Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2006

Dear Friends & Family....

Merry Christmas from Tasmania,
& Happy New Year to all,

Just a little note to say thanks for all the help and support during the last year. And what a year it has been.

Biggest highlight was Noah's birth in March, but we won't go on too much, but obviously a great bundle of joy and smells, and a total life changing event.

It was great to get back to old blighty in May/June to visit people and places. Thanks for taking the time to come to us, really appreciated. Highlight being the week at the cottage in Witney, Oxfordshire.

It's been head down ever since then, given that we used most of our holiday days, and little N ate most of the cash. Jac's been amazing throughout, adapting to being a mother in a place where normal forms of support (family, etc) are a long way away. Noah's a fit and healthy organic food freak, who is also vege/pisco like his parents. Hey - he might have kangaroo one day - we won't stop him!

October brought a little break to Kangaroo Valley, but the fishing was (and probably never will be) the same as last year. More fishy tales next year for sure.

October also brought about the end of the old website (Internet v1) and along came this blog/photo (Internet v2). Go on, do it - it's the way forward. More politics and tales next year. Subscribe to our RSS feed (for those that understand that....).

Jac is now back at work 3 days per week, and we are over the childcare dilemma for now. It breaks things up a bit and our life is a bit more balanced again.

After our little break in Tasmania, we don't have much planned for 2006. Probably biggest thing, if it comes off, will be to save for, and buy, a house. I have a dream to be close to the beach and to build a fantastic eco-home, but prices in Sydney are a bit outrageous (better than a couple of years ago), but it's good to dream eh?

So put aside a slot for your dreamtime, and hope you get everything Santa said he would bring you. ;->

Take Care,

James, Jac and Noah x

Dolphins save swimmers from great white

Nice little story......

A group of swimmers has told how a pod of dolphins protected them from a great white shark off the north-eastern coast of New Zealand.

Rob Howes and three other lifeguards were on a training swim about 100 metres offshore at Ocean Beach near Whangarei when the dolphins raced in and herded the group together.

"They started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us," Howe said.

When he tried to drift away from the group, two of the bigger dolphins herded him back.

He then saw why. A three metre great white shark was cruising toward the group about two metres below the surface.

"I just recoiled. It was only about two metres away from me, the water was crystal clear and it was as clear as the nose on my face," he said, adding he then realised the dolphins had moved in to protect the swimmers.

The group were surrounded by the dolphins for 40 minutes before they were able to reach the shore.

Another lifeguard, Matt Fleet, was patrolling nearby in a rescue boat when he saw the dolphins' unusual behaviour.

When he dived out of the boat to join the group he also saw the great white.

Fleet said he was keen to get out of the water after the sighting, but didn't panic.

"I just kept looking around to see where it was."

The incident happened about three weeks ago, but Howes and Fleet said they had kept the story to themselves until they had a chance to catch up and confirm what they had seen.

Auckland University marine mammal research scientist Doctor Rochelle Constantine said dolphins were normally vigilant in the presence of sharks.

The altruistic response of the dolphins was normal, she said.

"They like to help the helpless."

- AFP

Come On Christmas

Wow - where does the time go?

Was it three weeks ago that I wrote the last post? Hate to give the very busy excuse (cos I hate it when others say the same), but a lot is on around Christmas and deadlines loom and it's quite stressful actually.... I've recently had so much on my mind I've been waking up at 5AM with things just 'popping' into my head. Don't like that - I have to read a book to focus on something else until I can fall asleep again. It was Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire - really takes your mind off things....

Noah is now pulling himself up to stand up, then falling over again, and then pulling himself up. He can sometimes go for 10mins just wiggling and grunting (yes, that's where his Piggy nickname came from - we all have them I'm sure). Two top teeth now through, and a lower one, so no more sticking you fingers in his mouth..... He's also developed this head-shake thing - like he is amazed as what happens to the world when he shakes his head. So now we have head-shaking competitions between - most amusing.

The next best thing to happen is my computer is fixed! And what was it (I hear you ask?) - a blinking power supply. The problem was, all the problems started after I installed a piece of software. After that point, it just kept crashing - total an utter instantaneous power failure. But I could replicate the problem. Well, after 2 months of it getting worse and worse, I bought a new power supply. Bingo - worked first time. How frustrating! But Happy.

Jac had a mini-victory on the work front, her firm accepted that 'Continuation-of-Service' was indeed applicable (he he), and she has now started back part-time. Shame of it all is the childcare crisis in NSW at the moment. We were literally 'on the list' of loads of agencies; finally we have sorted out nanny-share for 3 days a week. The bad thing is that about 60% of Jac's income (it's after tax) will go on childcare. :-(

Really looking forward to the Tasmania trip in a weeks time, but will try to get in a Christmas message beforehand. 10 days in a campervan from 'Devil' campers. We have bought a MacPac (read bloody expensive) backpack with baby carrier - buts it's fab and comfy.

Have been getting into the whole Texas Holdem' Poker thing, been playing on and off all my life, but about a year ago a friend and I got into online poker (from Ladbrokes) - just playing on the 10-20c tables, but the excitement is still the same. Well, I wanted to host my own poker nights with a few mates so I bought the 'World Poker tour' set and baise. Absolutly fantastic - on Friday and Saturday we played until the early hours... - but boy does it zap your time. Of course, I ended the weekend up (I would say that, no?).

Had a little BBQ & cocktails yesterday - which was nice to have a few friends round and not talk too much baby-shite for once... The most funny part being that Swaff, who has a habit of falling asleep any time after 10PM, did so with a glass in his hand.... Which led to the inevitable...
Which led to the inevitable...
Not much politics this week - aside from the usual battles with blinking work crap - you cannot believe the process to order a mouse which costs $60. Sign off by the branch manager, yup, it's true. Madness.

Take Care out there...

First Tooth

Well this week has been an eventful one...

Noah got his first tooth, after falling off the sofa round a Ben (my brother's) house onto his top lip (first of many no doubt) - the top tooth came through. Pics soon. Looks like we might have a bugs bunny on our hands. He's also v. near to crawling, doing the back-forward bum wiggle...

Another revelation, and not approved by some, is the 'Jolly-Jumper'. Noah absolutely loves it - and just sits inbetween the doorway bouncing up and down. There are those who think that it's bad for their legs, and I can see if it was badly adjusted or over-used it would be, but done properly, the exercise and enjoyment he gets is just amazing. His coordination and ability to 'jump-up, jump-up' changed overnight. Thumbs up from us.

On a more painful note - the bloody computer has been freaking out. It developed a mad instantaneous crash after iTunes v.5 (cheers Apple... but I do love iTunes) was installed, and I eventually traced it back to a clash with the graphics drivers, unfortunately by that point is has lost it's mind. So I decided to perform a Windows 'repair'. More like a baseball bat to the legs actually.

Three times this week I have performed a repair over a repair over a repair, just to get back to some semblance of normality, but it's obvious I now have a totally mental machine. Just in the last touches of migrating all of the customisations to my other disk and will go into the full reformat and reinstall. Now to put this into perspective, and given that I am a bit of a geek who likes to fiddle - I have never reinstalled the operating systems in 4 years - I've added and removed hardware, software and other devices. So maybe that's not a bad thing. We'll we'll see anyway.

On the work front I was nominated as part of the 'Win of the Quarter' Team and for an individual 'Branch Award'. We got the WotQ, but I missed out on the BA. Both were down to my relationship with a client, someone with whom I've developed a good relationship with over time.

Jac is in the final negotiations to go back to her job 3 days a week part-time, although they are playing silly-buggers, trying to say that after maternity leave, you are not entitled to continuation-of-service. This is appalling and amazing that, in this day of 'maternity-rights' how they can even think of trying it on after speaking to their 'legal people', well we'll see...... Take on the Taylors.... that's all I'll say.

Laters,

More Big Brother

2 more stories highlighting the control-freakery going on in the world at the moment...

The first from those friendlies in Canada... A new law which proposes that internet communication can be intercepted without a warrant:
"law enforcement will be able to compel ISPs to disclose subscriber information, including name, address, IP address, telephone number, and cellphone number. It would appear that such information can be compelled without judicial oversight".... amongst other things...

And secondly, the US has won over maintaing control over the Internet, the one item which should remain and become independent:
"U.S. officials said early Wednesday that instead of transferring management of the system to an international body such as the United Nations, an international forum would be created to address concerns. The forum, however, would have no binding authority...."...

But on the brighter side, sort of, is that again that friendly lot in Canada have got some of their Truckers to use an add on to inject hydrogen-made-on-the-go into their engines:
"HFI is a bolt-on, aftermath part that injects small amounts of hydrogen into the engine air intake, said Canadian Hydrogen energies Steve Gilchrist. Fuel efficiency and horsepower are improved because hydrogen burns faster and hotter than diesel, dramatically boosting combustion efficiency... ...But the HFI system uses electricity from an engine's alternator to power the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen as needed from small amounts of distilled water"...

Take Care out There, They are watching You....

Democracy actually works... shock... horror...

Finally, the '90 day detention' bill was overturned. A crass piece of politiking if there ever has been one.

I posted this to the NWA the other day after being riled up over the Terror Bill...

"...Sod the establishment. Don't believe the crap the Police, Bush, Blair and never, ever Thatcher. They are popularist vote grabbers running a hidden agenda.
We are innocent until proven guilty and it MUST stay that way. Never ever must we allow people to be locked up for 90 days without evidence?
Our forefathers fought for Freedom and Democracy (Yes that includes [Is because of] the Unions) and it is being eroded under a mask of political media hype around terrorists.
If the police can't do their jobs now (and a poor Brazilian bloke can say yes to that) what the hell will it be like when they force the 90 day rule in?
Abu Grave in Luton.
There are no more terrorists now than there were 20 / 50 / 100 years ago.
Get with it and understand it's about white/jewish oil money and maintaining control..."

And this after the Paris riots...

"So f*****g what if the immigrants want to stay in their own 'quarters', we raped and pillaged their lands and people for hundreds of years, 'invite' 'them' over to do our shite jobs, complain when 'they' now make more money that us, whinge when people try to break into our lands when they see our riches (made off the back of 'their' raped countries); and we want 'them' to 'integrate'. Integrate is OK (if they want to), but what most people actually mean is 'drop everything and become English/French & get the bulldog/leCoq tattoo'. Balls to that. Share the knowledge and culture.
'They' won't and don't want to integrate - cultures take a long time to merge.
The French have tried to maintain the 'French' way of life in a global land - all of their colonies are still 'departments' or counties or infact, parts of Europe. But the white/jewish class still rule and keep all les monies.
They are kept in slums, unemployment is rife, and they have nowhere to go. OK the social system is now costing them a fortune, but that is not the reason for the unemployment. And neither is a 35 hour week (what the hell is wrong with that?) - the unemployment would be a lot worse if it was higher.
I don't blame them. Remember Bradford? Mmmmm how long ago was that? And New Orleans - kept in a state of perpetual poverty/slavery for 200 years. Shame on them/us.
We WANT people in different dresses, and we don't necessarily want to live their way of life, but we do want to sample some of their culture now and again. Live in peace and harmony and share the riches & culture, or live in shame protecting it.
We created this multi-cultural land, we must live with it and accept that we don't live in countries anymore, we live in a global land - as so many of us can attest to who live around the globe. The sooner we accept it the better.
I'd much rather go to France for an Operation any day. And Croissants. And also to flog Listerine, Imperial Leather & Sure Extra Dry."

So after all that excitement, where have we been over the past couple of weeks... I had my company AwayDay on the 'Sunshine Coast' at the Hyatt Coolum. 600 of us flew up to have a couple of drinks and be really interested in work for a couple of days..... They put on a good show in a great location. Probably the swankiest hotel I've ever stayed in actually.

Uploaded some more pics to the fab flickr - Noah and his mate Finn - bloody good quality pics (if you like that sort of thing...).

35 C in Spring today - a hot summer perhaps?

Time for tea, take care out there...

JT

Seafood - choose wisely

Check out this table to see what bad / better choices you can make when buying seafood...

Control Freaks - U.S. control of the Internet

More concern over the control freakery of Mr. Bush, I like the bit about 'problematic human rights' and 'questionable taxation practices', ha ha ha, they are off the planet, no? ..... JT x

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives called on Friday for the Internet's core infrastructure to remain under U.S. control, echoing similar language introduced in the Senate earlier this week.

The resolution, introduced by two Republicans and one Democrat, aims to line up Congress firmly behind the Bush administration as it heads for a showdown with much of the rest of the world over control of the global computer network.

"Turning the Internet over to countries with problematic human-rights records, muted free-speech laws, and questionable taxation practices will prevent the Internet from remaining the thriving medium it has become today," said California Republican Rep. John Doolittle in a statement.

Doolittle introduced the resolution with Virginia Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte and Virginia Democratic Rep. Rick Boucher.

Countries including Brazil and Iran want an international body to oversee the addressing system that guides traffic across the Internet, which is currently overseen by a California nonprofit body that answers to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The European Union withdrew its support of the current system last month, and the issue is expected to come to a head at a U.N. summit meeting in Tunisia in November.

The Bush administration has made clear that it intends to maintain control.

If a settlement is not reached, Internet users in different parts of the globe could potentially wind up at different Web sites when they type an address into their browsers.

U.S. lawmakers have backed the Bush administration's stance, arguing that a U.N. group would stifle innovation with excessive bureaucracy and enable repressive regimes to curtail free expression online.

Top Republicans and Democrats on the House Commerce Committee sent a letter of support to the Bush administration earlier this month. In the Senate, Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman has introduced a resolution supporting the administration's stance.

"The United States is uniquely positioned in the world to protect the fundamental principles of free press and free speech, upon which the Internet has thrived," Goodlatte said in a statement.

The United States has not always taken a hands-off approach to Internet regulation. In August the Commerce Department asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the California body that oversees domain names, to postpone action on a proposed .xxx domain for sex sites.

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JT Trip to Cobar, NSW

I'm working out at a gold mine in Cobar, NSW.

Cobar is 9 hours drive inland directly west from Sydney. Or a 2 hour flight. The final leg of the flight is in an 8 seater and has the most amazing views. Then it rained and got a bit sweaty for the landing.

Cobar & its shire has 7000 people on an area the size of Tasmaina, 5500 whom are in Cobar town itself. That's about the same size as the Republic of Ireland.

At the mine - they buy CATs that they have to chop up and reassemble down below... See pics...

I was told they check the runway for kangaroo's before each flight.

Incidentially - Did you know that Kangaroo means 'I don't understand' in Aboriginal...

More pics uploaded

Had the chance to upload some of our other photos - it's just so easy to sort and edit (Picasa) your whole hard drive, Upload to Flickr using their easy upload tool, and then reorganise or post straight to this blog.

New pics online - and of Noah - June-July, August & September.

Take Care

Super Swimmer

Super Swimmer
Originally uploaded by J J n' N.

One happy, one sad....

Noah turn's it on again!

what's that

it's a kangaroo!

catchin a wave?

on your way

bye

out to sea

pigman...

this is too funny to be true...

Venezuela Switches to Euros -- Ominous News for the American Economy

this is actually very important news... JT x

Venezuela Switches to Euros -- Ominous News for the American Economy

The U.S. economy faces utter collapse if OPEC and other oil-producing countries were to begin pricing their oil in euros rather than dollars. When Iraq tried to switch to euros in 2000, they were attacked by the USA soon thereafter.

Recently, Business Week reported that oil producer, Venezuela, "has moved its central bank foreign reserves out of U.S. banks, liquidated its investments in U.S. Treasury securities and placed the funds in Europe."

The importance of this news should not be underestimated.

Dollar Hegemony

Generally speaking, international trade has become a process in which the U.S. produces dollars and the rest of the world produces goods and/or services that dollars can buy. Nations trade to capture needed dollars to service dollar-denominated foreign debts and to amass dollar reserves in order to sustain the exchange value of their domestic currencies. As it currently stands, if a country wants to prevent damage to its currency, that nation's central banks must acquire and hold dollar reserves in amounts corresponding to their own currencies in circulation. Fortunately for the U.S., this system (in place since WWII) creates a built-in support for a strong dollar that in turn forces the world's central banks to acquire and hold even more dollar reserves, making the dollar stronger still.

This phenomenon, known as "dollar hegemony," is created by the geopolitically constructed peculiarity that critical commodities, such as oil, are denominated in dollars. And because oil is priced in "dollars" for the most part, everyone accepts dollars as the currency of choice.
The strength of the dollar since 1945 is a result, for the most part, of the dollar being the international reserve currency for global oil transactions (i.e., "petro-dollar"). As a result of the dollar being the standard denomination for oil transactions, the U.S. prints hundreds of billions of these fiat petro-dollars, which are then used by nation states to purchase oil from the oil producing nations. These petro-dollars are subsequently recycled from the oil producing countries back into the U.S. via Treasury Bills or other dollar-denominated assets such as U.S. stocks, real estate, etc.

Because of this system, dollar reserves must be invested in U.S. assets which produces a capital accounts surplus for the U.S. economy. Luckily for the United States, the U.S. capital account surplus finances the U.S. trade deficit to a certain extent. [But if the capital account surplus should diminish (as countries shift to euros rather than dollars) and the U.S. trade deficit continues to grow even wider, the American economy will rupture quickly.]
Since the U.S. prints the petro-dollars, for all intents and purposes, the U.S. controls the flow of oil. When oil is denominated in dollars as the only fiat currency for trading in oil, an argument can be made that the U.S. essentially owns the world's oil for free.

So what happens if the oil producing nations decide to suddenly begin trading oil on the euro standard? Without being dramatic, the United States would go into economic ruin. Oil-consuming nations would be forced to flush dollars out of their central bank reserves and replace them with euros. The dollar would crash in value and the consequences would be similar to the types of currency collapses we have seen in Mexico, Argentina, etc. Foreign investments would pour out of the U.S. securities markets. Similar to the 1930's, the current account deficit would become unserviceable, the budget deficit would go into default, many banks would collapse overnight.

And that's just what would happen in this country. America's economic crash would result in the economic crash of many other nations. Most notably-- Japan.
We all know what happened to the last major oil producing country that shifted from dollars to euros. We also know what might happen to other major oil producing countries if they shift to euros.

As we have discussed at The Bulldog Manifesto (here and here), history is filled with examples where the United States has used military force to protect it's economic interests.
And now that Venezuela is shifting, what will happen to them?

all kangaroo valley photos uploaded

click here for the photo album on flickr (I tell you this blog stuff is just getting better...)

blogging and all things...

This was sent from my email at work.....

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It took me 10 minutes to set up our new site at www.blogger.com (owned by Google).  But I have been fiddling.
 
How easy is it to post to your blog?
 
- I can just send an email to 'my secret email address' they give you and the contents are posted straightaway
- I can download a plugin for word that allows me to publish word doc's straight to the site
- I can download a piece of software called Picasa (www.picasa.com)  & Hello (www.hello.com) yes also owned by google, that 1) automatically searches & organises pics on my whole PC (v. sexy – ooh like a mac), can super easy edit them (redeye, colour, sharpness, etc), and then 2) using 'Hello' will post them straight to the blog – no resizing (I pre-select the quality & size)) or storage issues (well one but we'll come to that)
- Or just use the normal 'post editor' provided on the site – a wysiwyg style editor.
 
- I have also created to syndication feeds (real easy) – one direct using the Atom format, and then using 'Feedburner' (www.feedburner.com) , created an RSS XML feed (easy) so I can push my content out to others who what to subscribe (family, friends, etc).  They also have little widgets and hacks like the feed thingy below.
 
There are shit loads of more hacks – I have put up some 'On this day' and other links.  As it's HTML – you can fiddle if you feel like.
 
The only issue I'm having is one of photo storage – you can dump up to 300MB of photos direct to the site and they will store them no probs, but if you want a photo album facility you need to link to an external party, or if you already have one (like yahoo photos etc) then you can link between the two, especially with the feeds, in fact yahoo also allows you to post direct to your blog as well.
 
I have not yet transferred my old website over, so the content is a bit bare  – oh – you don't have to have your blog hosted on www.blogger.com – you can set up your own, or elsewhere (ISP) – blogger.com will just ftp all your files over seamlessly – that's my next step.
 
Take care out there…
 

all wheel drivin' at kangaroo valley

Latest CIA information

**Latest intercepted terrorist transmission to be read by all operatives**


-----Original Message-----
From: Osama Bin Laden [mailto:osama@alqueda.com]
Sent: 29 July 2005 11:25
To: Ahmed, Mustafa, Mohamed, Hooky, Big Saiheed, Al Qaeda Warriors (Group), Mum
Subject: Issues still not addressed since last meeting!!

FROM: Bin Laden, Osama.
TO: All Al Qaeda Fighters.
Hi guys. We've all been putting in long hours recently but we've really come together as a group and I love that! However, while we are fighting a jihad, we can't forget to take care of the cave, and frankly I have a few concerns:

First of all: While it's good to be concerned about cruise missiles, we should be even more concerned about the dust in our cave. We want to avoid excessive dust inhalation, (a health and safety issue) - so we need to sweep the cave daily. I've done my bit on the cleaning roster - have you? I've posted a sign-up sheet near the cave reception area(next to the Halal toaster/griller).

Second: It's not often I make a video address but when I do, I'm tryin to scare the hell out of most of the world's population, okay? That means that while we're taping, please do not ride your scooter in the background or keep doing the 'Wasssuuup' thing. Thanks.

Third: Food. I bought a box of Bega cheese recently, clearly wrote "Ossy" on the front, and put it on the top shelf of the fridge. Today, two of my Bega slices were gone. Consideration. That's all I'm saying.

Fourth: I'm not against team spirit and all that, but we must distance ourselves from the Infidel's bat and ball games. And Please do not chant "Ossy, Ossy, Ossy. Oii Oii Oii" when I ride past on the donkey. Thanks.

Fifth: Graffiti. Whoever wrote "OSAMA F**** DONKEYS" on the group toilet wall, it's a lie. The donkey backed into me, whilst I was relieving myself at the edge of the mountain.

Sixth: The use of chickens is strictly for food. Assam, the old excuse that the 'chicken backed into me, whilst I was relieving myself at the edge of the mountain' will not be accepted in future. (With donkeys there is a grey area).

Finally, we've heard that there may be Western soldiers in disguise trying to infiltrate our ranks. I want to set up patrols to look for them. First patrol will be Omar, Muhammad, Abdul, Akbar and Dave.

Love you lots, Group Hug. Os.

PS - I'm sick of having "Osama's Bed Linen" scribbled on my laundry bag. Cut it out, it's not funny anymore.


Osama Bin Laden
CEO
Al Queda PLC
Secret Bunker
Afghanistan
"Bringing terror to the masses"
Tel: 01659- B-O-M-B-U
E-Mail - osama@alqueda.com <mailto:osama@alqueda.com>

link to old website

until we get our old pics and stuff transferred across, please click here to access our old website.

hello all - welcome our new blog site...

hello from james, jac and noah xxx

more posts soon...