web-goddess

Category: Roald Dahl

  • Linkrot diminishes us all.

    Losing the Internet You Grew Up With – The Atlantic – I think about this a lot. It’s why I maintain a blog with fifteen years of archives, as well as a fan site that’s existed for almost twenty years. We’re at the point now where that’s pretty much ancient. At what point will I have the oldest functioning blog on the Internet?

  • Viral

    I woke up this morning and had a look at Twitter (as you do). To my surprise, I saw this:

    @web_goddess bahh! @neilhimself posted a link to your Dahl site (measles piece)! lol! 🙂

    – miftik (@miftik) February 2, 2015

    Wait, what? Neil Gaiman tweeted a link to my site? I went in search.

    Heartbreaking and wise Roald Dahl letter to his readers about measles and his daughter Olivia. http://t.co/MdgLiLAMlb (via @timminchin)

    – Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) February 1, 2015

    Wow. He really did! Turns out he got it from Tim Minchin. (Tim, of course, wrote the music for “Matilda”.)

    So here’s the very sad #oliviadahl letter again: http://t.co/viSDnWgpWU And now I’m off to have hot chocolate with my vaccinated kids.

    – Tim Minchin (@timminchin) February 1, 2015

    I discovered pretty quickly that a LOT of other people had picked up the story. They were all linking to this letter from Roald Dahl about why you should immunise your children. His daughter Olivia died from measles encephalitis. I posted that letter on the site about two years ago and then completely forgot about it. I’ve actually been following the story of the recent Disneyland measles outbreak with fascination (don’t even get me started on those stupid, stupid “anti-vaxxers”) and never remembered there was a big tie-in to Dahl. But somehow over the past three days it blew up in a really big way.

    Traffic

    See? I’m still not sure who actually started it. People have been tweeting links to the page off and on for the past two years, but the most recent one that could have started the avalanche was from Charles Simmins. On the 30th someone wrote about the issue on Daily Kos. Was that where it picked up steam? Kottke tweeted about it, but it didn’t really go nuts until Tim Minchin and Neil Gaiman picked up on it. It spread to Facebook where it’s still trending. At some point the folks at the official site got wind of it and started emailing and tweeting sites, suggesting they instead link to the page on their site instead. (Fair enough. They contacted my site too so I happily put a note on the page.) Right now lots of sites are still writing about it but most are just reproducing the text themselves. So while my site did get a really big spike – about 10x its normal traffic – I suspect it’s not as big as it could have been. In the end most of my traffic was from Twitter and Facebook, where folks mostly don’t bother to go back and change links to things. And I’m still getting some clicks from sites like Get Off My Internets, Refinery29, Reddit, and even Metafilter.

    So there’s my 15 minutes of Internet fame for 2015, I guess!

  • Roald Dahl Fans share their Charlie covers

    Roald Dahl Fans share their Charlie covers – Hey, look! That’s me on the official Roald Dahl site. 🙂

    Me reading Charlie in front of the Opera House

  • The dangerous transphobia of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda” – Salon.com

    The dangerous transphobia of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda” – Salon.com – Interesting. I think the author might be reaching a little bit though. It leaves out the fact that Matilda’s mother (Mrs. Wormwood) literally advocates for a very traditional image of femininity, that of being dumb and hot in order to get a husband. This is also an image that Matilda rejects. So while the Trunchbull’s portrayal is problematic, I don’t think the book is as black and white as the essay makes out.

  • RDF on Reddit

    Holy crap, RoaldDahlFans.com got linked on Reddit! That was a fun traffic spike. I hope they liked the site.

  • Roald Dahl Fans.com rebirth

    So you guys remember the Dahl site I built years and years ago, right? Well, it’s mostly just sat there for a long time now. It seemed to be useful to kids and teachers, and the site more than pays for itself through the Google ads. So I just left it up. Well, a nice young man named Michael Mander contacted me a while ago about a Dahl-themed Facebook page that he runs. We emailed back and forth, and recently I asked him to officially assist me in running RDF. I was a little worried at first – I put so much work into this site for so long, I didn’t want to share it with anyone. But what’s the point of leaving it there slowly mouldering? So Michael is on board, and it’s completely reinvigorating me. I’ve started doing some of the long-planned admin tasks that I never found time to do before. Michael has started pulling together information to fill in gaps in my content. So if you enjoyed the site back in the day, I think you’re going to enjoy it again going forward!

  • Checkout Girl: Fantastic Mr Fox Costumes

    Checkout Girl: Fantastic Mr Fox Costumes – These made me laugh and laugh. So brilliant. Cross-posting to RDF…

  • Roald Dahl

    So, this exists. Too bad I can’t link that URL on my site though.

  • Roald Dahl Profile

    This New York Magazine profile of Roald Dahl is really weird! It’s got a lot of information about him that I’d NEVER heard before in all my research. He was descended from William Wallace? He had all his teeth pulled out? His last words were “Ow, f*ck!”? I wonder if it’s all from that new biography. I need to get it.

  • Little Red Riding Hood

    Little Red Riding Hood ShirtThe Snook and I were on a run through Newtown Tuesday morning when I spotted this shirt in a shop window. I stopped in my tracks to take a photo.

    Snook: What’s up?
    Me: Somebody’s been reading his Roald Dahl.