Brisbane River

Healesville racecourse

I found this photo of Healesville racecourse under water. Its officially a heavy track!!!

Kill the Bats.

"The LNP's primary industries spokesman Ray Hopper put a motion in parliament on Wednesday to better protect people and the viability of farms, saying farmers should be able to shoot flying foxes." The driver for this call " to the gun" and to do the proper aussie thing and start shooting things dead was the recent sad death of another Vet from the Hendra virus which is transmitted , or can be transmitted from bats to horses and then from horses to humans. At last count 3 people in 10 years have died from Hendra virus in Qld. Based on this logic not only would all the snakes in the fair state of Queensland be round up and shot ( on average 3 people a year die from snake bite that makes 30 dead people in 10 years), all the drivers of cars would need to be shot as well given that nearly 300 people died on the roads last year. And how would we deal with the suicide rate ( currently about 300 people a year in QLD) - SHOULD WE ROUND THEM UP AND SHOOT THEM TOO!

Don't you love living in a country where our politicians' solution to complex problem is just "shoot the bastards" !!

An ode to Octavalent

An ode to Octavalent

Every night from now aloud I pray
"God bless my mother
God bless my father"
and especially the one to whom their is no equivalent,
may god doubly bless - the great Octavalent.

My you keep him running
and keep him far from harm
And let me know if he saddled and ready to stride out
Be it Caulfield or Flemington or Sandown
or even Warwick Farm.

May This fine beast,
to relieve me when I am stressed
keep running at odds
be it on the green grass in the east
or the dust bowls of the west.

Though the experts will most likely disagree
Octavalent truly fits all my criteria
"as horse of the yearier"
Along with Vim and his Brother
and at 70-1 who can forget
the that mighty mare Brackenette

And as we get older and we walk
through the Moonee Valley of Death
And as we are about to be heaven sent
Lord please give me another winner
that pays as much as -
the great - Octavalent

Lads hope you enjoy lunch I am off to cash a ticket
For your information as I walk out the door
It wasn't on the nose, quinella or even each way.
I've got 20 percent of a FIRST FOUR!!

Save the Crossley Church

Recent article in Eureka Street spoke of the pending sale of the Crossley Catholic Church.This is one of many public meeting places across the country that has either gone into or is about to go into private hands ( some would argue that the Catholic Church is a form of private enterprsie.

"At the top of a hill in south-west Victoria sits the church and hall of St Brigid's in Crossley, surrounded by rolling green hills of fertile volcanic soil. To the south, the hills drop away to the Southern Sea. These fields have sustained the largest rural Irish immigrant population in Australia for more than 150 years".

And here Endeth the lesson!

In the spirit of Randomness I got to the last thing - I Google and guess what - discovered I already had an account and had set it up monthes ago. Heres a picture of Neil Young and heres neil.

Bloglines and RSS feeds

I had a play with setting up RSS feeds and am yet to master but this interests me greatly especially the capacity to transfer feeds and podcasts etc to a mobile device to make the train journey home more bearable.

Wikis arent as Wicked as I thought - Wicked!!!

The world of the Internet always tantalises and then lets you down. I thought some evil person somewhere would have developed a wiki that was about wickedness - well they have . Except it is about Wicked - the musical - DAMN!! And to compound things when I went looking for Wicked Librarians this is what I got - beware its a hot blog! Well organised and a good explanation of Wikis.

Library Thing and the e book thing

I can see why small libraries might find this a possible answer to cataloging. I added a few books one of whicgh I was the author and pretty impressed with the capacity to search large bibliographic sets quickly. Interesting that most are in English.

The Project Gutenberg site is worth exploring. I downloaded Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Mindmaps - Free Mind and Mindmiester and Mindmap - I think!!

I love mind maps. We certainly used them heavily in recent business planning exercises. That was a commercial product called Mindmap ( i think?) but I also used Freemind which although clunky in some regard I quite liked. For this exercise I have had a play with Mindmeister and this is very easy to use.
As an observation with the recent work we have done on the business plan I found a number of people felt that the use of Mind maps to express a business assessment and direction quite challenging. I had repeated requests for the text version starting with the title and content page and ending with the index.
Methinks they are actually an art form!

Skype - I Like the Hype

You can see why the internet is changing all known business models. Check out Clay Shirky on Newspapers and then think about how Telstra and the telcos are going to live in a world of Skype.

Second Life and You Tube

You Tube is fascinating I suspect more so for its wealth of random ordinariness . Check out my selection of random videos from YouTube displayed using the Blogger widget.

And hows this for random. Yesterday I fired up an old PC and found a link in my web favorites section of Firefox. The link was to an experiment by a company called Daden LTD in about 2002 using Chatbots as online Reference Librarians - it was very raw. The Library world were horrified that this looked like the future and in many cases missed the point which wasnt about providing an online reference service but learning about how people interacted with chatbots and in particular how language was used ( I used to delight in asking the female chatbots for their phone number and trying to find out if they wanted to go out and see a band!!)

How does this marry into Second Life you wonder? Well when I clicked the link I discovered that Daden have developed somewhat in the intervening years and are now , among other things selling Chatbots and Virtual personalities (Price: From £3499 set up and £999 a year hosting and support ) and have made what looks like a lucrative business out of virtual worlds - they have an island in Second life. The link stored in my browser took me to a You Tube demo on aircraft tracking in second life.

What does this all mean? I am not sure, however two things come to mind. The value of being able to experiment and use that to innovate and develop products is still as important as the day man first experimented with the wheel. And it is highly unlikely that airline food will be any better in Second Life!

Facebook Versus MySpace - Neil Young Wins

I believe there should be a global battle organised. All those on Facebook move to the right of the world and all those on Myspace move to the left- and then charge! I find both interesting. I like and have for some time occasionally used MySpace for random searches of music- most often using Neil Young as a Jumping off point and following his friends.

THIS brings me to Facebook - something I set up a while ago. Firstly I was surprised that people wanted to be my friend and what was worse my family wanted to be my friend!! On a serious note Facebook is quite useful for communication, talking to others, sharing games etc. Also as secretary of a community sporting club I set up a group to see how useful Facebook could be in sharing information- its very useful is my conclusion. I also joined the Save the Timboon Pub group and we got it reopened!!

PS: thats my Facebook photo!!

Photo of pearl harbour - Photo Generator and Other Generators

Played around with some of the photogenerators and this shot of the bombing of Pearl Harbour looks nice in a frame. Purportedly this is one of several photos taken on the day and left for many years undeveloped in a box brownie.
I tried to get a frame around the photo but somehow failed however I did play with the Apple rumour generator and got this rumour "An operative deep inside Apple has advised us to expect a 16 Core Mac Pro in the Second Quarter 2007". Makes you wonder about the currency of rumours.

You Tube and Flickr

I really like the fact you can incorporate random ( sort of) You tube and Flickr slideshows in your blog. The stuff to the side are a combination of random keywords, Places such as Warrnambool and Tower Hill, combined with things such as potato and trains brings together a wonderful array of images.

Golf at Port Fairy

Imagine a cold autumn day with the sun going down in the west and the moon rising in the east. Mix this with the sound of the wind and the waves rolling in on the beach just over the hill and a scorecard with multiple double figure scores pales into insignificance - at least that's my argument ( a 12 on the first!!)

Above playing the last hole at Port fairy golf course. The hole is dedicated to my mothers cousin which in the true spirit of Vimineousity I discovered by accident.

Footy's Back

You know footies Back when the city is awash with Yellow, Black and Blue and White scarves. Thanks to Darren I was able to retrieve a video from my mobile yesterday that I know will be enjoyed by a few of my fellow bloggers


Can't Wait for the sea of red and black and green purple scarves - good luck to all!!

And the Mighty Hopkins Rolls On!!

In the spirit of Vimineousity I went to You Tube in search of more of the Hopkins River. I got many videos of Flannel shirted fishermen extracting Bream from the river. And although I enjoy fishing, the sight of fine fish wobbling on the end of hooks for too long wasn't really that enjoyable. However Hopkins is a fantastic word to exercise vimineousity. Going with the flow I found someone I forgot existed , Lightnin Hopkins. That great bluesman who wrote " baby please dont go". a song that Bon and Angus made famous. But this is a great Monday morning song - enjoy!

How 2 = 1

This photo was taken in about 1982. in fact its two photos quickly taken of the Hopkins river at Allansford. I didn't realize until much later that they joined perfectly. The great joy of digitisation is that i can now make 2 equal 1!

With the big dry i hope it at least makes people feel a bit cooler.

Wots a word worth?

The most difficult thing I always find is naming something. The mere act of giving this blog a name took 17 years with very little sleep , no food and much trauma. How could a name be witty and subtle at the same time , have clear meaning, be enigmatic , and emerge as a dazzling "BlogNom"?
Over the 17 years I became very disappointed in the good folk of the internet. I expected there to be an "automatic blog name generator" - you know , you just whack in a couple of random words and whammo - you get the perfect blog name! No such thing exists. The internet was invented to help us increase our laziness and I have discovered a gap.
In the end I had to go to the Oxford English Dictionary seek guidance from the grandaddy of ' user generated content". Luckily by the time I was wading through "V" I was able to find some inspiration. The word "vimineous" is now rare in use - (which anticipates the future of this Blog) and means:
1. Made of pliable twigs or wickerwork.
2. Bot. Producing long, flexible shoots or twigs.

So welcome to this rare, pliable and far reaching gathering of twigs!