what happened to monsterblog (3)

If I remember correctly, it was during Brendan Pereira’s time when the front-page stories on Monsterblog thing was implemented. The idea was for us to blog a newsworthy story taken from NST every working day, and a link would be made available on the said story on NST online edition. This move improved Monsterblog’s hits by leaps and bounds, and along the way we managed to score a Google Page Rank of 6. Yay.

Fast-forward to the demise of Monsterblog: I blogged about the BERSIH and HINDRAF rallies. I don’t recall my blog postings to be particularly negative, or that I wrote anything out of line. One could call my postings on Monsterblog to be almost tame 😉

In early December 2007, we found Monsterblog to be inaccessible. At first we thought that there was some problems with the server, as we have had this problem before (something about MySQL couldn’t handle bla bla bla). Left it at that. But the next day or so, I was told by someone to call a number; the company that registered Monsterblog’s URL. The guy on the other line was a tad worried (and rightfully so), because according to him, the police visited either the company or the company’s head, asking about Monsterblog, if they owned it etc. Turned out that a police report had been lodged on Monsterblog, presumably related to the BERSIH or HINDRAF postings or comments. The domain guys freaked out and removed the pointers to the DNS, and that was the last of Monsterblog.

We asked around, and someone told us that there was no police report lodged against Monsterblog. But two days later, the person called to say, yes the police report just got in. Apparently or allegedly or supposedly, ZAM was the one who lodged it, and Monsterblog was only one of the few blogs that kena-ed. Until today, we’ve not seen the police report so we do not know what it was really about.

I discussed with a couple of people, and we unanimously decided to let go of Monsterblog. Not because we were afraid, but mostly because we have other shit going on. The fun was over, thanks for the ride 😉 A couple of weeks later, Mr. Little Birds told me that he heard that the operation (operasi, a.k.a. mass-tangkap) was canceled. So, that was that.

But it was no fun living each day waiting for someone to turn up at your door, okay. More respect to those who face it everyday and have it worse.

So again, that was that. And again, the ride was fun; sometimes tedious (it’s not that fun to have to crack your head every morning thinking what to write, especially during the slow days when the news weren’t that happening) but overall it was good. I learnt hell of a lot during this time, and I got to know a lot more people, and made some good friends along the way. But there you go, that was the story. Not very spicy right? Now you all can go to Peter’s blog and whack him for deluding you all that this would be akin to a Korean drama.

To end this, here are some random recollections/ notes:

– At one time we had the brilliant idea (heheh) to showcase bloggers. So I rounded up some people I know, got in touch with Joan Lau (ex-editor of NST Life & Times) and she kindly loaned us a photographer, May for the shoot. Borrowed some lovely clothes and accessories from Cats Whiskers and Sharizal hooked us up with his friend, Suzanne @ galleriizu for the venue. For reasons that I don’t remember, the posts never went up. But the photos were lovely, and here’s a group photo:

L-R: Raksha, Fireangel, Reta, Erna and Val

Of course there are other photos, some of which are really awesome IMHO but you’ll have to ask the respective bloggers for them.

– NST loaned us their auditorium to host MOSSA‘s first roundtable to address the growing interest in open standards, open source software (OSS) and the Malaysian government’s announcement on adopting a neutral technology platform policy. It was moderated Dato’ Lee Ow Kim, Chairman of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) ICT and Multimedia Committee, and the turnout included some major OSS advocates heavyweights. Even Uncle Jeff made it, though he didn’t blog about it (for valid reasons that he told me later). So, I was quite happy lah.

Florian Reuter at the roundtable. FR is a software engineer at Novell Inc., currently focused on OpenOffice.org. Photo by ST — I cropped and compressed image quality

– Random e-mails from random people asking me random questions, such as “Please tell me the timetable for SPM exam.” Wtf?

– Mack Zulkifli is no longer with OSB.

– Trolls, a couple in particular who threatened me harm et al. I kept all, ALL your emails and print screen of your comments including timestamp and IP addresses before I deleted them, okay?

– E-mail from a lawyer’s office in Singapore, demanding that we take down a couple of comments by one individual, claiming that the comments were defamatory to their client. So I had to print the whole damn thing, took it to NST’s legal counsel (who is btw IMHO a gorgeous male specimen, heheh) and he provided some free advise. But I think the whole thing also caused the editorial team to think twice about the relationship between Monsterblog and NST.

oO time for lunch. That’s all I can remember for now. If I suddenly remember anything else, I might include in the comments, or not. Anything else anyone wants to ask, feel free to e-mail me. Kthxbai.

** Click here to read Part 1, click here to read Part 2.