Recently in General Category

I read an article last week that had me worried about both the girls in Wagga who have already refinanced a couple of times in the last couple of years.

Those home owners feeling the pinch from rising interest rates and living costs need to put their house on the market now because things are about to get much worse, Wizard Home Loans founder Mark Bouris said. He said inflation pressure and rates rises had made the repayments calculations people made when entering into a home loan only a few years ago were now not worth the paper they were written on - and urged home owners to "get their heads out of the sand" and realise the trouble around the corner.

I have plenty of friends who have taken advantage of bank's easy lending of late and have done those renovations they've always wanted, or got that reverse cycle air conditioning throughout the house. (Something I wish I too could get done at the moment.)

The Daily Telegraph reports rising inflation has gouged $86 a week out of the average household budget, meaning that the tax cuts would have to be $34.61 a week higher if they were to leave a typical family with the same disposable income they had when the cuts were announced on October 14 last year.

If that family drives two cars they will an extra $18.50 a week on top of that to cover increased petrol bills. The paper's calculations show the three interest rate rises that occurred after the tax cuts were promised have cost the average family $38.25 a week.

Childcare fee rises due this week will cost a family with two children, one in long day care, another in after school care, $23.40 a week extra if they use three days care. Grocery price rises are costing families a further $6 a week.

I'm feeling the pinch too and our fridge isn't looking too healthy lately. Gone are the little extras that once it was nothing to throw in the shopping trolley. Now I'm telling the kids to put things back. Every week it's something else that's gone up, especially petrol.

Mark your calendar, wrap a ribbon around your finger or write a little sticky yellow note. Download Day will start on June 17, 2008.

The news from China this week has been tragic indeed, but what makes it even sadder is the thought of all the children killed. Thousands of children were in class when the tremor hit Monday afternoon and many of their schools collapsed on top of them. News scenes show grieving mothers whose loss is compounded in many cases by a Chinese policy that limits most couples to one child, a measure meant to control explosive population growth.

As a result of the one-child policy, the massive earthquake that rocked China this week -- already responsible for at least 15,000 deaths -- is producing another tragic aftershock: Not only must thousands of parents suddenly cope with the loss of a child -- they must often cope with the loss of their only child.

The Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force ISPs to filter out all material "inappropriate" for children from Australian homes.This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access.

Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is determined to force this filter into your home. Don't let him!

There are several quick things you can do to keep Australian Internet access fast and open. Go here to see how you can help.

Many of us attend the ANZAC marches around the country and get emotional listening to the speeches, but how many think about what it must have been like for those original ANZACs?

In the lead up to Anzac Day in this 93rd year since the end of World War I NEWS.com.au and the Australian War Memorial open the archives to bring you extremely rare pictures from the nation's photo record.

'An Australian Light Horseman collecting anemones near Belah in Palestine'. Picture: Frank Hurley, 1918

Squadrons of the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade in formation at Gaza Picture: Frank Hurley, February 1918

Australians of the Imperial Camel Corps form up at Rafa, Egypt. Picture: Frank Hurley, 26 January 1918

The 3rd Australian Light Horse Regiment machinegun in action at Khurbetha-Ibn, Palestine. Picture: Frank Hurley, New Year's Eve 1917

Four camel ambulances attached to the Imperial Camel Corps at Rafa - used as a base for the attack on Gaza. Picture: Frank Hurley, 1918

The 2nd Australian Light Horse Regiment behind the front line barricades at Nalin in Palestine, one man passing across a grenade. Picture: Frank Hurley, January 17, 1918

Australian Flying Corps planes in Palestine. Picture: Frank Hurley, 1918

Waiting the order to fire a camouflaged eight inch gun from the 1st Australian Siege Battery before the main attack on Polygon Wood in Belgium. Picture: Frank Hurley, September 1917

Official photograph at Gallipoli taken in early 1919 for The Australian Historical Mission showing a landing barge, wire and entrenchments. Picture: George Hubert Wilkins

A thigh bone and other skeletal remains near the Turkish war memorial at the Nek are a grim reminder of the fighting in this photo taken February/March 1919. Picture: George Hubert Wilkins

Stretcher bearers of the 13th Field Ambulance resting at a dressing station on Westhoek Ridge on the Western Front. Picture: Frank Hurley, October 1917

Soldiers, mules and carts stopped on a street in the ruined village of Voormezeele on the Western Front in Belgium. Picture Frank Hurley, August 1917

Statue of the Virgin hanging from the Cathedral of Albert in France. Local superstition held that war would end when the Madonna fell. She collapsed in the spring of 1918 under shellfire. Picture: Frank Hurley, September 1917

The derelict hulk of a British tank on the Pozieres battlefield - a battle in which for Australian troops distinguished themselves but suffered heavy losses while taking the French village and ridge from the Germans. Picture: Frank Hurley, 1917

An Australian Light Horse Field Ambulance wagon on the Philistine Plain, Palestine. Picture: Frank Hurley, 1918

French Premier Georges Benjamin Clemenceau on his only visit to the Australian front at the Somme, pictured with 4th Division command including Brigadier General Thomas Blamey, CMG, DSO, second from left. Picture: Unknown, July 7, 1918

Scattered graves marked by simple white crosses on the old Somme battlefields in France. Picture: Frank Hurley, September 1917

The first annual "Junee Rhythm 'n Rail" festival will be held on the weekend of 7 - 9 March 2008. The festival will be a celebration of Junee's strong railway history and of the depth of artistic talent in the area.

Vintage and steam trains will bring visitors from such places as Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Griffith and Cowra. Organisers estimate some 2,000 - 3,000 people will visit the town with accommodation provided by local hotels and motels, private homes and Tent City.

Local organisations have the opportunity to benefit directly whilst helping to make the festival a success. Proceeds from the festival will go to local drought relief charities, CanAssist and Variety Australia.

Broadway Museum will be assisting in the festival by conducting a display of handmade knitted, crocheted or woven rugs. So bring along your Granny Rugs, your Baby Rugs, or even your Fanciest Rugs. Prizes will be presented in four categories - Prettiest, Most Popular, Oldest and Most Unusual.

Three days of activities have been organised with two Guinness Book of Records attempts to be held on Saturday 8th March. The first is a record attempt for the Longest Licorice String, and second, a record attempt for the most guitars playing a single tune. Junee's Vaughan Logan has written a piece of music for many guitars to be played in the attempt.

If you can help in any way, want tickets, need accommodation, want to join in the record-breaking guitar playing attempt, or just want to know more about it, please vist the Rhythm'n'Rail website and use the contact form.

Remember...
Bitter words are good medicine…
Sweet words carry infection.
Master Chen Hai Yang

I want visitors to think that the features on this site are cool. I know my idea of cool and someone else's idea of cool differ, eg. flash sites really annoy me, the same with sites designed using Macromedia. If you don't have the latest version installed it's a pain in the proverbial waiting for the updates. Although I must admit, a few of these sites ARE cool, and I wish I knew how to create them, but time is the necessary ingredient and just don't have enough of it.

A little bland? WTF? Flash? Animated gifs?

Some of the comments were nice, and thankyou to those people who left a positive response. But really, in the end, it only achieves a link, and a positive review if it wins, and it's all a matter of perspective anyway. I like rather bland looking sites: there's a certain "zen" feeling about a site that doesn't try to be something it's not. Simplistic and minimalistic are adjectives that come to mind. Bland? Is he referring to the content? I take that as a personal attack: my life is anything but bland.

Remember...
God promises a safe landing,
Not a calm passage.

I'm rather disappointed about the comments no longer working on this site and so tonight looked for another solution to the problem. I Googled "comments disabled" and got 37,700,000 results. I shouldn't have been surprised. It seems that it's become the scourge of blogging. So much for "community".

I reinstated the contact page, and that seems to be working okay. I'm getting between 2 and 10 script errors emailed to me each day and every one of them uses a different ip address, so it's useless to block the addresses since you don't see them twice. Deleting the emails is just as easy. I thought that installing Akismet and Autoban together would be the "Deadly Duo", but when the ip address is constantly changing, the two plugins can't do what they were designed for. Running MT under FastCGI sounds like a great choice, but it is not installed on my server, and I doubt they're in much of a hurry to see me enabling the comment script any time soon. (Unless I tried renaming it!)

"Spring forward, fall back" is one way to remember how to set your clocks for daylight saving. I woke up this morning listening to my neighbours and remembered that daylight saving started today, then I spent the next 10 minutes wondering whether to set the clocks forward or back. Was it 10:30am or only 8:30am? In the end I Googled for the answer.

In October we set the clocks forward an hour, and next April we put them back an hour. We've had daylight saving here in Australia for over 30 years and you'd think I would know this but every year it's the same question. Forward or back?

Australian Timezones

For those of us who feel the deepest respect for the way computers have enhanced our lives .. .

Bill Gates was recently reported to have compared the computer industry with the motor industry, stating, "If (the motor industry) had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

Thanks to boreme.com