I have a profile on Facebook. I don’t spend a lot of time there; mostly playing the Scrabble clone Scrabulous, actually. (I’m winning one game thanks to “zit” on a triple word score; the other is heading for a photo-finish.) And seeing what my friends are up to.

I’m not doing the free-for-all friends thing. I’m only adding people who I actually know. People I’ve had real two-way interaction with at some stage in my life. Which probably doesn’t include most of the people reading this blog post.

I’m afraid I just don’t buy the idea of adding anybody who pops up requesting it.

In October the BBC reported results of an experiment: they created a fictitious Facebook user called Amba Friend, and sent friend requests to 100 random Facebook users. 35 said yes, and ones details were used by the BBC investigating team to open a bank account and credit card in his name. Which worked.

Computer security company Sophos did a similar experiment back in August, with 87 of 200 happily adding Sophos’s toy frog “Freddi Staur” as their friend. Sophos posted guidelines for protecting your privacy on Facebook, which is well worth reading.

Obviously it highlights the dangers of putting too much of your personal life (or at least, your details) online. Hell, I’m wary about putting my birth date online — though it’s not excessively hard to find. My address? Nup, no way.

Not that I really believe anybody is going to try identity fraud on me via Facebook.

But I’m not doing the whole “whoever has the most friends wins” thing. If we’ve actually met, if we’ve actually spoken, if we’ve actually had some kind of meaningful two-way interaction then great, I’ll add you! (I might even go looking for you — I’m pretty curious about what some of my old school and uni friends are up to.)

Otherwise nup. Don’t feel offended; it’s not that I don’t like you. I just don’t know you… and that’s not how I’m using Facebook, sorry.

But hey, I’m sure there’s plenty of other random people out there you can add. Amba Friend and Freddi Staur, for a start.

…

I don’t indulge in MySpace. Call me an old man if you like, but it’s too loud for me. Oh dear. Do I have an Old Man’s attitude to social networking?

Sometimes my brain doesn’t join the dots. Context in particular can throw me.

I’ve had numerous emails over the years contributing to my Weird News page, most of them from a fairly small number of dedicated contributors.

A few weeks ago at the Walk Against Warming, one of those contributors came up and said hello, and explained who she was (”I send you lots of those News emails”).

But her appearance was totally out of context. My brain had been concentrating for several hours on carbon emissions, holding a large heavy banner (navigating it through a crowd with a colleague, and making sure some of the makeshift letters on the back didn’t fall off), green issues, marching, and public transport — I had been talking with a few people in the crowd about it all.

So we chatted briefly about the march. But the cogs in my head took so long to process what she’d said about News emails that I didn’t fully comprehend until about two minutes later who she was — long after the conversation had stalled and finished.

I probably came across as rather standoffish actually, not very talkative at all. Which is what I can be like when I’m not really sure who someone is. Whoops.

Sorry Amanda. (It was Amanda, wasn’t it? Not Michelle? Oh bugger.)

Who is Vladimir, and why does Connex think he’s affected more than anybody else when the trains are out?

It’s like writing the wrong year in January. I keep hearing the words “The Prime Minister” on the news and thinking they’re still talking about John Howard. Is it just me?

At first glance, I’m impressed with the code of conduct Rudd’s written up.

I’ve seen Google and Yahoo put out reports on the top search terms of the year, and we’re only a week into December. (Happy Hannukah by the way.)

Seems a bit odd to do that before the actual end of the year, but what the hell, I’ll jump on that bandwagon. Here are some stats for my blog, for the year up to midnight Tuesday.

Total posts for the year: 279

Total comments for the year: 2014

Average comments per post: 7.2

Most frequent post categories:

What do I end up writing most about? Posts in multiple categories counted twice.

• News and events 46
• Melbourne 42
• Home life 34
• Consumerism 33
• Transport 19
• TV 17
• Friends and loved ones 15
• Driving 15
• Health 15
• PTUA 12
• Culture 12
• Food’n'drink 12

Most popular categories by comments:

What do people like commenting on most? (average comments per post per category)

• Ranting 17.5
• Clothes 10.1
• Friends and loved ones 9.9
• Adelaide 2007 9.9
• Transport 9.4
• Driving 8.7
• Working life 8.3
• Health 8.2
• Melbourne 7.5
• Culture 7.3
• PTUA 7.3

Least popular? Dreams 0.5. Not really surprised at that; more than any other category, my occasional posts about my dreams are for my benefit, not anybody else’s!

Top popular posts by comment:

And what have been the posts that people have commented on the most?

• 2007-08-27 Thirty-seven 91 — that was where I asked how old everybody is. Results here.
• 2007-02-16 Smoking rant 30
• 2007-06-30 Dumped… by Virginia 24 — See also the sequel.
• 2007-07-05 Guess what these are 23
• 2007-07-17 More on emissions 22
• 2007-08-08 Oh Myki you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind 21
• 2007-01-22 Get a grip, you people 19
• 2007-07-26 Adelaide in November 19
• 2007-07-31 Where are you from? 19
• 2007-01-11 Is aircon turning us into wimps? 17
• 2007-05-22 Winter and water 17

Top ten frequent commenters:

Who’s left the most comments?

• Daniel 191 — I guess I just love commenting on my own blog
• Roger 146
• Toria 86
• Andrew 73
• Ren 51
• Philip 47
• Nathan 33
• Peter 30
• Stitch Sista 29
• Savannah 27

Quickest comments (minutes between post and comment):

Thanks to the web, and particularly with RSS feeds, people can see what you’ve written within seconds of it being posted. Who’s been quickest off the mark to comment? Figures in minutes and seconds between the blog post and the first comment.

• 2007-09-07 APEC Day Tony 01:25
• 2007-10-19 Animal meme Roger 05:21
• 2007-02-12 Somebody set us up the bomb Miss Eagle 06:00
• 2007-01-19 That’s an excuse? Roger 06:25
• 2007-08-31 Clean swear words Roger 06:38
• 2007-07-27 Confuse-a-Commuter Andrew 06:47
• 2007-03-01 Snacking Roger 07:24
• 2007-08-27 Thirty-seven Roger 07:40
• 2007-10-04 Anniversary number four dave 08:31
• 2007-10-02 The mayor Chris Till 09:01

Some comments come in weeks after the post, and probably nobody notices them except me. Comments are normally closed 90 days after the post date.

Finding these stats

Most of the above extracts came out of the database for the blogging software, Wordpress. For those who want to try this for themselves (and for my own future reference if I try this again next year), here’s the SQL I used.

(Pah — Skip this geeky stuff and go to the comments)

(more…)

I’m in two minds about the kids using Wikipedia as a reference.

On the one hand, it’s known to be a generally accurate source of information, with studies showing it can rival the big commercial encyclopaedias such as Britannica.

And I love the idea of the information in it being free, helping to spread knowledge without it being shackled by cost and commercial interests. Britannica has banner and pop-under ads, for heaven’s sake. Do I want my encyclopaedia splattered with adverts for horoscopes and the US Green Card Program? I don’t think so. (Though if you subscribe — A$69.95 per year — there are no ads.)

There’s little doubt that Wikipedia can be subject to vandalism or bias, depending on who edits the articles. You need to have your BS detection running constantly, just in case Stephen Colbert has fiddled with what you’re reading. But in most cases, problems get corrected reasonably quickly.

Obviously the key here is to verify what you read, to check against and use multiple sources. There’s other known generally reliable free sources online, too, such as the CIA World Fact Book, and the not-very-catchily-named Citizenium, which is subject to peer reviews before user-contributed articles are made public. A kind of Wikipedia with the screws tightened a bit, if you will.

And maybe it’s worth investing in a commercial encyclopaedia (something more up-to-date than the 7 year old copy of Encarta that I got way-back-when under that 100% rebate deal).

Certainly with Wikipedia becoming (I suspect) the dominant online reference work, it’ll be interesting to see where these types of publications go in future.

Whichever way it goes, learning to question and verify your sources is a vital part of any research, and something I’ll be encouraging the kids to do when they need to look up information on Wikipedia or elsewhere.

…
One measure of an online reference’s worth is how up to date it is. So, which entries on Australia have been updated with the election result? As of last night:

• CIA World Factbook — head of government: Prime Minister John Winston HOWARD (since 11 March 1996); Deputy Prime Minister Mark VAILE (since 6 July 2005)
• Citizendium — Australia’s current Head of government is Prime Minister John Howard of the Liberal Party. The opposition is the Labor Party, led by Kevin Rudd.
• Wikipedia — Since 3 December 2007, shortly after the 2007 election, the Labor Party led by the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been in power in Canberra …
• Britannica — Not listed on the free version of the Australia entry, but shown in a list of Australian Prime Ministers: Kevin Rudd Labor 2007-
• Encyclopedia.com — Most recent election referred to is 2004, and also refers to the outdated view that: There are four main political parties: Liberal, Labor, National, and Democratic.

A few brief snippets:

Okay, so it’s December now. And I’ve sent precisely zero Christmas cards. Really should get into action, shouldn’t I — I’ve already got some from overseas.

Who Do You Think You Are with Stephen Fry on Sunday night was gripping, fascinating, poignant television. Looking forward to the rest of the episodes.

I didn’t know this before: A character in one of my favourite all-time TV series Edge of Darkness was based on Lyndon LaRouche, who is the leader of the Citizen’s Electoral Council.

I’ve written about this before, and the other day Danny Katz wrote a column on the wimpyness of air conditioning.

Booked tickets to Spamalot in a couple of weeks. Cost a small fortune, but hopefully very funny — it seems to be getting good reviews, and given the kids want to see it and I’m the sort of person who spent years quoting bits of the movie (and other Python scripts), I thought I should take a look.

Andrew blogged on this subject on Friday, so I though I’d jump in too.

The Pakenham bypass ($242 million) opened over the weekend, and is already expected to cause traffic problems further south.

The Tulla-Calder interchange ($150 million) is almost finished — which may be why it’s still showing red on the Vicroads Travel Time Information page… but I’ll be interested to see how it looks a year after it’s opened.

Work continues on the Deer Park bypass ($331 million) and the Monash widening ($1 billion). And of course Eastlink ($2.5 billion), which is widely expected to cause more problems at the Hoddle Street end, with debate continuing as to whether building yet another motorway, an East-West tunnel, will help.

Gordon Price: I simply ask people: show me the example where this has worked. All I want is for a working example of a city that has built its way out of congestion simply by building more roads, and then is that the place you want to be? I don’t get an answer to A or B.

Peter Mares: You mean, there’s never been a city that’s managed to fix congestion by building more freeways or more roads?

Gordon Price: You might argue that Houston, Texas has. They throw about $1-billion a year into it, they do keep the traffic moving. Do people want to be like Houston? Can you be like Houston? Are you prepared to spend that amount of money and is that really the kind of city that you want in the end? And they have to run as fast as they can just to keep where they are. And they’re looking at transit too!

—Gordon Price (Transport Planner, Vancouver, Canada), ABC radio interview, February 2007 (cited here)