Reconstruction finished

And, after all, plainness and simplicity have won in the template battle. It all works smoothly now, and I commend these pages to you. Having read the lot again over the past week I am quite pleased with some of it. 🙂

Floating Life Apr 06-Nov 07 reconstruction

Be patient if at times you see odd things here. I am patiently rebuilding some of this blog, especially correcting a few small display issues. Everything still works though, but it will look better when I have finished.

New look archive here

This blog, as its title suggests, is an archive from my first WordPress blog covering the period April 2006 to November 2007. It continues “live” on New Lines from a Floating Life and on Ninglun’s Specials.

As of today the ten most popular posts and pages here are:

Two Australian poems of World War II 2,155 visits
Bill Heffernan! 1,819 — mainly for a picture of Elizabeth I
Assimilation, Integration, Multiculturalism 1,620
John Howard: bullying expert extraordinaire 1,523 — but not because of John Howard, I suspect
Does Tim Blair still do global warming jokes? 1,498
Book and DVD backlog 1,454
3 — Indigenous Australians 1,408
About 1,407
On the awkwardness (and fatuity?) of discussing religion 1,294
Friday Australian poem #17: Bruce Dawe, “Homecoming”  1,286

2007 in review: #2 — best pics used here in 2007

1. This one came from Creative Spark, an Oz in Singapore.

Did something happen last night?

Meanwhile, time for the seven day survey of the top individually visited posts and pages in the seven days to Saturday.

ENGLISH/ESL

Physical journeys and Peter Skrzynecki’s poems 615 visits
Workshop 02 — NSW HSC: Area Study: Imaginative Journeys 313
Studying the Gothic, or Emily Bronte? 215
How should I write up a Science experiment? 94
Physical journeys and Peter Skrzynecki’s poems updated 76

HERE

Bill Heffernan! 91
The connection has timed out — Firefox 85
Book and DVD backlog 80
John Howard: bullying expert extraordinaire 69
Is Australia a Christian country? 53

Polling Day in Surry Hills

Just past 8am and the polling booths will have just opened for today’s election. There will be no surprises in Surry Hills where Labor is 100% sure to win. But nation-wide? There were those at last night’s meeting still saying “landslide to Labor” but it does seem it will be a very close thing.

I have to say I thought Noel Pearson’s dummy spit yesterday was impolitic. He could have saved that for after the election. I really wonder too whether he bothered to look beyond the campaigning hype (on both sides) at actual ALP policy on Reconciliation and Indigenous Affairs, particularly Constitutional Recognition Of Indigenous Australians. All he has done is tarnish his own reputation for a degree of balance and originality — for which I have up to now tended to respect him — and made life difficult for himself if Labor gets elected.

Here in Surry Hills it is a grey morning and the sound of crows fills the air. Is this ominous? If so, for whom? I go coaching in Chinatown shortly and will vote either on the way there or on the way home, depending on the crowds. Meanwhile I note, if this relates to anything, the relative readership figures for the past 21 hours on my blogs here at WP: