Autocade gets to 18,000,000 in record time

25.12.2019/12.30

Above: Autocade’s latest entry, the first-generation Nissan Stagea. It’s Boxing Day here, but Christmas Day in a lot of places. And Autocade is about to hit 18,000,000 page views, in record time (under 7,000 to go at the time of writing, which it will comfortably hit within hours). Not a bad Christmas present in terms […]

Wide of the mark

/07.52

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, e.g.: Anyone alive during this period will be wondering, ‘Where’s Altavista?’ Just on visitor numbers, as opposed to visits per month, they were doing 19 million daily in 1996, 80 million daily in 1997. Goodness knows how many searches we were doing per day. Yet […]

Healthy jump in Autocade traffic for home-page entries

24.12.2019/09.30

Some interesting traffic patterns at Autocade. At the time of writing, two models have been added: the Audi A2 and the Daimler DE36. They’ve netted 5 and 2 views respectively, which is what you’d expect for new pages. The last significant updates, when models were added, took place on December 13. The last model […]

Breaking Hart’s

23.12.2019/08.44

Usually, all our publications use Hart’s Rules. It’s well understood, enough compositors know it, and it’s a credible enough style guide for us to point at and use as a defence. There are some departures, which so far few have complained to me about. 1. Citation style. The OUP publishes The British Year Book […]

Victor Billot on the 2019 UK General Election

22.12.2019/06.40

I often find myself in accord with my friend Victor Billot. His piece on the UK General Election can be found here. And yes, Britain, this is how many of us looking in see it—like Victor I have dual nationality (indeed, my British passport is my only current one, having been a little busy to […]

The “fortress America” approach to the internet fuels piracy

21.12.2019/13.05

There are websites such as CBS News in the US that no longer let us here in New Zealand view them. US Auto Trader is another one. It’s a damned shame, because I feel it’s a stab at the heart of what made the internet great—the fact that we could be in touch with each […]

Thank you, Twitter whānau

16.12.2019/21.01

When Twitter is awesome. Thank you, everyone, tēnā rawa atu koutou. Wellington Twitter. Our friend @jackyan's Dad is extremely unwell in hospital so please can you send him good wishes and strength.Jack, we are all with you through this trying time, but still hoping for a miracle.Arohanui to you and Amanda ❤ — Beckie (@FitKiwi) […]

Warning about Facebook “copyright” phishing scam—which Facebook itself covers for

13.12.2019/13.33

Yesterday, I received an email purporting to be from Facebook, with the body reading: Hi, We are obliged to inform you that your page has been flagged because of unusual and illegal activity, therefore your page might be permanently deleted. In order to avoid such actions from our side, you need to fill the forms […]

Capitalism falls down when it’s rigged

04.12.2019/09.57

Martin Wolf, writing in the Financial Times, touches on a few points that resonate with my readings over the years. He believes capitalism, as a system, is not a bad one, but it is bad when it is ‘rigged’; and that Aristotle was indeed right (as history has since proved) that a sizeable middle […]

The British media are telling you they want you to vote Conservative

03.12.2019/08.50

George Hodan Those who remember Visual Arts Trends, a publication created and edited by my friend Julia Dudnik-Stern in the late 1990s and early 2000s, might recall that I didn’t have kind words about the Rt Hon Tony Blair and his government. In those pre-Iraq war days, one reader was so upset they wrote to […]