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I’ve been naughty, and haven’t posted anything to my blog in quite a while. But I have an excuse — I’ve been distracted by new toys, both real and in cyberspace.

My first gadget is a brand-spanking new Canon EOS 350D SLR camera. It’s quite fun to play with. It takes awesome shots, and even though it’s taking some time to learn how to use it, I’ve already taken a couple of photos I’m proud of. One of my beautiful puppies, and the other at the football. Oh, good times.

I’ve also been tracking the new Flickr layout. It’s now in Gamma mode — a very quirky move from the Flickr team, given that most Web 2.0 are still in Beta, and seem like they’ll remain there for the rest of eternity.

Habo has also been taking up a lot of time. We’ve been running some awesome programs for our kids, that have taken a lot out of us. Also, with camp coming up, it means that I’m going out to schools to convert kids to our greedy socialist ways often three times a week. Whoa. It’s tiring just thinking about it!

Somehow, though, I’ve got in plenty of Stargate SG1 and Atlantis watching time. I missed a few series of both while I was away last year, so it’s great to finally catch up. It’s my new thing now that West Wing has sadly come to an end. :(

I just thought that I’d outline a few really cool things here, that I’ve just discovered.

For one, Google Analytics is very powerful, and very cool. Take a look at my source code. Right before the body tag you’ll see a little Javascript reference to Urchin. (Urchin was the company that used to own the program that Analytics runs off before Google bought them.) With that little piece of Javascript, a whole new world opens up. There are tonnes and tonnes of features, more than any other stats program I’ve ever used — mind you, I’ve yet to use Mint, which I believe is the new biggest thing in Web 2.0 stats.

Analytics can tell you absolutely everything that you want from a website — about new and returning visitors, locations of visitors, keywords that they typed to get there, which page they came from, and which ones they visited, how long they visited for, and oh so much more. In true Google style it’s fantastic!

Because of Analytics it brings me to the second cool thing I’ve found out today — that the new Web 2.0 phenomena of social networking actually works. Thanks to my Flickr profile page, I had a visit to my website from Petaling Jaya in Malaysia, which just happens to be the location of Malaysia’s oldest university. Who would have thought?!

It’s pretty amazing that not only is Web 2.0 taking off hype-wise, it’s actually coming through with the goods, so to speak. Neat, hu?

Cerado asks the question everyone’s been asking:

How silly is the Web 2.0 hype getting? You tell us! Here’s a quick quiz…we looked in 30Boxes and analyzed 37Signals that led us to come up with the 43Things below. So without further ado, can you decide…

You can take the quiz — http://www.cerado.com/web20quiz.htm — and find out for yourself. I got 20, which puts me as having a “rare zen balance” between Web 2.0 and Star Wars geekiness. Pretty good considering I’ve never seen half the SW movies!

Amazing. Who would have thought? I’m sitting in a nice bed and breakfast in Bright for the Autumn Festival, so I thought I’d load up my laptop until the DVD starts playing to do some work… and lo and behold! Wireless access! Fantastic!

I was going to be offline for a little bit, but it looks like I’ll have great access for a lot of the time. Weather is quite miserable, so a lot of time inside the cooling with the dogs playing games and watching DVDs.

And now — on with the show!

Yesterday morning I flew back home from Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport. It was the first time in a number of years that I had been to the airport, and I think after my experience there, I won’t be going back for a while.

I was sitting enjoying one of Hungry Jacks’ delicious “Brekky Wraps” and a refreshing soft drink, when I noticed a suspicious object (”chefetz chashud” as they call it in Israel) sitting on the table next to me. It was just an unattended bag, but in other places that I’ve been to recently, namely Israel, the police would have been all over it in an instant; the whole area would have been cleared, flights delayed indefinitely, and a robot brought in to conduct a safe explosion.

Instead, half a dozen Federal Police officers stood around the object, just waiting for “word from above,” as one officer I spoke to put it. The bag, although almost definitely harmless, could have blown up at any stage taking with it as many as a dozen lives.

I know we’re not living in Israel. I know that Australia has yet to experience a terrorist attack. But I do know that we’re I prime target. And I do know that every effort is being made at the top of the food chain to prevent it. But why then, when there is an unidentified object sitting in Australia’s largest airport, that nothing serious gets done? Why is there no evacuation? To some it may seem a little like an over-reaction, but just a day before Israel remembers more than a thousand dead in terror attacks in six years, shouldn’t we be more careful?

All I know is that the complacency among the security fraternity in this country is frightening. Anything could have happened. Lucky it didn’t, that’s all I can say.

[tags]airport, security, Sydney, terrorism, Australia[/tags]