Local news for local people
General and miscellaneous articles - Page 2
There are miscellaneous stories in the archives.
Things that don't fit anywhere else.
What do those statistics mean? I'm a bit skeptical of the numbers of visitors that are supposed to be coming to this site each month. Could it really be true that about twice the number of people in the Oberon LGA have a look at the site every month? I have access to three ways of counting visitors:
What all three have in common is that they all show traffic increasing in line with the graph above. The numbers aren't all the same because they all use slightly different ways of gathering and processing the data but they roughly agree. A big number of visitors come here each month. There is always the possibility that the numbers are inflated by robots trying to hack the site. An example of this is the large number of attempts to access the administrator login page for WordPress (all "404 not found" because I don't use WordPress) but these are accounted for, and in any case the bots would have to use literally thousands of different IP addresses to make any significant difference. So, in summary, the visitor count might not be exact but it's what mathematicians would say is the right order of magnitude and what cliché writers would call "in the ballpark". |  |
Goodbye to Instagram
June 4, 2026 in General News
Oberon Matters has had an Instagram account for some time where the weekly site updates have been publicised. The idea was to attract visitors to the site, but it hasn't worked. As posting there just increased the workload without any benefit the account has been closed.
 | Three ways to avoid being fooled by AI slop Sorry to keep harping on about Artificial Intelligence and how it's taking over everything, but here's a handy set of suggestions from The Conversation about how to tell what's real from what's not. It's bad enough that it's becoming hard to work out whether the words you read come from a human or are just condensed plagiarism, but now you can't even trust the pictures that are supposed to be worth a thousand words. |
Aussie Bird Count: Magpies on top The front page of this site on April 9 featured a photo of a magpie, Australia's best bird. According to BirdLife Australia it's the one that's most seen across the country. The white ibis bin chicken has become more visible this year and a pair was seen in Oberon in the last week. It's not known if they were travelling east to join the community in Hyde Park or going west to visit the relatives. |  |
 | Victoria Pass update Transport for NSW have issued an update to what's being done to alleviate the problems associated with the closure of Victoria Pass. |
A bit of help needed For many years I have been variously President, Vice President and general committee member of Australian Skeptics and part of the agreement there is that I never pretend to be psychic. Also, I for many years I ran a successful online magazine challenging such things. Because of these limitations, I have difficulty knowing things unless someone tells me about them. I can only add things to What's On, attend events or write about them if I know about them. As an example, I recently found out about an event that I would have liked to attend and write about half an hour after it started with no time to get there before it finished. So, I need a bit of help here. Let me know what's going on. Obviously, I can't get to everything that happens but that doesn't mean there might not be a story in it. Also, if you have an opinion about something, write something or send a Letter to the Editor. The more material here that is relevant to what's happening around town or what people are thinking, the better it will be for all of us. Thank you. |  |
 | Why has this autumn been so hot and dry? Mark Twain is supposed to have said "Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it" (or it might have been Robert Underwood Johnson or Charles Dudley Warner or maybe even someone else), so let's talk about the weather and see if there might be something we can do about it. This article from The Conversation talks about the weather lately and why it has been like it has. And there can be no doubt that weather matters a lot to Australia's agricultural industries. The article mentions climate change so deniers can skip past without bothering to read it, but the rest of us know that climate isn't weather but a smoothing and averaging of it over time. And that's the thing that's changing. |
Is it "Bye, bye Buy me a Coffee"? Back in February I introduced a donation scheme to help fund Oberon Matters. It was called Buy me a Coffee. It sounded like a good idea at the time. I've received several emails notifying me of donations but what I haven't seen is any money appearing in my bank account. I just checked my account at BmaC and the money owing is there. I've asked for it to be transferred to my bank (after converting it back to $A). A few years ago I had a similar experience with a system called Patreon, but after getting none of the money supposedly donated I found that it only really worked if my web site was part of Patreon (eg oberonmatters.patreon.com) which wasn't what I wanted at all. (The current version of this is Substack, and I hope it works better). All of that wouldn't matter too much (I eventually got my money) but I got an email this week to tell me that Buy me a Coffee now accepts donations in cryptocurrencies (called "crypto", of course) but as there are literally hundreds of these scams I'm not sure which one I should get a "wallet" for and where I could spend the "money". As I don't like to do business with anyone who deals in crypto, I'll be thinking about closing the account. Thank you to everyone who bought me a coffee. Now I'm off to find another way to solicit donations. |  |
 | Challenges in renewable rollout more complex and deeper than ever There's a bit of talk around town about renewable energy projects. The Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner's (AEIC) 2025 Annual Report has been tabled in the Australian Parliament, highlighting the Office's work supporting communities, industry and governments. |
'A study showed...' isn't enough Someone I care greatly about has an advanced case of Parkinson's disease so it was interesting to see reports this week in social media and the main stream media about a breakthrough cure for the complaint. What was actually being reported wasn't a cure, it was early research which showed promise in reducing the symptoms and managing the condition better but the word in the headlines that grabbed all attention was "cure". Note that anyone finding a cure for Parkinson's would cause all other nominations for that year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to be withdrawn because coming a very distant second would be a waste of time. I've been around and writing about science for long enough to see the rad flags waving wildly whenever I see the word "cure" in a headline, so this timely article from The Conversation caught my attention. |  |
