Stilgherrian alerted me to the fact that I got a mention on Crikey today - or at least, yesterday's post about ASA's censorship of flight records did.

I'm flattered, but also slightly pissed. If you clicked on that link, you'd have been asked to provide your credentials as a paid-up member of Crikey - or at least, to take a 21-day free trial. I had to do the latter, in order to read what had been said. Hopefully if I'm ever mentioned again on Crikey it'll be within the next few weeks - because after that my free trial will have expired, and I'd hate to have to pay for a membership just to see how I was being quoted. There's plenty of good reasons to pay for a membership, and I've been toying with the idea for a while - but that's not the reason I'd prefer to be my primary reason.

So yes, I signed up for the trial and got to read the article. There's a nice link back to my blog - except with a missing "http://", so the link directs readers to http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/zhasper.com/2008/12/censorship-of-flight-details/ and not to my blog. So, of course, I got... well, actually, I got 27 people hitting that page directly, no doubt through manually fixing the URL.

Actually, I should say that I got two half-mentions. I also had 61 visits from http://civilair.asn.au/. Ben Sandilands, the journalist wrote the Crikey piece, seems to be active there as well (at least: I found a story from him just by skimming the front page) - I'm guessing the two are related. As with Crikey, I can't see the content on this site without registering. Unlike Crikey, it's not possible to register here - so I'm still in the dark about where the traffic came from.

So, overall, a good day for blogging. Apparently I'm not the only person interested in why ASA censored flight details - I just wish I could see what the other interested people are saying.

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Unrelatedly, I caved and ordered x-plane tonight. If I had a car, I'd be at the airport on one of the mounds right now, having spent the last half-hour watching the last few planes scurrying to get off the ground before curfew kicks in. I seem to be back in *that* phase.