Baggas' Blog

I’m still not a huge Twitter devotee and if forced to choose between it and facebook I would pick the latter, but I do still cross-post to it and follow my feed every day or two on my iPhone.

If, like me, you’ve dabbled in Twitter you may not understand some of the bewildering abbreviations they use. This article gives a great run down on some of the features of Twitter, and there are plenty of other twitter related resources on his site as well : Twitter FAQ

Rodney Olsen has an excellent blog that I like to follow. You can also hear him most days presenting on Sonshine FM 98.5. Currently he’s blogging about a topic close to his heart – cancer and it’s effect of people’s lives. As a doctor I’m only too aware of how common and devastating a problem cancer can be, but if it’s not directly impacting your life then it’s easy for people to foget about it. Rodney is planning a big cycling trip from Perth to Albany in October to try and raise money for cancer charities.  Please visit his blog, share your stories, and show your support for this worthy cause… Breaking the silence on cancer.

As part of my renewed blogging vigour over the last few weeks I’ve been updating my blogroll – getting rid of some dead links and adding a few fresh ones.

Let me just draw your attention to a few of the ones that I read on a regular basis

1. Scot McKnight – this guy is a theology professor in the US who was written some good books and blogs about a heap of interesting religious topics. The problem with his blog is he makes so many book recommendations that I just can’t resist so my amazon.com account, and subsequently my credit cards and bookshelves, become overloaded.
2. Hello Internet – Ben has his own video show, and also posts a lot of stuff about movies, music, books, and comics so if you’re into those sort of things (and most of us are into at least one of them) then check it out.
3. Slacktivist – another Christian blog and one of my favourites. This guy has a prophetic voice that I tend to agree with most of the time. In a well reasoned, often humorous and occasionally scathing way, he examines some of the excesses and inconsistencies of the Christian Right/fundamentalists (mostly in the US but still somewhat relevant to the rest of us). Recent examples include those crazy anti-rock & roll Christians who think U2 is satanic, the misguided creationist Ken Ham (who I’m sad to admit is from Australia..), the kooks claiming universal health care will lead to mass euthanasia, and of course his ongoing brilliant step-by-step demolition of the Left Behind series. Check it out if you think you will resonate with that.. otherwise maybe best you don’t.. but he does post on a lot of other interesting stuff as well.
4. Guitar for Worship – my mention of U2 in the last section inevitably leads me to Karl’s blog which is based on guitar and worship (nothing like a nice obvious blog title) – not only does he love The Edge but he also writes humorous yet insightful posts on guitar, tone, worship, and gear. Biggest problem with this page is it fuels my gear and gadget habit. Every time I read his page I have to fight the urge to immediately go on eBay and hunt for pedals (often unsuccessfully). But I just can’t stay away (from both ebay and his blog)…

Was going to write some more but I can smell a nice curry cooking and wanted to get in some GarageBand time before dinner, but with those 4 blogs you’ll have hours and hours (or longer) of material to keep you busy… enjoy!

I continue to not be too active here in this blog due to study/family/ministry/work/facebook etc, although have been a little more involved in our worship team’s blog here : http://wccworship.wordpress.com/

In the process I’ve recently discovered a few brilliant worship guitar blogs that have really got me inspired. Here’s a few of them :

• Guitar for Worship
• Guitar Praise
• Worship Guitar Guy
• Les Paul Player Doctor

They are all now fixtures in my newsreader and all are excellent, but I’d recommend the first one especially. This dude has a mountain of good material, loves U2, and is pretty damn funny too. So if you’re into that sort of thing, check it out. In the meantime I’ll be off hiding out in facebook as usual.

Yuu may have noticed a lack of activity here of late, partly because I’ve been so busy and partly because my online presence (like that of many other people) has sharply veered into the realm of facebook. I hate to say it (because I really hated it at first) but I think the “new” facebook has ultimately turned out to be an improvement, greatly enhancing the social interactivity of the site whilst reducing a lot of the spam and the preponderance of silly applications that were dragging down the old facebook. They are all still there, but much more nicely compartmentalised. In fact the new facebook has also in my mind effectively replaced Twitter – it gives the same functionality of microblogging with status updates, but allows for a much more elegant way of replying and communicating based on these updates, and with a much larger “audience.” I’ll still cross post to twitter using ping.fm (in fact as of today I now have the Australian leader of the Opposition “following” me on twitter) but facebook is where it’s at. Amazing how it continues to grow, and penetrate into more and different demographics. Wonder if the creators of facebook ever imagined how far this would go – from a niche site for uni students to arguably one of the two most crucial sites on the web (along with Google).

The other thing area that facebook has tentatively moved into is chat, with the little web-based chat in the lower right corner. I’ve used this a couple of times now and it’s not bad, although a little unreliable. The potential utility of this is that if facebook is becoming your communications hub, then instantly all of your FB contacts are on your chat list. It keeps it all centralised. At present though, facebook chat is under-cooked and very low powered. If they want this to compete with MSN, AIM, Yahoo etc then they will need to beef up it’s features and create stand-alone desktop software so it will run when your browser is closed, allow more customisable contact lists, availability status, invisibility, file transfers, and ultimately video and audio chat. Not sure if this is their goal but the potential is there. For Mac users, you can go part way to achieving this using Adium, a neat and powerful program that combines all your different chat accounts into the one client – and facebook chat is one of those. So you can chat with facebook friends even without your browser open. Probably there is similar software for Windows, but I haven’t been bothered to look for it.

I’m not planning on abandoning this blog any time soon, but the chances are you’ll be seeing me a lot more on facebook…

Over the past couple of years I’ve been regularly entertained by LaHaye and Jenkin’s “Christian” fiction novel Left Behind. Well actually not by the novel itself, but by the excellent commentary provided by Fred on his slacktivist blog. Over the last few days Fred finally reached the end of the book – a momentous occasion. His post on the final pages gives his usual humorous analysis of the events (or non-events) contained therein, but more importantly he goes back and looks at some of the larger issues surrounding the book and gives his reasoning why this should be considered as the “Worst Book of All Time.”

Somehow it seems a little sad. Although slacktivist is still high on my list of must-read blogs due to his great political, religious and journalistic commentary, it just won’t be the same without “Left Behind Fridays” Hope Fred doesn’t take too much of a break before he delves into the next book Tribulation Force – could this book be any worse than the “Worst Book of All Time”? I guess we’ll have to wait and see…

I’ve seen noted before the eerie similarities between the current US presidential race and the final season of The West Wing (my all time favourite show). Today I discovered an interesting Australian blog about US politics, Kan Da Shan, who in this post, goes into some detail listing the similarities…

Social networking – it’s the big buzzword at the moment. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and many others are the latest extension of the blogosphere, and are reaching a much greater crowd for whom maintaining a proper blog would not be considered. Politicians such as Barack Obama and many other well known personalities are using these sites to their advantage.  Even my wife now has her own facebook!

The two main sites I’ve used are facebook and twitter, which have different, but sometimes overlapping, uses. Facebook has been good for connecting with current friends and family, old friends from school and Uni and elsewhere, and even allowed me to maintain some contact with some Canadian friends I met in Uganda last year. The applications of facebook are myriad – from messages and chat (as Jen discovered for herself last night), photo and video sharing, through to a vast range of mini apps, ranging from the useful to the completely stupid.

Twitter is much simpler – you just post a short, SMS length message which goes onto a timeline of messages from you and your twitter friends. It’s hard to explain the appeal of this but it can be good for just posting quick status updates or having extended (though sometimes difficult to follow) conversations. A primary use of twitter for me (as for ob1 and others) is to feed twitter posts into my blog so as to maintain a level of activity here when I am to busy to create full blog updates.

And these are just two examples – there are plenty more other overlapping and different social networking sites.

The problem for some of us then becomes that if we are signed up to 2 or more of these sites it becomes :

• (1) a chore to keep them all up to date
• (2) difficult to keep up with the activity on all of them

I know there are some apps which attempt to solve problem 2 but I am yet to investigate them. However I have found an excellent solution to the first issue – http://ping.fm

Using this site you can type in your twitter style update (or a longer blog for sites which support that) and it will be instantly sent to as many of these different networking sites as you are registered for. As I said my 2 main sites are twitter and facebook, however along the way I have signed up with plurk, livejournal, myspace and several others – so this stops them from lying completely idle. It also has the advantage that I can update ping.fm (and hence everything else) not only from a web interface but also by IM and a range of other mini-apps, which is useful for mobile updating. Definitely worth checking out if you use any of these sites. Currently it’s still in Beta (though works perfectly) and you need a code to register. The current code is “pingitlikeitshot” but if you find that doesn’t work let me know and I’ll try and get you a newer one.

EDIT (Aug 16) :  new code for ping.fm is “vivalaping”

The Global Ambition of Rick Warren

this is a great article from Time about Saddleback megachurch pastor Rick Warren, author of the Purpose Driven Life. Warren cops a bit of flack on the Christian web, both from conservative dogmatic types and from some emerging types, for being a bit of a lightweight, too compromising, not conservative enough, not liberal enough etc etc – but perhaps this is part of his success. He has managed to present the gospel message in a way that connects with the average person in a real and meaningful way. Although a very smart guy, he keeps his message simple and direct so as not to overwhelm people.

So I’ve always kinda liked Warren, but his story gets better. Not content with having a massive church and being a best selling writer (who gives away most of his earnings though), Warren is now moving more into the political sphere. Fortunately he’s not just becoming yet another of the divisive, condemnatory Religious Right – rather he seeks a more conciliatory, unifying approach to Christian involvement in politics. He seems to see the role of the church as being a force for good, making positive changes in the world, rather than just a defense against bad.

He says he is more interested in questions that he feels are “uniting,” such as “poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and human rights”

Interesting article about Warren, his global PEACE plan for Christian mobilization, and his upcoming political forum where he will have both Obama and McCain together for one of the first times this campaign.

• The Exigent City – this is a fascinating in-depth article from the New York Times on the history, sociology and architecture of refugee camps around the world. They also have a good article on the groth of new cities.
• Ben Witherington writes an excellent post on God’s freedom, love, and human free-will. I’ve been pondering some of these issues lately so this is very timely.
• On the US election, this article compares the online presence of Obama and McCain, and this article looks at McCain’s strategy in searching for a Vice President – Google!
• Apple News from the WWDC conference. A better, cheaper iPhone with 3G and GPS, coming to Australia soon (wonder how long I will be able to resist?). An upgraded .Mac service (no trouble resisting that) and a new Mac OSX ‘Snow Leopard’ next year. Read a summary of some of the buzz here. My only disappointment is that I was hoping to see an upgraded version of the MacBook Air with more storage and RAM – guess I’ll keep waiting for that one… until the next Stevenote..

Along similar lines to my last entry about wild west cowboys to be blamed for legalism in 20th century evangelical/fundamentalist churches, one of my favourite bloggers Fred the slacktivist weighs in with his take on C.S. Lewis’ book Prince Caspian :

I haven’t seen Prince Caspian yet, but since it was the “No. 1 Movie” this weekend, let’s revisit what that wonderful little book was about:

Prince Caspian is about beer.

He then goes on to quote Lewis from Mere Christianity discussing this very issue of legalism, especially relating to alcohol. And Lewis, as you may or may not know, enjoyed his beer. Fred’s interpretation of Prince Caspian is that the bad guys (Telmarines) represent excessively legalistic “anti-beer Christians” and the mission of the Pevensie children is to help Caspian and Aslan restore joy and wildness to the land.

It’s a long long time since I’ve read the book, and I’m also yet to see the movie (not sure when it comes out here in Australia) but it’s an interesting take on a classic children’s book. I’ll have to try and revisit it sometime soon.

You can read Fred’s post here.

Came across a video similar to this one on cnn.com today and thought I’d go on The Google and see if I could find a YouTube version to post for y’all. This is not exactly the same but it’s essentially the same basic story – classic Bushims! Ain’t the internets a wonderful thing!

Well I’m back to working slightly longer days this week after doing half days for the school holidays. For the second half of the holidays it didn’t seem all that slack though as I still had babies being born almost every day which meant early mornings and late nights and other hospital visits in between. This week has been a little quieter on the baby front although I’ve got my second one on the way today (no idea what time she will deliver though) and work here in the surgery is reasonably sedate. I do have a smallish pile of paperwork to get through but rather than doing that I’ve been putting my time to us catching up with some episodes of the Amazing vlog show on YouTube. This is an almost daily video blog produced by Mr Internet and his compadres. The episodes are well produced, funny at times, and interesting. At least I found them interesting but I know most of the guys who are doing it so maybe if you have no idea who they are you might not be so enthralled.

Anyway here’s the first episode – I’ll leave it up to you to check out the rest if you want…

A bittersweet look at ten years of MP3s

Excellent article here looking back on ten years since the first MP3 players were produced. The author mentions some of the good things about digital music, but also some of the things he misses such as borrowing and lending music, shopping for used music, album liner notes and artwork, and (my favourite) music as furniture.

I can relate to many of his points. I jumped on the MP3 bandwagon fairly early, using my dialup connection in the heyday of Napster to download hundreds of tracks. It was slow but fun in a way, and challenging -like trying to find that elusive final song you were missing from an album, or the rare album that few people had. And although it was anonymous there was still the pleasure of finding a user with similar music tastes and a huge collection of songs – even better if they had a fast internet connection to leech from. And there was the built in chat box that added at least a little bit of human interaction into the process. None of the P2P software I’ve used since has been quite the same, although I did use one called DC++ a few years back that came close. But by then we had broadband, which took some of that challenge out of the whole thing and gave us the ability to flood our hard drives with vast quantities of files that we were unlikely to ever seriously listen to. And after a while the whole downloading thing just lost it’s shine. Now we have bit-torrent which is easy and fast, but no fun.

Going back to the points in the article above I guess I’ve come the full circle as well. I now purchase more CDs than I ever have before. Admittedly it’s partly because I have more income than before, but it’s also because I like to have the CDs in my hand, reading the notes, looking to see what track is coming up next, and sitting on my shelf as a reminder of what I have and what I like, instead of being tucked away on a hard drive. I totally get the whole “music as furniture” appeal – a bit chunk of the wall in the room I’m sitting in is full of CDs (as you can see in the photo, taken from the couch I’m sitting on with my iSight camera). A related concept is the “books as furniture” one – few things make a room or house more inviting and appealing than shelves and shelves of books. If you’ve been to my house you’ll know I’m definitely a big adherent to this.

I love my iPod and having a collection of digital music at my fingertips, but it’s still just not the same as having something physical to hold, to collect, and to enjoy as part of the overall experience of the music. I’ve bought a few albums over iTunes but probably at least half of those I’ve then gone on to purchase the physical CD. Nowadays I don’t bother as much with the iTunes store unless I’m in a real hurry to get something or if I just want an individual track for some reason (like this Reindeer song I sang at our Christmas carols event last year). I did get one album on iTunes last month – Luka Bloom’s Before Sleep Comes (which is a brilliant mellow acoustic album) but I liked it so much I’ll definitely be getting the CD. I rarely acquire music now by less legitimate means, but even then it will usually now lead to a purchase. For example I’ve had the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack languishing on my hard drive for years (I think I actually got it when I traded some MP3 CDs with a friend rather than downloading it myself) – never listened to it until a month or so ago, and when I finally did I immediately went out and bought the CD at the next opportunity.

So from my perspective at least the music industry need not fear the death of the CD just yet. For all it’s benefits digital music is still just not quite the same.

We get them all the time – those emails that are endlessly forwarded on around the net. Funny stories, cute pictures, sickly-sweet poems, ‘fascinating’ articles or amazing photos. Occasionally they are interesting, but mostly they are either mildly amusing or just annoying. But I never thought one of them would contain me!

Yesterday I got an email from my mum which her brother had forwarded to her (after being forwarded many times prior to that)

Subject : Fwd: FW: FW: I don’t think so………… !!!!!!!!!

Message Body : In Zimbabwe, Africa, you will find the magnificent Victoria Falls, at a
height of 128m.

The location is known as the “Devil’s Swimming Pool”. During the months of
September and December, people can swim as close as possible to the edge
of the falls without falling over.

These falls are becoming well known amongst the “radical tourist”
industry, when more and more people search for the ultimate experience.

Would you dare?    

Underneath that a series of photos of people on the edge of Victoria Falls in Devil’s Pool (which is actually on the Zambia side, not Zimbabwe), many peering over the edge. And the first of those photos … me and Owen! Looks like we’ve been emailed around the world – at least we’re famous for being daring “radical tourists” and not for something embarassing. Probably someone has stolen the photo from flickr, where there are plenty of other photos of people at Devil’s Pool. This one is my favourite of the ones we took there…

Photo-sharing site bans ‘nude’ babies in nappies

Another example of taking things a little too far – online photo album site Photobucket has removed pictures of babies in nappies for violating their nudity code. Sure glad I’m not storing my photos with them – my recent photo postings onto the Flickr website include dozens of such ‘offensive’ photos, like this one, for example :

I’ve discussed this site before, but on the occasion of passing 800 books catalogued I thought I’d give another mention to what is perhaps my favourite website – LibraryThing. This is a simply brilliant site with which you can keep track of your book collection, as well as interact with other book lovers in a number of ways. You can get book recommendations, write or read book reviews, and interface with online stores such as amazon, and even local bookshops if you live in the USA. But it’s not completely American focussed – you can search for your books in the catalogues of a huge number of libraries internationally (including several in Australia) and in a variety of languages.

I especially like the way you can use your LibraryThing data to interface with other websites, like I do with this blog. They also offer widgets and plugins for a variety of other web spaces, although as yet I haven’t found a really good one for Facebook.

Anyway if you have a book collection, take a look at LibraryThing. And if you want to see my profile, as an example of what it looks like then go here.

Gavin makes an interesting post on the nature of musical tastes – why we like what we do and why it might change over time. Worth thinking about so go over and check out what he has to say and make your own comments…

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: Bank intern busted by Facebook

As a doctor and facebook user, I found the above story interesting when I read it in a medical newsletter I subscribe to. Basically this bank intern in the US took time off work for “family reasons” but was busted by his employer when they found photos of him at a party that day on his facebook page. There’s copies of the photo, and related emails posted on the link above. So Facebook users, bloggers, and anyone with an online presence beware – big brother might be watching… Maybe I need to consider Googling people after I’ve written them a sick note

Sometimes you stumble across some weird things on the internet, and this is one of the most bizarre I’ve found yet. Whilst looking up the perecentages of the various blood types in the population I came across this link :

The Message of His Kingdom : Poisoning of Mankind: Blood Types, Copper Deficiency,
Evolution Theory, Shroud of Turin & Illuminati – it’s basically an incoherent mix of wrongly interpreted statistics, twisted health data, and DaVinci code style religious conspiracy theory – looks like the product of a seriously messed up mind. Weird.

Founder of Whirlpool discussion forum being sued | NEWS.com.au

This is a slightly disturbing story. A software company are suing the founder of the Australian broadband forum Whirlpool, for negative comments about it’s software posted by users on the site. Now I’ve consulted Whirlpool many times and found it to be a very useful site. Though there will usually be a range of differing opinions on virtually any topic, it is still valuable for advice and recommendations. This lawsuit is not a god thing for a number of reasons. Firstly it’s censoring the ability of people to make their opinions known on a site like this (which therefore might impede the ability of the rest of us to find opinions and advice on the net), and secondly it’s making the owners of the site responsible for the opinions of others which are posted there. If this suit is successful, does that mean I could be held responsible legally for what I say here, or even worse, for what commenters say? It takes us down a very tricky road. I sincerely hope this case gets laughed out of court.

vitum medicinus ::: Beginner’s Guide to Reading Medical Blogs

I don’t know if I’d classify my blog as being a “medical blog” per se – since I blog a lot more on religion, politics, travel, my family etc than I ever do on medical topics. Truth be told, I don’t have a burning interest in reading or exploring much about medicine at the moment – 12 years of medical study has pretty much exhuasted my desire for reading anything related to medicine, at least for the time being. Plus I’ve never quite known how to walk the fine line of confidential blogging – I might have some interesting stories to tell, but what if one of my patients stumbled across the blog? The recent story of “Barbados Butterfly,” a Melbourne surgical registrar who was suspended because of what she wrote on her blog, is enough to make us all pause.

But anyway, for those who are interested in medical blogging (and for my own future reference), the above link from the excellent med student blog vitum medicinus, is well worth reading. A worthy introduction to the medical blogosphere. Check it out.

So I’m still mucking around with Facebook. I have to say I really like the interface and the amount of content apps you can easily put on it. The other thing, which I guess is what facebook is really all about, is that it is quite easy to find contacts. A very quick and easy search around last night has led me to discover a bunch of old mates from med school, a couple of whom I’ve had a brief chat with. These are people I haven’t seen in years, so facebook really does help you connect. Also it can log into your email address book and search for Facebook contacts from that. I plugged in my gmail details and it managed to find a few contacts in there too.

I can understand why people may want to keep their facebook private so only their friends can view it, but I still wish we at least had the choice of making it publicly viewable. I still think this is probably the biggest flaw of facebook. So for those of you who haven’t got your own facebook account (yet), here’s a screen capture so you can see what mine looks like (the top portion of it at least – there’s heaps more stuff below) – click the picture for a larger image…

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…

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.

Up until today I have been with the same internet provider, iiNet, for about ten years or so. From a small Western Australian company to one of the biggest ISPs in this part of the world I’ve stuck with them, usually a loyal and satisfied customer.

Over the last year or two, however, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with them. Firstly with their continuing failure to upgrade my local telephone exchange in Warnbro to enable high speed ADSL2 broadband (despite almost every other exchange in Perth being upgraded), and then with the steadily eroding value of their plans for ADSL1 broadband.

Today, after all this time my relationship with iiNet is finally over. After a bit of web research I have jumped ships, changing to a faster (though still ADSL1) plan with much more generous download allowance on a company called aanet. And so far I’m very happy. The plan is very good value, the application process was painless, and the changeover went very smoothly. From my 512/128 connection on iiNet I’m now on a 6912/384 connection and it is sweet. I can download files in an instant, watch YouTube videos in real time with no delay waiting for it to download. I just wish I wasn’t such a loyal customer and made this change a long time ago.

Note : this now means if anyone has an @iinet.net.au email address for me or Jen you need to change it. Just use our first names @ baggas.com and it will find it’s way to us. Thanks.

I don’t often do business recommendations on here but let me mention one I am very happy with CheapChips.com.au. Although the name might suggest otherwise this is not a company dealing in junk food, poker supplies or wood products – they are an online seller of memory cards and associated products. Their products are very competitively priced, their website is excellent and easy to use, and they ship the same day. Twice I have ordered from them and received the order the next day. In addition the order comes with a bag of minties and a discount card for next time. Very impressive.

The only thing I find unfathomable about this company is their location – their postal address and bank branch are listed as Norseman, Western Australia. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Norseman, it is a small town in the east of WA, 725km from Perth, which is itself the most isolated large city in the world. Norseman is the gateway to the Nullabor Plain, one of the world’s largest flat treeless landsapes. As you can see from the map it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Just another amazing thing about the internet when you can successfully run a quality e-business from a place like that! What really makes me wonder is the logistics – how can they achieve 1 day turnaround of orders when shipping from a place like that? Maybe they have a warehouse in the city that they ship from. Regardless of how it’s done, kudos to Cheap Chips!

I love Wikipedia and I love guitars, so this is the perfect site for me : Wikipedia Guitar Portal.

Links to all the Wikipedia articles about the guitar, a guitar related article of the day (today’s is George Harrison), pictures, trivia, annniversaries and much more. Totally excellent!

Hello Internet: Moofies – Hijacked Penguin – Ben is getting annoyed at yet another penguin inspired movie coming out hot on the heels of Happy Feet, continuing a disturbing trend in animated movies… See if you can think of any other examples.

Just been playing around with one of the most handy websites I’ve found in recent months, especially useful for travellers or for those wanting to communicate with people overseas – TimeandDate.com.

This site gives you accurate and detailed information about the time and weather for just about any point on the globe. You can customise it to reflect your own preferred cities and formats (eg I changed the temperatures from farenheit to Celsius so I can understand them) and you can make a custom World clock page that you can share with others. The one I made is here – it has the current time for all the stops we’ll be making on our big trip in July. Clicking on the name of each of the cities brings up a whole wealth of current information about the conditions there.

A very simple looking site, but incredibly useful. I love these clock applications for some reason. In addition to this site I have 3 cities in the toolbar on my Vista computers (one of the cool new features of Vista allowing multiple clocks) and at least 2 world time programs on my Palm Treo with little maps and multiple times listed. Very handy indeed.

While I’m in a blog tinkering mode, thought I’d have another look at my Google Analytics stats, which I’ve had going for a couple of weeks now. Over the last week my pageviews have been trending upwards, with 1.55 pageviews per visit (ie each visitor is viewing an average of one and a half of my pages), Google still accounts for 50% of the referrals, and the number one page aside from the front page is still clearly my post on the Fender VG Strat, which is pleasing. Hopefully I’ll be able to post my own review of the guitar at some point in the future, in addition to just linking to others.

Just done a bit of an upgrade on the blog, to the latest version of Word Press 2.1.3. Overall it’s not a lot different though I have noticed a few enhancements here or there. Took a bit of fiddling but I’ve got all my plugins and layout back to where it all should be.

One new feature you might notice is the “What I’m Doing” section on the top left. This links to Twitter, one of the new in-fashion sites. Twitter basically consists of high frequency, low volume blogging – so you just write one or two sentences often to let people know what you are up to. It also features the usual “friends” aspect and social linkage inherent in any Web 2.0 type site. I don’t know how good I’ll be at maintaining it but I thought I might as well throw it on the site and see how it goes. My main twitter page is here : http://twitter.com/baggas

Zazz! One Day. One Thing. One Chance.

A friend told me last night about this cool site called Zazz. Rather than try and describe it myself I’ll quote from their FAQ (or wtf?) I especially like the last paragraph…

Q:  So what is Zazz?
A:  Zazz is a very special internet-based store that only sells one item a day, at a large quantity. Zazz will continue to sell that item until either it sells out, or the 24 hours ends. Should it end prematurely, you’re more than welcome to hang out but a new item won’t be available for sale until midnight the next day. Beyond this, Zazz is also a community of people who love gadgets and buying cool things they’ve always wanted but could never afford, until now.

Q:  That’s ridiculous. Are you guys insane? Why on earth would you do something so stupid as to sell one thing a day?
A:  In answer to your first question, No. In answer to your second question, we feel that online stores are too bogged down with items. You know what it’s like, you go to a major internet department store and unless you know exactly what you want it’s near impossible to find something suitable for your 3rd cousin’s 65th birthday. And if we were going to just sell one thing for the rest of the company’s lifetime we don’t think we’d make very much money, so we keep things fresh by selling new things every day.

Q:  That sounds an awful lot like impulse buying, is that the case?
A:  Look, Zazz really is impulse buying, but at it’s best. We’re willing to say that. A lot of the stuff we sell you DO NOT NEED. But that’s irrelevant; because last time I checked, the things I want (a new plasma tv, swiss army knife and coffee grinder) are much cooler than the things I need (air and water).  

These products go on sale at Midnight Australian Eastern time each day, which is cool for those of us in Western Australia since it’s only 10pm here. They also offer an sms alert service via twitter which I am yet to check out. Looking through their list of past products it seems most of them have been selected to appeal to the geeks and the gadget freaks. This may not have been such a timely discovery for me since I’m currently saving towards our upcoming trip and hopefully a new guitar, so I shall have to be strong not to give in to the temptation. I was even tempted by today’s $988 computer system, which is an awesome deal, even though I already have a relatively new PC. Anyway, check it out at your own risk!

Over the years I’ve had a number of interesting free stats plugins on my website but most of them have either been inconsistent or stopped working entirely after a while. So I was very interested when my mate Dean showed me Google’s stats offering that he uses on his website. For him this tool is invaluable, enabling him to keep a detailed eye on the progress of his e-commerce and track the website’s effectiveness at transalting visits into sales. For me the interest is more just on how many people are coming and where they are from, but I’m still very impressed with Google Analytics. Plus being from Google, it’s most unlikely to stop working or disappear. I’ve only just started to scratch the surface but thus far Google analytics seems to be a very powerful tool. My digital life is becoming increasingly googlefied – first the ubiquitous search engine, then multiple gmail accounts for home, office, mobile (with fairly effective spam control), my customisable Google homepage, Google RSS reader, Google documents and spreadsheets, and now Google stats – all of these are tools I use on an almost daily basis. No wonder they were recently rated the most powerful brand in the world.

I’ve only had analytics running since Friday but the stats so far are interesting. At present the most popular posts are my review of Hillsong United’s newest album, and my post on the Fender VG Strat. The most referrals to my site have come from Google of course. Interestingly I’ve I search in Google for Fender VG my post is the second result after the Fender site itself, and if I google Fender VG stratocaster, I’m third, after Fender and the Harmony Central review. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the great people at Fender took note of all this traffic I’m generating and sent me my very own VG Strat to review?? Ahh it’s fun to dream…

I’ve spent a lot of time this weekend doing my tax from last year, which has been a scary and sobering experience. Even though I have an accountant it seems I still spend as much time on this as ever – in fact I think I need to try and get more out of them. I’m sure my finances could be organised much more tax efficiently and advantageously – and the bottom line is I need more money to pay this huge tax debt and hopefully also still be able to afford our big overseas trip planned for the end of this year. Until they give me any better ideas I’ll still to this simple plan : earn more & spend less. I’m already starting to do the former, working longer hours and delivering more babies – now I need to focus more on the latter, which has never been our strong suit.

Amidst all this tax work, I’ve now completely moved all of my spreadsheets and related documents online. Previously I would keep them all on a USB memory stick, which I’d plug in to which ever computer I happened to be working at (home, office, or laptop). Now I’ve put all my files into Google Documents, which is great. It allows me to edit my files in Excel and Word formats, with all the main functions of the desktop applications (at least all the functions I use anyway) yet I don’t have to worry about a computer crash or being on the wrong PC – all I need is an internet connection. I think from now on I’ll be using Google more and more for all document based work. Internet applications are the way of the future, as I believe even Microsoft have started to acknowledge.

Ok now this is cool, well at least in a nerdy sort of way. I’m sure everyone has heard of Wikipedia by now, the incredibly useful internet encyclopaedia. Well now the StarWars Universe has it’s own version, the aptly titled Wookieepedia – the Star Wars Wiki. The depth of information here is surprising, going far beyond the six movies and deep into the vast realm of other Star Wars related fiction. A person could get lost in this world, and it seems to me some devoted fans probably have…

Now I’m probably not legitimately qualified to be critical of the Left Behind series of religious novels, since I haven’t read a single page. I’ve heard they can be semi-entertaining in a comic book kind of way, yet all I hear of their theology and it’s ramifications is quite disturbing. But someone is is qualified to comment is the Slacktivist, a well educated American Christian blogger and writer, who is slowly working his way through the first book on his blog, in addition to his other insightful and sensible comments on US politics and other subjects. Following his blog is like getting the Left Behind novel in serialised form – I’m able to follow the story while at the same time Slacktivist mercilessly demolishes it – his criticisms are not just theological, but also ethical, logical, and above all literary. He has a large following and gets plenty of comments, the majority of which agree with him, so I’m not sure how the Left Behind fans would find his site. For me, I’ve found it very entertaining (quite humorous at times), thought-provoking and illuminating, and will continue to keep a regular eye on it.

On a related issue, the book I’m currently reading by Ben Witherington III (who also has an interesting blog) called The Problem with Evangelical Theology systematically debunks the theology behind Left Behind. His arguments are relatively easy to follow and make a lot of sense, despite the depth he goes into in his detailed analysis of scripture. A little denser (and perhaps more unsettling) is when he takes on some more theological heavyweights in his criticisms of the theology of Calvin, Luther, and Augustine. Once again his arguments are logical and seem to make sense, but I feel out of my depth in making any judgement as to who’s right about these things. As a layperson dipping fingers into the deep well of theology, it’s important to remain humble and not just blindly accept whatever I read. However much I wish otherwise, I just am not well enough educated or qualified to make these sort of judgements (and will probably never be). All I can do is say to myself what feels right and logical and scriptural and say what system seems best to me, whilst acknowledging that I don’t know for sure. For example Witherington’s views on perseverance and apostasy are quite challenging and confronting and his exegetical reasoning seems to make sense – but I am not in a position to confidently conclude whether I believe him or not. The sensible reaction for me is to ask myself not “Is he right or wrong” but “what if he is right? what ramifications does that have for the way in which I conduct my life?” and thinking in that way is both sobering and worthwhile. Some might say it’s dangerous ground for a layperson to go exploring in matters of theology, but I think as long as I maintain a healthy level of “epistemological humility” and realisation of my own limitations, it can be a valuable enterprise.

Just got some new glasses yesterday and I’m very happy with them – they work well and look good. They took about a week to arrive from 39dollarglasses.com as recommended by ob1. Definitely worth checking out and let me give you another tip - before you buy any glasses Google “39dollarglasses coupon” to find codes for discounts, free shipping etc. I got $5 off my pair and free shipping, so it’s well worth it.

slacktivist: Parable

In this modern retelling, Slacktivist brings an ancient parable to life. Brilliant!

alastair.adversaria » N.T. Wright: A Biography

Followers of this blog may have noticed that I’m an avid reader of the works of Anglican Bishop N. T. (Tom) Wright , who combines rigorous Biblical scholarship, firm Christian orthodoxy, with a pastoral heart and a flair for writing. In all the books and websites I’ve encountered, one thing I’ve missed has been any sort of biography of the man, other than the odd snippet here and there.

The above link from adversaria has provided what I’ve been looking for. A very interesting read which has further increased my estimation of Tom Wright, not least for the fact that he is a fellow guitarist, as you can see in this funky picture. If you have any interest in N. T. Wright and his writings, then I’d suggest you have a look at the site – I’ve only scractched the surface of his blog so far but Alistair is one serious Wright devotee, and unlike me he has the educationalbackground knowledge to seriously and critically examine the issues involved. Definitely a site to watch.