November 22, 2009
So I have a site over at http://andrew.harvey4.googlepages.com/ which I used to deliver my HSC notes to the public. Some time after I put it up I added Google’s Analytics bug to the page to track the number of visitors. Almost two years on from that I can now present the results of the experiment. I have found no reason to hide this data and its not a business here so I have nothing to hide. The site (which is really just one page) got (over the period 17 Feb 2008 to 21 Nov 2009) 9,614 visits, 12,918 pageviews and 6,605 visitors according to Google Analytics.

Visits (not pageviews) for 2009 and 2008 in comparison.
The most notable thing is that you see a spike on the day before the physics HSC exam (and then drops off as expected), there is also a gradual increase from Jul till whenever the exams are on.
As for traffic sources well search took time to increase and certainly has. In the beginning you wouldn’t find my site in the top 10 results of common queries but now I’m getting traffic from queries (and these are the top 5, but only make up 45% of all queries) like “andrew harvey”, “andrew harvey hsc”, “andrew harvey physics notes”, “andrew harvey chemisty”, and “andrew harvey physics”. The main traffic sources are 40% referer from community.boredofstudies.org, 30% direct, and 23% from Google. All referring sites actually made up 47% which was made up of this blog, various webmail services, various high school web sites, facebook.com…

(From top to bottom) Direct, Referring and Search Engine Traffic Sources.
96% of visitors were listed as coming from Australian IPs.
Of course I don’t think any of these numbers are 100% accurate, for instance because the analytics is coming from the JavaScript code and not from the web server I’m not sure if people who block Google’s IP’s, or JavaScript analytics code are counted. Nor am I sure about people who were referred to be my another site, but choose not to tell me this in their HTTP GET header.
Unfortunately because I don’t run a site on a server I own (gosh I wish I could, but the cost is off putting), I don’t know the numbers of the PDF file downloads.
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Posted by Andrew Harvey
June 3, 2009
It seems that channel ten (or at least their contractor/outsourcer/whatever) decided to release episodes of a show its airing (Merlin) on the interent before their have aired on TV. Its not such a big deal because the show has already aired in the UK, but I would still say good on you channel 10 for going that extra mile and supporting the fans who want to watch the show through legal methods.
The links are (its a 13 episode season),
???
???
http://flash.vx.roo.com/streamingVX/19056/1395/geo/ausonly/2009/Q2/MERL-3fullep-210509_700.flv
http://flash.vx.roo.com/streamingVX/19056/1395/geo/ausonly/2009/Q2/merlin_ep4_220509_700.flv
http://flash.vx.roo.com/streamingVX/19056/1395/geo/ausonly/2009/Q2/MERL-5fullep-270509_700.flv
http://flash.vx.roo.com/streamingVX/19056/1395/geo/ausonly/2009/Q2/MERL-6fullep-270509_700.flv
http://flash.vx.roo.com/streamingVX/19056/1395/geo/ausonly/2009/Q2/MERL-7fullep-270509_700.flv
http://flash.vx.roo.com/streamingVX/19056/1395/geo/ausonly/2009/Q2/MERL-8fullep-270509_700.flv
http://flash.vx.roo.com/streamingVX/19056/1395/geo/ausonly/2009/Q2/MERL-9fullep-280509_700.flv
???
http://flash.vx.roo.com/streamingVX/19056/1395/geo/ausonly/2009/Q2/MERL-11fullep-280509_700.flv
http://flash.vx.roo.com/streamingVX/19056/1395/geo/ausonly/2009/Q2/MERL-12fullep-270509_700.flv
http://flash.vx.roo.com/streamingVX/19056/1395/geo/ausonly/2009/Q2/MERL-13fullep-280509_700.flv
But they are sure to change, esp the dates (but they were valid when I posted them (wget -S –spider filename, will verify if a file exists for you)), so you may need to change them (the dates) (ps. DownThemAll is great at trying many different file names to see which ones get a hit). On ten’s web site they only list the most recent episode but if you look at your HTTP logs you can see the flv URL. There is no key in the file so you should be able to just change the episode number and then try all dates in the near months.
PS. In the odd chance than someone from TEN reads this you should note that Australia has poor interent (in terms of IP quota) as such we have a greater need to be able to download shows and watch later (so the download can be done off peak, or from a location with more generous IP quota). You should consider promoting friendly file formats straight for download. Perhaps then you will have a larger uptake of online viewers (I would find a short advertisement at the start and/or end of the video acceptable).
PSS. I’m not one of those people who thinks posting links to pirated material should be (or is) illegal or immoral. Among many other reasons, how is the person who posts the link supposed to know if the material they are linking to is infringing?
PSSS. This is not a vunrability and as such I don’t think I am required under my own ethics to let them know. But regardless this is obviously intentional, and dispite all this I cannot report it to TEN anyway as there is no email listed on their contact us page.
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Posted by Andrew Harvey
May 28, 2009
It’s sad but I’m not surprised. Not only does this reinforce that the Government does not want you republishing what they say in Parliament sessions (as per their copyright statement on their web site), but they are not even willing to grant specific rights to specific groups for specific intentions.
From http://tickets.openaustralia.org/browse/OA-237,
from Katherine Szuminska <kat[at]openaustralia.org>
to steve.stokes[at]nt.gov.au
date 6 May 2009 22:18
subject Hansard Copyright request NT
mailed-by openaustralia.org
Hi Steve
I am writing to you from OpenAustralia in your capacity as the contact for the NT Parliamentary Hansard as per http://www.nt.gov.au/lant/hansard/hansard.shtml
We are a group of volunteers who run a website, http://www.openaustralia.org which republishes the Hansard from Federal Parliament in a user friendly searchable format. We also support email alerts and rss feeds by keyword.
In future, as well as the Senate and the House of Representatives, we’re also intending to republish the State and Territory Parliament Hansards in the same format, making it even easier for all Australians to have access to their elected Representatives and be easily informed of Parliamentary proceedings at all levels.
Specifically in this case we’d like to republish the NT Parliamentary Hansard at www.openaustralia.org
—————————————————————————————————————————————-
On 27 May 2009, at 15:56, Steve Stokes wrote:
Hi Katherine,
Please note that authority has been given for you to link only to our Hansard & Legislation page or more specifically the Parliamentary Record databases on that page as per the Hansard link below. Unfortunately, authorisation has not been given to republish Northern Territory debates in another format.
Should you require any further information, please feel free to contact me.
Regards,
Steven Stokes
Table Office Manager
Chamber Support
Ph: (08) 8946 1447
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Posted by Andrew Harvey
Sydney Gets a new (and improved) Weather Radar
September 16, 2009I just realised that the new capabilities of the Sydney BOM radar aren’t just something that I had missed before, rather they are indeed new. The Buero brought online their new Terry Hills radar (on 9/9/09). Here is their media release (from Wednesday 9 September 2009).
–http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/nsw/20090909.shtml, © Copyright Commonwealth of Australia 2009, Bureau of Meteorology (ABN 92 637 533 532). Information is presented with the permission of the Bureau.
This is great news! Higher resolution radar images, new images every 6 minutes, a Doppler wind map. They have some nice documentation which I’ll read when I get a chance. The only thing I don’t like is the radar loop only shows the last 30 minutes. This is nothing to do with the radar, just the web interface. But the situation is not too bad, they have all the radar maps/data available through their FTP site, and they have a permissible licence which allows republication of this data, so anyone is free to build their own interface which could allow you to loop through more than just the last 30 minutes (which is something I have on my TODO list). But, I think they only keep something like the last hour or 1h42min of radar images on their HTTP/FTP servers so you would need an always on machine to ensure you have all the data.