Mum and Dad have been over from the UK the last couple of weeks at the country 20 acre residence. We have decided to fence in the house in to prevent kangaroos from eating all my plants. Dad helped me with my fence .(Mum has proofed this)

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I listen to a lot of podcasts and thought the readers might be interested to know what my favourite were. They all feature stacks of detailed actionable  information and are also all really motivating.

Five minutes with Jack

Jack runs a successful business based around The survival podcast and based on this experience he also has alot of great stuff about about setting up community by using podcasts that I haven’t heard anywhere else. This is a business podcast on all manner of internet marketing topics. Recently he had a really good show on some very low level advice about how to effectively use keyword research. The shows are about 5-15 mins long and there is a new show every day.

The lifestyle business Podcast

This is the journey of two smart location independent entrepreneurs. These guys have a number of profitable interesting business ventures which they tell their story on the podcast. They also have tips and tricks and great stuff about outsourcing and working internationally , working with chinese firms and even (shock!) selling real physical products. The shows are fun and they have bags of energy and I’ve been listening to their adventures since more or less the start.

The Smart Passive Income

Pat Flynn has had this the smart passive income website going for a few years he has built a successful business around various passive income streams coming from his various websites and social media presence. He is completely transparent and open about his progress and publishes some great instructional videos on his blog. He also was one of the first people ever to publish his monthly income statements online which he continues to do today. I have just listened to his podcast where he actually went through his yearly income statement which I found very interesting. Recently he has also been conducting a series of interviews with different entrepreneurs using the internet in different ways to improve their businesses which I found very interesting.

To read more about other internet marketing stuff I
find really useful go to my internet marketing page

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I have recently updated my whole server setup and its now costing me less and giving me better performance and security. I now have a very efficient setup for my podcasts, wordpress and webserver backups. I have my wordpress site hosted on hostgator and a second web server for a second account for hosting my backups and any podcast files hosted with webhostingpad.

This is a great approach for backups because then you have two different locations and companies which spreads risk. From a podcast point of view it is great as it means that people downloading your podcasts will not harm the performance of your website.

For the hosting

I have been using hostgator for some time and have found the support good (they have alot of staff and can get to you quickly). My only gripe is that the chat window has no way of sending screenshots. (For this reason I reccomend to anyone who is talking to hostgator support to email thier support desk with screenshots of your problem so you can refer to it on the chat )

I have just started using webhostingpad as they have had really good review and seem very well priced.

For the backups

I use backup buddy and I’d recommend it to anyone as it backs up everything on your site (including images) and it is easy to setup , supported and you are also able to use it to migrate wordpress site with (a task that can be very painful without it).I have a post that explains more about about how to backup using backup buddy wordpress plugin

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One of my new favourite podcasts at the moment is called Doc Fermento Discovers the world its loosely about fermentation although he can have some quite nice interviews on a verity of subjects. He’s big into fermentation after reading a book called Wild Fermentation more info can be found on the wild fermentation website .

While I was on his website I saw this unusual affilaite link. The squatty potty website (left) has a video with some facts about why its better to squat that sit. Seeming it is a good cure digestive conditions and it can cure hemorrhoids. But best of all just look at how much fun its! (see woman above)

The videos great  click this link to get through to the websitewhere you can see the video and if you decide to buy one I will earn a small commission.

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For backup and recovery of my websites I use backup buddy.

I have recently optimized my webserver configuration to optimize them for speed and safety by using two web hosts and backing up files from one to the other using backup buddy. Unlike the import export tool in wordpress backup buddy backs up all images all databases, everything.

I have setup weekly backups of all my sites using backup buddy. Its actually really easy. I ahve also recently used backup buddy to migrate one of my wordpress blogs to another server.

I also use backup buddy to migrate websites so I can develop them offline.

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Theres a big thing in Australia about growing Native plants. I have to say I think its overated and after out chat in the royal botanical gardens in Castlemaine about what plants we know well are “native” I realized  that a number of plants I thought were native to the UK were not includeing the apple. The only native widely eaten food I could think of was macadamias. So it got us thinking about where mist of the plants we eat originate.

Tomato- south America
Lemon – Asia
Orange – Asia

Strawberry – north America
Capsicum – America
Wheat – ottoman empire
Rice – Asia
Maize – America

Rasberry – Eastern Europe

Almonds, figs, peach – asia
Garlic – central asia
Potato – south America
Watermemon – south Africa
Capsicum – south America
Apple – Asia
Cucumber- India

Britain/ Europe
Cabbage
Carrot

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Well my front gardens look rather lovely at the moment things are stepping. I have probably about 20 tomoato plants 20 beans and all manner of greens and flowers growing is rather nice. At our house in Melbourne we have an apple,plum,apricot,olive,peach and lemon tree. We have masses of lemons and recoently the plum and apricot trees and been producing fruit.

Meanwhile at the estate the 6 yabbie traps that I bought have come in useful and we dinned on yabbie for the first time the other week, I also have been very busy trying to make the area more green. (I’m not sure if its working) but I have dug a pretty long swale so its now “permaculture” . I also have probably about 30-40 potato plants growing at the moment. See pics below

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I have just come back from a lovely holiday driving 2000km round trip to Adelaide

I did the video in iphoto then screengrabbed in screenflow. Which was a bit of a pain but I generated it as an album in iphoto so I can send a physical photo album to my Gran (this is why a few pages look funny because iphoto does not created videos and I sort of bodged it)

Background
We have been on holiday on a road trip round Australia. We started off in Melbourne and drove to Mildura. Then we drove to burmera. On the way we drove a 200km unsealed road where we saw some of the lake / salt marsh teaming with life, huge Murray river cod in the shallows with We also saw 6 emus. We then made our may along the Murray River to Adeliade and then on to the coorong and then onto Mt Gambia and then home.

Had a lovely time

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“Which came first the chicken or the egg?”. I have the answer

The egg came first

The justification is that according to Darwins theory of evolution the a mutation would have caused the first chicken to evolve from another animal.
Ps I am currently on holiday and was driving down the Cooling in SA when I thought of this. Comments on this would be much appreciated. (I wrote this on my iPhone)

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I have been busy recently. We have recently moved and the last couple of week I went mad put in a spring / summer garden. I have also made some significant progress at the estate. The contrast is amazing at the home the soil is dark a loamy and full of worms at the estate if I want to grow anything I have to dig a hole first with a pick axe (and it takes a long time).

I have setup automated irrigation in both places – set to go off every 3 days. Like anything its not to hard once you work out how to do it. The timer cost $30 from bunnings. At the estate I also needed to put in a filter ($80). I also needed piping (although theres quite a bit at the estate allready)

Below is a sideshow of my new garden / house in Melbourne

Please do not watch the video below if you are offended by foul language!
When I am not swearing about the irrigation I am showing whats going on at the Estate lots of “big potatoes!”

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I launched www.freeeventsthisweek.com in July and now services 3 cities worldwide and and now weekly youtube video / video podcasts. Below is the latest

A big thank to Ryn from the Philippines who has done a fantastic job on this!

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I remember when this came out I thought it stank.Below is a video of Julian Assange talking about how the documents (that were not authorized to be publicized) were put online by the Guardian newspaper and in the process putting peoples lives at risk.

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I was looking up something on youtubeFor about $350 US from Amazon you can buy your own drone with camera and operate it by your phone. You can even play augmented reality games with. Just like being in the US military.. woooooh. This is scary.

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I have been of the opinion for about 3 years that the troubles with the financial economy are terminal and none of the bailout nonsense is going to do anything apart from make it worse. I expect people in the UK and US to see there savings and investments being wiped out (after devaluation and collapse of the euro). Currently Australia is looking pretty good compared to elswhere however if (when) the banks fail I would expect that to cause either a bailout (therefore currency devaluation) or bank faliure here too.

A friend of mine from my finance club sent me the video below – its dynamite. When the BBC interviewed this bond trader they got what they didn’t expect!

Also on the subject of the ecionomy theres a new video by juice media out

If you want to know more about things finanical then you can find alot of stuff on The real Truth about money

Shadow stats is also a great place to dig into economic data if your interested

The crash course video course is also an excellent film that explains the basics of all things economic

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Recommended Media
Stanford University Entrepreneurship Podcast
Small Biz Pod Podcasts
Five Minutes with Jack Podcasts
Startups for the rest of us Podcast
Lifestyle Business Podcast
Automate my small business Podcast
Smart Passive Income Blog / Podcasts

Recommended Books
Lifestyle Business Podcast
Crush it - Gary Vaynerchuck
Various books by Seth Godin
Four Hour Work Week

Recommended Applications
O-desk - Outsourcing website
99designs Setup Design Competitions
CoHuman - Team collaboration 
Mailchimp - Free email marketing
Capsule - Free CRM
pixlr - Free online photoshop
Capsule - Free CRM

There are alot of people right now that want to leave thier job and start a “lifestyle business”. The term “Lifestyle Business” was first coined in the book The 4 hour work week. Tim Ferris is very smart and I read the book a few years ago and found it inspirational.

There is alot of useful stuff in there about how to be ultra efficient and get what you want from life. However some people get the idea that it is possible through being clever to build successful a business with little effort. There is alot of hype on the internet that supports this view (mainly from people selling ebooks and training courses on how to get rich on the internet).

Even Tim Ferris didn’t manage to build his first lifestyle business from scratch. He had a business where he spent 70- hours a week building up prior travelling the world and transforming the business into a “lifestyle business”. I have not heard from one credible entrepreneur that really is doing well that hasn’t had to put in alot of work in the startup phase (see recommended media above).

Pat from the excellent smart passive income blog is a good example of someone living that “lifestyle business” but even he admits in his most recent podcast that it took time and effort to setup things to where he is today.

So I guess the message in this post is if you want to build anything thats worth anything it will take time and effort (probably alot more than you expect). Hopefully you enjoy the ride but if you not prepared to put in the work you may as well give up and watch TV instead.

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I facilitated a workshop at the Internet Marketing Business meetup events  at St Kilda yesterday. I had no business cards and there were some pretty cluey people at the events so I pointed people this way If anyone was there and wants to catchup to discuss ideas etc contact me via contact page and we could maybe do lunch in the CBD or meet after work sometime.

All ideas that were thought up during the workshop are public domain and people are willing to give them a go if they want. I think I may have a go at one of them.

If anyones interested I did the slide pack in google presentation at it can be found below

Below are the ideas that came out of the workshop

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Last week I went to watch Red Dog which is a lovely movie about a dog in WA in Mining country. I’d recommend it. It made me want to go out and see some mining in WA. Mining is questionably what is driving the AU economy’s boom at the moment. And although most mining companies are small about 1/4 of all the companies in the Australian stock exchange are in mining related. Australia pulls alot of stuff from the ground and is the worlds largest exporter of coal.

• Iron ore – Australia was the world’s third largest supplier in 2008 after China and Brazil, supplying 342 million metric tonnes.[7]
• Nickel – Australia was the world’s second largest producer in 2006 after Russia.[8]
• Bauxite/aluminum
• Copper
• Gold – Australia is the second largest producer after China.[9]
• Silver
• Uranium – Australia is responsible for 16% of the world’s production and was the world’s third largest supplier in 2009 after Kazakhstan and Canada.[10]
• Diamond – Australia has the third largest commercially-viable deposits after Russia and Botswana.[citation needed] Australia also boasts the richest diamantiferous pipe with production reaching peak levels of 42 metric tons (41 LT/46 ST) per year in the 1990s.[citation needed]
• Opal – Australia is the world’s largest producer of opal, being responsible for 95% of production.[11]
• Zinc – Australia was second only to China in zinc production in 2008, producing just under 14% of world production.[12]
• Coal – Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and fourth largest producer of coal behind China, USA and India.[13]
• Oil shale
• Petroleum – Australia is the twenty-eighth largest producer of petroleum.[citation needed]
• Natural gas
• rare earths

But there is some dangers dangers in the big mines. Its pretty interesting

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I have been looking for decent plugins to setup some reporting on my wordpress sites for a while. My search is now over I have found the

best reporting plugins for wordpress

They are Adminer and Exports and reports
Adminer gives a way of quickly viewing and running sql scripts on wordpress tables within wordpress. Exports and Reports gives a way of generating reports from those scripts within wordpress. I have not found anything else like them. I was using them to setup some reports and that was when  I came up with my first problem with queries on wordpress tables it was

How to run a SQL Query to show the post details with the category information.

I was trying to join the wp_post table to the wp_term_taxonomy table so I could find
the categories that match the posts. It took me a while. Below is a diagram that shows how the category information is organized in

The code I wrote to do the join is below
select a.id ,b.term_taxonomy_id,c.term_id 
from wp_posts a, wp_term_relationships b,wp_term_taxonomy c,wp_terms d 
where	a.id = b.object_id and b.term_taxonomy_id = c.term_taxonomy_id
and c.term_id = d.term_id

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A small finance website http://fatcatsfinance.blogspot.com/of mine has recently leaped in traffic by a factor of 8. The biggest source was google.com. I don’t understand this because breakdown of traffic sources is

• 11.11%

Direct Traffic

• 82.57%

Referring Sites

• 6.32%

Search Engines

Highly confusing

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Julian Assange has won another Award The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism details can be found here

I’ve just watched this interview with Martha -quite interesting

The Outsiders: Martha Gellhorn from John Pilger on Vimeo.

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I have been having trouble with my eyes for about 3 years

• Dry eyes
• A scratch on my left eye that won’t heal
• A red mark on my nose near my eye
• Headaches / right eye pain

I had a bad week with my eyes playing up and I decided to have a go at seeing if this problem could be caused by nutrient deficiencies. So I am embarking on a 1 month course of supplements to see if they can fix it

• Vitamin A
• Vitamin B6
• Cod liver oil
• Mens multi (including magnesium and potassium)
• Carrot Juice

I’ll do a follow up post in a month

Background

About 2 years ago I bought a coca cola in a bar and drank from glass forgetting there was a straw in the glass. It hurt like hell , everyone I was with thought it was hilarious. I have to admit if had been someone else I too would have found it hilarious. A month later I woke up in agony holding my eye.

What followed was $600 is specialist bills to be told I have a corneal erosion in the eye I scratched. What was happening was that the scratch was not healing and sticking to my eyelid causing it to tear when I woke up. My eyes are also very dry I believe the scratch not healing and the dryness are related for this reason I am trailing supplements to see if it may be caused by a nutrient deficiency.

If it doesn’t work by June 31

Next Steps

1. Treatment with oral tetracycline antibiotics (such as doxycycline or oxytetracycline) together with a topicalcorticosteroid (such as prednisolone)

Patients with recalcitrant recurrent corneal erosions often show increased levels of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) enzymes.^[9] These enzymes dissolve the basement membrane and fibrilsof the hemidesmosomes, which can lead to the separation of the epithelial layer. Treatment with oral tetracycline antibiotics (such as doxycycline or oxytetracycline) together with a topicalcorticosteroid (such as prednisolone), reduce MMP activity and may rapidly resolve and prevent further episodes in cases unresponsive to conventional therapies.^[10][11] Some have now proposed this as the first line therapy after lubricants have failed.^{[3]. Source wwikipedia}

If that doesn’t work

• Chinese Medicine Practitioner

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How do you work out the square of two random 5 digit numbers. This man shows you how

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• Carbon Offset
• Carbon Footprint
• Carbon Trading
• Carbon nonsense

I am getting increasingly irritated by the fuss about carbon. If you assuming global warming is the biggest problem the world currently faces I do not agree that reducing carbon is the solution. I believe a focus on reducing pollution and clean efficient technologies is a good idea to help the environment but to blindly just to to reduce you “carbon footprint”

Global Problems

• Potable water shortage
• Food shortage
• War
• Destruction of the natural world (you kill this we all die)
  • 95% reduction in all food crops genetic diversity in the last 100 years.
  • x acres of farmland turned to dessert
  • Genetic modificated organisms are currently cross-pollinating with natural occurring species which could screw up all the rest
• The countries we live in are run by people with more power everday caused by erosion to our civil liberties increasing

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An assumption I have always had is that more gun ownership causes more murders. Recently I’ve heard some things that made me question this assumption so I have completed a little basic analysis and thought I’d share my findings.

My Analysis

I took the homicide rate per country from wikpedia (the countries were ordered by homicide rate). I then went to another website called http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region to get the % people with guns. I amended the gun ownership figures to the top and bottom and a few countries in the middle. I didn’t get all the % of gun ownership figures because it was too time consuming and I didn’t have time.

Results

Conclusion

Based on this quick bit of analysis  it looks to me like war and poverty do look like they correlate with homicide rate but gun owenership does not have any appreciable correlation.

My spreadsheet  can be found here

I would appreciate any thoughtful comments. If you have better data that show things in a different light then I would appreciate it if you could send it me and I’ll continue this post once I look at that.

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The image above I had made up for $150 using

The way it works is that you setup a prize action and people submit designs you then choose the one you like. If you don’t get any you like you don’t pay. Below is how I briefed in my design and the ad I put up. I received 2 designs , the one I choose went through 1 iteration.

The project is a Rock Show based upon the movie I imagined- details can be found on www.carolinetowers.com

Below is my brief

A poster is required for the action movie “Caroline Towers”

Summary
3 Main Characters – Richard Steel (hero), Leader of the resistance, Architect

About

• Huge building
• Lower floors = lower class
• Lower floors being filled in and occupants murdered so the tower can continue to grow.(The big secret)

Poster Style
below are some I like

More Details

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I was motivated to write this after a friend showed me the video below. Have you ever watched a competitive aerobic competition? No well maybe you should. In tight lycra and big moustache those boys are having so much fun!

All this talk of dance reminds me of the post I wrote a long while about the Melbourne Shuffle (a melbourne dance move that involves a shiny floor and lots of talc) which is worth checking out.

Also did you know that Pumping Iron the video about Arnold Swarzennegger  competing in Mr Olympia (prior to any of his film work) was all on yourtube. It is really good – you don’t have to like gyms to like this. It is really interesting. I saw this movie at a music festival once and was riveted. Arnie is playing mind games with the competitors and he is sooo cocky,  a real smart arse and has some good one liners. It opens with him taking ballet lessons.

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Having local copies of useful stuff on the internet is handy when your not online. The internet is also constantly changing which means that just because something useful is on there now doesn’t mean it always be as useful in the future. For this reason I like local copies of some key items 1. How to download the wikipedia I used okiwiki 2. How to Download all your google docs You can now download all your google docs in one go easily. Click Actions -> Download -> All items 3. How to download maps onto your iphone I use offmaps but its a bit annoying. I also tryto zoom around on my iphone in the maps application to put the maps in cache (although is teduios)

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We are getting screwed by retailers in Australia. Australia is a country full of duopolies and monopolies. I was recently sent this video which discusses our two largest retailers.

Due to the high cost of the AU dollar and the reasons above nowadays there are a large number of items that if you don’t buy them online your are being irresponsible with your money.  I have been able to save 50% on the shop price on these two items.

Item 1

ENGL Valve Amp (nice!)  60%  $1300   saving including shipping from Germany

bought from Thomman

Item 2
Protien Powder 50% $100 saving

bought from https://www.completehealth.com.au

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As readers to this blog may know I am in a band called Jimmy Yukka & His Amazing Band. As part of being in an active band anytime from 2003 you were obliged to get your band on myspace.

In that band I wrote a song about it (below).

I wrote that song a couple of years ago. Myspace now has an all new look that format.  Maybe the new format is quicker to load and has some really neat features and maybe it doesn’t crash all the time.

I’m never gonna know though because I won’t be trying the new myspace. Die myspace
….Die……Die…….Die

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Julian Assange is an Australian citizen that has recieved many awards for journalism and peace (see the full list in wikipedia) just this month he won a peace medal from the Sydney Peace Foundation and he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize see reuters article here

On Friday I watch the video below

High tech terrorist
In an article in the The Huffington Post Vice President Jo Biden was reported as calling Julian Assange a high tech terrorist. The Uk’s Daily Mail quotes potential US presidential candidate Sarah Palin as demmanding that Julian Assange is hunted down like Osama Bin Ladin.

The court case
Julian Assange is fighting a court case that could see him be extradited to Sweden (and then the fear is extradited to the US on some terrorism charge). He is only required for questioning. This is very unusual for an individual in the EU to be extradited just for questioning on a crime – especially unusual where no charges have been laid. The case has been widely missreported in the media but is actually about is him having fully consensual sex with two woman on different occasions whilst not wearing a condom (this is against the law in Sweden) . The case was started after one of the women went to the doctors to be tested for STD where she explained she had consensual unprotected sex with Julian after which the police started proceeding against Julian. The offense is of “minor rape” where the accused can be found guitly of rape even of the the person raped consents (?). This does not have an equivilent in the UK or Australia, an article explaining this was published in The Australian newspaper.

To hear two feminists on the radio station Democracy Now debating the charge and whether a charge of consenting rape is approprate click here.

The US strategy to contain Wikileaks
In an ironic twist of fate the US strategy to contain wikileaks was leaked to wikileaks. Democracy Now recorded an interview about 12 months ago with Julian Assange where he discussed this leak (unfortunaltly I cant find the episode please add a comment to this article if you can find it) . The key components of the strategy were

Any of that sound familiar?

About the video screening on Friday
The video at the top was screened in the Federation square in the centre of Melbourne buy the Australian journalists Union ACTU during the presentation a number of Australian journalists praised Julian Assange for his work. After that at the Melbourne State Library a guy called “Robert Foster” from the juice media made an impromptu performance on the steps. After a bit of digging I found this video

EXTERNAL SOURCES

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Australia has been devastated this last few months. The flooding has been on a massive scale affecting most of the east side of the country in one way or another. QLD has been most badly affected but NSW and VIC have also taken a pounding close to home Castlemaine has been affected. We spent last Sunday preserving fruits to donate to the guys that had their homes flooded in Castlemaine. Part of the growing ambundance project. Below is a video showing the the water. It is incredible after all the drought all the resiviors around castlemaine are now full. However the flooding has caused significant flooding and personal disasters.

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The only two US politicians I like Ralph Nadar and Ron Paul are teaming up. Ralph Nadar (progressive) and Ron Paul (libertairian). Below is a video

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I have just watched the speech by Ricky Gervais where he annihilates hollywood. Its dynamite. I’ve never seen anything like it. Its like watching the office but real and even more awkward.

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I have been listening to a podcast episode on Democracy Now where they played two speeches from Martin Luther King.

Nearly 48 years ago Martin Luther King (wikpedia page) delivered his optimistic and hopeful “I have a dream speech“. I’ve heard part of that speech before but never any others. The podcast played two other remarkable speeches from Martin Luther King. The first speech “Beyond Vietnam” is still very relavant today. The second is from a man who know his time on this earth is limited.

“Beyond Vietnam”

Exactly 1 year prior to his assasination he made a speech “Beyond Vietnam”
calling the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”. He also spoke about international aid “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar….it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring”. It was slammed in the media and Time Magazine called the speech

“Demagogic Slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi”

and time The Washington Post declared that King had

“diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

“I Have Been to the Mountain Top”

In April 3, 1968 he made a speech called “I Have Been to the Mountain Top”. Towards the end of the speech he talks about the time he was stabbed and almost died. In hospital he received many letters of support and out of all the messages he received there was one that he’ll never forget. The excerpt below is from the end of that speech starting with that letter. In the speech he seems to foresee his own early death.
The next day he was shot dead.

‘

Dear Dr. King,
I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.”

And she said,

While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.

And I want to say tonight — I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.

If I had sneezed — If I had sneezed I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.

I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.
And they were telling me –. Now, it doesn’t matter, now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.”

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.
And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight.

I’m not worried about anything.

I’m not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

‘

whole transcript can be found here

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Background

Established during the gold rush of 1851
The Home of the Castlemaine XXXX beer

Hot Rod centre of Australia

Robert O’Hara Burke – leader of the Burke and Wills expedition, was stationed in Castlemaine as police superintendent from 1858 to 1859.

Frank McEncroe - creator of the Chiko Roll which is a sausage in batter on a stick

Climate

600 mm of rain a year (approx) which is similar to that of Cambridge (where I grew up) but less than Sheffield (1000mm per year). It is much warmer and sunnier than both though.

Videos about Castlemaine and the surrounding area

The easy gold is long gone but there is still goldmining going on in Maldon 12km away from castlemaine at the Maldon gold project

below is a video from a guy who has been doing a bit of gold mining on his property

Some brit has saved me the trouble of videoing the Castlemeain and Maldon

THeres also the Maldon Folk festival

Just down the Road is Newstead below is a video of race they had there in 2006 on lawn mowers

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The garden has been going great recently with all the rain. I put together a video on how its going below

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I was recently listening to an interview with Canadian filmmaker Brent Leung has released a film called house of numbers about HIV / AIDS on the Lew Rockwell Show.  The film is called House of numbers and the interview blew my mind. The filmaker started making a film about aids and through the course of making the film discovered that the scientific knowledge on what is HIV and what is AIDS is far from the homogeneous. Some well respected scientist even question if HIV exist at all.

The scientist that won the Nobel prize for discovering the HIV virus claims in the movie that HIV / AIDS can be cured by a naturally healthy immune system! At its heart is a focus on numbers (as the name suggests) and the film rips into a number of the huge numbers that a talked bout around HIV / AIDS. Probably have a look at the trailer below and listen to the podcast for more details.

The Link to the films website is here

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I’m still loving this nano studio iphone app.

I have created 2 new tunes one that I made on the way to my friends house (I made the tune in 30mins) to wish him a happy birthday

Roy
The other tune is called Bump n Grind its dirty house I just did this tonight. I thought with all these effects and arpegioators I really should make some sleazy house music. (All Vocals are mine – (Including “Heaven sent”) and all music is from the iphone using either the keyboard or hitting in the drums – no samples)

Bump unt Grind

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Went of to the new house this weekend to do some painting and surveying

Full Screen

Full Screen View

I also got bitten by a redback (see image)

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To keep my music fresh I have been wanting to improve my guitar technique with some guitar lessons. My last guitar teacher moved further away which meant I found it too difficult to get to his new location. For this reason I started my search looking for lessons very close to my home or work . I couldn’t find any teachers that were really close that would have been suitable and it lead me to an innovative solution to my problem.

Lessons by Skype

I have found a new teacher from Sydney called EMZ who gives lessons worldwide Via Skype.

I have to admit I had my doubts about how effective using a webcam would be. The teacher did offer a free trial first and once I took up the trial it worked pretty well. I have now had 3 lessons and my teacher is great (I am currently learning “Play Misty for Me” theme to the film “Play Misty for Me” – I think I’m gonna have to hire it)

It is so convenient just skype him at the allotted time and pay him by payPal.

I think skype is going to revolutionize guitar lessons watch this space.

My teachers website is http://www.emzonlineguitar.com/index.html
Below is a video of him

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To help me with my podcast I have bought a couple of microphones.

The itouch mic $13 US (which is a lapel mic for the iphone)

and a Zoom H4n (a bit over the top for podcasts perhaps but I’m also in a band so have used it to record demo tracks) $450

I have used them to record my latest podcast on my bands website www.jimmyyukka.com I used the iphone mic as a backup mic (which was just as well as the Zoom H4n filled up halfway through the recording).

My Opinion on the itouch mic
cheap and easy and sounds better than the iphone headset mic (worth the $30)

My Opinion on the ZoomH4n
Gorgeous as a portable recorder or an small a/d for my laptop it even has gates

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I have been dying for a decent sampler on the iphone (I tried beatmapper) but all of the apps have disappointed until now. This thing is just sooo good!

It is called nanostudio it costs money but it really is breathtaking

This is the muts nuts. I can create tracks on the way to work! I  have created a bunch of tunes my favourite a couple are below. The interface is so slick.

Virgin Outbound (recorded whilst waiting for a flight to sydney)

Theres something going on outside recorded using the iphone mic for vocal samples. It is track 3 on my new concept albumn.

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I was listening to the Lew Rockwell show the other day and he interviewed a really interesting guy called John Taylor Gatto. John was an educator for 30 years and was named NY States official “teacher of the year” before he quit in disgust. He has written several books and was talking about the problem with the current western education system.

I was impressed and bought his book “Weapons of mass instruction” which I am reading at present. It is a very powerful book and has made me take a second look on some of my preconceived ideas about who I am and how society operates. I would strongly recommend this book.

Teach yourself to Learn

One line of self examination it sent me down was “what good has school done me”. I have been educated to a degree level (I have a mechanical engineering degree). I would claim that I learnt all I needed to know in primary school (age 6-11)  and all my education after that was a complete waste of time. All the important things I know now are not as a result of my schooling but they are self taught. To teach yourself though you need some some skills. The key to this is critical thinking.

How to think Critically

• It is a cliche but reading many books (including source texts)is the only way to really dig into a topic.
• Evaluate the material
• Have the courage to make your own conclusions based on the evaluation

Most people don’t read much, very few people read source materials (even the “experts”).  Most people today outsource nearly all thought to experts (financial advisors, doctors, education). Those “experts” are often lacking in basic critical thinking skills too or where they really know their topic they may also be lying to further their own agenda.

Formal education cannot rate critical thinking skill highly if it did we’d all be much better at them. Worst of all it makes us think we are not capable good critical thinking and it should be left to experts.

My Self Improvement Journey

The biggest single thing for me was probably getting over a fear of big books. In 2003 I read a book on photoreading I have never actually photoread a book but it did change my mindset on how to read large factual books. My reading steadily grew I would regularly fill my 45 litre rucksac with books from the library getting every book I could find specific subject until I moved on to the next one. I would have usually around 20 books out at any one time. In that time I also read the bible, the dead sea scrolls the Qaran and various hindu texts and many history books. I don’t read as much at the moment as I am listening to a lot of podcasts at present. Topics I am researching currently are Permaculture, gardening, internet marketing and anything that will help me with my new property.

Pink Floyds “Another Brick in the wall”

“Weopons of Mass Instruction” got me thinking about Pink Floyds song “Another brick in the wall” and I thought I’d look up what it was actually about. I had allways assumed it was about East Germany but it actually isn’t. It actually was about Roger Waters’s Grammer school. More details about the song can be found on this website Song meaning

Free Education

The Khan Achademy is an example of this in action. It is a free site with tutorials that cover all educational topics for schools and adult courses all for free. Its amazing and its it been put together by one ex stockbroker type.

Other Notes – Jon Taylor Gatto recently wrote an article about education here

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I was listening to the Survival Podcast today and Jack mentioned in passing that vitamin C when used in very doses has been shown hugely reduce cold turkey for heroin addicts and also prevent the heroin high from heroin and had amazing results in getting people off smack and cocaine.

Its a really interesting video

The scientist also talks about vitamin C and its health benefits when used in large quantities. Did you know the RDA for vitamin C for chimps is 60 times that for humans? I didn’t. Theres quite a few interesting things there.

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I am a pretty healthy individual however in the last couple of years I have develeoped a few chronic health problems

• Dry eyes
• Sore eyes
• Headaches that can last 3-4 days and put me in a bad mood (I think casued by painfull eyes)
• Hot flushes in the afternoon
• The headaches are made worse through doing headstands and handstands
• Corneal errosion – I scratched my eye a year ago and it still hasn’t healed. The eye specialist reckons I may just have to live with it.

I am not content to “live” with theses symtoms anymore and have declared war on my ailments. I am going try everything I can think of to get rid of this (apart from stopping work on a computer)

My Hypothisis

• Overworked Liver and maybe spleen
• causing chemical inbalances and dehydration that is
• casuing a lack of nutrients getting to my eyes which is
• causing pain in my eyes
• casusing my preloged headaches (migranes)

The Plan

Action 1 – Medical doctor (Got prescribed sandamigraine for my headaches which I stopped taking after a while because it wasn’t a cure just a way to reduce the symptoms)

Action 2 - Chinese Doctor I- I had acupuncture and some herbal remidies. 5 weeks into it I had a bad bought of headaches and nasty eyes. He suggested that the cause is most likely my liver speen and the herbs were to treat my eyes and liver. It is possible the reoccurence could have been due to a few beers that during a couple of days. However it was not the “miracle cure” I had hoped for so I decided I would try to sort it out myself.

Action 3 - The Liver Cleansing Diet I have been banging on about doing a fast or the liver cleansing diet for ages. I was winging about my headaches at work and saying how I was going to do a fast at some point and caught myself being pathetic. At this point I added to my todo list to get hold of the liver cleansing diet. At this time I have been strictly on the liver cleansing diet for 2 weeks. I have also been pretty free of booze (1 glass of wine and 2 beers).

Action 4 – My corneal errosion played up on the weekend. As a result I hit the internet again and found out that magnesium and zinc contribute to healthy eyes and depending upon the performance of your body your ability to metabolize these minerals can be reduced. For this reason I changed my hypothosis to

• bad liver / speen
• causing reduced minereal absorption causing mineral deficiency
• causing bad eyes

For this reason I thought it worth taking some suppliments I have been on berroca for now 3 days and currently my eyes are not actually dry (exciting)

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A friend of mine send me a link to a website that lists hundreds of documentaries and links to where you can watch them for free.  I’ve tried read “The truth about good and evil” by Friedrich Nietzsche but struggled with reading it. There was a documentary about it here. Well at least I know kind of what he was about now. And all for free.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/watch-online/

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I was almost tricked by a very convincing spam that I received this morning claiming to be from gmail.

“Due to the congestion in our Gmail servers,there would be removal of all unused Gmail Accounts.You will have to confirm if your E-mail is still active by filling out your login info below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.”

It then goes on to ask you DOB and some other details.

This is spam ignore it

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I have just started to use mailchimp and set it up to mail out every post I put up from my rock bands website.

I am really impressed with it as it’s easy to setup and has lots of videos to show you how to do things. It is also free for the first 3000 emails so it makes it low risk to try out. The analytics seems pretty good as well. Awebber is another highly rated service I did not try this though as it is not free. I have heard good things about it though.

Below are a few comparison blogs Awebber vs Mailchimp

• Moneyhelpforchristians
• mywifeleftherjob

If anyone has any feedback about my choice of mailchimp then I would love to hear your opinion in the comments

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