Simon Pegg Rants
Not a fan of the Walking Dead show notes it seems. (Read from Bottom to top)
Nov 29
I still haven't seen past s01e01..
Nov 29
A Newspaper For The Twitter Age: The Size Of A Sales Receipt, And Edited By You | Co. Design
A Newspaper For The Twitter Age: The Size Of A Sales Receipt, And Edited By You | Co. Design. Hello Little Printer, available 2012 from BERG on Vimeo.
Nov 24
How Kyle Sandilands was humbled by Twitter - mUmBRELLA
As Twitter demonstrates, even Kyle Sandilands’ luck can run out.via How Kyle Sandilands was humbled by Twitter - mUmBRELLA. The best story you'll read today.
Jul 29
Why I'm Staying With Optus
Today on Twitter it seems like everyone I know is moving to Telstra. I completely understand the sentiment and Telstra's new iPhone plans are unbelievably good for a company more traditionally known as evil and expensive, but I'm sticking with Optus. Considering Anthony at Mactalk hates Optus so much he's written a guide to switching from the company, I thought I'd post the reasons why i'm staying. Contract The simplest reason. I still have 17 months on my Optus contract. Breaking it would cost me $895 for the contract and $165 for the handset repayments, money I can't justify for Telstra's better speeds. However, the reason I have 17 months left is thanks to the... Excellent Optus Twitter Team These guys were able to replace my stolen iPhone at no extra handset charge. They unlocked my phone in less than an hour after a dm, helped me sort out my sister's contract, put her on a new plan better suited to her usage, and even put up with my bullshit complaining to them at times, all with good humour. Customer service that good goes a long way to making me loyal. Thanks Rhys, Julz, Dave, Scott, Meg, Andy, Holly, and whoever else I've harassed in the last 12 months. You guys all deserve a raise. They're Honestly Not That Bad When the iPhone 3G was released, the Optus network ground to a halt. For two whole weeks you could hardly make a call or open a webpage as thousands of new iPhone users started playing with their new toys. If nothing else, I'm fascinated to see how the network performs once all these early adopters jump ship to Telstra. The network today is nowhere near perfect but it is a hell of a lot better than it was. Telstra are still miles ahead but Telstra are miles ahead of almost every telco in the world. But looking at my data usage with the excellent iphone app Consume, these days I manage to average about 400-500mb a month in data, and on my last trip to Melbourne i clocked up 700mb in 4 days. So for all of the complaints about Optus on Twitter (and Jesus, some people never shut up) I reckon I get my $59 a month's worth. The new $59 2gig business plans (with free tethering) are pretty compelling even if my contract were up. The Optus network still bugs me. Optus' 3G network falls over at concerts or Sydney Swans games, places where many phones are trying to use the same tower I'd assume. I still can't maintain a 3G signal in Glebe or in Bondi, two suburbs I spend a lot of time in, and two suburbs that really should get 3G coverage in 2010. Looks like Optus have 17 months to fix these remaining issues.
Apr 17
A few people asked me about it, so I thought I'd better explain.
A few months ago a perfect storm of boredom and douchebaggery made me ponder how hard it would be to create a Twitter spambot. A Google search appeared to answer "Pretty fucking easy", so i did. Now Spambot is probably the wrong word, the bot doesn't actually spam anyone. It's more of a Social Media Expert bot, it just posts incredibly boring shit all the time -auto copied and pasted from a list of some of the most boring Experts on the planet. It also randomly thanks the people it follows for their insight and occasionally retweets.
It was designed to Auto-follow people from various lists of "top twitters", cos i thought these people would be more likely to follow back. They didn't let me down, and within a day the little bot had over 400 followers. It also follows anyone who follows it, making it a magnet for up and coming "top twitters" looking to boost their numbers. When it was finished with the top lists, Botty started following random people based on location, and by following the followers of its followers. Real people (non-power users) tend to be less gullible so its follower growth has slowed, but it still has a respectable follow number of around 1,600.
So why did I create Botty? Well, mainly to see which experts and top twitters will just auto-follow something so bland. My theory was that the wankers that talk the loudest about 'community' and 'value' and being part of the 'twitteratti' were so fucking stupid and obsessed with their own follow numbers they couldn't spot the bot, where as people who actually used Twitter to communicate with interesting people would avoid him. Apart from the odd heartbreaking exception, this has been the case.
At this point in the post a younger, angrier man might name and shame some of the douchebag expert fucks that have been following little botty from day one, but I'm too old for internet fights. I'd prefer to sit back and quietly judge them, and leave them wondering if they fell for and continue to fall for my bot.
As always, I need new hobbies.
Fun With Twitter Spambots
Yesterday I posted this on Twitter:
Oct 23
