Gavin Knight .com

I write on the intersection of Effectiveness & Technology, on the intersection of Politics & Christianity, and on anything else I find interesting.

I provide this succinct description of what I write about because it has occurred to me, while tidying up GavinKnight.com following my recent move to Squarespace hosting, that the theme of my writings might not be self-evident.

To a degree this doesn't bother me as one of my primary reasons for writing is that it helps crystallise my thoughts, and so brings further clarity to my own thinking.

However, given I currently have around 25 daily visitors and 50 subscribers, what I write must be of interest to others too - so I should be clear on what I write about.

My About page describes in further detail what drives my interest in Effectiveness, Technology, Politics and Christianity - but it only became clear to me while writing this post that it is not just an interest in those four separate topics, but an interest in the intersection of two pairs of them.

Image found on newsday.com using google images.

A helpful reader (thanks Paul) emailed me overnight to explain where my missing RSS subscribers might have gone when I moved GavinKnight.com from Google's Blogger service to Squarespace.

It seems that when you use a custom domain with Blogger (as I was) there is a setting to tie your Feedburner hosted feed to the native feed provided by Blogger (but under your domain - in my case GavinKnight.com). I don't remember specifically enabling that integration, but must have done it. When I moved from Blogger to Squarespace this integration would no longer be active, those subscribers would have been getting a 404 'not found' error - and would have dropped out of my Feedburner subscriber count.

So, I have now created a redirect within Squarespace pointing the old GavinKnight.com RSS URL published by Blogger to the new one published by Squarespace for the Blog - those subscribers should now see my blog posts coming through their feed reader again.

Update: dilemna solved

I am not quite sure what is going on with the statistics for the RSS feed I maintain through Google's Feedburner service.

However, as you can see from the graph, my reported subscriber numbers declined from 50 to 30 at the very point I moved GavinKnight.com from being hosted by Google's Blogger service to Squarespace.

I could understand the subscriber numbers for this feed steadily reducing over time as people move to the RSS feed(s) hosted directly here at GavinKnight.com - but a sudden decrease makes me suspicious that somehow Google inflate the numbers for their own service. Can you shed any light on what is going on here?

By way of context, I now provide the following RSS feeds hosted directly here at GavinKnight.com:

• Blog articles (articles from my Blog here at GavinKnight.com)
• Short Thoughts (daily collation of my personal Twitter stream
• Shared Reading (daily collation of my online reading shared via Twitter stream)

I will also continue to provide the following feeds through Google's Feedburner service:

• All Posts (amalgum of the above three feeds) (also available by email as a daily summary)
  • this is the feed for which the statistics are shown above
  • this was the feed for GavinKnight.com before I moved here to Squarespace
  • (I use Yahoo!Pipes to combine the three feeds above into one, which is then fed into Feedburner)
• All Comments (all comments here at GavinKnight.com) (also available by email as a daily summary)

I previously provided RSS feeds for each of my main topic areas, but decided to close those down when I moved my hosting to Squarespace.

I have just switched the host for GavinKight.com from Google's Blogger to Squarespace - if you are seeing this it has worked!

This weekend I will be changing the host for GavinKight.com from Google's Blogger to Squarespace - as signalled last month when I sought feedback on the prototype.

You should see no issues if you surf to GavinKnight.com on the web or if you are an RSS or Email subscriber - although they might be a transitory hiccup or two while the changed DNS settings propogate, which can take up to 24 hours.

I have grown tired of the tedium of maintaining my GavinKnight.com template on Blogger (Blogspot), and don't like that there is no way to get rid of the Blogger bar at the top of the page (correction, you can, done, hat tip Madeleine). I have considered Wordpress but it looks too daunting and techie, and Typepad just doesn't look like me.

So, I am contemplating moving GavinKnight.com to Squarespace having heard good things about it on recent TWiT podcasts. It is a paid service, but I am happy to pay as Squarespace will give me better control over my site using powerful yet simple tools.

I have setup a prototype at http://gavinknight.squarespace.com/, and would be interested in reviews from my readers. Please leave a comment here, or send me an @GavinKnight tweet on Twitter, or email me.

The http://gavinknight.squarespace.com/ prototype incorporates the following design changes compared to the current GavinKnight.com:

• the home page is a static landing page with links off to the Blog, ‘Short Thoughts’ and my professional life – this gives me a more predictable outcome for those who follow the link in my email signature (for example);
• the daily collation of my tweets has been moved into its own section ‘Short Thoughts’ so as not to clutter the blog;
• there is much less clutter in the right hand column;
• for now I’ve gone for a very clean/simple style/interface (actually it's the SquareSpace default!).

The only thing I’m not really happy about yet is RSS:

• I don’t like the way the feeds show on the home page – it’s simply not as visually elegant as everything else I’ve played with so far on SquareSpace;
• I don’t seem to be able to get an aggregated feed combining both the Blog and ‘Short Thoughts’;
• there doesn’t seem to be an easy subscribe by email option - only one which requires the reader to register with my website, which I don’t want to force;
• for these reasons I think I’ll stick with Feedburner for RSS & Email subscribers, including using Yahoo!Pipes to get an aggregated feed.

Note, at the moment links within articles might take you back here to the current GavinKnight.com, but those on the home page should be OK.

yay for democracy!

the #blackout protest has had some success

I'm putting back my avatar on Twitter and Facebook now

Dave: "Great news. Section 92A of the Copyright Act has been delayed until 27 March so a voluntary code of practice can be nutted out. If there is no agreement on it, S92A will be suspended. Even if an agreement is reached, the Act will be be reviewed and monitored by the Government in the first six months. That's what happens when a group of people get a viral protest going, it gets support and gets into the mainstream media before midday and into the Aussie papers and into the Cabinet agenda."

Internet NZ: "New Zealanders can breathe a sigh of relief that their Internet access is no longer under threat due to unproven allegations of copyright infringement. Section 92A still needs to be fully repealed. It is disproportionate and unfit for purpose. But this deferral is a good start."

Tomorrow ~ Mon-23-Feb ~ is NZ Internet Blackout day so I will not be posting any new content.

David Farrar has helpful instructions on how to #blackout your blog.

I took a month long break from blogging from early January, and have struggled to get back to anywhere near my previous target of writing an article per day. Partly this is because a lot of my writing last year was prompted by the election, but I'm also finding my online habits are changing - and I've decided that my blogging strategy needs to change accordingly.

I will continue to write here at GavinKnight.com, but less frequently. I am currently targetting at least one substantive article per month for each of my four major themes - Politics, Christianity, Technology and Effectiveness.

It will be interesting to see what this does to my Tumeke NZ Blogosphere and M&M NZ Christian Bloggers rankings seeing as their methodologies have a bias toward high frequency posters - although my rankings couldn't go much lower given my reduced writing frequency over recent months!

So, my new blogging strategy revolves more around the following ...

I have been on Twitter since March 2007, and I'm now posting there more frequently - typically multiple times per day. I'm finding I can often say something just as effectively in a succinct 140 characters as I can by taking the time to write a full article here at GavinKnight.com! So, I encourage you to sign up on Twitter (if you're not already) and 'follow' me there. If you're one of my personal friends on Facebook most of my Twitter posts also appear there as status updates.

A lot of my articles here at GavinKnight.com used to be simply to share interesting items but as most of my online reading comes to me via RSS I'm going to move my sharing of them to sharing from Google Reader. Sometimes I will simply share an article, but I'll try and add a brief comment to some too. To see these, and everything I'm doing online go to FriendFeed (no account required, but it makes for a richer experience).

Are you experiencing a similar change in online habits?

I have just written to 3 relevant ministers (Power - Commerce, Joyce - ICT, Finlayson - Arts and my local MP Peter Dunne (who is also a minister) about the campaign to stand up against "Guilt Upon Accusation". You should write too if you care about this.

Gavin is blacked out: Stand up against "Guilt Upon Accusation" for New Zealand

hat tip: Mike

My NZ political and news blog ranking has reduced further from #91 to #95 during October.

This is unsurprising given that I didn't write much in September and October while settling into self-employment, but the rest of the NZ blogosphere was going crazy with the then pending election.

Thanks to Tim Selwyn of Tumeke! for all the hard work he puts in collating and analysing the data behind these rankings.

Madeleine at MandM has further analysed this month's rankings and produced her ranking of NZ Christian bloggers, where I have slipped from 6th to 7th. Thanks for your work too Madeleine.

I am #6 on the list of Top 10 NZ Christian news/political bloggers produced by Madeleine at MandM based on Tumeke's NZ political and news blog rankings:

1. NZ Conservative (24)
   
2. The Briefing Room (30)
3. Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later (36)
4. MandM (77)
5. Samuel Dennis (80)
6. Gavin Knight (91)
7. Contra Celsum (94)
8. Put up Thy Sword (115)
9. Say Hello to my Little Friend (a.k.a Beretta Blog) (128)
10. Section 59 Blog (147)

Madeleine, I encourage you to repeat this analysis each month.

If you are a Christian news/political blogger but not on Madeleine's list I suggest you leave a comment on her post so she can add you in. You'll also need to get yourself ranked by Tumeke! if you're not already on their list (leave your blog's link and details in the comments section of the latest ranking post). Update: Madeleine has asked in the comments that to get into her analysis you get yourself on the Tumeke list and identify yourself there as a christian blogger rather than swamping her with direct contact!

David Jenkins makes an interesting observation in a comment on Madeleine's post:

Interestingly enough, the majority of the top 10 Christian blogs are straight talking, soundly reasoned, conservatives who don't water down their faith and who robustly defend it. The fact that such blogs figure in the top 150 most read blogs in New Zealand is admirable especially when you consider that most of them enjoy respect from non-Christian blogs. Even anti-Christian blogs link to most of the top 10.

My NZ political and news blog ranking has reduced further to #91 in September - which is unsurprising given how little I have been writing.

Thanks to Tim Selwyn of Tumeke! for all the hard work he puts in collating and analysing the data behind these rankings.

Thanks to Tim for all the hard work he puts in collating and analysing the data behind these rankings.

My NZ political and news blog ranking as rated by Tim Selwyn of Tumeke! has decreased from #65 in May to #76 in June March/April.

Thanks to Tim for all the hard work he puts in collating and analysing the data behind these rankings.

I have setup www.justcomment.org for the Just Comment blog hosted at Google's Blogger which used to be at justcommentblog.blogspot.com and on which I am a contributor.

Last year I did the same thing for GavinKnight.com so decided to write up the steps so I could repeat them.

I use FreeParking for my domain name services but you should be able to adapt the following instructions for other domain name service providers. You could use Google's Blogger themselves for the domain name services (and they are cheaper than Freeparking, and simpler to configure) but if I'm going to pay I prefer to support a NZ company.

1. point DNS A record for gavinknight.com at FreeParking:

2. point DNS C record for www.gavinknight.com at Blogger:

3. point domain redirection for gavinknight.com at Blogger:

4. wait 24 hours for DNS settings to propagate around the internet (optional):

5. turn on custom domain within Blogger using the 'www' version (don't tick redirect option):

Readers can then access the blog by any of the 3 addresses, which all end up at the primary 'www' address, as follows:
1. type www.gavinknight.com
or
2. type gavinknight.com, redirects to gavinknight.blogspot.com, redirects to www.gavinknight.com
or
3. type gavinknight.blogspot.com, redirects to www.gavinknight.com

You don't have to use 'www' as your prefix. For example, I have done a very similar thing to host my Tumblr at shared.gavinknight.com for my shared items.

My NZ political and news blog ranking as rated by Tim Selwyn of Tumeke! has increased from #68 in March/April to #65 in May.

Thanks to Tim for all the hard work he puts in collating and analysing the data behind these rankings.

I am aggregating my online life at Shared.GavinKnight.com using Tumblr (with a custom domain) and FriendFeed (as the aggregator).

There you will see a 'lifestream' of my postings here at GavinKnight.com, my online reading shared via , my tweets at , my mobile photos at , my shared videos at and my photos at .

It uses RSS feeds between the various services so can take an hour or two to show new items, but that is prompt enough for my purposes.

You can subscribe to Shared.GavinKnight.com by rss or email .

I am also active on but that content is limited to my friends there.