Hot Topic

Hacked again

by Gareth January 1, 2010

Hackers broke into Hot Topic‘s servers again this afternoon (though not, apparently, the same bunch as last time), and although I was able to restore the site within a couple of hours, some problems may remain. Not quite the New Year present I’d been looking for… As before, I would ask registered users to change [...]

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Marvellous year

by Gareth January 1, 2010

Click on the picture, and then listen to Marvellous Year, the title track of Don McGlashan’s recent album. It’s a fitting soundtrack to the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010. If what you’re looking for is a roundup of 2009′s climate-related news, I can do no better than offer you Nature’s effort — [...]

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I wish it could be Christmas every day

by Gareth December 25, 2009

It doesn’t seem to matter how long I live down here (and it will be 14 years, in a matter of weeks), I still think the man in the moon’s upside down, and Christmas carols don’t sound right when it’s 27ºC and you’ve just barbecued sausages for a Christmas Eve supper. Nevertheless, Hot Topic will [...]

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The cracks are showing

by Gareth December 18, 2009

At 9-45am this morning, hackers broke into Hot Topic’s WordPress installation and wreaked havoc. I’ve wasted a whole morning trying to put things right — and we’re slowly getting there. It will take a while to get the look and feel back to normal, and I’m sorry to say that we’ve lost all comments made [...]

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Walker update

by Gareth December 15, 2009

Good news: my co-blogger Bryan Walker is home from hospital after a successful operation. He’ll be taking things quietly for a while, but with luck he’ll have his blogging boots on before the end of the year. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery!

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Stop me and buy one

by Gareth November 18, 2009

An item of minor import to the world, but some significance to the writer: the PDF edition of Hot Topic is now available for a mere NZ$10 (all the words and pictures, none of the paper, half the original price) from the “Buy” tab in the menu at the top every page. Traditional paper copies [...]

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Sciblogging: they blinded me with science

by Gareth September 28, 2009

This week sees the launch of the next big thing in science communication down under – Sciblogs, the new science blogging platform from the NZ Science Media Centre. Sciblogs is hosting 25 blogs, from scientists in Crown Research Institutes, universities and private research companies, with two dozen PhDs involved. I’m letting the side down on [...]

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Race for the prize

by Gareth June 2, 2009

The rather good 3 Quarks Daily has launched a new series of blog prizes, beginning with an award for the best science post. Ken at Open Parachute tipped me off, and so you’ll find I’ve taken the opportunity for a bit of self-promotion and nominated the first(*) Monckton tale — Monckton & The Case Of [...]

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Bird on the wires

by Gareth May 22, 2009

Another week, another step forward in the relentless march of progress. Hot Topic now has its very own Twitter account: hottopicnz. Why? Is it simply born of the insufferable self-importance of your blogger, or does it have a purpose? Probably both, but I’ll only deal with the latter. In the process of keeping up-to-date with [...]

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You can’t always get what you want

by Gareth May 16, 2009

Hot Topic didn’t win the Royal Society of New Zealand’s first Science Book Prize: the cheque went to Rebecca Priestley, who compiled and edited The Awa Book of New Zealand Science — a very worthy winner. I had a glass of wine with Rebecca before the event, and we were both picking other books to [...]

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