I had a few relatively relaxed days, which was nice for a change. Got to the Easter Show which was good.

Classic quote of the day came from Miss 7 as we were exiting one of the pavilions & she caught sight of a display.

“Bricks? What’s so artistic about bricks?”.

I laughed & explained they were fruit cakes (while imagining the wrath of dozens of scorned cake makers, for whom I daresay the competition would be a highlight of the year).

The display looked something like this. Image courtesy of James O’Brien.

The relaxed long weekend also gave me the opportunity to update my sadly neglected Top 100 list.  I just realised yesterday was the 2nd anniversary of my first attempt at a top 100 list. So there you go.

You might notice a new little button in my sidebar. I’ve never been a fan of the whole donation, buy me a beer kinda thing, but Duncan suggested it & I figured “heh, why not?”. Maybe someone out there appreciates the time that goes into the list…

So without further ado:

Blogs Debuting on the Top 100 Easter Edition

gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine
mUmBRELLA
Laurel Papworth Social Network Strategy
WassupBlog
Sean Rasmussen
Limeshot Design
The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl
KidStyleFile
Personalize Media

Congratulations & thanks again for your suggestions of blogs that might be eligible.

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You know you’ve been out of the blogosphere for a while when….. you drop into Karen’s blog to see if she’s had any luck falling pregnant yet, only to find she’s not only been pregnant – but has actually had the baby! Congratulations

And on the downside….. you venture to read one of your favourite bloggers & a Most Awesome Chick only to find out she’s had a minor stroke. Hugs Kelley & glad to hear you’re on the mend.

Dear Mr Isherwood

You know today I had a really crap day. I’m sure you couldn’t care less.

At the end of a long, frustrating day the last thing someone feels like is fending off spam emails like the ones you are sending. I just received the sixth copy of the emailed press release entitled “Storm Financial a case for an Australian Pecora Commission”, and all were addressed to customised condolence email addresses (which are intended to convey condolence messages to the families of deceased people). I have come to the conclusion that you are nothing but a two bit spammer amongst the ranks of sellers of pharmaceutical products I will never have the need for and replica watches I will never buy.

Furthermore these email address could only have been obtained via raking (scraping email addresses from websites). Which indicates to me one of two things. Either you are buying crap email lists from a disreputable source and couldn’t care less, or you are engaging someone to obtain these on your behalf. Frankly, I don’t particularly care which – the net effect is the same. SPAM.

I responded as such to the fifth email you sent, but I’m sure it will get lost amongst a sea of abuse. This is not the first incidence, but I certainly hope it’s the last. You honestly do nothing for your cause by flooding inboxes with your unsolicited messages – as important as you may feel they are. I happen to be one of the most apolitical people you will ever meet. And frankly I’m happy that way.

“We hope you found this message useful. As a registered political party‚ the CEC receives e-mail addresses from various sources”

No I didn’t find it useful – and irrespective of whether you are a registered political party or not, I’d seriously question the integrity of your “various sources”.

Dude – you got the wrong chick on the wrong day.

Yours sincerely

Meg

</rant>

Congrats to the blogs debuting this update:

Tim Blair Blog
WhipUp.net
Lilly’s Life
Digital Photo Gallery of Ted Szukalski
Kristarella.com
Not Quite Nigella
Des Walsh dot Com
babyology
Loobylu
Tech Wired Australia
Planning With Kids
The Food Pornographer

and the others returning.

In what would have to be my biggest run through of blogs in a long time, and since it’s Australia Day & all, please find below a list of 250 top Australian Blogs.

Oops – seems this list slows down the loading of my site incredibly, so I’ve moved it on to its own page at 250 Top Blogs.

I hope you are enjoying your Australia Day

This is a blog – if you’re not quite sure what a blog is, this might explain it for you. These days I’m not a particularly active blogger, as my business (dLook) keeps me very busy, but I try to make the time to update my list of Top 100 Aussie Bloggers (usually) monthly. There you’ll find a wealth of active and interesting blogs on a variety of topics. I also have an articles page which contains what I consider to be my most useful (well, useful to some!) posts.

If you’re an Australian blogger (or thinking about starting a blog), you’ll find a very helpful community forum at Aussie Bloggers.

And if you’re looking for a comprehensive course on internet marketing via the social web, a friend of mine, Alister Cameron, has recently released a programme called “Internet Marketing Masterminds“. I haven’t seen the course materials, but having known and worked with Alister over the last 3 years, he wouldn’t release anything less than excellent.

Thanks again for stopping by.

She got between 91% and 98% for all 6 subjects.

I’m so happy that her diligence has been rewarded!

Well done baby – you always make me proud

Polka Dot Bride
Business Blogging | BlogWell
TechNation Australia
Meet Me at Mikes
babbleBABY Australia

Life continues to be super busy here, which was the source of the delay for October’s update – apologies to those who noticed…

Got offered a Freebie the other day, in exchange for a review – which was kinda cool. I was tempted until I had to provide my home address for delivery (it was a large object) at which point I graciously declined. Am I too cynical? What would you do?

I thought upgrading to a 22″ monitor was pretty indulgent, but hey – a girl puts in so many hours in front of the damn monitor, may as well make it a biggish one, right?

Well, I splurged on a second one. Yes, I now have twins – two ViewSonic VA2226w’s scored for less than $300 each. Maybe I’m a bit behind and and all the cool kids have dual monitors, but I’ve got to tell you it is simply Awesome!

My six year old surmised that I could now do twice the work. I said that I hoped I could do the same about of work twice as quickly. Well, not quite, but it has made such a huge difference! Think of every time you minimise an application or flick between tabs/applications. Need to reference something, while writing something else. Copying and pasting. It makes it so simple.

I think everyone is sick of hearing me rave about it. It’s not at all confusing. Just. Simply. Awesome.

If you can justify the indulgence, convince your boss…. whatever – just do it! I doubt you’d ever go back.

So hey, there’s a financial crisis happening – go figure! I’m so not in touch. With anything. But the world keeps turning, even if you’re not watching.

Like when I happened to (flukishly) drive to the shops one Saturday a few weeks ago because I was out of sugar (a girl’s gotta have her coffee right?), and happened to notice a shite load of cars out the front of the local school, along with those A frame banner thingys. I thought, “hmmm, this reminds me of election day”. So I pulled up & moseyed over with my 6 year old and sure enough it was an election. For something. Local council maybe? I dutifully took every “how to vote for this person you’ve never heard of” flyer, got my name crossed off & walked to a booth.

I showed the flyers to my daughter (more interested in the process that I was) and asked her who she thought I should vote for. She looked at me somewhat perplexed and said “I don’t think it should be up to me to decide”. Damn, kid’s right. I said to her “I’m just kidding” (as I closed my eyes and picked one). Yeah, apathy personified. Do you think “I seriously had no idea there was an election” would be a valid excuse for not voting?

*********

My parents visited the other day (or maybe week, I lose track) and my mum commented on all the cards hanging over the slats of my Venetian blinds. “Are you getting Christmas cards already?” she asked. “No mum, I replied those are from the last 2 years”. Guess I should think about taking them down, sometime.

It’s a bit like taking stuff out of your pantry that has expired more than 2 years ago recently. And hey! Did you know some body lotion has an expiry date? Yeah, I learned that one the hard way. Noticed I had a few dry spots on my leg so I applied some stuff on my legs & hopped into bed. A few minutes later my legs were stinging, so I went back into the bathroom and checked out the pump pack. Damn stuff expired in 2004. Holy cow! I’ve moved house since then & carted it with me. I guess you gather I’m not much for beauty products either.

***************

Ah, don’t you love technology? Sometimes I lose my printer connection. It usually rights itself after I reboot, but who has time to reboot during the day, and shut down the 64 multiple tabs and applications that accumulate? So for about 3 days running my printer wouldn’t print. I got around it, but eventually I needed to print. So I figure I have to reinstall my printer – spent 10 minutes looking for the driver disk, figured I’d just download the driver, realised I’d already done that some months ago, and just before I was about to reinstall I do a cursory check of all the connections. [quote Gordon Ramsay]! The printer was turned off! Feeling rather sheepish and admitting to my “blonde moment” I told a colleague. Who also sheepishly confessed that they had in fact turned the printer off (because all the lights were flashing). D’oh.

Have you had a “blonde moment” lately?

No change on my domain, but I am noticing PageRank on posts from earlier this month indicating there has in fact been an update.

How’s your green bar? I’m a little surprised Google hasn’t released a toolbar for Chrome yet.

The Inquisitr
CopyWrite
The Inspiration Room Daily
Down to Earth
Hoyden About Town
Housewife Hiccups
Three Ring Circus
Save…Save…Save

(Note: The Inspiration Roomâ„¢ Daily is the renamed Duncans TV, which was at number 10 last month).

Sarah Stokely (ex LifeHacker) dropped me a note a couple of weeks ago to tell me that Crikey! now have a blogs section, which might be of interest. Sarah is the website editor.

Thanks to the people who email me to let me know that their blog may be eligible for the list. It certainly helps keep the list complete, since I don’t have the time I once did to blog hunt.

I continue to get a lot of emails about products, websites and offers, as well as requests for lists of certain categories of Australian Blogs. Unfortunately, I’m simply not able to respond or comply with many requests, however much I’d like to. Categorisation of the blogs is something I’d love to do, but again, just don’t have time.

Anyone noticing any PageRank movements in the last few days? Not time for a PR update, surely? I thought that was a month away.

Until next month, or maybe something random in between…