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30th August 2007

What I’ve Been Doing Today – 2007-08-30

  • 1226 – playing around with Facebook. Waiting for the drug rep to arrive with lunch #



Categories : Twitter | 0 Comments

30th August 2007

Facebook – cool but pointless?

Alright, now that I’ve been fiddling around with my Facebook for much of the afternoon I’ll share a few preliminary thoughts.

Firstly facebook is very easy to use, and there are heaps of cool apps you can add to customise your page – I’ve got ones which feed in my blog posts, link to blog friends’ posts (who are facebook users), display flickr photos, Library Thing books, a travel map, my X-Box Live Gamer card and more. Within a very short space of time I’ve got the page looking pretty cool…. but …..

…. unfortunately you won’t be able to take a look at it,  unless you sign up with Facebook that is! As far as I can tell (and please someone correct me if I am wrong), the general internet public cannot view a facebook page – you can only view someone’s facebook page if you are a member yourself, and are an approved “friend” of that person, or are in the same regional “network” on facebook. Maybe I’m not quite getting the point of facebook – I thought it was kind of like a more sophisticated version of MySpace, where you can quickly construct an online presence, throw up some content, and connect in many ways with other people. All of this can be done (and quiet nicely) on facebook but if it’s limited only to other users then that takes a lot of the shine off it as far as I’m concerned.

But I’ll keep fiddling with it. Maybe there’s some kind of privacy setting I’ve missed somewhere but I can’t see it at the moment. The only settings I can find seem to just allow you to restrict access even more tightly, not less so. Once again, if any other facebook people have thoughts on all this, please let me know…



Categories : Internet | 8 Comments

30th August 2007

Health Battleground

Allow me to get a little bit political for a few moments … It’s good to see that health has finally opened up as a bit of a battleground for the upcoming election, after a couple of fairly quiet years on the health policy front. This was sparked off by Kevin Rudd’s headline grabbing “policies” of a federal takeover of state hospitals and something called GP “super clinics.” There’s been plenty written about the former idea and all the potential problems associated with it (including maybe an increased GST) but not much press on the Super Clinics. Like most of Rudd’s policies to date, it seems to be a flashy title designed to beguile the public and make Rudd seem like a sensible man of action, yet has very little substance behind it. As if building these new clinics is going to address the problems of a nationwide doctor shortage and overcrowded emergency departments. Where are they going to get these doctors from? If they manage to attract doctors to shift into these practices (and so far the only “incentive” I have seen mentioned is a $15,000 payment which really won’t attract many GPs at all, especially if these clinics are to be bulk-billing clinics which would actually reduce most GPs’ income)… but even if they can attract GPs to work there, aren’t they just shifting the problem from one place to another, making it even harder to get appointments in the practices the doctors woul be forsaking? When there’s only a limited pool of doctors, building new clinics won’t go a long way towards solving the problem, they need to add to the pool of doctors… HOW? only two possibilities spring to mind – one is increasing the medical school intake, which the Howard Govt has already done, but which is a long term solution only since it will be years before these new docs are practicing. Or secondly increasing the amount of foreign doctors allowed to work here, but this is both morally ambiguous (since we might be “stealing” doctors from other countries who need them even more) and slightly dodgy politically (after the recent doctor terrorist scare) and medically (since it’s hard to assure the quality of medicine practiced). So Super Clinics is all headline (don’t you just love the word “Super”!) but no substance. But hopefully it will have the effect of upping the ante and making health a bigger issue in the upcoming election. Hopefully the government can come up with a better plan than Rudd’s efforts so far.



Categories : General Practice, News, Politics | 0 Comments

30th August 2007

Facebook

I never bothered to get a MySpace, and don’t even really know why I bothered to do this, but I now have a Facebook. At this stage it looks like quite a well set up, elegant, and versatile application, but I don’t know how much I’ll be using it.

For the time being though, to keep it fresh, I’ve added a plugin so my blog posts here will automatically be posted there also. That way at least I’ll have a bit of dynamic content instead of a stagnant facebook – so long as I update this blog that is. Anyway, if you have a facebook yourself, let me know your thoughts on it, and please add me as a friend. I only have one so far (thanks Rodney!) Oh and I found there is a group for Five Senses Coffee, so I’ve signed up for that. That’s about all I’ve gotten around to so far.



Categories : Blogs, Housekeeping, Internet, Personal | 0 Comments

30th August 2007

My Personality in a Box

Discovered this personality test over at Hamo’s blog. Seems reasonably accurate, as far as I can tell. Visit MyPersonality.info to sign up and do the test yourself, and let me know how it goes :) Or click on the box below to discover more about my personality results…

Click to view my Personality Profile page



Categories : Personal | 4 Comments