Brilliant!

It’s about time "The Man" started recognising that sharing is not the same as stealing.

I can’t praise this one highly enough.  I was watching MTV Indie last night and this clip came on. It starts as a documentary and soon turns into a fantastic music video clip.

In 1985, two of Australia’s premiere skip ropers, Spiradon ‘Mr Invisible’ Savvas (on Facebook) and Arthur ‘Venom’ Penington (on Facebook), put aside their dislike and united to lead Team Bluejuice into the World Skip Rope Championships. Their opponents — Shimmer Extreme, the young guns. It was a battle for the history books, one that is still spoken about to this day. In 2009, Team Bluejuice and Shimmer Extreme are set to make history as they again battle it out for the championship.

It’s a rocking track and a very clever clip.

It’s not often I hear a "new" song and love it straight away -- but this mash-up by DJ Earworm takes the masters of some of Annie Lennox’s catchiest songs and creates something entirely new.

Brilliant.

Brilliant piece of corny, daggy awesomeness.

This is what 96fm should be playing!

I just made a loan to someone in Mozambique using a revolutionary new website called Kiva (www.kiva.org).

My loaner page is here: http://www.kiva.org/lender/jasonjordan

You can go to Kiva’s website and lend to someone across the globe who needs a loan for their business – like raising goats, selling vegetables at market or making bricks. Each loan has a picture of the entrepreneur, a description of their business and how they plan to use the loan so you know exactly how your money is being spent – and you get updates letting you know how the entrepreneur is going.

The best part is, when the entrepreneur pays back their loan you get your money back – and Kiva’s loans are managed by microfinance institutions on the ground who have a lot of experience doing this, so you can trust that your money is being handled responsibly.

It’s finally easy to actually do something about poverty – using Kiva I know exactly who my money is loaned to and what they’re using it for. And most of all, I know that I’m helping them build a sustainable business that will provide income to feed, clothe, house and educate their family long after my loan is paid back.

Join me in changing the world – one loan at a time. I’ve only just started but I’ll be continuing to add new money to my loans as well as re-investing as the loans are re-paid. You don’t get a financial dividend on your investment – but that’s not what this is about. This is all about helping out because you can.

Visit Kiva now and find out more: http://www.kiva.org

Thanks!

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What others are saying about www.Kiva.org:

‘Revolutionising how donors and lenders in the US are connecting with small entrepreneurs in developing countries.’ – BBC

‘If you’ve got 25 bucks, a PC and a PayPal account, you’ve now got the wherewithal to be an international financier.’ – CNN Money

‘Smaller investors can make loans of as little as $25 to specific individual entrepreneurs through a service launched last fall by Kiva.org.’ – The Wall Street Journal

‘An inexpensive feel-good investment opportunity…All loaned funds go directly to the applicants, and most loans are repaid in full.’ – Entrepreneur Magazine

It seems like the road toll is increasing disproportionately to the increase in drivers. I guess it could be a media beatup – but ultimately, that’s not my point.

Any road trauma is a problem.

I’ve been hearing lots of arguments about how to lower the incidence of these events – but many are expensive and others will be ineffectual.

I agree our roads suck. I agree that "traffic calming" devices actually have the opposite effect on many types of drivers. I agree that speed limiting vehicles is dangerous in and of itself – and pointless – 90km/h is still too fast in a school zone.

So what other options are there?

Initially I thought using a GPS with GPRS feeding data back to a central computer would be useful. Not *that* expensive, technology is already here but I can forsee the outcry over "Big Brother".

The only option I see now is a cultural one. If we can’t stop drivers acting irresponsibly and outrageously we have to get over our fear of dobbing in a mate and report it. Every time.

Yes – there will be issues of malicious reporting and other such foul play… but I don’t think that should stop it. You can always warn those who make frivolous reports.

Perhaps it could take a number of complaints about the same driver within a certain period of time from different people before anything is done. All it would need is for 3 drivers to report that Green Lancer heading north at 130km/h+ on the Kwinana – and they get a visit from the Plod.

I know that in effect this can already happen, but if the Government is willing to spend millions on campaigns for drink driving and seatbelts, surely a "Dob in a Dickhead" campaign would be even more effective?

It’s a big cultural mindshift for us to make, but with the amount of people (families, friends, innocent bystanders) currently being affected by idiot drivers surely we can all agree to report the goons who are clearly risking not just their own lives?

I’m not a particularly politically motivated person – but I’m almost pissed off enough to get this whole "Dob in a Dickhead" thing going myself.

We’ll see if this is a good idea or not … but at the moment yeah I like it.

iKarma allows you to build a reputation online by creating a profile and then having your network of contacts link to you and provide 3rd party feedbacks and comments about you on both a personal and professional level.

As I have little to hide… (apart from the bodies) … I’m happy to give it a go and see if it works.

Check me out at: http://www.ikarma.com/id/106 and join in!

Infant Confinement Specialists… now we have 4 kids, these could come in veeeery handy.

Babycage.net – Infant Confinement Specialists Since 2001

Now, where can I get a Baby Handle?  I want to be able to pick up a crawling child as though it were a suitcase!

It’s here again… v3.0 – have a look.

GotMyVote.com

I’ve got my own private war going on with spammers.

I use Postfix on Linux with multiple Realtime Black Lists (RBLs) to reject spammers as soon as they connect. That way they use minimal system resources and I don’t have to have their rubbish getting onto my system.

Six months ago, some spam started slipping through.

I implemented TMDA. Tagged Mail Delivery Agent. It’s a great system but can cause pain to all email senders not just spammers. It works by challenging first time email senders to my system. Once they respond correctly, they get whitelisted and don’t ever see a challenge again.

Of course this means spam can make it on to my mailhost and I still have to filter it.

That’s the same issue I have with Spamassassin. I installed it about 3 months ago and it identifies spam very, very well. But the spam still makes it onto my system.

I wanted a way to reject it BEFORE it makes it onto my box. Just like the RBL’s do.

Yesterday I found it!

Amavisd-new integrates nicely with most MTA’s. The Postfix install was extremely simple. It passes off inbound emails to Spamassassin and F-Prot (anti-virus) and has the ability to reject before accept if the email is identified as spam or virus.

I think it’s fantastic. In the last 24 hours, only one spam made it through – and that was completely in Spanish.

For a free product that can be installed on a Pentium 133/64mb PC, we’re talking about something that provides a service of inestimable value for pennies.

Ah Perl… is there anything it can’t do?

YAY!

GotMyVote.com is now owned by GotMyVote Pty. Ltd.

The company leases the intellectual property, domain name, code and server space from myself and David and has no tangible assets of its own.

It’s a big step – and an expensive one too – but absolutely essential in this litigious age. Hopefully, this will minimise the risk of a company taking umbrage to a review and trying to sue our pants off.

We genuinely see GotMyVote.com as a positive and beneficial tool for consumers AND businesses. It’s a shame that the ever present risk of litigation means we have to pre-emptively spend more money just to protect our asses rather than spending it on making the site better.

Never mind. It’s exciting and the next big step in turning our baby into something that may well earn us enough passive income to facilitate our other business ideas.

Happy Happy Joy Joy.

Ok, cats out of the bag – a bit.
http://www.gotmyvote.com is live albeit in beta til July 1.

Please go and take a look. I’m very interested in your thoughts.

Theres a great deal of work to do – both in the backend and in the user interface… it’s only by getting feedback that we’re going to end up with something usable and pleasant.

In my wanderings I’ve found a terrific, independent news source for all things related to the Iraq Liberation.

The Agonist is a blog by Sean-paul who seems to have some excellent alternative sources for timely updates.

It’s refreshing to get some news about the situation without it having been fed through PsyOps people living at MSFOXCNNBCBBC.

Highly recommended.

We’ve finished most of the design. Now the coding begins in earnest. It shouldn’t take too long as we have solid plans and the coding is essentially a realisation of what we have already designed.

I think the graphical design will be the trickiest bit of all. Everyone likes different things. I guess we’ll keep it simple.

As soon as we have something up and running we’ll let you know here first.

The server is prepared, the domain is registered, the design is complete.

Lets roll.

This is an amazing piece of technology.  It’s a CD that you can stick in virtually any PC with a CD-ROM and boot to a fully functioning Linux without touching the hard drive.

That means you can test Linux or recover from a damaged hard drive just by inserting the CD.  Give it a go!

Knoppix 3.2 is now available Via NeoWin: “KDE 3.1 (woody release); Evolution 1.2.1; OpenOffice 1.0.2; KOffice 1.2.1; Possibility to create a persistent homedir with personal data and desktop settings on a memory stick or similar, optional with AES encryption; Many updates and new tables for hardware detection.”

I knew I should have taken my clothes off. These two shots don’t make it as obvious as I’d like, but they do show the overhaul I’ve just put my body through.

I’ll keep looking for some better before and after shots.

There’s about 12 months between the shots – and a good 20kgs of fat. I’ve gone back up about 6kgs in the last 12 weeks but I’m in the gym regularly now trying to bulk up and add some shape.

When you get a good idea – run with it!

Ok, I’ve set up the IT Operations Information Exchange. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m restricting membership to registered users who must be working in the field. I want to keep it as professional as possible. I guess I’ll allow read access for everyone else – and maybe full access even for unregistered users in the “current issues” area.

Anyway – go check it for yourself… happy to accept any feedback on how to improve it.

http://www.pcguru.com.au