Enjoying the journey

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Posted by admin | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 27-12-2009

Growing up you hear a lot of sayings that make very little sense. One saying that did not make sense to me until recently was the one about life is a journey not a destination. This may sound like an obvious one, for me it wasn’t. I am very focussed on goals and getting there. The point I missed is the destination in life is not the achievements in 5, 10 or 50 years away, it is death. As morbid and me as that sounds it is true. That said it is those events which make the journey memorable. This is why interviewers always ask people about how they got to where thy are today.

As 2009 is coming to an end it has made me think back over the year that was. Over this year I have ran a half marathon, full marathon, volunteered, joined Rotary, given several talks, organised an Ignite night and celebrated with friends and family amazing events such as the announcement of Nat’s new niece.

None of these were any of the ultimate goals that I have set for myself and took time away from those goals. Yet to miss out on these events to get the destinations / pit stops along the way would be a big lost.

Knowing the end isn’t all that bad. A weird analogy is the TV show “How I Meet Your Mother”. I know how the series end as I have read the synopsis on Wikipedia. The end (destination) is not that exciting. It is the 5 seasons of the journey which makes the show enjoyable. The journey of how Ted finally meets the mother of his children makes you fall in love with the show, the triumphs, the lows, the times where you cringe, and most more importantly the fact the show celebrates those smaller moments in life which just make up the journey. Life is very much about every moment.

I recently listened to a talk by Steve Jobs who asks himself every morning if he would be happy to die doing what he is doing that day and if the answer is no for several days in a row he knows that there is a problem. I thought that this was an interesting concept. How would taking on this approach change things? Would I be quickly unemployed or rising to be a superstar?

Realising that death is the destination I vowed to make sure that each day was a day in which to enjoy the moments weather good or bad.

So I guess the important thing to remember is that while the final destitution is death, it is the journey, the pit stops, the detours, roadworks and scenic drives which makes getting there all that much more memorable.

Open311 API – Web 2.0 – Gov 2.0

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Posted by admin | Posted in web 2.0 | Posted on 15-10-2009

Earlier this year the Australian Government started talking about Gov 2.0 (as in Australian Government Web 2.0 Agenda). Back then I thought that it is an interesting concept and wondered how they were going to make it work when they cannot even make the eTax 2009 available for the Mac or online to be device independent.

So while the Australian Gov is trying to figure out this Web 2.0 business (hire me and I can tell you) the San Fancisco Gov has manage to absolutely kick butt. They have released the Open311 API.

So just to fill you in 311 is this great initiative by Govs world-wide to have a simple one-stop-shop for citizens to call. This means no 500 different numbers for the various departments and agencies, just one simple one. This can be done really well and really badly.

The Open311 API allows developers to create apps for the citizens to improve their interaction with the local gov. The example covers a situation where a developer could create an app which allows citizens to report pot holes. This app could be made very simple for the user. Using the camera of the phone the app could take the photo, use the GPS to pin-point the position, allow the user to input notes, capture masses of other statistics and open a new service request if one doesn’t exist. If the gov wanted to show citizens their progress they could provide the citizen with a personalised message at completion.

Benefit to the Government is that they

  • save on having to constantly send assessors out for basic analyst,
  • can capture trends,
  • reduce calls to their contact centre,
  • can connect with customers like never before
  • citizens build the apps which they feel is needs i.e. user driven not gov driven, and
  • it sends a clear progressive message to the voters.

Data Just Got Fun

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Posted by admin | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 15-10-2009

In this amazing video from Ted Hans Rosling shows why data is exciting and fun. He is the ultimate geek and makes it look cool. He takes us on a journey of the history and future of poverty and how it is going to be changed over the next 50 years. Some of the amazing concepts covered are how the USA was different from the rest of the world in its development, the dollar street and the sword swallowing.

Next Idea – A central hub for posting odd jobs and finding those jobs – Cash in hand

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Posted by admin | Posted in About Me, About the Site, web 2.0 | Posted on 31-08-2009

So I have had a new idea to have a central hub for posting odd jobs and finding those jobs – and Cash in hand is the site for it. The concept is pretty simple: Have a website where people can post for a nominal fee odd jobs they need done around the house and people can than view the jobs and contact the person to do the job.

The idea is more about people who are just wanting to earn a little bit more cash when needed by doing odd jobs, not a site for people to find under the table work as the tax office might consider that illegal.

Please share your thoughts.

Toolnames.com – .COM Domain Name Generator

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Posted by admin | Posted in About Me, About the Site, web 2.0 | Posted on 28-08-2009

Toolnames Logo

Coming up with a new domain name is usually quite difficult. You’ve got to come up with something catchy, memorable, and preferably short. Tool Names.com is a domain name generator with a difference. It uses a thesaurus to find related words to your site so you get a greater choice in choosing a domain prefect for your site. This domain name generator only produces .com top level domains. Try a few different combinations and see what you can come up with.

via Toolnames.com – .COM Domain Name Generator.

Mortgage Home Loan Calculator

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Posted by admin | Posted in About Me, web 2.0 | Posted on 25-08-2009

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I recently have been build a Mortgage Calculator for Mortgage Corp Mortgage Home Loan Calculator. Loans are provided to users in real-time based on the information they provide. As the user provides more details the more refined the loans become. It is pretty cool and make use of some funky jQuery functions and AJAX. If you have a chance check it out.

Dale

Response to Proud to be White

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Posted by admin | Posted in Viral Marketing | Posted on 20-05-2009

Over the years there has been many thing I have been proud of in man’s achievement to overcome the difficultalties we face. It brings me great shame when I see an email as disgusting as the Proud to be White email.

For reference, below I have included a picture of the email as the text is so disgusting I will not publish it. Also included is a picture of an anti-racism advertisement from the UK.

Proud to be Email Chain Email

Proud to be Email Chain Email

The Proud to be white email is the most disgusting email I have ever read. I’ll tell you why all of that is racist.

The presupposition that everyone is equal is inherently wrong when you look at the following:

First, the nation of the USA, for a long time, held the belief that Europeans were naturally superior to other nationalities and eventually; and when eugenics came along, claimed that black people specifically were a dying, inferior group of people. No credible scientific observations were made by these scientists and their racial bias always bled through. Like many other facets of society, the scientific field was looking for and often doctored evidence to show that African-Americans were naturally inferior to the Anglo-Saxon, which strengthened the legitimacy of segregation. Even when Jesse Owens won the gold medal, he was thoroughly tested because the scientists thought he had an extra muscle. Luckily we’ve evolved beyond the theory of inferiority, though we still have people thinking that they’re genetically equipped to be faster than whites.

The “Black” colleges in the USA still exist because of their historical properties and the need for them still exist to this day. In the climate of socio-economic slavery, it’s not uncommon for a black kid to lose all hope for his or her life in the community he or she’s in because of the never changing condition of the institutions there. It is the same with Indigenous Australians. Inner city schools continue falling apart and stay underfunded every day, drugs are becoming more and more prevalent, and even a lot of rappers are glorifying the life of the ghetto. Not a lot of black people can get into Yale or Harvard or even West Virginia University because of the school system they were in, plus the money isn’t there either. These “black” institutions provide black people an opportunity to succeed and become something other than a poor black person on welfare. All of the hardships and the cultural outlets that promote them lead straight to nihilism, as Dr. Cornel West frequently emphasises. In America where getting an education is expense outside the reach of most especially people who come from poor areas you need help. How is it fair that George Bush gets to go to any colleage he wanted while a much smarter person from a poorer family, suburb cannot?

The racial epithets black people use about white people are nothing more than retaliation to the word nigger. Nothing more and nothing less. White people have always shrugged that off or used it as an excuse to commit civil rights abuses, so white people have nothing to bitch about regarding that. Many black people don’t even use them, unless they encounter a white person not from the ghetto, who they perceive to be racist. My experience so far has been the people who call us the worst names by far are those whom we call friends.

The use of the terms African-American, etc. is a trend toward political correctness. It allows people to affirm their heritage, while embracing their American nationality. White people go with American mostly because they can’t spell Caucasian, which of course is the fault of the school system for this. Technically, we don’t need these terms; however, for the purposes of enforcing affirmative action, the terms are useful for seeing how quotas are being reached.

Most of everything else is absurd because the author is presupposing that every one’s equal. White supremacy still exists, although it’s forced underground. It exists in socio-economic structures. 80%, more or less, of black people live in inner cities. Most of the jobs that black people use to have were manufacturing jobs and this group of people haven’t been able to make the transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. Once these jobs were lost, it became a struggle to survive in a socio-economic climate that forced people to take multiple jobs to pay rent and sometimes even that wasn’t enough to keep the water or heating and cooling going. Bill Cosby often comments on the inadequate parenting, but he doesn’t realize that parents either are too busy working to pay for the home or they’re on drugs and they’re paying for their fix. The children cannot be expected to grow up to be model citizens in this climate, it’s impossible.

UK Racist Brain print advertisement

UK Racist Brain print advertisement

The social aspect of the socio-economic structure also is telling. Chris Rock puts this in a proper light, explaining that he lives in a gated community. His house costs millions of dollars. He has cars, he has a wife, kids. He has everything he needs. In this community, there are only 3 other black people – Mary J. Blige (top-level hip hop artist), Eddie Murphy (top-level comedian), and Jay-Z (top-level rap artist). Chris’s next door neighbor is a white dentist. He goes on to say that the respect that he gets is equal to that of a white dentist, which suggests that a black dentist “would have to invent the tooth” in order to be allowed in.

To answer the question about “why only whites can be racist”, they aren’t. The New Black Panther Party has dipped into the extremes of Black Nationalism on many occasions. Sean Hannity has run a 30 second clip of one of it’s intellectuals calling for a “white extermination”. This is a radical form of “black rage”, which is something Malcolm X brilliantly articulated when he was alive. The inadequacy of black leadership, which Dr. West has observed, contributes to this idea that things are equal between everyone when they clearly are not. And even when attention is drawn to something, the leaders are now not taken seriously. Jesse Jackson, for example, has been involved in sex scandals and such, so a disconnect between him and MLK now exists in the minds of white and black people. Rev. Sharpton also tends to be a small potatoes type of leader. He typically rehashes the same arguments for all cases. Protests, boycotts, and Black Nationalism now get you nowhere today.

Regarding the phrase “that’s why we have lost most of our rights in this country” and I am sure you don’t think your American, that’s just ridiculous. In America and in Australia the evening of the right has meant that “we” didn’t lose the right to free speech, to vote, to think, to express oneself, to prosper, to pursue perfection, none of them because of the Civil Rights activists. White people have NEVER lost their rights and they never will, by the result of other nationalities. The only group that would subvert the rights of white people in a nation that’s usually run by a white majority in the government would be a power-seeking group of people inside the government.

It sickens me that people could forward such an ugly email and thing that they are not a racist. This is 100% racism.

Reblogging – Publishing other people’s Blogs’s posts

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Posted by admin | Posted in Marketing | Posted on 25-02-2009

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Retweeting is great in Twitter because it is 140 characters, in the blog sphere it is not so. When I started blogging I thought that it was a great idea to post other peoples’ posts which was relevant to my blog. There was two major things wrong with this:

1. It is stealing – Without gaining permission of the original author the act is stealing the IP of another person.

2. It was wasting people’s time – while in some ways it meant people could come to my single blog it also meant anyone who has alerts are seeing the same story multiple times.

If you do think someone’s blog is great than blog about why it is great or otherwise. Reposting is just adding to the clutter of the web, stealing IP (even if you have permission) and just a waste of time.

So when you consider WP-o-matic or Feed WP or whatever else think about if you are really adding to the value of the internet or just causing clutter.

Getting Started with setting up a site.

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Posted by admin | Posted in Marketing | Posted on 14-02-2009

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To make it real simple here is what I would do:

1. Sign-up for a host account with http://inmotionhosting.com/ they are cheap and reliable. I have been with them for a year and not had any dramas. When I send requests to them they are really fast to respond, with-in an hour normally. I got their – Power – $US8.95/mo – Top Choice for Small Business. Use the free domain for like a personal blog.

2. Buy a domain off http://www.crazydomains.com.au/ $AU12.95 .com.au $AU12 .com. Cheaper the GoDaddy. I never again let my host register a critical domain. If you have problems with the host it is too much of a pain reclaim your domain. You can use http://www.toolnames.com or http://www.CreateMy.com.au to find a domain name.

3. Set crazydomains to point your domains to the immotionhosting DSN

4. Set up the domains as Add-on domains in the cPanel of your inmotionhosting account

5. Use Fantastico in cPanel to install WordPress. This is the very easiest way to install WP.

6. Setup your WP site. It takes seconds to setup pages and posts. Install the Google Analytics and All in One SEO Pack.

Refreshing cup of Cow Pee

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Posted by admin | Posted in Marketing | Posted on 13-02-2009

Yikes! Reuters announced in India an extremest group is getting one back at Western society by releasing cow pee soft drink. WHAM! TAKE THAT COKE! So while the Coke board is forming a new war room to take on the soon to be entrant to the market I am left wondering, in a population of over 1 Billion could something proclaiming to be deeply religious get off the ground. Just to put into perspective a 0.1% penetration is over a million people, 1% penetration is 100 million people. This is a country which is still very regious. So next time you go to the India restaurant to try some traditional Indian beverage you might be drinking Framer Joe’s Cow Pee.