1 August 2008

State of the Riot - July 2008

| johnboy
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We’re re-instating the State of the Riot as a monthly feature. For new players there’s some fun stuff in the keywords down the page.

In the meantime, well, that’s a gratifying bounce on my return! Better than I hoped for and thank you all for reading and, where appropriate, for contributing.

Visits: 95,998 – Up 14.01%
Pageviews: 296,721 – Up 23.24%
Absolute unique visitors: 37,223 – Up 12.28%

Housekeeping

While I’ve got you here a few house-keeping announcements. If you’re one of the thousands of Canberrans enjoying reading RiotACT perhaps you should consider supporting us? You can just make a donation

Alternatively you could take out a premium subscription.

If you have goods or services to advertise you could advertise with us.

Failing that Facebookers can just become a fan. We like fans.

Now, a note to our many fans in the wider Canberra media community. We all lift stuff from each other. No Question. RiotACT does it more than most. But we do credit the sources of our stories. So if we have made your life easier by giving you story ideas maybe, just maybe, giving us a plug back will help insure we’re here to help you out for years to come??

And isn’t it a little ridiculous referring to “a Canberra website” as if there’s only one?

Fun stuff

So the 20 most read stories on RiotACT in July were:

    1) Murder most foul in Charnwood
    2) New DFO Fyshwick will make airport seem “Brand Depleted”
    3) Ice, Meth and E soon to be sold by the cops
    4) Parton boned from 106???
    5) Raider implicated in All Bar Nun fight last night
    6) Goodbye Starbucks – you were never good enough for this town
    7) Glebe Park – the lover’s lane of Canberra
    8) The Return of the King… or, a dog to vomit.
    9) Is Marist College Legal?
    10) ACT government commissions review of suicide attempt
    11) WIN News gets it right
    12) Trimming down the bride…
    13) Canberra most haunted?
    14) GDE duplication is GO GO GO
    15) WTF? More Marist Trickery – Are these guys marist brothers or master magicians?
    16) Down Memory Lane
    17) Creation of a Marist Ex-students and Families lobby Group – Interest sought
    18) Reasons why the ACT is better than NSW – Jon Stanhope
    19) Police activity in Dickson
    20) The Kenja Trust presents “Guilty until proven innocent”

And the hundred highest ranked search terms which brought people to RiotACT in July were:

    1) riot act
    2) riotact
    3) the riot act
    4) riot act canberra
    5) the riotact
    6) mark parton
    7) riotact canberra
    8) the riot-act
    9) dfo fyshwick
    10) riot-act
    11) www.the-riotact.com
    12) riot+act
    13) all bar nun fights
    14) todd carney
    15) helen volmari
    16) car+accident+on+majura
    17) canberra airport
    18) fraser court
    19) gde duplication
    20) the-riotact.com
    21) flint restaurant
    22) chester
    23) the riotact rudd public servants
    24) the riot act canberra
    25) tonk system addict review
    26) ha ha bar belconnen
    27) dfo canberra
    28) foskey staffer roland
    29) grapevine voip
    30) limestone lizzy
    31) “barrel of monkeys” + canberra + band
    32) anu singh
    33) contented soul act
    34) riotact south vietnam
    35) wasabi dickson
    36) raiders+earth+hour
    37) griffith vietnamese
    38) nyssa76 anissa
    39) underground base canberra
    40) “overheard” canberra
    41) wasp’s nests
    42) massage canberra
    43) “lincoln hawkins”
    44) dale seaman daramalan
    45) hall ps
    46) canberra long-term parking
    47) best plumber canberra riotact
    48) riot act act
    49) jess wright
    50) site:the-riotact.com cornucopia haunted
    51) angela shanahan
    52) my hat is a red saucepan
    53) richard mulcahy
    54) bootcamp in canberra
    55) riot act goolia
    56) 73549138494000
    57) gungahlin community council
    58) skidbladnir
    59) charnwood murder
    60) noodle house menu tuggeranong
    61) video ezy
    62) elvin group
    63) plaka pizza
    64) blossy canberra
    65) capital+city+punkfest
    66) canberra brewery
    67) dickson noodle house
    68) carney poll best player
    69) sausages site:http://the-riotact.com/
    70) act computer fairs 2008
    71) charcoal restaurant canberra menu
    72) crusty demons
    73) “police convention in civic” 2008
    74) events torch relay act map
    75) three mothers thai
    76) www.the-riotact.com.au
    77) cam sullings
    78) katie bender parents
    79) “identical strangers” “canberra” “band”
    80) fireworks canberra
    81) “gungahlin drive”
    82) defence hq bungendore stupid
    83) delissio curtin
    84) new action bus timetable
    85) nyssa76 housing joker
    86) burgman anglican college
    87) craigslist canberra
    88) danman
    89) dendy premium cinema menu
    90) hansel & gretel coffee
    91) hughes canberra
    92) paintball canberra
    93) yum cha deakin
    94) central cafe queanbeyan
    95) kate carnell dui
    96) scumdorg+canberra
    97) westfield woden expansion
    98) canberra interstate rego
    99) daramalan victim
    100) adventure playground in gordon

Also for all the nerds here’s the breakdown on web-broswers used to read us:

    Internet Explorer 61.79%
    Firefox 29.30%
    Safari 7.04%
    Opera 1.00%
    Mozilla 0.40%

And operating systems:

    1. Windows – 87.53%
    2. Macintosh – 10.17%
    3. Linux – 1.81%
    4. iPod – 0.14%
    5. SymbianOS – 0.10%
    6. iPhone – 0.08%
    7. Playstation 3 – 0.08%
    8. (not set) – 0.06%
    9. SunOS – 0.01%
    10. Danger Hiptop – 0.01%

(There were also a views from a Nintendo Wii and a PalmOS but too few to make the percentages).

Discuss….

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Hey, I notice the Poolroom Taglines have been added-to! One of my nominations got up: Vicepope’s problem finding diplomatic postings for other ACT assembly members, as diplomatic relations with Hell have not yet been established. I’ll be watching the headers with interest to see what else got up.

@Jazz: Possibly something along the lines of
Rating = ( (Average_votes_quantity * Average_votes_quality) + (This_votes_quantity * This_votes_quality) ) / (Average_votes_quantity + This_votes_quantity)

where –
Average_votes_quantity: The average number of votes of all items that have votes_quantity>0
Average_votes_quality: The average rating of each item (of those that have votes_quantity>0)
this_votes_quantity: number of votes for this item
this_votes_quality: the rating of this item

But its quite possible that that will just skew things a bit, instead of being a perfect system of developing ratings, it will require more polish.
Your codemonkey owes me a pint.

Skidbladnir said :

@peterh: But are they -identical- (as in monozygotic) twin boys?
PS: I’m not saying you’re not doing anything good (So long as the kids get fed, watered, educated, and don’t grow up to steal my car or stab my wife, you’ll do fine), just that fraternal (as in dizygotic) twins aren’t caused by anything fathers do, unless he’s slipping fertility drugs into his wife’s food.

ah, but I was the one who suggested a 2 embryo transfer. my wife thought that it meant a higher chance of pregnancy viability. She was so right. They are fraternal. and very very cute boys, with their own personalities, yet a love for each other that is very tender to see. When they ride in the car side by side, they hold hands. they are very loving towards their sister, as well. (when they aren’t working together to gang up on her, of course)

@peterh: But are they -identical- (as in monozygotic) twin boys?
PS: I’m not saying you’re not doing anything good (So long as the kids get fed, watered, educated, and don’t grow up to steal my car or stab my wife, you’ll do fine), just that fraternal (as in dizygotic) twins aren’t caused by anything fathers do, unless he’s slipping fertility drugs into his wife’s food.

@Jazz: My code & doco inspecting hours are pretty much spoken for until we get our next enhancement release gets into Prod, but I may give it a shot (probably not for a while).

Skidbladnir said :

I will give your CodeGimp a whole dollar to go towards a pint or his next leather facemask if he brings in Bayesian averaged ratings for the “Five Star Posts” thingy.

Something with fifty four-star votes has more weight than one vote at five, but a single user voting to five-stars currently gets you top of the list. :\

I’d be more than happy to include that bit of code if we could find someone to write it for us. care to have a stab at it Skid?

Mmmm, interesting point JB! Fear not, further opportunities exist where we will also seek to give RA credit for what it, and its mods, have done to assist/promote debate and discussion in the above mentioned case!

Which is particularly odd seeing as they do mention us frequently where appropriate.

I suspect it depends who you’re asking.

caf said :

You can ask print media to mention RiotACT by name, but I doubt it’ll happen.

I was on ABC TV news recently talking about the Marist/Dara abuse issue and asked if I could plug RIOTACT for all the good work they’ve done (i.e. promoting the issue, letting discussion run free etc.). I was advised (very nicely) that as it’s the ABC it counts as advertising and they can’t do that.

Well you know we don’t actually make that stuff up.

First it has to happen and then we have to hear about it…

Love riotact but am I right in thinking there are fewer fed politics articles than there used to be? I like a mix of local shenanigans and federal derring-do – like the recent Annie O’Rourke affair at PMC …

Seconded – with thanks.

Mælinar - *spoiler alert* I've seen S04E137:27 pm 01 Aug 08

Thumper for Premium Subscription status for his continued efforts !

My god, can someone explain number 52???

My hat personally ISNT a red saucepan!!

peterh said :

I could ask for an increase in my project fund, but as i have shelled out $6K for a faceting machine, I don’t think it would be looked on favorably….

You need to come up with a good business case.

No Peter, Tyler was on topic, no action taken.

Even going to moderation doesn’t mean you’ve been silenced, just that comments have to be approved before they appear.

“Jumping the shark” refers to The Fonz waterskiiing over a shark in Happy Days, a moment most now regard as the point when the show went into irrevocable decline.

Hey JB, where is the person who was trying to heap onto you? are they in the moderation queue? I believe that they “jumped the shark”?

funny comment that, still don’t know what it means, though….

Skidbladnir said :

If the mother has released two fertile eggs, as he’s set loose millions of them originally, and eventually thousands of them make it to finish (and it just being a matter of whoever gets across the line first), then there are two chances of success.

For DZ (fraternal) twins, fathers aren’t the special one in the union.
For MZ (identical) twins, both parents need to be special in whatever the criterion for twinning is.

(I am of DZ parents, at one point went out with a girl who was a DZ twin, so though it might be worth finding out more about, before anything unexpected happened…)

It wasn’t bad enough that you put all this info up, but I was making reference to the fact that 2 little boys, 2 eggs, means that there must be something good that I am doing.

(now my wife is entertaining the idea of one more (or is it 2))

anyway, raising 3 kids under 4 has taught me that there is this dream state called sleep, that one day, after my daughter is married, I may be able to achieve again. not happening any time soon….. BUT, I earn the money in the house, my wife does the budget. fair trade I feel. Hate budgets, hate doing them even more.

I could ask for an increase in my project fund, but as i have shelled out $6K for a faceting machine, I don’t think it would be looked on favorably….

If the mother has released two fertile eggs, as he’s set loose millions of them originally, and eventually thousands of them make it to finish (and it just being a matter of whoever gets across the line first), then there are two chances of success.

For DZ (fraternal) twins, fathers aren’t the special one in the union.
For MZ (identical) twins, both parents need to be special in whatever the criterion for twinning is.

(I am of DZ parents, at one point went out with a girl who was a DZ twin, so though it might be worth finding out more about, before anything unexpected happened…)

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t exactly good authority…. *chuckle*

Twinning really has very little to do with the father. (Sorry Granny)

Fraternal (Dizygotic) twins are matrilineal (the ejaculatory father does not influence how many ovum the conceiving mother releases, but a female with a family history of DZ twins is herself more likely to produce DZ spawn), identical (MZ) twins are a mystery as to what the hell the process is.

You’re mostly on the money Skidbladnir.

I get a lengthy report every day of sites linking to us and that’s only the ones who actually get clicks.

These guys are being very well behaved compared to some.

peterh said :

jakez said :

One can just imagine peterh’s wife in the car, cackling away, with peterh’s testicles dangling from the rear mirror like two fuzzy dice.

she doesn’t cackle. and as for the fuzzy dice, I am certain I mentioned I have 3 kids under 4 – so they are in fine working order, thank-you.

Twins even!!

I have it on good authority from a father of twins, who had it on good authority from his obstetrician (also the father of twins), that it takes a real man to father twins.

; )

No fuzzy dice on that dashboard….

Skid,

For #52 see niftydogs comment @ http://the-riotact.com/?p=6404

Appears that they were a band. Good name. Better then mine….Stool, but thinking of going with Gravy Thickshake (inspired by Chicken Gourmet).

They’re doing their own indexing and linking back to us, not actually hosting or claiming Riots posts as theirs.

And I suspect that by backlinking to them you lend Riot’s validity to any Googlerank they as a whole may have, while at the same time diminishing RiotACT’s slightly if their ‘value’ is in the overridden or valueless pile.

(Sorry, my understanding of Pagerank is honestly quite crap. Its never been work-related, so I generally haven’t cared)

and JB, might like to check out what this site is posting….

http://www.readburner.com/source/The+RiotACT

thinking about search engines, try this one:

http://www.cuil.com/

jakez said :

peterh said :

I would love to subscribe, but she who must be obeyed watches me like a hawk. haven’t made any frivolous purchases for many years now….

but am saving my change at work. One day.

HAHAHAHAH!

One can just imagine peterh’s wife in the car, cackling away, with peterh’s testicles dangling from the rear mirror like two fuzzy dice.

she doesn’t cackle. and as for the fuzzy dice, I am certain I mentioned I have 3 kids under 4 – so they are in fine working order, thank-you.

I have a very old computer at home – duron 850, 384mb of ram, 20gb hdd, cdrom.
if any money is allocated anywhere, it will be for 2 shiny notebooks, one each.
(just because i work in the IT industry, doesn’t mean i get the latest and greatest)

Gungahlin Al3:37 pm 01 Aug 08

Thanks for my arvo laugh Thumper!

Yeah! And someone gave my article five stars!!! Allrighhtttt!

I will give your CodeGimp a whole dollar to go towards a pint or his next leather facemask if he brings in Bayesian averaged ratings for the “Five Star Posts” thingy.

Something with fifty four-star votes has more weight than one vote at five, but a single user voting to five-stars currently gets you top of the list. :\

Probably best to protect his identity until such time as he finishes the sodding previous button.

At which point all will be forgiven and we can hail him as the hero he really is.

Who -is- the RiotACT Codemonkey?

Search functionality! Brilliant! I take it all back.

It’s something we have been asking our code master for.

We ask early, often, and at great volume.

We feel your pain.

BUT the month archive does full forward and back quite nicely if you’re on an extended browse. (just ignore February issue which he promises he’s onto as well.

Speaking of accessing past topics, I noticed a couple of months ago that when you scroll down to the bottom there is no ‘previous articles’ link. Is this a conscious choice? I really relied on it for the times when I could not get on here frequently? Any chance of a comeback?

Thanks Feebles,

Have you tried dropping a couple of words from those titles in our spiffy orange texted search box?

I’ll see how I go for time next month.

Hi Johnboy,

Some interesting things here. As a very lazy and somewhat time-challenged baby chaser, I would find it helpful to have links to the top 20 posts. I did start to go through the archive section to find them, but there are just so many posts to scroll through. This site is nothing if not prolific. If you get time, please add links. Thanks!

peterh said :

I would love to subscribe, but she who must be obeyed watches me like a hawk. haven’t made any frivolous purchases for many years now….

but am saving my change at work. One day.

HAHAHAHAH!

One can just imagine peterh’s wife in the car, cackling away, with peterh’s testicles dangling from the rear mirror like two fuzzy dice.

I apologise, Tyler. It did not occur to me that my comment would be taken that way. It was meant to be a bit of fun.

tylersmayhem2:08 pm 01 Aug 08

you go right on expecting thanks for slagging a product I was trying to promote

And one last comment JB, I’m not sure what “thanks” you thought I was after?! I sure haven’t asked for let alone “expected” any.

tylersmayhem2:05 pm 01 Aug 08

Not really M.P. JB if you take any bit of feedback (NOT slagging) personally.

Thanks Tyler, and you go right on expecting thanks for slagging a product I was trying to promote.

Really appreciated.

Your feedback will, however be taken on board, not that is was anything we weren’t already aware of.

tylersmayhem1:57 pm 01 Aug 08

Holy crap – I was simply providing some feedback JB & Granny! I have had a look again at my previous post, and I still can’t see any sarcasm, rudeness or anything malicious.

Perhaps John Boy, if you would like people to keep subscribing the the “John Boy Show” and paying your salary, you should not jump down potential subscribers throats when they prompt for more value for a subscription. I pay to subscribe to various other forums, and I have made suggestions in the past, but never have I had the type of response as the one you have sent.

Just keep your pretty graphs coming so you can continue to justify your job to your advertisers, and maybe not depend on subscriptions!

[Ed. (Jazz) subscriptions do not pay JB’s salary]

johnboy said :

Also you forget the most important benefit of a subscription…

… threatening not to renew it when something is written which you dislike.

I would prefer just to be moderated.

: )

I would love to subscribe, but she who must be obeyed watches me like a hawk. haven’t made any frivolous purchases for many years now….

but am saving my change at work. One day.

johnboy said :

Also you forget the most important benefit of a subscription…

A RiotACT Christmas card for each subscriber? 🙂

Gungahlin Al said :

There isn’t a need to recycle so many of Stanhope’s media releases for instance. Some of them are up there with the recent “I just got a new memory card for my camera and took 15 pictures of my shoe” post.

Would the solution be to maybe just have a weekly “What’s Sonic Up to Now” post, a bit like the Police updates?

Gungahlin Al said :

BTW been meaning to say: good on Jazz, Thumper, and the other guys for holding things together over recent months.

Hear, hear!

Also you forget the most important benefit of a subscription…

… threatening not to renew it when something is written which you dislike.

In part, I’m with Al, and curious how the digital camera story made it past QA.
“I bought a camera and helped you waste some of your bandwidth” is not news.

Maybe make the 5 star listing bigger & somewhere unobtrusive (and put in a Bayesian filtering algo!) to give interesting stories some more simmering time…

Numbers 1-10 (with the exception of dfo and parton) are mostly just signs that people don’t know how to use an address bar, and only remember Google.

30: She’s possibly dead, and we still love her?

52: There’s got to be a story behind that…
58: I don’t remember searching for myself… Who was it?

I have the power, Tylersmayhem! I decide what goes and what stays … even if it has no comments.

; )

If you disagree with my ratings, what are you going to do about it? *hehe*

Gosh Tyler, maybe if you took out the sub the starring would reflect your values? Or maybe you want to support a publication from which you derive much enjoyment? Or maybe you don’t want to take out premium membership? All fine options.

Caf, I’m well aware of the dishonest culture of print media, but asking never hurt.

tylersmayhem1:05 pm 01 Aug 08

To be honest, I still really don’t see the added value in paying $50 per year. I’m first to admit that $50 over a years is nothing (Less than 14c a day) – but for the added benefits of being able to rate a story (many times I see a story which never gets any comments, but has a full 5 stars?!) – and the thingy to keep track of where you were up to really isn’t all that great.

The premium subscription has the coveted ‘Granny’ award seal of approval.

You can ask print media to mention RiotACT by name, but I doubt it’ll happen. It’s just not their way to plug competitors – they’ve been doing it to each other for years (with stories simply mentioning “another newspaper” or similar when necessary), it’s the culture of print media.

It’s a balance of which I am painfully aware.

While we like to get high level debate it’s sadly not our only priority.

Also you have to understand that encouraging reader contributions is important to us, so we will tend to run stuff from readers that we might have rejected if we came up with it ourselves.

Gungahlin Al12:47 pm 01 Aug 08

Good to see this back JB.

But something been meaning to mention – I think we’ve gone from too few to too many articles. We are back at the old state of content turning over so fast that there is seldom the opportunity for debate to develop.

There isn’t a need to recycle so many of Stanhope’s media releases for instance. Some of them are up there with the recent “I just got a new memory card for my camera and took 15 pictures of my shoe” post.

While things weren’t turning over very much for a bit there, there were some really good discussions/debates/arguments/shirtfights…

BTW been meaning to say: good on Jazz, Thumper, and the other guys for holding things together over recent months.

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