Thursday morning I noticed one of my older posts (this one) was receiving comments… I figured someone, somewhere posted it on their own blog and people were following the link over here. Then my mailbox blew up as people started “liking” the same post, subscribing to the blog, and commenting… I had no idea what was going on until a friend on Twitter out to me that the post had been selected to be featured on WordPress’ frontpage!? Yup, my writing was featured on “Daily Press”!
What does that mean exactly? For one it means a lot of comments! That post now has over 120. It also means a lot of pages views. Before today my the most hits I’d had on my page was 180. In the last three days DiMortuiSunt has had 5,176 hits?!?
I'm still in shock!
This is just a quick post to thank everyone. Those of you who have been reading here for a while, those of you who showed up in the last few days, and WordPress for noticing me. I promise I won’t try to disappoint any of you!
DiMortuiSunt has always just been my space for talking about whatever happened to be on my mind. It works great as that. Some of my interests though haven’t received quite the attention that they should have here. They just don’t seem to mesh as well with the miscellany here.
For that reason, and because I can, I’ve created a new space for exploring my creativity, Fictive Funk. If you’re interested in poetry, short fiction, or photography you should go there, because that is what it is all about. DiMortuiSunt will remain random crap that I do.
I could do this every week forever... And still have books left.
First, I want to announce the winners for week four of the DiMortuiSunt Book Giveaway: Rock!topus Prime, Shivam Bhatt, Lady, and Aleanil (names have been changed to protect the innocent). They’re books will be heading to them soon. I hope they enjoy them as much as I did.
Second, I want to congratulate everyone who participated in the giveaway and won something over the month of April, as well as thank everyone who commented. My views were up for the month though I haven’t sat down yet and looked through the logs to see if that was because of the book giveaway or I just happened to have particularly interesting postings. Regardless, I’m going to call the entire thing a success. Reader participation definitely increased and I had a lot of fun giving things away.
Keep a look out for future contests as well! I have all interesting stuff lying around to give away!
Welcome to week three of the book giveaway here at DiMortuiSunt! Congratulations to Nicolas Rycar and Richard Smith for winning! This week I’m giving away three books (are you seeing a pattern?) all of which have something to do with technology. From my reviews at Sacramento and Portland Book Review:
Computer security has never been an easy job. The advent of the internet only complicated things, and now with social media it has become even more so. Hacking: The Next Generation is an in-depth, extensive look at how hackers are using new tools to get their hands on and in other people’s business. This book is not for the casual reader, and it isn’t even for the savvy computer user; IT workers, systems administrators, and computer security professionals are the target audience here. Dhanjani and Company go through the entire inventory of security breaching in this book, with real-world examples and sample code to show just how easy it is for hackers to get a hold of information in today’s world. Phishing, Social Engineering, Using Social websites for Data Mining, Cross-Site Scripting, Abusing SMTP and ARP, Blended Threats, Cloud Computing Vulnerabilities–it is all here with case studies and code. As computing becomes ever more complex and heterogeneous hackers and attackers will have an increasing array of options to use, security professionals need to be aware of these new threats and how the traditional methods (fortress like defenses) are ill equipped or, worse, completely unable to rebuff them. Hackers: The Next Generation is a guide showing where the hacking scene is now, where it is trending and how best to combat it.
The Internet has been sold as a panacea for the world’s ills. Economic equality, totalitarianism, social justices are all problems that the Internet has been proposed to be an answer to. Much like its forebears: telegraph, radio, television, the Internet has failed to deliver on those promises. Despite this the Internet has eagerly been embraced by Washington D.C. as the weapon of choice against totalitarian regimes. Evgeny Morozov addresses these issues in The Net Delusion, a comprehensive look out how the Internet is not as simple a tool as politicians in the West believe it to be, how Authoritarian regimes can, and have, used the Internet to increase their hold on power, and how centering policy on technology blinds policymakers and citizens as to the nature of the issues they must deal with. Morozov’s culprits are cyber-utopianism and its child Internet centrism. The first is the belief that technology is always the answer to any problem and its offspring is the philosophy that the best answers to these problems should be addressed through the World Wide Web. Morozov thoroughly highlights the deficits of these views and reminds readers that “the promotion of democracy is too important an activity to run out of Silicon Valley.”
Cult of the Amateur – I don’t have a review of this book (anymore.) I must have lost it somewhere along the way. I recall thinking Mr. Keen had an interesting take but was a little too worried about civilization falling apart. We do need professionals and they do need to be compensated for their work. I don’t think blogs or amateur created content are going to replace them, unless of course the amatuers are doing a better job at a better value. A good read, just one I don’t agree with.
You can win one of these books by leaving a comment below. Next Friday, I’ll pick three winners at random from the comments and mail them a book. If you’ve already entered you can enter again. If you’ve already won you can still enter!
