickson, unlike Civic, is not deemed a metropolitan town centre post office (or something along those lines) by Australia Post, and as such it is considerably cheaper to get a post office box there than it is at Civic…or an even more expensive GPO box at one of the main post offices. Dickson isn’t too far out of my way (actually it’s quite close) so a post office box there is quite convenient.
Samuel
January 6th, 2007 at 05:15pm
As three people have now informed me by email, the weather information normally seen on the right of the home page of this blog is currently not appearing. Weatherzone, the people who provide this service, currently have the following message on their home page:
Weatherzone
Saturday 11:42 EDT
Due to a catastrophic hardware failure Weatherzone is temporarily offline.
Our technical staff are working to correct the problem.
We apologise for any inconvenience.
Hopefully they will be back online shortly…in the meantime the Bureau of Meteorology says it is currently 30.3°c in Canberra, which is in excess of the expected maximum of 29°c, and we are in for a shower or two. The wind is coming from a North-westerly direction at 20km/h.
I do not intend on providing further “current” weather reports, although I might provide a forecast if the Weatherzone service does not come back online soon.
Samuel
January 6th, 2007 at 03:57pm
For those if you who are wondering (and especially those who guessed correctly and emailed me), yes this blog has been automated for a bit under a week. To cut a long story short, just when I was getting better, I fell ill again. I’m feeling better, even if a tad sleepy, now and I’m hoping I stay that way.
Samuel
January 5th, 2007 at 05:05pm
I am pleased to be able to announce that the anonymous emailer going by the name of “Ismail”, who has been annoying me for the last few days, has just proven beyond all reasonable doubt that he is not 2UE caller “Ishmael”.
In his latest rambling, Ismail wrote:
I think John B1_B5’s reference to Tasmanian Tigers in the newsreaders thread is off topic
In the Festively Missing Newsreaders post which is about newsreaders being absent from 2CC and 2CA, John B1_B5 wrote:
Speaking of which, I heard on the grapevine that our mutual friend Mike Welsh was attacked by a Tasmanian Devil for telling ‘porkies’ on the 2CC Drive Show.
Naturally I’m not giving that story any credence – at this stage.
After I had discussed other 2CC and 2UE staff related changes with him.
Not only is Ismail an idiot, he also doesn’t seem to recognise 2CC’s personalities, even when labeled as such, which completely disproves that he is “Ishmael” as Ishmael lives in Canberra and listens to 2CC!
Ismail, take the advice of your bogus email address and stick your head up a turkey.
Update 1:00am: And Ismail, both “imposter” and “impostor” are the same word, I’ve covered that with another one of your alter egos, now #### off. End Update
Samuel
December 28th, 2006 at 12:29am
I’ve had a couple reports of people having trouble logging in to their accounts. If you are having problems please contact me so that I can get on top of this issues as soon as possible.
Update 27 December @1:23am: But you don’t need to email me to register on this website, just click on the “register” link on the right hand side of the page (you will need a real email address though). End Update
Thanks,
Samuel
December 26th, 2006 at 09:53pm
(Originally published at 2:07pm, then re-scheduled to appear at 11:07pm)
Mick (aka Heatseeker), who obviously has no Christmas spirit, sent in this email at 4:15am on Christmas day, in reply to my email to John Kerr about regular pest caller Ishmael. (I’ve removed a derogatory reference to a valued contributor).
From……: Mick
Email…..: Mick@stickmyheadupaturkey.com
Url…….:
………………………………………………….
Subject…: Ismail
………………………………………………….
Samuel, it’s probably “Ismail”, and those type of comments are exactly the type you ban people from your site for … unless of course you happen to be # ###### ### ####### #### ########.
Anyway, I would have logged on to post this coment, but there’s really no point, as it would never have seen the light of day, and I would have immediately been purged.
What’s it like lviving in a bubble?
You sir, are a bigoted weirdo!
The reason I have decided to publish this email is that Heatseeker clearly has no understanding of the context of the Ishmael email, and many others have followed his lead of misunderstanding.
Ishmael (there is definitely a “H” in there, it might end with “il” instead of “el”, but as it is radio I have no way of knowing) is a serial pest caller on 2UE who calls up to make all sorts of outlandish (generally racist or religiously prejudiced) comments. Occasionally he calls up to actually discuss something rather than make outlandish comments. When he does call up to make outlandish comments he usually gets into a debate with whoever the host happens to be at the time, but to date has not been cut off.
Generally people of Ishmael’s ilk would be cut off for their racist or religiously prejudiced comments, but Ishmael, without fail, manages to deflate his own arguments, he will also generate calls from people who either want to disagree with him, or want to partially agree with him.
On this particular occasion, Ishmael got annoyed with John Kerr because he usually gets calls from the same group of people week in, week out, and those calls often involve a discussion of the events of these peoples’ lives. John probably has a higher percentage of regular callers than most other talkback hosts because of the time of day that he is on. That being said, John has plenty of other callers as well.
Usually I can put up with Ishmael because he is just another person with another opinion, he is also a tad entertaining. It wasn’t him getting annoyed with John that annoyed me, it was him singling out three or four regular callers for a taste of his bile that annoyed me. I wasn’t one of his targets, but on a morning where most calls to John started with people wishing him and all the listeners a Merry Christmas, his call was very poorly timed and really annoyed me.
For the record, my email wasn’t read out, and I didn’t expect it to be read out, I mainly sent it to show John what I thought, but felt compelled to copy it to the blog. Also for the record, Ishmael won, he turned a nice morning into three hours of people ringing up to tell him off.
I defend what I wrote, Heatseeker can think what he wants of me, I really don’t give a stuff about a prize goose like him. I have an archive of emails Heatseeker wrote to me around the time of the Spin Starts Here debacle…don’t make me publish them.
Update 2:12am December 26: Oh ye gods, Ishmael lives here in Canberra…AAAAAAAAAAAARGH! Apparently he now wants us to ban Santa, and people who are alone at Christmas need a thicker skin. Serial Pest! End Update
Update 1:27am January 10, 2007: Since publishing the Ishmael email Ishmael has contacted me and we have had some discussions. I have come to the conclusion that whilst I disagree with a lot of Ishmael’s opinions, he isn’t the stark raving mad lunatic I portrayed him as, and actually seems like a fairly reasonable individual.
My description of Ishmael as a “serial pest caller” was harsh and unwarranted, especially seeing as there are plenty of callers who actually do fit that category, and it is unfair to compare Ishmael to them when Ishmael actually calls to make a point rather than a nuisance.
I still think the choice of timing of Ishmael’s exchange with John Kerr was poor, but I do now see where he is coming from.
Whilst Ishmael understands that I won’t be taking down any of what I wrote, I would like to publicly apologise to Ishmael for being a bit too harsh in my comments. End Update
Samuel
December 25th, 2006 at 11:07pm
For those of you who are wondering where the Musicians Of The Week award went, it should never have appeared in the first place. I accidentally forgot to tick the “Edit Timestamp” box when I was posting it, and as such my scheduled time for it to appear was not taken into account. As I then went away from the computer for a while I didn’t notice the error and it stayed at the top of the page for about an hour. This isn’t the first time I’ve made that error, but it is the first time I’ve let it run for that long.
I apoligise for any confusion or any inconvenience my error caused, please rest assured that the Musicians Of The Week award will re-appear in its usual timeslot later today.
Samuel
December 24th, 2006 at 02:46am
Here’s a comment I posted yesterday which is probably worth a read. I posted it in relation to the recent banning of Loki, and subsequent protest from some contributors.
Let me put it this way…I’m at work for the majority of each weekday, while at work I do not have access to this website or to my personal email, I therefore have no way of monitoring comments.
When I do finally have a chance to check on the site, I tend to find a bunch of completely off-topic, near-defamatory comments…often against people who either read, or know people who read this website.
It’s fine for you…the chances of anyone ever finding out who you are and being able to take legal action against you for defamation is minimal…I on the other hand am responsible for what gets published here…I’m the one who will be facing a defamation lawsuit one of these days.
I don’t mind if people wander off-topic occasionally, I don’t mind if people criticise me…and I enjoy reading a lot of the comments, but I have to take some action to avoid defamatory comments, and repeated attacks on various contributors.
I can’t force every comment into the moderation queue because I would only be able to check it once or twice a day…and that would stifle any discussion, therefore I have to revoke the comment writing privilege of people abuse their privilege.
Loki is strongly suspected of being someone who has been banned multiple times.
I don’t guarantee to be consistent, and I reserve the right to change the rules as I see fit, and to not publish those rules.
I don’t care if I lose contributors because they don’t like my administration of my own website, in my view it’s good riddance. Just because some parts of the Internet are seen as “anything goes” areas, doesn’t mean that I have to run the same kind of website…you have your own website Captain Flume, and anybody can setup their own website if they don’t like the rules on this one.
Basically, if you don’t like it, go away and don’t come back.
I appreciate that some people don’t like my stance, but I see no good reason why I, as the person paying for this website, should have to let everyone else dictate what goes on…actually, no, it’s not that I just don’t see a good reason…there are no good reasons. It’s my site, and I shouldn’t have to justify my administrative decisions.
It seems that many people have this absurd idea that the every website on the Internet has to adhere to some golden rule of free speech (When I started blogging I thought that was a great idea, but it just doesn’t work on the Internet) and that if you block a comment for any reason then you are some facist censorship pig from the office of Mr. Stalin. I like the idea of free speech, really I do, but with free speech comes responsibility…unfortunately many people on the Internet seem to think that they can ditch their responsibilities by being more-or-less anonymous, such reckless actions ruin it for everyone else, and make what could be a good place for open discussions a place with anxious admins…and that in turn scares the contributors who become paranoid about saying something “wrong”.
I, as the administrator here, have responsibilities too…I have to ensure that you don’t break the law when you post here, I have to maintain certain standards, and I have to clean up the mess when someone ditches their own responsibilities…I don’t like that last role, but if I didn’t do it, no one else would, and the website would be a complete waste of time, not to mention be in all sorts of legal trouble.
I did consider having someone acting as a moderator, but I can’t rely on other people to make those decisions, especially when I’m not making any money out of this website (the Google Ads might pay USD$100 in another year or two…if I’m lucky) and wouldn’t really be able to pay them for their time.
My decision is final, that’s the way the website works, if you don’t like it then there is nothing stopping you from complaining about it elsewhere, or sending me an abusive email…maybe you’d like to complain about it in the comments of this post…that’s fine, but I am tired of the constant ridicule of people who aren’t related to articles, the constant off-topic inuendo, and the constant attacks between certain contributors.
I like debates, I’m more than happy for you to debate (on topic) things here, and I’m more than happy for the occasional off-topic foray, and the occasional textually violent disagreements between contributors which are bound to occur. But when it happens too often, it becomes stale, boring and painfully monotonous.
There are two bottom lines here:
1. Your ability to contribute to this blog with comments is a privilege, not a right, and that privilege is granted and denied by me.
2. My site, my rules…I’m fairly flexible most of the time, but I have my limits, and many people hear have me at near or beyond breaking point.
My job
Another point of housekeeping, recently there has been some discussion here about my new job…admittedly I handed out more information than I later wanted to, and subsequently withdrew that information and have remained very tight-lipped about my job. This has created an air of mystery, and a few rather curious individuals.
For various personal and professional reasons I do not wish to discuss my job here, nor do I wish to hand out any information about it. I would also appreciate it if there was no further speculation about it on this website. If you must speculate about it, please do so elsewhere.
Your cooperation is appreciated.
All comments relating to the above are welcome in the comments section below.
Samuel
November 26th, 2006 at 11:26pm
I like this quote so much that I’m going to make it the quote of the day.
“It’s like a lottery, you have about the same chance of winning whether or not you buy a ticket” — 2CC’s Mike Jeffreys.
Samuel
November 22nd, 2006 at 07:56am
Just a quick note to inform you that certain words and phrases which I have used (and others have subsequently used) to describe a particular thing relating to a recent event in my life have been replaced with “####” for reasons which I can’t really explain here.
Unfortunately this has rendered some comments and posts incomprehensible, and I apoligise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Samuel
November 13th, 2006 at 07:27pm
It’s been a while since anybody wrote an email to me quite like this one!
From……: Steven Oldes
Email…..: radio.god@hotmail.com
Url…….:
………………………………………………….
Subject…: What the hell?
………………………………………………….
What the hell is this site all about? I think you are serious freak with major issues
Thanks Steven!
Samuel
November 10th, 2006 at 12:44pm
The other morning while I was writing the Canberra Centre Expansion Opens This Week story, I tried to upload the pictures to the webserver, only to get a disk full message from the FTP server. I checked the server status page and it was also reporting a full disk.
At 2:23am I rang Bluehost support via Skype and, despite it being a Sunday evening at Bluehost HQ, I got straight through to a technician who took a look at the issue and said they would get straight onto the issue, which he suspected may have been another using exceeding their quota. Of course this does raise the issue of why quotas aren’t being enforced (perhaps they didn’t expect anybody to exceed 50 gigabytes) and why there aren’t any systems in place to monitor disk usage.
So I finished off the text of the article, had a coffee and worked on another article. When I next checked the server status page at 3:08am I was pleased to see disk usage back down to 81%, so I uploaded the pictures.
At 3:12am I received an email from Chris Bankhead, the support technician I had spoken to on the phone, who informed me that the problem had been resolved, and apoligised for the inconvenience.
Whilst I’m still a bit perplexed at how the problem occured in the first place, I am very pleased with the prompt response of Bluehost support.
Samuel
November 1st, 2006 at 06:33am
“Bob” from “Not Where You Tink” (hmmm, think perhaps…well not Bob) sent me one of those long rambling emails yesterday that people seem to enjoy sending me. I would love to quote bits of it, it’s just that I would have to give you ten minutes worth of reading material for any of his points to be made.
So, allow me to summarise. Bob is disappointed, you see, according to him all blogs are supposed to contains nothing but opinions, they are supposed to be online editorials about politics, and we all have to either extreme left wing people or extreme right wing people. Bob is very disappointed that I don’t share my opinion on “newsworthy” (I counted that word at least 50 times in his email) issues more often, or to be more precise, every moment that I’m awake. I’m supposed to be very disappointed with myself, see the error of my ways, and instantly correct my errors.
I’m not going to address the majority of Bob’s email, as it is pure nonsense…I will address the issue of why I don’t have my opinion on newsworthy issues clogging up every single post…I don’t have time! If I raise newsworthy issues and offer my opinion, I need to have time to back up my opinion when somebody disputes it…unfortunately I don’t really have enough time to sit at a computer and have debates with people all day.
I hope you all understand and aren’t as disappointed as poor Bob seems to be…I wonder if Bob has a blog?
Samuel
October 17th, 2006 at 08:09am
Poor attempt at humour…that’s how I would describe my Friday the 13th hoax. The whole flying pictures thing, the intermittent server errors and change of homepage, the cryptic rehash of a post from October 13 last year by translating it to German and back with the Google Translator…nowhere near as funny as I had hoped.
If only I’d waited until April 1…people fell for the hoax “hook, line and sinker”, I’ve had half a dozen people email me thinking the website has been hacked, I even had one person say that my website must be a virus because it makes things fly about.
One thing did go very wrong though…the final cron job which would have removed the flying pictures around 5:30pm did not run for some reason, and as such they weren’t removed until I spotted them this morning. The flying pictures were acheived with some javascript which, due to the things WordPress does to various punctuation, just doesn’t appear properly without me spending half an hour working out the HTML codes for said bits of punctuation, and another half an hour tracking down the error I made. As such, I have put the code in a text file (which should prevent any browser from trying to run and hide the javascript). Click here for the text file which contains the code to make pictures on any webpage fly, and code to embed on any webpage where you would like the pictures to fly.
Credit goes to Ryback from Hobart for the code.
So, yes, thank you to all who were concerned that the website had been hacked, and I apoligise for my bizarre attempt at humour which, ultimately, was not funny, and confused and concerned many people.
Samuel
October 15th, 2006 at 01:05am
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