i had to share this email i received from my "sister in the lord"

This is just so tempting, in the name of the LORD.

I'm an atheist and a sceptic, and certainly NOT a child of God, whoever she may be.

Dear Child of God

Calvary Greetings in the name of the LORD.

Please don’t be surprise by receiving my message, i am currently sending you this mail from my sick bed in the hospital despite my critical condition now But don't worry, All i hope is that you will not betray this trust and confident that I am about to repose on you. I have to thank God this moment for his direction as regards this mission,

Countdown to the next Australian Federal Election: 2016

The first date that a normal House and half-Senate election can be held in Australia is 6 August 2016.

The last date on which the next election can be held is 14 January 2017.

So assuming the election is held and it takes a while to finalise, I estimate that Tony Abbott's last day as PM will be 31st December 2016.

I have added a widget to this blog to count down to this date, just to keep it in the front of our minds that all tings must pass.

We might live in a global economy, but why are there so many local?

I’ve often read about new product launches with great excitement, then been disappointed when the local release date is ages away.

We’ve always had this issue with music and books in Australia, and more recently we've had the issue with technology. Many electronic items take a long time to hit our shores when they have been commonplace in Asian, European and North American markets for months.

Australians and asylum seekers: not in my backyard

Tony Abbott managed to get a great deal of mileage out of the asylum seeker debate during the 2013 election campaign and during his time in opposition.

I often wondered if his nasty inhuman stance was just him being contrary, in order to differentiate himself from the Gillard/Rudd government and attract the heartless Australian heartlanders.

Well, I no longer need to wonder.

I don't have anything in particular against Clive Palmer, but.......

Is there really a constituency in Australia, or even the world who would find Clive Palmer representative of their social political concerns and issues?

The only way he will win Fairfax is through an expensive process of challenges powered by a top notch legal team most people would never be able to access.

I'm reminded of the gun toting scumbag Gorge Zimmerman who murdered a young Trayvon Martin in cold blood. Palmer is nothing like Zimmerman obviously but the legal scenario smells the same. Money wins! Zimmerman was backed by the NRA because he exercised his ridiculous right to carry a gun.

David Rowe (of the AFR) really captures Abbott's new cabinet...

It's kind of creepy how David Rowe manages to capture the spirit of the moment and the person.

It's work like this that reminds me why newspapers are still worth buying.

Note: This is just a link and a reference, I haven't stolen the image.

http://www.afr.com/p/national/cartoon_gallery_david_rowe_1g8WHy9urgOIQrWQ0IrkdO

Australia, we have three years to plan for a better outcome

I used to be passionate about politics.

When I was young there seemed to be a real line in the sand between left and right.

There was also the Australian Democrats, the Greens under Bob Brown and ALP leaders from Union rank and file. Outside of Australia we had the Berlin wall the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Rwanda, South Africa etc making us feel lucky to be where we were.

DIY surgery - try this at home!

When I was young I used to use a medical encyclopaedia to diagnose ailments. I wasn't a hypochondriac; I was just curious and interested.

When I was thirteen or fourteen I had a couple of warts that I removed by burning & biting with varied levels of success.

This led me to my most invasive self surgery. I correctly diagnosed an ingrown wart, on the heel of my foot. It was uncomfortable and not responding to the smelly junk the chemist suggested, so I wondered if I could remove it myself. I read that this type of thing is not very deep and that extreme temperatures could kill it off.

I gathered together the surgical equipment: fire, a compass from maths class and some disinfectant, and proceeded to mutilate myself.

The surgery was a success and I was very proud of myself.

Since then, I have continued to self diagnose, but have avoided more self surgery. I have however, remained fascinated with self surgery and by extension body modification, piercing, self mutilation etc., so I thought I’d share the following article. It is a Self Surgery How To. Enjoy.

Crazy self surgeries and how to perform them yourself

anyone but abbott - australian federal election 2013

Although I have been disgusted with the behaviour of Australian politicians of all shapes and sizes of late, I was never in any doubt about who SHOULD NOT be given a majority at election time.

At worst, I was hoping for the Coalition to get a minority, much like Labor has had to endure in the recent parliament.

get your news for free

In an age where a most of the developed world is online, is more or less literate and many of us have access to mobile devices, the majority of first world news at least starts with "citizen journalism".

Add to this the fact that newsrooms around the developed world have made no secret of the fact that they are cost cutting and downsizing.

happy birthday mobile phones

Up until 40 years ago, people were doomed to use fixed line phones to communicate.

How dull must it have been to have to wait until you saw someone, or until you were in reach of a "landline" phone before you could share the details of your lunch? And, imagine this, you couldn't send them an image of your lunch or a funny sign you had seen because, not only were phones stationary, but they also didn't have cameras!!

Then 40 years ago this month, a researcher from Motorola made the first "mobile phone" call from a street corner in New York. The heavy, ugly monstrosity used by the Motorola employee would be unrecognisable using today's definition of mobility, but it sure does mark the start of something big.

It wasn't until the 80's that i can remember seeing mobile phones in the wild. These were monsters too, mostly battery, with huge LCD or LED number screens. As batteries became smaller and processing power per square centimetre began increasing at an exponential rate, mobile phones became practical and affordable.

The intersection

l saw a woman get hit by a car on an intersection hear my house last week. A car ran a red light and the woman was thrown from her bike. She was hurt, but survived. I approach this intersection with extreme caution now, and I certainly never cross against the lights, especially when I have my infant son with me.

Earlier this week I saw a man on a bike with a child in a seat on the back cross against a red light at the same intersection, and in the same 5 minutes a woman on a bike tried to cross when an ambulance was speeding through the intersection with lights and sirens blaring. The ambulance driver had to brake to avoid her and use the horn to get her to move.

l just don't know what is wrong with people.

dogs in fenced off kid's playgrounds

I wrote a letter to my local council about people who exercise their dogs in fenced off, dog free, children's playgrounds.

Good morning.

The Smith Reserve is between my house and my son's daycare centre, so we often stop to play in the fenced off playground. Unfortunately, despite the "No Dogs" signs, more than half of the times we want to stop to play, there is someone with at least one dog off it's lead inside the fenced off play area.

Kids put their hands in their mouths and near their faces all of the time, and they pick up everything.

Kids who crawl might as well be licking the soles of shoes when they put their hands in their mouths, so I am concerned, not just about what I can see on the ground, but what has been on the ground.

the age of the Myki is upon us

I was on a tram this morning when a team of nervous looking ticket inspectors boarded, handheld scanners at the ready. The age of Myki has begun.

Whilst the technology used in the Myki system is clearly cutting edge (as it should be for the cost of $1.5 billion), it reminds me of the 80s and early 90s, when I relied heavily on public transport. Back then, if you didn't plan ahead for your trip you could find yourself inadvertantly travelling without a ticket, or missing the train or tram whilst trying to buy a ticket.

why does new years eve have to be so messy?

I'll admit that when I was younger, it seemed hard to have fun without alcohol. That's not going to change just because i grew out of it.

Kids will be kids and drinking to excess is a bogan rite of passage, whether the bogan is a hipster, a hippy or whatever other clothing style they have adopted.

I just wish people would clean up after themselves.

I'd rather stick a fish hook down the end of my penis than watch reality tv

I'd rather stick a fish hook down the end of my penis than watch reality tv. Unfortunately, this means that I often find myself re-watching old tv shows instead of anything that is on when i feel like watching.

Tv is such a boundless media that it is often disappointing to see just how especially dull the non-ratings season is going to be, especially after a dull ratings season. Sure, I should be at the park, visiting relatives, playing with my son and talking to my special lady friend, but sometimes all I want is some intelligent entertainment to distract me.

Why I no longer use an iPhone or iPad

As far back as I  can remember I have always craved the latest technological gadgets. Meccano sets gave way to lego, then came the walkman, cd player, and the personal computer.

l currently have too much tech in my house. 

Now that the sub genre or categories of personal media player, computer and phone are converging, I'm an avid tablet user. I've owned lots of tablets from a Chinese 7" Android tablet made by ZTE, the first Samsung Galaxy Tab, the first Motorola Xoom, the (excellent) Galaxy Tab 7.7, the Galaxy Note 10.1, the first iPad and the second iPad.   I recently took stock of why I wanted or needed this "stuff". Its a fact that only a small number of the phones and tablets in the world are used for anything work related.

Until a month ago my daily kit consisted of an iPhone 4S and an iPad 2 3G.

Goodbye 2012

As Christmas draws closer this year I haven't had the time to reflect that I am used to. 

Work is not winding down, so we're working through the festive season. Hopefully I'll be able to take some time in February. 

It's been another big year. In 2011 my mum died, we fell pregnant, I was made redundant and we were evicted. 

This year started with the birth at our son Jacques and the dramatic collapse of the company I went to work for after my redundancy. I was then unemployed for a couple of months as a contact I signed kept getting delayed. After a shaky start, work has been plentiful and lucrative since then. 

We were hoping for a year without death, but unfortunately my maternal grandmother finally succumbed to illness and age. Having outlived three of her children I think she'd seen enough anyway. We all miss her.

My main disappointment as to year ends is that my extended family of cousins uncles and aunties no longer have anyone binding them together and the family has drifted further apart. 

2013 is shaping up as the year for creating new traditions to make things fun for my son.

The USA is its own worst enemy.

I'm not going to mention recent events but anyone who watches the news has to concede that the United States of America is in a steep social decline.

Anyone who harbours ill will towards the USA need not waste their energy and resources attacking what is a brutishly powerful nation. Rather, they only need to wait as it destroys itself from within.

Right wing Christian fundamentalism combined with a colonial attitude towards the world and the toxic obsession with the misinterpreted constitutional right to bear arms is destroying a briefly great nation.  

The only real tragedy is that many far superior western nations have irreversibly entwined  their fate with that of the USA.

Last week, i went for over an hour without the web.....

In the 80s my mate and I were the nerds who had our own home-made PCs and the only kids who handed in dot-matrix-printed schoolwork. In the early 2000s I had an O2 XDA windows mobile phone that makes todays barcode scanners at retail outlets look sleek.

I was an early adopter of smartphones, tablets and personal computing in general, and I occasionally try to think back to the days before I couldn't go anywhere without being connected.

It's difficult.

I conducted an experiment last week. I decided I wouldn't check email, the internet or any digital gadget until I got to work. As I use my smartphone for my music and podcasts, I didn't even listen to anything for the 30 minutes or so from my front door to my work site. I felt a bit starved, sensory wise, but I enjoyed the 3.5 km walk to work.

So all up, I went for about an hour and a half without connecting to the digital world.

My key findings were interesting. Firstly, the world was still there when I reconnected. Also, I noticed my surroundings a lot more than I normally do, and finally I didn't feel worse for the sensory starvation.

 

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