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Dismemberment – Anish Kapoor

I have already outlined how Matt Blomfield fed a story to and helped Maria Slade at the Herald on Sunday write her article.

He did this for many repeaters who dutifully repeated all of Matt Blomfield’s stories and helped Matt to build the narrative in the media that Hell Pizza and Warren Powell were a pack of useless bastards. In Matt’s own words he said:

Well Matt Blomfield really was on a mission because as coming post will show, that while he was being paid by Hell Pizza he was feeding negative stories to the media and in some instances actually writing or reviewing them for the repeater.

Take this set of emails regarding a bad news story that involves Matt Blomfield as the aggrieved franchisee. The attachments are images of the front page of NBR (PDF 103K).

Matt was also trying to shop this story to the Herald as Sarah McDonald begs him to not to so that she can have the exclusive:

Sarah McDonald no longer works at NBR.

I have managed to trace almost every bad news story about Hell Pizza to an email trail implicating Matt Blomfield in all of them. I even have emails of him coordinating other “aggrieved” franchisees to contact media or indeed sending their email correspondence directly to the media so the media can contact them.

Make no mistake that every time a media outlet runs a bad story about Hell Pizza then Matt Blomfield has had a hand in feeding it to them & profiteered from the misfortune of the parties damaged along the way. Sunday is planning on running a story and in my phone conversation with Matt Blomfield he confirmed that he knew all about the story. He quickly tried to cover up how he knew but it was clear that he has had a hand in it.

Sunday has even flown in “Weeman” (Paul Hinton) from Australia for their programme. As I have shown, “Weeman” is hardly an “aggrieved” franchisee, in point of fact he actually conspired against Hell Pizza all the while taking loans and assistance.

I will bet a dollar to a knob of goat poo that any “aggrieved” franchisee that is put up by the Sunday programme or any other media outlet has been less than honest and as they pop up I will be able to prove it or produce emails that Matt Blomfield had a hand in feeding the story to the media.

Tomorrow I will outline the background behind some of the alleged “aggrieved” franchisees.

For The Spanish Bride

the tipline

A reader emails a suggestion for the Whale mobile. The answer is no!

However a nice ute painted up like that wouldn’t be too bad.

Another big thank you to my readers for keeping Whale Oil Beef Hooked at number one in the monthly Blog Rankings.

I couldn’t do what I do without the support of my loyal readers and many tipsters.

Day 10, The Bresaola should be ready.

I took off the muslin and string, and this is the dry Bresaola.

And this is it sliced:

The taste?

Awesome…going to be hard to stop scoffing it.

Previous posts: The Bresaola Project, The Bresaola Project, Ctd

I am definitely going to get into this curing thing…it is totally cool, having shot, gutted, skinned, butchered and cured the meat from hoof, to plate.

I know you like Cliff Richard, but the words of this song have great meaning for me:

Whenever God shines his light on me
Opens up my eyes so I can see
When I look up in the darkest night
I know everythings going to be alright
In deep confusion, in great despair
When I reach out for him he is there
When I am lonely as I can be
I know that God shines his light on me

Reach out for him, he’ll be there
With him your troubles you can share
If you live the life you love
You get the blessing from above
He heals the sick and heals the lame
Says you can do it too in Jesus name

He’ll lift you up and turn you around
And put your feet back on higher ground

Reach out for him, he’ll be there
With him your troubles you can share
You can use his higher power
In every day and any hour
He heals the sick and heals the lame
Says you can do it too in Jesus name

He’ll lift you up and turn you around
And put your feet back on higher ground.

ᔥ Boing Boing

The Managing Editor of Boing Boing, Rob Beschizza, explains what blogging is to him and how to blog.

There are some good parts, great parts and gay parts of his post. But since Boing Boing is one of the worlds best blogs it pays to listen to what Rob has to say.

His comments about critics are interesting:

IGNORE MOST CRITICS

Even if you have thriving, dedicated, civil, reasonable, no-nonsense commenters, they’ll still be a tiny fraction of your readership. It’s true that they’re an important constituency; they build upon your work and buy your t-shirts. But losing sight of the 99.95 percent of readers who never talk to you is a bad idea–a bad idea that grows with your readership.

How do you serve people who aren’t in the habit of giving feedback? The answer’s simple:don’t stop doing whatever it is that brought them to you.

A habitual mistake of successful bloggers is to react to criticism from commenters and peers. First, we write about something in a certain way that builds an audience. Then the audience reaches a threshold at which criticism loudly presents itself. Then we make the critical mistake of thinking the critic represents the audience.

It’s hard to figure out how to respect a largely invisible readership, but the first step is respecting whatever you did to earn it.

and my personal favourite related to critics, but ones who are tits at blogging themselves:

IGNORE WHAT UNSUCCESSFUL BLOGGERS SAY ABOUT BLOGGING

Harsh, but true! Ignore bloggers, SEO experts, marketing gurus and other people who have figured out a traffic trick or two, but who have never built a large audience of daily readers.

A lot of people have a fixed idea of what a blog is: it’s something like Boing Boing, Gawker, or TechCrunch as they were years ago. A smattering of news, thoughts, links, opinions, random stuff. But you need to run where the ball is headed, not where it was in 2005.

At Boing Boing, we now pay experienced freelancers for original features on extremely obscure subjects. Long before becoming part of AOL, TechCrunch had a full-time staff of reporters who knew what was going on in Silicon Valley before anyone else. Gawker now occupies two floors in Manhattan, and has video monitors informing dozens of writers how their stories are performing.

Instead of trying to repeat others’ success, find something that no-one else is doing right. Find something close to your heart that no-one else is as interested in as you are.

Finally, stay away from cynics who see success in writing as a closed circle. I didn’t do a day of blogging before I got hired by Wired a few years ago; I posted comments on other people’s posts, on forums. Within a couple of years, I was an editor at Boing Boing.

So, people whining about the inaccessibility of the so-called blogging A-list can safely be ignored. They always were full of shit and they always were a bore. Be good at what you do, make friends with people who know a thing or two, and always be posting.

ᔥ Cre8D Design Blog

Rachel Cunliffe blogs about the differences between Blogging vs Twitter and Facebook. Rachel did the re-design of this blog and I credit that re-design as one of the reasons why I am now the number 1 blogger. During the design phase Rachel provided some insights into blogging from a design perspective that I hadn’t thought of, we implemented those and they have been a big success. the blog is ever evolving…and Rachel continues to provide great advice.

Anyway that is just preamble as away of saying she knows what she is talking about when it comes to Social Media, Blogging and design. Listen to what she says:

• Blogging requires more thought, reasoning for opinions, refining, details, deep expression and reflection than tweeting. Tweets are valuable for quick (incomplete) thoughts and light conversation but we often need more than that. Tweets are snacks between meals, signposts to feasts. The real banquets are blog posts. Drew McLellan, Sean Coates, Jon Tangerine
• Blogging helps you find like-minded people to talk to and work with and a sense of community (David Rhoden, Rian van der Merwe)
• Blog conversations don’t force you into an artificial relationship like “Facebook friend” or “Twitter follower” (David Rhoden)
• Blogs are in a database that you own and control – you can edit it or throw it away at any time. (David Rhoden, Anthony Killeen)
• Facebook and Twitter aren’t a replacement for your own personal history of things you want to say online. (David Rhoden)
• Comments and discussions are there in context. (Anthony Killeen)
• Blog posts are better indexed by search engines. When was the last time you Googled a question and got a Tweet or Facebook status update which answered it? (David Rhoden, Jeremy Cook)
• Blog posts are more educational, spread knowledge and are helpful to newbies. (Clive Walker, Rafael Dohms, Court Ewing)
• Blog posts are timeless: they don’t expire. (Rafael Dohms)
• Blog posts showcase your thinking as a professional and get your name out there. (Rafael Dohms)
• Blogging takes more courage: tweets are easier to correct. Blogging opens you up to real critique and criticism. Joe Leech)

There was a sense that true blogging was (and still is) about honesty, learning, growth. It was about opening yourself up to critique and trolls but also finding cheerleaders, mentors and fellow journeyers. There was a sense that we’re missing out on good insightful blog posts being written, and a proliferation of “Top 10 ways to get people to link up to your blog”.

There was a sadness that blog comments aren’t so lively any more: the comments are disparate, brief and shallow.

I know that every time I blog, I feel rewarded: I’ve thought things through, I’ve learnt things and I’ve worried a teeny bit about what other people are thinking in response.

The best text information I find online is still via blog posts.
The best way I find out about deep thoughts friends or strangers have online is still via blog posts.
The best place to find tutorials, help and ideas is still via blog posts. I may get there via Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest, but they’re signposts to the real content.

A reader of the blog writes:

Hi Cameron,

That great photo of you in your camo inspired this video: