Gary Sauer-Thompson
Here is an Adelaide man who is producing and interesting blog, rich with interesting words and pictures. Gary describes himself as someone for whom “Adelaide is home. Work is often in Canberra. Relaxation is in Victor Harbor.” He says he is a “frustrated photographer & philosopher who has lost his way in life. I used to be a policy wonk. Now, as a knowledge worker I have trouble learning to live in a complex digital world. Personal expression is the way I critically cope in a technological mode of being.”
His blog, which I am linking to, has four main sections – conversations, public opinion, philosophy and junk for code. It is the junk for code part I will link you to so that you can watch his pictorial essay on the River Murray unfold. At the time of linking to this section of his site, there is a prominent story on his recent trip to the Milang Jetty. He weaves in political comment, regarding Brendan Nelson’s recent visit as part of the Mayo by-election campaign for Jamie Briggs, along with a wonderful picture of the jetty. If you scroll further down the page, you will see more dramatic pictures of our River Murray in all its resplendent distress. The colour and detail that Gary achieves in his photographs is stunning, and he is doing an important job of keeping the river in our consciousness while we dodge occasional rain showers and run our hot water taps without fail every morning. You can see this blog stream at http://www.sauer-thompson.com/junkforcode/.
Make sure you scroll down to the Mundoo Channel photograph near the Murray Mouth just south of the barrages. Surrounding the photograph, Gary reminds us “the barrages were constructed seven decades ago to pool freshwater behind them, providing drinking and irrigation supplies to farms and towns … the situation is one whereby the levels of the freshwater lakes continue to drop behind barrages that currently keep out the sea. Scientists warn they could within months turn acidic, irretrievably damaging them.”.

Food facts
Now this is an interesting site on many levels. Firstly, it is funded by Meat and Livestock Australia so straight away we know we need to be on guard for “spin”. We know that only research that supports the consumption of red meat will be included. We know that censorship by omission will be the key to keeping the funding body happy. That being said, I am a meat eater and they are selecting research from authoritative bodies, so it is a site that will be in harmony with my expectations and understanding of the world.Secondly, I don’t know how such a nicely designed site can be created and NOT be compatible with Mozilla Firefox. It is incredible. This site totally breaks in Firefox, the second most popular browser used today. I would be having a few words with my web designer if I was the funding body.
Thirdly, there are some interesting comments in the “facts” that would make juicy conversation pieces for your next dinner party (as you eat your red meat, of course), here are just a few:

• It is important to eat a wide variety of fruits from apples to citrus to berries and bananas, “from fresh to stewed to canned varieties”. Now I know that canned and stewed fruits are not totally bad for you, and can be handy back ups when fresh fruit is out of season, but who has ever heard of making sure we mix canned and stewed fruit into our diets? That would be similar to saying you must eat red meat but must also include jerky in your diet. Bizarre.
• It mentions we need to include cheese in our diets and then on the next point it says we need to reduce consumption of cheese and other foods with saturated fats.
• Interestingly, it does point out the down side of dairy food, sugars, oils, and alcohol, but when it talks about meat it gives a glowing reference apart from lightly mentioning we should trim fat from our meat. I am sure there must be other points of concern and it would have lent more credibility to the page if they were included in the way pros and cons were included for other food types.

On the Weight Management page, it states that we need, for our evening meal, 4 servings per week of 200g of red meat, 2 servings per week of 200g of fish, and 1 serving of chicken without fat or more meat. For lunch we MUST eat 100g of lean protein – beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, etc. It says we need just 40g of high fibre cereal, 2 and a half cups of non-starchy vegetables, one serve of fruit and dairy, and a dribble of vegetable oil.There is advice on eating less, namely, setting times for eating, not eating in front of tv, chewing more, and washing your plate straight after eating (that also helps marital bliss). The other classic piece of advice is to choose smaller plates and bowls. I must say, I think the jury is out on that one. Having to go back for a second plate all the time would be annoying, leading to frustration, leading to depression, leading to more consumption of comfort food.
Overall, this is an interesting site that will easily keep you interested for a few hours. Just don’t sit down with a bowl of snack food next to you as you explore it! Using Internet Explorer, you can visit the site at http://www.foodfacts.com.au/.

Ugly Dresses
Oh my! Just what do girls do to each other? You must see this collection of ugly dresses, mainly bridesmaid dresses that charming brides have foisted upon their best friends.
There are some interesting categories of pictures from bad shape and bad colours to the must see categories of bad shoes, ugly weddings and tattoos and skanks. Some highlights are:

• Ugly weddings - Was this made in the parking lot of a Dunkin Donuts, Deodorant Application.
• Ugly shoes - Bridal Sneakers Complete With The Ankle Tattoo, and Minivan, Sneekers, Man-Calves.
• Tattoos and skanks - Tat, Beer, Cig, and a Casino, and Wedding Tattoo Rule #3. Actually, I have to paraphrase tattoo rule number three which features a girl with some pseudo eastern tattoo on her left shoulder blade, fully exposed by her low cut wedding dress. The advice is: Don’t let a $50 tattoo ruin a $20,000 wedding. If you still think that your tattoo is meaningful and that everyone else actually gives a rat’s about what it signifies you are wrong. The only people who actually pretended to listen to that crap were guys who were trying to “get to know you better” in your past, and guess what? You are married now.”

Actually, the most razor sharp commentary was also saved for the tattoo section. It is the picture entitled “shark tattoo and a million other things”. The commentary goes: “Ivory Dress & White Bra. Bleached blond hair and leathery skin. Black plastic watch and crappy tribal shark tattoo. Also, someone should slap the Maid of Honor for screwing up the pearl buttons.” Unleash the sarcasm within and visit http://uglydress.com/index.html.

Fast talking Fred
I was alerted to Fast Talking Fred by an article in The Age, in which it highlights that Fred’s creator, Lucas Cruikshank, is already a minor celebrity at the age of 14, still two years away from being legally able to drive, vote or get married. On YouTube, Lucas’s character, Fred, is attracting hundreds of thousands of subscribers, leading to sponsorship deals and talk of television shows.Fred is “a six-year-old with anger management issues who lives with his alcoholic mother and whose absentee father is doing time in jail.” The attraction comes from Lucas’ baby face, the timeworn comic device of having someone older play someone younger, and the “chipmunking” of his voice.
Fred’s weekly videos began in May and four of the episodes have had more than one million viewings. You can see his YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/Fred.

Adelaide Green Porridge Forum
I have found an amusing blog written by a fellow Adelaidean, Colin Campbell. Colin describes himself as a “Transplanted Scot, with an Australian partner, a seven year old would be Computer Game Junky/Cricketer/Yugioh Duellist/Pirate.., nine year old all Singing and Dancing/Mobile Phone Video Artist.., Spotty the annoying but friendly dog, Ben and Daisy, the rabbits, 7 budgies , the memory of Mr Quail, 2 goldfish and a few worms (they suspend life in the hot weather). I spend most of my time tending to the needs of my employer and my flock, ferrying, cooking, child taming, washing the dishes, cleaning, dusting…you get the picture. We just bought a house, so I am gainfully employed with my wife’s long list of projects *sigh*.”

His blog is a delightful collection of thoughts and humorous observations on life. I particularly like his post on July 17, 2008, about speed cameras. The state government is about to spend 3.5 million on new speed and traffic light cameras but Colin gives this a eerie twist with an image of a speed camera fitted with a machine gun. His story says there is likely to be a spike in the road toll at first, but then the cameras will start saving lives!

I also like his entry from earlier that week about the Sheffield Shield name returning to state cricket. Here’s his intro, “The Intra State Australian Cricket Competition and major loss leader for Cricket Australia in their quest for world dominance in the land of the Silly Mid Off, Point and Square Leg has had a face lift and is set for new life as the Sheffield Shield again. Many Australian traditionalists have been unhappy with the retirement of the shield and its replacement by Pura, a milk brand.”

Make an amusing appointment with his blog at http://adelaidegreenporridgecafe.blogspot.com/.

Charge Your Glasses
This site begins with a reassuring introduction – “Worried about your wedding speech? Charge Your Glasses is here to give you content and confidence. Whether you are the father of the bride, groom or best man, we provide everything you need for a brilliant, smooth-flowing speech. And yes, it is all free. The catch? There isn’t one.”

The site helps you work through the speech creation process methodically, breaking speeches down to the following components:

1. Opening
2. Introducing yourself
3. Relief
4. Physical
5. His early years
6. School Days
7. College / University
8. Job
9. Hobbies
10. Drink
11. His home
12. Girls
13. Meeting his wife
14. The happy couple
15. How she’s changed him
16. His wife
17. Our friendship
18. Summing him up
19. Toast

To get going, you just click on a section of the speech at a time and then on a relevant angle, By choosing the topic of “girls” and then “his first time”, I got this delightfully saucy piece:

I bumped into a familiar looking girl in the pub last week.

After I’d stared at her for a few minutes she came over and introduced herself …

… as the woman who had taken away Lawrence’s innocence many years ago.

I was shocked.

Because she made the story last for an hour and a half.

Which, from my understanding …

… was approximately an eighty nine minutes longer than the original incident!

But working backwards, there is a brilliant opening ploy called “I’m going to shock you”.

Never before, in the history of weddings, has a best man been under more pressure.

People kept whispering about what I should and shouldn’t say.

And then I heard that Anna had approached my wife to find out what was my speech contained.

So I’m sure you’d all like to know that this

(pause and hold two pieces of paper in the air)

is the official, authorised, family-friendly version of my speech.

(Pause. Rip it up in front of them.)

Well, for those of you who remember Blue Peter … here’s one I prepared earlier!

(Produce another speech from pocket)

This is an excellent site and great for excellent ideas. You will have to register to use it, but it is all free, and can be found at http://www.chargeyourglasses.com/.

The Mother Of All Excuses Place
If you have ever wanted to find a tactful way to get out of a commitment, this site is for you. The guys behind this site have collected excuses from the workplace and take submissions to be added to the website.

The excuses are grouped into themes, such as, missing school and homework, police or accident, kids, getting out of family events and holiday functions, breaking dates, doctors and doctors note, missing church, wedding, diet, why I ate that, debt, tax, not paying the rent, getting out of home repairs, unwanted house guest, jury duty, not voting, no sex, and miscellaneous.

Some of my favourites include:

Church Excuses

• Well…I could not come to the church last Sunday… because there was a sermon in the radio.
• (Real Mysterious Sounding) “I just had this feeling I shouldn’t be there.”

Work excuses

• My car ran out of gas on the way to work. I was pushing it to a gas station and I got a stomach hernia and I have to go to the doctors.
• A graphic artist I once knew told me of a person who called in and said his house had burned overnight. He was caught in the lie when word got out because co-workers took up a collection and the guy had to come clean when they gave it to him. He said it’s just so much easier to say you’ve got diarrhea. They can’t argue with that.
• Constipation has made me a walking time bomb.

Breaking a date

• This is how to break a date: (if you live with your parents) when the other person calls you, and asks you what they want to do, say “Just a second, let me ask my mom” then you go to your mom and scream “MOM! F— YOU!!” almost any mother would then ground you….Case solved, instead of being with the loser….quality time with yourself.”

You can find these excuses, and more, at http://madtbone.tripod.com.

The Cool Hunter
This mainly pictorial site is an eye opener. If you want to see “cool”, amazing, and sometimes awful and eccentric architecture, this site needs to be in your bookmarks.

Of particular note, is the feature on the private, seaside estate being created in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Apartments will sell for about 40 million dollars each – so oil sheiks will be needing to keep the price of oil high to pay for them. I think you need to see these sleek buildings which sit on stilts in the sea. Staggering. My link takes you to this pictorial, to continue looking at the site, just click on the menu item, Architecture, towards the top of the page. See the site at http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/architecture/Exclusive-Private-Residential-Estate-Abu-Dhabi/.

Then, if you want to see some amazing bars and clubs, click on the bars/clubs menu item and make sure you see the weird, jetsons-like setting of the Blue Frog Lounge in Mumbai.

Stuart’s Hell
Michael Giacometti is an Alice Springs man on a mission, drawing close to to finishing his gruelling challenge of dragging a 180kg cart over 1000 sand dunes in Australia’s Simpson Desert, from east to west, unassisted and away from roads and tracks.
In September 1845, after 18 months in central Australia searching for the inland sea, Captain Charles Sturt wrote to his wife about the dramatic, red sand dunes that marked the end of his journey:
Ascending one of the sand ridges I saw a numberless succession of these terrific objects rising above each other to the east and west. Northwards they ran before me for more than fifteen miles… The scene was awfully fearful, dear Charlotte. A kind of dread came over me as I gazed upon it. It looked like the entrance into Hell. Mr Browne stood horrified. ‘Did man’, he exclaimed, ‘ever see such a place?!’
Michael is walking from Bedourie (Qld) to Mt Dare (SA), covering 485km in 24 days.
This has never been done before, crossing east to west, because it means Michael will be hitting high sand dunes face on, at the steepest point.
He says he is doing this to immerse himself in the desert and raise awareness of man’s impact on the earth. We should also think of Michael when we grizzle about not being able to water our lawns because he will be surviving in treachorous conditions for three weeks on just 100 litres of water - that’s 4 litres a day, which is the same as a one half-flush of a toilet per day. In fact, his complete water consumption for such a gruelling journey will be the same amount of water you and I use in one average day!
You can follow Michael’s story at http://www.michaelgiacometti.org and progress updates at http://www.michaelgiacometti.org/progress.html

Broadband Choice
Whirlpool is a very popular, Australian-based forum for IT and Telco geeks. They have a handy page that helps you cut through the garbled marketing messages regarding broadband plans and mobile plans, etc. Part of this service is a page set up for you to enter your telephone number into, and it advises you on how ready your exchange is for ADSL2 and other technologies.
And there is one great spin off this function. If you are looking to hire a tradesperson and all you have is a landline number, you can plop their number into this service and it tells you which exchange they are connected to. I used it this week, when searching for an electrician.
The great thing about this site is that although it is written by and run by geeks, it takes the time to explain things in detail AND it points out the traps such as noting whether your broadband connection counts just the data coming to your machine or whether it also counts data you are sending out (or upstream). If the latter, your usage rates can jump 10-50%
You can find the service at http://bc.whirlpool.net.au

St Kilda Film Festival
This week sees the St Kilda Film Festival travelling show roll through South Australia. The event is 25 years old and this year’s competition attracted 700 short films. Unfortunately the festival’s website is boring. It just has the basic information about the event and the films, but there are no snippets to watch. This really needs to be addressed. However, you can see one of the films that is travelling, on the Tropfest website, because the film was entered in both competitions. The film is Beggar’s Belief, and it is quite a funny, quirky story, that just gets ironically weird. You can link to that from the Tropfest site here - http://www.tropfest.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=380367. While on this page, you will also see the winning film from Tropfest, Marry Me, which, if you have not caught up with it yet, is a beautiful story of unrequited love and BMX bicycles. If you click on any of the movies, other than Marry Me, you will have to watch a 30 second commercial before the main event - you don’t need to start clicking madly, thinking you have gone to the wrong place. (Tropfest has been running since 1993 and is now the world’s largest short film festival.
Back to St Kilda Film Festival, and the touring show will be in Mt Gambier, Tuesday, at the Sir Robert Helpman Theatre; here in Adelaide Wednesday, at the Palace Nova; Renmark Thursday, at the Chaffey Theatre; Port Pirie Friday, at the Northern Festival Centre, and Whyalla Sunday, at the Middleback Theatre. It’s actually doing the opposite of our health system - the film festival is going out to meet the people in regional areas, instead of forcing them to travel to the big city! The festival’s official site is http://stkildafilmfestival.vic.gov.au.
A friend of a friend of a friend knows you’re on vacation
As you know, I am a passionate advocate of social networking sites. But someone does need to pay the piper. In the case of sites like these, the trade off is giving away personal information to the site provider. So, you get membership to a warm, fuzzy, online community where you can rekindle old friendships, make new ones, and take part in global conversations, in return for the site operators being able to aggregate user information, sell it to advertisers, who in turn use it to target advertising. I think that is a win-win. But, as the Canadian Office of the Privacy Commissioner rightly points out, there are some downsides to not thinking about how much personal information and media you share on these sites. You need to remember you are giving full rights to your words and pictures and information to these companies.
Some of the downsides can be:

• increased marketing coming at you (although, it is likely to be targetted)
• lower types of people learning when you are on holiday and seizing the opportunity to rob you (or learning when you are having a large party that they could gatecrash)
• getting curly questions from potential employers who have researched you online
• giving away your date of birth (I always use a fake, but memorable one)

This link will take you to a video that asks, “what would you want a friend of a friend of a friend to know about you?” As the commissioner points out, joining a social network is our personal choice, “but we would hope that people would take a minute to think about their choices - and how much information they end up handing over to corporations, advertisers and marketing companies.” Fair call. The video is here.

Evernote
We can now have an external brain to keep track of all the tiny bits of information we encounter every day, through a service called Evernote. The service is in Beta at the moment and I am a few days away from taking part in the early trials. The technology is breathtaking. The basic idea is that Evernote will capture and remember everything you send to it and then it will index text including text from images so that you can search for bit of information you need, whenever you need it.

There are three prongs to this service:

• The website, where you register your Evernote account
• Your desktop, where you install the software
• Your mobile phone, where you install a client for capturing and sending information to your Evernote account.

There is a very good introductory video about this service on the front page of the website.

Some of the features I am looking forward to using include the ability to send a phone picture of a wine label or business card to Evernote, copying sections of text and images from interesting websites without needing to save the whole page which will make bargain hunting easier, and the ability to capture my handwritten notes into the system with my webcam.

You can sign up for a Beta invitation at www.evernote.com.

Libra
Here is another site to help you organise your “stuff”. It is library software to help you capture books and other media into a single database, with the ability to export lists to spreadsheets or webpages.

There are some very cool aspects to this software, including:

• Your webcam can become a barcode scanner for reading your book barcodes
• You can set it up to track people who borrow your books and media
• You can export your collection to a page on your website, so that you and your friends can peruse your collection – might come in handy when you need to make an insurance claim.

Before you wonder how long this will take, the process for loading information is made quite fast and simple because Libra taps in to the Amazon database. This means when you scan or type in an ISBN number, your collection gets information imported about the author, publisher, story, etc, in an instant. CDs, DVDs and games sometimes need to be searched by titles, but it sure beats typing everything out longhand.

When you look at your collection, simply clicking on the media title will display the title’s information. You can start getting organised today at www.getlibra.com.

Mr Dad
I have been amazed at how many parent-focussed sites there are on web, since becoming a parent. One I found, called Mr Dad, is a site set up by a US-based Parenting Expert, Armin Brott. Although the site tries to sell you his books and DVDs, there is a blog on the site of his Q and A column, in which he answers questions from dads. Here are a couple of interesting ones:

Sharing. A dad wrote in to seek solutions to his two-year-old’s grabbing and non-sharing habits. Armin replies by sharing “The Toddler’s Rules of Ownership” which included such gems as If I like it, it’s mine, If it’s in my hands, it’s mine, If I can take it from you, it’s mine, and If it’s your and I steal it, it’s mine.

He makes the point that “he toddler who shares easily is a pretty rare bird. In fact, toddlers are supposed to be self-centred at this age.” In fact, allowing your children to see the reactions from people who they grab toys from, is part of the lesson about how to share. Here are a few ways Armin says we can prepare for play dates, to keep your child’s developing sense of sharing moving in the right direction:

1. Prepare by reminding your child that more than one friend might want the same toy at the same time.

2. Put away or don’t take the “unsharables”.

3. Practice sharing by asking your child to share a toy with you from time to time, then make a big deal of saying thank you when you return it.

4. Enforce a no-grabbing policy by returning toys to children if your child has grabbed them.

Curiosity. Armin has some great suggestions for harbouring a sense of wonder and curiosity in your children. Did you know that between 2 and 5 years old, children ask 400,000 questions? And that how you answer them plays a big part in their development, more so than the 13 years of schooling that follow? Armin says the best answer is another question, such as “what do you think”? The goal is to encourage the search for answers, not just dish out questions like the Bigpond dad!

Read through the questions and answers at www.mrdad.com/ask.

Chillmasterflex
This site is meant to be a “counterweight” to the hustle and bustle of your typical website. There is new age music in the background and a choice of images – sunset, lakes and woodfire. I chose the woodfire. It fills your screen and you can just stare into it in a darkened room, and relax! Note: let images load before you choose “fullscreen”. Also, I had difficulty getting the lakes and sunset to load. The fire, though, was lovely. www.chillmasterflex.com

50 things everybody should know how to do

This article is a rich resource of how-to links and videos covering a pretty comprehensive list of basic life skills. Sadly, the only one missing that I think is important is “how to make or find the perfect espresso”, but I guess they had to cull some things from the list. The full list is here and the headings are below.

1. Build a Fire – Fire produces heat and light, two basic necessities for living. At some point in your life this knowledge may be vital.

2. Operate a Computer – Fundamental computer knowledge is essential these days. Please, help those in need.

3. Use Google Effectively – Google knows everything. If you’re having trouble finding something with Google, it’s you that needs help.

4. Perform CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver – Someday it may be your wife, husband, son or daughter that needs help.

5. Drive a Manual Transmission Vehicle – There will come a time when you’ll be stuck without this knowledge.

6. Do Basic Cooking – If you can’t cook your own steak and eggs, you probably aren’t going to make it.

7. Tell a Story that Captivates People’s Attention – If you can’t captivate their attention, you should probably just save your breath.

8. Win or Avoid a Fistfight – Either way, you win.

9. Deliver Bad News – Somebody has got to do it. Unfortunately, someday that person will be you.

10. Change a Tire – Because tires have air in them, and things with air in them eventually pop.

11. Handle a Job Interview – I promise, sweating yourself into a nervous panic won’t land you the job.

12. Manage Time – Not doing so is called wasting time, which is okay sometimes, but not all the time.

13. Speed Read – Sometimes you just need the basic gist, and you needed it 5 minutes ago.

14. Remember Names – Do you like when someone tries to get your attention by screaming “hey you”?

15. Relocate Living Spaces – Relocating is always a little tougher than you originaly imagined.

16. Travel Light – Bring only the necessities. It’s the cheaper, easier, smarter thing to do.

17. Handle the Police – Because jail isn’t fun… and neither is Bubba.

18. Give Driving Directions – Nobody likes driving around in circles. Get this one right the first time.

19. Perform Basic First Aid – You don’t have to be a doctor, or genius, to properly dress a wound.

20. Swim – 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. Learning to swim might be a good idea.

21. Parallel Park – Parallel parking is a requirement on most standard driver’s license driving tests, yet so many people have no clue how to do it. How could this be?

22. Recognize Personal Alcohol Limits – Otherwise you may wind up like this charming fellow.

23. Select Good Produce – Rotten fruits and vegetables can be an evil tease and an awful surprise.

24. Handle a Hammer, Axe or Handsaw – Carpenters are not the only ones who need tools. Everyone should have a basic understanding of basic hand tools.

25. Make a Simple Budget – Being in debt is not fun. A simple budget is the key.

26. Speak at Least Two Common Languages – Only about 25% of the world’s population speaks English. It would be nice if you could communicate with at least some of the remaining 75%.

27. Do Push-Ups and Sit-Ups Properly – Improper push-ups and sit-ups do nothing but hurt your body and waste your time.

28. Give a Compliment – It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give someone, and it’s free.

29. Negotiate – The better deal is only a question or two away.

30. Listen Carefully to Others – The more you listen and the less you talk, the more you will learn and the less you will miss.

31. Recite Basic Geography – If you don’t know where anything is outside of your own little bubble, most people will assume (and they are probably correct) that you don’t know too much at all.

32. Paint a Room – The true cost of painting is 90% labor. For simple painting jobs it makes no sense to pay someone 9 times what it would cost you to do it yourself.

33. Make a Short, Informative Public Speech – At the next company meeting if your boss asks you to explain what you’ve been working on over the last month, a short, clear, informative response is surely your best bet. “Duhhh…” will not cut it.

34. Smile for the Camera – People that absolutely refuse to smile for the camera suck!

35. Flirt Without Looking Ridiculous – There is a fine line between successful flirting and utter disaster. If you try too hard, you lose. If you don’t try hard enough, you lose.

36. Take Useful Notes – Because useless notes are useless, and not taking notes is a recipe for failure.

37. Be a Respectful House Guest – Otherwise you will be staying in a lot of hotels over the years.

38. Make a Good First Impression – Aristotle once said, “well begun is half done.”

39. Navigate with a Map and Compass – What happens when the GPS craps out and you’re in the middle of nowhere?

40. Sew a Button onto Clothing – It sure is cheaper than buying a new shirt.

41. Hook Up a Basic Home Theater System – This isn’t rocket science. Paying someone to do this shows sheer laziness.

42. Type – Learning to type could save you days worth of time over the course of your lifetime.

43. Protect Personal Identity Information – Personal identity theft is not fun unless you are the thief. Don’t be careless.

44. Implement Basic Computer Security Best Practices – You don’t have to be a computer science major to understand the fundamentals of creating complex passwords and using firewalls. Doing so will surely save you a lot of grief someday.

45. Detect a Lie – People will lie to you. It’s a sad fact of life.

46. End a Date Politely Without Making Promises – There is no excuse for making promises you do not intend to keep. There is also no reason why you should have to make a decision on the spot about someone you hardly know.

47. Remove a Stain – Once again, it’s far cheaper than buying a new one.

48. Keep a Clean House – A clean house is the foundation for a clean, organized lifestyle.

49. Hold a Baby – Trust me, injuring a baby is not what you want to do.

50. Jump Start a Car – It sure beats walking or paying for a tow truck.

Pick Up Pal

No, this is not an online swinger’s service, this is car pooling service with a slight twist. Drivers and would-be passengers both register independently on the site and then the site’s proprietary system matches drivers to passengers using a raft of preferences. Part of the twist is that you can also find a driver to deliver some goods for you, rather than just take you for a ride.

Who pays? The passengers pays an agreed price to the driver and the driver is then billed for 7% commission by Pick Up Pal.

It was launched in January 2008 by a Canadian, whose mum signed the Kyoto Protocol on behalf of the Canadian government. I guess that gives some street cred to a service like this! The site claims to have saved 480,000kg of CO2 emissions and to have coordinated 1.5 million km of travel.

Another clever aspect of this site is the free website offer for groups holding events or organisations with high people traffic. It is called the eco-rideshare program, and the free sites helps people come together to share transport to/from the event or organisation.

If you want to explore the site, sign up as a passenger and look around, at PickUpPal Adelaide.

Juice Bag

Here’s a glimpse into the future. Reware, a US-based company, has just released a solar powered attaché case that can recharge your mobile phone, PDA, and other accessories while you are on the move.

The bag sells for about AU$330 and can power an army of small devices. It doesn’t have the “juice” to charge a laptop at the moment, but you never know what’s around the corner. You can find out more at http://rewarestore.com/product/profolio.html. - hat tip to Lee Hopkins

Wiki Send

If you have ever had to send a large file to someone and did not want to burden your recipient’s email server, Wiki Send is a free tool you will find useful. You can use this service to upload large files, up to 100 meg, and then send a link to your recipient who can visit the site to download your file. If you give your recipient a week to download the file, the service is fast. If you choose to give them more than a week up to 90 days, the file will be put into the second class service area, and will download at half the speed.

I have also been using YouSendIt but WikiSend has a cleaner and simpler interface. Start sending files now at www.wikisend.com.

Free Encyclopaedia

Here’s a little trick to get you free access to Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The techcrunch article I am linking to explains how Encyclopaedia Britannica is often used as an example of how new technology can hurt traditional business models. After 250 years of dominating the encyclopaedia space, along came Wikipedia and suddenly, for every page viewed on Brittanica.com, 184 pages are being viewed on Wikipedia (3.8 billion v. 21 million pave views per month).

You can purchase the 32 volume Britannica, which has 65,000 articles and 44 million words, for just $1,400. Or you can access it on the web for $70 per year.

And now, you can get access to the online version for free through a new program called Britannica Webshare - provided that you are a “web publisher.”

The definition of a web publisher is rather squishy: “This program is intended for people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers. We reserve the right to deny participation to anyone who in our judgment doesn’t qualify.” Basically, you sign up, tell them about your site URL and a description, and they review it and decide if you’ll get in. Once you’re in, you get to link to the full version of articles - people clicking the link can read that article but they can’t go and read other parts of the Britannica site. Participants can also embed widgets focussed on certain topics like, Presidents of the USA, etc.

If you have a blog or plan to start one to make use of this service, go to http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/18/encyclopedia-britannica-now-free-for-bloggers/.

Running tips
If you want to stay on top of winter flab, Cool Running Australia is worth a visit. It has a great array of forums covering all aspects of running along with a digest of running events around the country. Some examples from the forum include:

• Running with dogs – users explore how to manage dogs on leads as you run. Seems most dogs don’t understand the harmony needed when they are on a lead and there are trees between them and their master
• Brand new to running – users help each other out with tips and advice, they go into detail about heart rates and monitors
• Running at 50 – users chip in with advice for a 53 year old wanting to improve his times. A common thread was to avoid books and join a running club with a coach for some personal attention
• Breathing through your nose – users engage in a solid debate around breathing techniques

Join the conversation at http://www.coolrunning.com.au.

Adelaide JazzWhoops. I unsettled some Adelaide musos last time when I talked about a Canadian jazz trio, the Geoff Peters Trio, who had put their music online for all to enjoy. One listener, Anthony, took the extra step of pointing me towards a local site covering our local jazz scene. He said, “why listen to recorded jazz from Canada when you can check out local artists on the live scene?” For the record, the Hammond Eggs Trio is in residence at the Promethean until May 21, Les Millar does the John Coltrane songbook on June 14 at the Promethean, and Marmalade Circus heads to The Gov on July 13.If you want to be hip in town, visit http://www.jazz.adelaide.onau.net/jazzcord.htm, which is maintained by voluteers at Jazz SA. They even have a jazz archiving project underway to capture the development of jazz in South Australia on CD. I must find out more about my uncle, Ken Charlton, who played in jazz bands in South Australia!

Australia in Black and White
This is brilliant! It is a Flickr collection of Australian photos all shot or presented in Black and White. My tip, when you go to this link, look for the “slideshow” button in the top right of the main body of the screen. Click on it, let it load, then let it play.
There are 2400 photos in the “pool” at this stage and you can enter yours at any time.The group rules say: “The beauty of Black & White Photography. The amazing textures, contrast and diversity of the Australian people and their environment captured or presented in Black & White. This group is exclusive to photographs taken in Australia. You can be a photographer from any where in the world, yet the image must be of a subject, landscape or situation which you photographed while being here, and in Black & White. Enjoy the expression of Life in the classic beauty of this artistic medium. Inspire and be inspired by our amazing country and it’s people.”
This slideshow starts with the grill of an FX Holden, then works through people and landscapes. It is hard not to hear the national anthem playing in the background as the slideshow slowly progresses past.
View the pool of photos at http://www.flickr.com/groups/australiablackwhite/pool/.

Workcover blog for injured workers by injured workers
This blog site was recommended to my by a listener, David, and it seems to be a busy blog that documents public comments and commentary on all things related to South Australia’s workers’ compensation system.

It makes for some depressing reading. You certainly get the impression that there is a strong, heavy current moving decisions in one direction and that workers have ideas and suggestions that have no chance in holding back or diverting tide.

There are some amazing threads of conversation on this blog, especially “New Legislation- More disadvantaged Workers-More blowout??” which contains insights into the role of case managers and claims that there seems to be a layer of lazy middle people standing between rehabilitation services and workers who actually want to get well and back into the workforce. I also notice the Liberal party is involved in the conversation and there are also some mentions of Kris Hanna.

You can visit the blog at http://www.blognow.com.au/workcover/.

Polldaddy
I discovered a new service for creating polls and surveys online, that can be easily embedded into blogs and websites. It is Poll Daddy and it offers a very slick free service – which I am using for our babydavisblog.wordpress.com.

The free account lets you set up and run polls and then has an easy to follow system for embedding the poll onto your homepage, or into your WordPress blog, MySpace page, TypePad, Facebook, Blogger – and there is even a Flash converter for posting your site on systems that don’t allow Javascript applications to run.

You can also run surveys but they are limited to 100 entries in the free version.

PC World and Fox News are just some of the companies using Polldaddy which means it passes muster with some of the websites that count.

You can have your own Poll Daddy at http://www.polldaddy.com.

David Seah
It doesn’t matter whether you are retired, working freelance, running a small business, or just wanting to perform better at your job or within your household, you now have access to your very own, Personal CEO.

David Seah is a freelancer who was frustrated with his attempts to focus and see jobs through to completion, especially when jobs had nebulous outcomes or pathways. So, back in 2005, he created a set of forms to act like a CEO breathing over his shoulder to ensure he could honestly say to himself that he had been being productive.

The forms – there are many styles – have a column for tasks and bubbles for every 15 minute period in a day. It is quite dramatic when you look at a day in hindsight, or even as it is unfolding, to see a series of filled in bubbles for time taken on tasks, or a series of bubbles with slashes through them for each period that was effected by distractions.

There’s also another brilliant tool – the Compact Calendar. This simple, elegant calendar prints out onto one page and has each day of the year plotted consecutively across seven columns. So what? Well, unlike a traditional calendar, which has loose ends when months change midweek, this has the whole year available in one glimpse. This makes it much easier for scheduling projects, holidays, and deadlines. What’s more, David’s fans around the globe have created local versions with public holidays and there are some Australian calendars on his site.

If you want to look at this calendar and then work your way through to his forms, visit David Seah’s Compact Calendar page at http://davidseah.com/page/compact-calendar. Thanks to Adrian for this site suggestion.

Geoff Peters Trio
I was looking at baby name websites and found one which I’ll talk about another day, called Baby Name Guesser, but, as often happens online, I was intrigued to see a note that the guy behind the site has a jazz band. So I clicked on the link to his band’s site and discovered the most sublime, or should I say, hip, jazz.

This is the perfect arrangement of piano, drums and bass that you could ever wish for.

One refreshing aspect of the site is that Geoff has a ton of music available for you to listen to while online, or download to listen to later – all free. He is running the honour system and trusting that if you enjoy his music, you’ll hop back to his site and leave a donation via PayPal.

Forget that Melbourne has the Jazz Festival at the moment, swing over to the Geoff Peters Trio site and have your own concert at http://www.gpeters.com/listen.php.

Australia 2020
Well, our nation’s huge talkfest is over and now it is up to politicians and public servants to filter through the ideas and see if any can be made to work – or if any are electorally palatable enough to warrant pushing through.

According to various reports, our representatives/delegates have floated ideas including:

• Junk food tax
• Becoming a republic
• HECS discounts for graduates who agree to go to rural communities
• More study of Asian languages
• Compulsory creative studies at schools
• Indigenous Australians becoming enmeshed in the preamble to the Constitution
• Opening lift wells at offices so people in desk jobs get 30 minutes exercise a day
• A national happiness index to measure the growth of social health as well as economic strength

If you want to find out more, there is a report at the official website - http://www.australia2020.gov.au/about/index.cfm - and The Australian’s online political editor, Samantha Maiden, has a blog.

Australian Wildlife
I have just returned from a week in Katherine, in the Northern Territory and heard a lot about crocodiles. So, in my search for some good information about our saltwater crocs, I discovered a colourful site that celebrates Australia’s fauna and landscapes. It is put together by photographer, Gerry Pearce.

Some of the information about crocs includes:

• up to 7 metres in length and one tonne in mass
• particularly large heads and strong jaws (strong enough to crush a buffalo skull) and the ears, nose and eyes are all on the top of the head, allowing these senses to be used whilst almost completely submerged
• spend most of the time basking in order to regulate body temperature (at 30 to 32 degrees C) and defending a territory by the use of postures and low-frequency vocalizations
• maximum lifespan is at least 70 years, possibly over 100

Gerry is a photography-tragic, meaning that his long suffering wife understands at nature photography is in his blood, so she has learned not to expect him to be home much during sunrise and sunsets.

On his simple site, there is information about many of Australia’s animals, and a free, monthly newsletter with stories drawn from all over the web that deal with animals, conservation and the environment. As a bonus, he provides free and royalty free pictures with each month’s newsletter – and he keeps an archive of previous newsletters on his site. Great for kids doing homework and for people who love having quality animal pics on their screensavers and as wallpaper. Head to the Australian Wildlife croc page then discover his site from there.

Photoshop Express

**PS: A listener just reminded me (thanks, Alan) that you need to say you are in the USA when you sign up for this site, to enable you to have a membership. Had meant to mention this last night but had one of those brain lapses - can I also blame Sean for distracting me? I have thrown one image up at Stevedavis.photoshop.com.
This is the long-awaited, free, online version of Adobe Photoshop and it appears to be worth it.

You can do most of the common things to your photos that you can do with the full Photoshop. Lightness/darkness, cropping, hue, etc. What they have also added is a number of fun things such as being able to twist and contort aspects of your images, such as giving friends large heads or removing blemishes. Plus you get up to 2 gig of storage to hold your images online. Finally, the key thing Adobe seems to be trying to foster, is a community of photo fanatics. They encourage people to create galleries and albums to show off your pictures to your friends. There’s a whole host of display templates from simple grids to alien crop circles. At last count, April 20, 2008, there were already 36,000 galleries!

Visit the site at https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

Save The Murray-Darling blog
Friday night, saw one of Adelaide’s first meetings of its blogging community. About 20 bloggers got together to meet their virtual colleagues face-to-face. One of the members in the crowd was Jim Manning. Jim has a hard-hitting blog called Save the Murray-Darling Basin. Boy, it is good reading, but probably not on Mike Rann’s, Karlene Maywald’s or Penny Wong’s favourite reading lists.

Last week, one of his entries was entitled, Communities Die - while Kevin,Penny and Mike Fiddle – it was about Karlene Maywald having the job of delivering the bad news to irrigators that the system is still under enormous pressure and their allocations will need to start the new year at almost zero. He also gets stuck into the Victorians quite a bit for their selfish approach to the river.

If ever you feel frustrated at the way our pollies seem to be dragging out the task of somebody actually waking up to the fact that the Murray-Darling is a national security issue and not some tender little political toy, then this blog will not only give you some down-to-earth commentary, it will also give you some good questions to pose the next time any of our Murray River leaders are taking calls on FIVEaa! You can read his blog at http://savethemurray.blogspot.com/.

Happy News

I am seeing this show March 15, although I am not reviewing this show. This one is an indulgence to celebrate Leonard Cohen. Here’s what the official guide says about the program:

A new work by Philip Glass based on the poetry and images of Leonard Cohen, co-commissioned by Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts.

A spectacular union of living legends as composer Philip Glass interprets the poetry of Leonard Cohen.

In 2006, Leonard Cohen concluded two decades of work, publishing his ruminative poetry and sketches in the Book of Longing. The result is a sweeping series of ballads, love poems, retrospectives and unexpectedly comic pieces, as well as some deeply spiritual meditations written during the eight years Cohen spent in a Buddhist monastery.

When Cohen read these works to his friend and mutual admirer, the enthusiastic response from Philip Glass was to suggest a collaboration that celebrated the poems musically. And so in this world premiere commissioned production, the Festival is privileged to welcome Glass as he presents these two remarkable concerts in spoken word, instrumental music and song, with an ensemble of eight musicians (including the composer himself) and four singers under the staging of acclaimed American choreographer Susan Marshall. Cohen also makes guest appearances via recorded spoken word selections of the work, and through his own visual artworks incorporated into the production.

Meditative, playful, erotic and provocative: Cohen’s words find their sonic syntax in Glass’s elegant and hypnotic score.

Festival Guide