Regrettably, this will be the last post, at least for now. The site has been in need of a shake-up for a while; I plan to redesign it to be more of an online resume and portfolio. That will likely happen in fits and starts over the coming weeks as I get a few spare moments here and there, so don't be alarmed if you see things move around a bit.

I started the blog as an experiment. It's turned out to be an immensely successful one. I have made friends, kept myself active and intellectually stimulated during a difficult period of my life, and also rediscovered my love of writing. Those benefits will continue to pay dividends long after this post eventually disappears from Google's cache.

Thanks for reading and please do come back as there will be 'an exciting new development on this site' real soon now. Watch this space, as they say. Meanwhile, if you want to know what I'm up to I recommend you keep an eye on my Twitter feed.

Bye for now,
 Danu

Here's the rant, as told through Twitter:

To answer the rhetorical Q. in Crikey today - "Is it any wonder that people view the media with a mixture of distrust and contempt?" - No.

I find it frustrating that those in 'The Media' still persist in thinking of news as whatever is in the newspapers.

Newspapers aren't dead (they're just a delivery method after all). But the culture that sustained them is. Good riddance.

Quality journalism will find a home with a user-pays model or be funded by the public / non-profit sector. Can we all move on now?

I don't read the papers. I haven't seen 'those' photos. Who cares about that shit anyway? Would anyone miss it if it wasn't there?

We are empowered more than ever to find out what's going on. News is no longer passive. Take responsibility to inform yourself.

I can see myself doing more of this. Sometimes blog posts just take too long to write.

I had my first week of uni classes. There's a fair bit of work involved with it all, but it all seems simple enough, at least through to the end of this semester. For anyone who's interested, these are the four subjects I'm studying:

• Discovering Policy - Learning exactly what policy is, why it matters and how it's made. Some people would find this dry and dull - for me this is the subject with the most substance
• Sustainability: Society and Environment - The idea of sustainability, why it's important and how it might be implemented. So far this has been mostly a lot of waffle but looking at what's ahead I remain optimistic.
• Modern Australian Society - This one sounds like a lot of waffle but probably isn't. As far as I can tell the objective is to get people to look objectively at the culture of a society they're actually living in. A useful skill if it works.
• Contemporary Australian Politics - The basics of how government works, the nature of politics and how it infuses everything that happens. This one promises to be a lot of fun, especially as by a stroke of luck I happened to sit next to a guy who has the box set collector's edition of The West Wing.

Three of the four subjects are shared with students doing other degrees in social science - from the social work, psychology, legal studies strands - while the Discovering Policy subject is unique to those doing the Policy and Research degree I'm doing.

I was pleasantly surprised to see there are quite a few other mature-age students in my degree. Having spoken to a few, it seems that many of them have tried other things and have gradually realised that policy/politics is where they really want to be. Sounds like me.

No luck yet on finding a place to rent. We're learning that the rental search in Melbourne can easily become a protracted exercise. For now, we've decided that the inner suburbs are far too competitive and we're not really in a position to win such a battle. We've now started looking further out and at time of writing have an application pending for a place in Coburg. From the outside it doesn't look much, being built in the 1970s when developers all had the brick veneereal disease, but inside it's been renovated and is quite roomy and nice. It's also nearly $100 cheaper than some of the places we've been looking at closer to the city.

On the whole it's been a busy week and the constant barrage of new information can be somewhat wearing after a while. Thankfully there have been ample distractions in the form of friends and tickets to shows we had booked previously.

Coldplay on Tuesday night were phenomenal and possibly the best concert I've ever seen. Clearly at the top of their game, the band were playful and enthused. It was a theatrical performance and far more than just a collection of great songs. We had great seats, especially for one segment of the show where the band all played a medley together on a tiny platform while the sound crew rearranged the main stage for a stirring rendition of Viva La Vida.

On Thursday afternoon we caught up with Luke who was down for a couple of days and showed off a bit by taking him to some of the cool places we had discovered. The three of us hung out well into the evening and capped off the night with a few drinks at the Melbourne Supper Club overlooking Parliament House (hat tip to @thetowncrier for introducing me to this fine establishment)

Saturday night we had tickets to a Melbourne Theatre Company production called Moonlight and Magnolias, a comedy which promised to depict the real-life behind-the-scenes madness that went into the making of the script for Gone With The Wind.

Having never seen Gone With The Wind we weren't sure what to expect, but the play did not disappoint - if anything our ignorance of the subject matter made it funnier. The play centres around a sense of disbelief that such a dense and meandering book with unsympathetic characters and a racially charged backdrop could ever be made into a movie at all.

We watch while the producer, the writer and the director struggle to comprehend the plot and what the hell the damned thing is about anyway, and then somehow try to make a screenplay out of it. It's fast, funny and frenetic and for some reason full of bananas and peanuts. Well worth a look. And now I can't wait to see the movie.

That's all for now. I'll be back next weekend with another update.

Click to see more posts from the 'Moving to Melbourne' series, or start from the beginning.

I'd like to say profound things about our first full day living in Melbourne, but the truth is Sunday started lethargically with a big sleep in and much poring over the computer making plans for the week ahead. Jobs, paperwork, uni, a place to live, it all had to be organised. We had booked 5 nights in the backpackers and there were no definite plans after that. There was much to do.

Roll on to the following Saturday and much has happened.

Our work cut out for us

Doug had a job interview today with Hudson's Coffee, a ubiquitous chain with stores all around the city. Doug is a qualified barista and most recently has been working as a supervisor at Zarraffa's Coffee in central Queensland. By all accounts the interview went well and with any luck Doug will be starting full-time work sometime next week.

There's also a possibility of another job for Doug, as a computer games tester. On Tuesday night we met up with a friend of mine from Twitter and had dinner and drinks at her house in Fitzroy North. Knowing we only had a few days in the backpackers, Kerry very kindly offered to put us up at her place until we got on our feet. That is where we are now staying and where I am writing to you from right now.

Kerry's daughter Wendy works as a programmer at Melbourne game developer Tantalus. After discovering myself and Doug especially are avid gamers, she mentioned that the company was looking for quality assurance testers, who essentially are paid to play computer games and see if they work properly. After he finished doing somersaults around the house and gibbering excitedly for a few hours, Doug applied for the job and is waiting to hear about it. Like a kid in the proverbial candy shop, he is extremely keen on this job, even after it was pointed out that Tantalus is most famous for its best-selling game Pony Friends and the first game he would be testing is the apparently highly-anticipated sequel, Pony Friends 2. I am watching with amusement but I hope he gets it.

I am due to receive a fortnightly pittance from Centrelink in the form of a student allowance, but this will need to be supplemented with some sort of actual work, though not too much as Centrelink will then stop paying me, and hey, a pittance is still a pittance. I have my first classes at uni next week and am keen to see what sort of demands study places on my time and attention so I know what I have left to work with.

A few weeks ago during my ill-fated advance house scouting trip to Melbourne, I had an interview with an Apple reseller at Moonee Ponds who seemed interested in having me around a couple of days a week to do some sort of hybrid of sales, training and working on their systems. Now that I am down here and have my uni timetable organised, we will see if anything comes of this next week.

The course is set

Speaking of uni, I went to an orientation day on Monday and met some of the lecturers, tutors, admin staff and fellow students. The head of the school outlined the course program and what it was about, as well as what we could expect. He was engaging and funny and I warmed to him instantly. Most memorably he talked about the importance of striking a balance between the academic and the practical, saying too many academics fear one day there will be an outbreak of clarity.

There are apparently no exams for any of the four subjects in the first semester, as the authors of the course have taken the view that traditional exams are pointless for a political science program. Instead there will be a process of continual assessment. How that all works and the structure of each subject I guess I will find out next week.

As seen in the toilets at RMIT

It was a good day of orientation and I felt keen and excited by the end of it. Observing all the fresh-faced and sometimes bewildered looking 17 and 18 year olds around me, I'm also glad to be studying after some years of life experience. I get the impression I will get a lot more out of it. They all look so little! I'm about to turn 26 and I feel old. Should make for some interesting workshops in any case.

Upon closer inspection

The process of finding a place to live is somewhat daunting. Rental properties are in most cases open only for mass inspections, many of which clash with each other and at which you can expect your application to compete with a dozen others who are also at the inspection.

We have begun our search by looking for one bedroom apartments in the inner suburbs - North Melbourne, Carlton, Fitzroy, East Melbourne, Southbank, South Melbourne and Docklands. Pickings are fairly slim, at least for something that meets our basic standard of living. It's possible we will have to look further out, or contemplate getting a two-bedroom apartment and finding someone to share with, which for a couple of introverts is probably best regarded as the nuclear option.

Nevertheless, we have one application pending for a nice-looking place in North Melbourne which is in a quiet street in a leafy area and close to shops and public transport, about 10 minutes from the CBD by tram. At the moment we're waiting for the owner to make a decision and then we will find out if we are the successful applicants. Fingers crossed.

Docklands is a nice area right next to the CBD with modern highrise apartments of a style and standard we Gold Coasters are accustomed to. The Melbourne natives don't seem to like it much though as they feel it lacks the character (and presumably therefore also the grime and structural flaws) of other parts of the city. In any case it's a moot point as it's out of our price range, at least for the time being.

We'll be fortunate if our application for the North Melbourne unit is approved. If not, there are more inspections next week and we'll just keep looking till we find something.

All work and no play

In between finding work, going to uni, filling our forms and hopping around the city looking at places to live, we've managed to find time to enjoy a little of what Melbourne has to offer - we're certainly becoming familiar with the intricacies of the tram network if nothing else!

We met up with my friend Steve on Sunday night for a lovely dinner at Chilli Padi Melbourne Central, followed by a deliciously irresponsible dessert at Max Brenner. On Monday night we saw the excellent movie Milk (for which Sean Penn deservedly won the Best Actor oscar) at the Carlton Nova cinemas, a nice little arthouse complex on Lygon St.

Tuesday was dinner and drinks at Kerry's place, followed by a few fast and competitive rounds of Trivial Pursuit. Wednesday we caught up with Liz, another friend, for lunch at Brunetti off Lygon St, where I had a wonderful penne salad and our arteries almost self-destructed upon contemplating the range of cakes in the sweet section.

Thursday we saw Zack and Miri Make a Porno, a cute little movie that happily exceeded my admittedly low expectations, and on Friday we saw the newly-released W., the Oliver Stone film about George W. Bush. People's opinions of this one seem to be mixed - evidently many people expected something more damning from the director - but I was impressed. It's a well-chosen, well-acted scrapbook of events that paints Bush as straightforward, naive, a little paranoid and totally out of his depth. This isn't a movie review, but if I were to go on I might say that there's a point in there about the broader American condition.

Tonight we're going to check out the Vegie Bar in Brunswick St, Fitzroy. Tomorrow, who knows.

Thus ends our first week living in Melbourne. Next week my classes start, Doug will probably start working and we'll hear about our rental application. We have tickets to Coldplay on Tuesday night and a play by the Melbourne Theatre Company on Saturday. Also, my friend Luke will be down for a few days so no doubt we'll catch up with him too. I'll be back again next weekend with another update.

Click to see more posts from the 'Moving to Melbourne' series, or start from the beginning.

One of the strongest supporters of content filtering (though not necessarily the Government's implementation of it), Clive Hamilton, wrote a piece in The Australian yesterday which began by outlining what he says is the kind of situation the proposed internet filter is aimed at.

Hamilton spends the next five paragraphs and nearly 300 words taking the reader on a graphic tour of the kind of pornographic content readily available on the internet, and then poses the question:

Do we believe easy access to these sorts of images causes harm to some or all of the boys and girls who view them? If so, how should we respond to it?

Hamilton is Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University and this is one of Australia's most well-respected national news publications he is writing in. He is asking a legitimate question in a legitimate forum.

Yet by and large, opponents of the filter chracterise Hamilton as a loony, and a filthy one at that. We make fun of him with witty retorts along the lines of 'gee, he must have had fun researching THAT piece, hur hur hur'.

The five paragraphs of porn seem to have caught many off guard, as no doubt was Hamilton's intention. He has posed the same question before, but more academically, and been shouted down and ignored. This time he has decided to abandon good taste in an effort to tackle the issue head on, and makes a subtle point about decency in the process.

Let's return to the question:

Do we believe easy access to these sorts of images causes harm to some or all of the boys and girls who view them? If so, how should we respond to it?

It's an important question, because it provides a starting point for any kind of policy which aims to address the issue, if it needs to be addressed at all.

I had easy access to these sorts of images growing up. I don't think it has harmed me in any way. I don't believe it would cause harm to most people, though it might cause some awkward moments for the parents who are asked to explain the images.

I believe that the mainstream view however is probably that it does harm boys and girls and their parents. The shorthand for this is that 'easy access to porn harms families'.

While I don't agree with this, I don't think it's a stupid thing to say and I don't think we gain anything either ethically or politically by treating mainstream views as stupid.

In the eyes of social conservatives, the pornography issue is not about moralising people's sex lives, it's about preserving standards in society. Standards give people a common language of what they can expect from each other, and this helps hold societies together. Social conservatives see excessive individual liberties as eroding those standards, a first thread which threatens to unravel a society's shared 'values'. Conserving those social values is what social conservatism means by definition.

A society without values or agreed moral standards enters a social condition known as anomie - the erosion, diminution or absence of personal norms, standards or values, and increased states of psychological normlessness. This is the result of 'extreme libertarianism'. Not libertarians who are extreme, but the idea of extreme individual liberty over common standards.

This is my understanding of what Clive Hamilton is arguing against, and to me it seems a legitimate argument. The real debate is over the second part of his question - how should we respond to it?

If you believe that easy access to pornography does not harm children, then the first step is to say so and explain why.

If you dispute the idea of 'easy access' and feel it's only easy to access if you go looking for it, then say so and explain why.

These are both legitimate arguments that I support. However, there is also a legitimate argument that Government has an obligation to protect its people. I have no objection in principle to the Government implementing a national content filtering system on the internet, provided it meets some important conditions. Namely, that such a system:

1. works within an acceptable margin of error
2. doesn't cost too much or is funded at the expense of other, more worthy, related projects
3. doesn't adversely affect network performance or access price in a significant way
4. is administered responsibly, with a reasonable safeguards and transparency, and
5. is not compulsory

I can't speak for Clive Hamilton, but I would like to think he would agree these conditions form a reasonable frame of reference for developing a national internet filtering policy, if we are to have one at all.

My point in all this is simple - let's stay on message. If we have ethical or in-principle objections to a national internet filter, let's argue on those grounds. If we have policy objections to the current proposal, let's make them clear and suggest better policy.

The Greens Senator Scott Ludlam is one of our greatest allies in this debate, and while he praises our engagement, he also asks us to speak with one cogent voice about what we are for.

Google filters its search results in an opt-out system called Moderate SafeSearch. I have no objections to Google's filtering policy or its implementation. Maybe that's a good starting place.

Let's not belittle our opponents or make fun of them. We just look stupid and immature. Let's not even assume that they need be our opponents at all. Instead, let's have a productive debate and search for common ground. If we want to be taken seriously and have a seat at the big boys table, we need to behave with some decorum. We need some standards.

"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable."
- James A. Garfield

I've been crying a lot lately. Not about anything in particular, just sudden outbursts of tears seemingly for no reason. But just now, after an especially violent outburst, I think I understand. These are tears of release.

I move to Melbourne in one week today. That's exciting, but this has nothing to do with Melbourne and everything to do with my life so far.

For the last 18 months I've felt like a nobody. It has been the most difficult time in my life. The company I started collapsed, and so too did my perception of myself and everything I knew. I was shattered, if not literally, then with an effect similar enough for the difference not to matter.

No-one understands what this is like. No-one. Except those who have been through something similar themselves. To give your all to something, every fibre of your being, and to drag dozens of other people with you, only to have the whole thing come crashing down. Those other people suffered because of me. So much was destroyed. You can't just walk away from something like that.

When people ask 'what do you do?' I have no idea what to say. I don't even care anymore. It doesn't matter. I was my company, and when it fell apart, so did I. Yet there was still this person who got up every day and wandered around eating and breathing and talking to people. There was still the question of what to do with him.

I still haven't made sense of it all, but I feel like a totally different person today than I was when I was a company. I feel like I am a person, and whoever I was back then was... well, I don't know who I was. It was someone like me, but it wasn't me.

This is me. And that's when the tears come. That person is dead. I knew him well and I mourned his loss, but now I accept he is gone. This person is new. If not in years and experience, then in spirit. All the old mistakes and regrets died with the other guy. They must've done, because all that is gone but I'm still here. The sense of relief is staggering.

I can't wait to leave this place.

In the rubble after everything collapsed, my first instinct was to run. Run as far away as you can, as fast as you can. But I couldn't even if I'd tried - I didn't have the strength, or the resources. So I resigned myself to a period of recovery, but privately itched to make a dash to freedom as soon as the bandages could come off.

As so often happens after you've been through trauma, the moment of recovery comes upon you without you realising it. There's usually some catalyst for making it the final inch, but it's usually not clear what it is until afterwards. For me, it was finishing my book.

For years I've been teaching people computers, doing technical support and generally being known as 'the computer guy'. I've had enough of that. Truth be told, I'm sick to death of it. I hate being 'the computer guy'. Stop bothering me and bloody well work it out for yourselves - that's what I had to do.

You can't say that of course, and you can't just stop. But the 'computer guy' died with the company, so something had to be done. That's what the book is for. It's for me. It contains everything I learned about computers that was important or that I ever tried to pass on to others. I've finished writing it and now I'm free. The bandages are ready to come off.

I'm going to hit the ground running when I move to Melbourne. I'm going to be forced to do things I haven't done in a long time, or have never done at all. Such thoughts can be daunting and I'm a little nervous about some of it, but like someone who's been stuck in hospital for ages, I can't wait to walk again. I'm looking forward to testing my own strength.

I know I am stronger than I used to be. Noticeably so, to me anyway. The truth is, I find it difficult to talk meaningfully to people who don't share that strength. Well, not difficult exactly, but... boring. I love to travel, I love to learn, I seek out new experiences. The most defining event of my life so far has been the most painful, and I've survived it. There are very few people in my life I can connect with on this level. Too few. I intend to seek out more of them.

I continually discover people who have incredible strength of character. If I've just gone up a level then they are many levels higher than me. I read their books, I listen to their talks, I experience their creations. Such people speak to me, and have done all my life. My great hope is that I get to speak to some of them.

12 months ago that seemed impossible, and before that I wouldn't have even understood what it meant even if it had happened. Things are looking up.

That's why I've been crying. I hadn't realised just how much I really need to leave this place until now that I'm almost ready to go. By this place I don't mean Queensland, or the friends and family I have here. I mean a place in my heart, that staying in Queensland is keeping me tethered to.

I can hardly wait to be free of it. In my head I've already moved on.

And one week today, I'm going home.

Click to see more posts from the 'Moving to Melbourne' series, or start from the beginning.

There's still a fair bit of work to be done before it's truly finished. I need people to proofread it for starters. That includes the kind of people it's aimed at, as well as hardcore geeks and good writers - I want as many opinions as possible! If you're interested in helping out, please give me your details and I'll send you a draft copy.

Then there's the tiny matter of getting it published. There are several options but I haven't decided on the best course of action yet. I'm leaning towards publishing through Wheatmark however.

This is my first book, so if anyone has any suggestions or advice it would be greatly appreciated! I'd like to have it published in paperback and also available as a free e-book. I'd like to get it into as many people's hands as possible, but it's not my aim to make a great deal of money from it. I just want good information to get to the people who need it, and to get my name out as a half-decent writer and/or teacher.

You can read more information about my book here.

It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
- Henry Ford

I am someone who likes to think. Whenever I think about money, it makes no sense and I inevitably come to the conclusion that money is worthless and the financial system is simply a well-perpetrated scam.

I began asking questions several years ago and was surprised to find I am not alone in this view. I am still asking questions. The answers I've found are ugly and raise even bigger questions. I'm yet to find someone who has been able to explain these things away.

In light of the recent economic crisis, more people are starting to think about the nature of money. I feel this can only be a good thing. In a game of musical chairs, nobody loses until the music stops. This silence is golden.

This post contains links to various articles, videos and other resources I have found which relate to the nature of money. It will be updated as I discover more. I hope you find it thought-provoking.

Articles in Mainstream Media

The Guardian UK - Global Recession: Where did all the money go?

An plain-english explanation of the current financial crisis with easy to follow graphics.

Business Spectator - US Finance is one big Ponzi scheme

Respected Australian financial journalist Alan Kohler explains the real purpose of the US bank bailout.

Read the article >

Videos

Money as Debt

Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created.

It's a Wonderful Life: Run on the Bank

The classic scene from Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life

Websites

Douglas Social Credit

In this age of plenty for all, social credit campaigns for optimum economic
security and political freedom for each individual. This means first an assured BASIC INCOME over and above earnings. It also means using the power of voters over their political representatives, local and national, to get the results people want. How can these aims be met?

Visit this site >

The Money Myth Exploded

The Money Myth Exploded was one of the first articles of Louis Even, and remains one of the most popular to explain how money is created as a debt by private banks. It's a story of shipwrecked travellers on a desert island told with accompanying illustrations.

Visit this site >

Books

The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World

This is on my reading list but I haven't gotten to it yet.

He is Mr Moderation, precisely positioned at the epicentre of Australians' view of themselves and the world.

Really? Epicentre? It's a word that has a very specific geological meaning:

the area of the earth's surface directly above the place of origin, or focus, of an earthquake.

That's a seismic shift away from what it's supposed to mean when Bernard says it. But it seems over the years, 'epicentre', and 'seismic' even, have taken on new figurative meanings. Perhaps it's because writing about politics is so earth-shatteringly dull that we need to employ the language of earthquakes to entice people into reading about it.

The problem with using 'epicentre' metaphorically is that the 'epi' prefix means 'upon', which is how you get the geological meaning - upon the centre. Try reading the opening sentence again with that in mind.

Mark Zoback, professor of geophysics at Stanford University, believes it's ok to use 'epicentre' figuratively provided you do so in the spirit of the literal meaning.

"Its metaphoric use is correct as long as it refers to a specific location. I don't think it works with respect to ideas", Zoback says.

It seems 'epicentre' is one of those words that only journalists use (and geologists of course) and more often than not they get it wrong. Unfortunately, it may end up in common usage.

All this just goes to show that if you muck about with language without taking proper care, the aftershocks can be felt for some time.

The Watch Your Language series is a tongue-in-cheek look at the way we have with words.

The Net Filtering Debate

Regular readers will know that I've been following the progress of Labor's mandatory internet censorship policy and writing the occasional article about it. Recently, one of the scheme's most vocal opponents and one of its most vocal supporters were interviewed on ABC Radio. It's an interesting listen, but made all the more so by the enterprising young geek who provided an accompanying video presentation. The video is complete with a honk sound every time someone makes a false or misleading claim

Please do watch this. It will get you up to date with where this misguided policy is at.

Kitties riding on a vacuum

Don't know if you've ever seen a Roomba vacuum cleaner before (I want one) - but here are some kittens riding one.

Dog vs Robot

Continuing the machines and the pets who love them theme, here is a video created by a guy who designs robots. Neat.

Why Windows Vista sucks: Diary of a Microsoft engineer

Moishe Lettvin worked at Microsoft for 7 years, including on Windows Vista. In this blog post he explains the process he and his team went through while working on one feature of the operating system. It's a great insight into how Microsoft develops its products. Lettvin now works at Google.

Read Moishe Lettvin's blog post

Best Business Card Ever

Simple yet effective. Love it.

Click here for previous editions of In Case You Missed It

It'll be a short update this month, but here goes.

To recap, my writing goals for the first half of 2009 are as follows:

• Improve my writing technique and skill
• Find opportunities to write for other publications
• Finish my book and get it published

How'd I do in January?

Improve my writing technique and skill

They say that to be a great writer you've got to be a great reader. I read four books last month, including one by Terry Pratchett, who is reaffirmed as my favourite author every time I pick up something he's written.

In many of the non-fiction books I read, I notice that while the author clearly is passionate and informed about their subject, they are not natural writers. Although the book is usually great, I often find myself thinking of ways it could've been written better.

Not that my own writing is anything of a gold standard. I really would like to brush up on my technique, rather than just rely on my natural ability. I was considering doing a professional writing course, but now that I'll be starting uni in a few weeks that seems unlikely. However, uni will no doubt give me plenty of practice at improving my academic writing skills.

Find opportunities to write for other publications

Absolutely no progress towards this goal last month. Zip. Nada.

Finish my book and get it published

This is where all the focus has been. I'm now within striking distance of finishing the damn thing, or at least the first full draft - about 5,000 words to go is my estimate. I will have it finished in the next fortnight or so, just before my move to Melbourne.

I'm still in two minds about the best way to get it published. I guess it depends on how good it actually is. I'm too close to it and I don't really know. When it's finished I'll be giving it to lots of people to proofread so the path will probably become clearer then.

That's all for now! Busy month ahead and I'll have changed cities by the time I do the next update. See you then.

A lot of what I talk about and am interested in comes back to the concept of change and how it works. When I'm finished my book my next project will be a new blog that explores the nature of change from all angles.

"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses."
- Carl Gustav Jung

One of the most challenging aspects of teaching is trying to see things through the eyes of your student. Your goal is to help them learn things they didn't know and to help them understand things in new ways. This means you first have to imagine what it would be like not to know something, which can be quite difficult if you do, in fact, know.

Occasionally, just when you think you've explained something perfectly, a student can derail a train of thought with an innocent question that totally stops you in your tracks and makes you suddenly realise you've been doing it all wrong.

Over the years, I have spent considerable time teaching small business owners to make better use of technology, helping them understand the role of technology in business and become more comfortable with using it. For several of these businesses, I have helped set up a blog, which in many cases is cheaper and more effective than the printed newsletter they've been using.

Everything is going well in my world and I'm feeling quite pleased with myself until one day I get asked an innocent question - isn't blog a swear word?

I keep talking for a few seconds until my brain freezes and I rewind what just happened. Did they just ask if blog is a swear word? Do I laugh? No, they're looking at me waiting for an answer. Oh my god this is a serious question. What am I supposed to say? We've been talking about blogs for two weeks, why are they just mentioning this now? Have they learned anything? Do any of my students learn anything? Am I a useless teacher?!

Like a poorly programmed piece of software, my brain has been hit with something it wasn't expecting and shuts down. My face is frozen in a goofy rictus of what must appear to be a disturbing mix of amusement and horror as I realise my student is still waiting for me to answer the question.

Blog, of course, is not a swear word. It's simply short for web log, which is really just an online diary or journal. People have blogs to talk about their lives and their interests, and to share with whoever is interested the details of what they are doing or thinking about. Why did my student think blog was a swear word? I was too polite, or perhaps too embarrassed, to ask, but I spent some time afterwards wondering about it. How would it be used?

I'm just going to download the blogging software for you...

Ok, finally the blogging software is installed...

You know all that stuff you usually put in your newsletter? Blog it.

My client must've thought I swore like a sailor. I asked some of my other clients what they thought of the word blog and was surprised to discover many of them had similarly negative feelings about the word. How had I missed this?

It was a defining moment. I realised it's not enough to teach someone how something works. You have to give them a sense of context too. You have to teach them what it means and where it comes from, which means first you have to understand where they come from.

There's a recent TV show called Mad Men which is set in 1960 and revolves around the world of New York advertising executives. Mad Men is well regarded for its accuracy in depicting the period and one of the major themes of the show is to highlight the differences in social attitudes and behaviour then and now.

There's an episode in which Betty, the wife of the main character, has a nervous breakdown while driving and crashes the car. She feels she doesn't know her husband, who seems distant, and she worries about being abandoned. Her friend has been gossiping about the divorced woman who has just moved in down the street, and while Betty is driving she sees the woman struggling to lift a box and worries it might be her doing the same one day. This sets off a nervous condition where Betty's hands are cramped and, unable to hold the wheel, she crashes the car.

Betty's doctors recommend she see a psychiatrist. Her husband doesn't like this idea and thinks psychiatry is full of quacks. He says her doctors aren't trying hard enough. Betty wants to see a psychiatrist but is anxious about it. "My mother always told me that it wasn't polite to talk about yourself", she says.

And there we have it. Blogging may not be a swear word, but it's easy to see how people might consider it rude. What is blogging, after all, but an endless stream of talking about yourself?

How do you explain that blogging is more than this? That it's changing the way we relate to ourselves as a society. How do you explain that blogging is important?

We've already covered the way computers think and the language they use, the differences between platforms and what happens when large numbers of computers are connected to form the internet. We've covered the different diseases computers can catch and how to guard against them. All we have left to cover is how technology changes the way society works and what those changes mean, yet this may well be the hardest thing of all to explain.

For the beginnings of an answer, let's wind the clock back to 1888 and a man named George Eastman, an amateur photographer from New York.

Eastman had been interested in photography for a decade or so, but was frustrated at how difficult it all was. Photography itself was only a decade or so older than Eastman. It had already been made cheaper and easier after William Fox Talbot discovered a process for making negatives, but as these were made of glass and had to be kept wet, the process was too complicated and expensive for the population at large.

Eastman developed a type of paper film that was emulsion-coated. Unlike the glass negatives, Eastman's film negatives were flexible and held on a spindle, so a whole roll of film could be sent to a specialist developer. This made the process cheap enough for the average person to afford, but Eastman sealed the deal by making photography simple enough for the average person to use.

Eastman sold the film pre-loaded inside a special camera he had built - the Kodak. "You press the button and we do the rest" became the slogan. In a flash, people started taking up photography en masse.

Suddenly there were more photos being taken than ever before. A lot of them weren't very interesting of course, and many of them weren't very good, but that didn't matter, except perhaps to some of the professional photographers of the time who felt their profession had been devalued.

Even though amateur photography was mostly just people taking photos of themselves and each other, these photos had value and significance, not just to those in the photos but to others as well. Photography became a way to document people's lives and their interests, and to share with whoever was interested the details of where they had been or what they had seen.

Photography wasn't rude or self-indulgent. It was exciting and emotional. It was important. It changed the world. And it began with technology.

"You press the button and we do the rest" may as well be the slogan for a whole host of technologies that have sprung forth since the invention of the internet. Blogging is just one of them. There are many others and we won't cover them all, but they do all have something in common - they put power in the hands of the people who use the technology rather than those who create it or control it.

That's the change, and it's profound.

Mad Men is a show about advertising men who dream up new ways to tell people what they want. The characters' own lives are fractured and false, but they do their best to look like the happy American family, just like the ones you see in their advertisements.

As someone who grew up using computers and the internet, the world Mad Men depicts is utterly foreign to me. But to many people, a world in which they are empowered by technology in their daily lives is equally as foreign.

The challenge is not to explain the technology, it's to explain why it matters. And that it's not a swear word.

This post is an extract from my upcoming book - The Digital Migrant

Travelling home from Brisbane on the train yesterday, Dad tells me he was accosted by Lawrence Springborg who was evidently conducting some sort of listening tour. Dad says they spoke for about forty minutes, mostly about the train service and what he thought of it, and just general chatter. Apparently politics wasn't mentioned, which was probably a good thing. Lawrence also had a cameraman with him, much to Dad's dismay as he had just walked across the Goodwill Bridge in a particularly heavy storm and was completely soaked.

Despite having little regard for the National Party's approach to policy, I must say I am at least a little bit impressed that Mr Springborg is taking the time to go and find things out, especially talking to just one person for so long.

Most interesting I think was when he asked Dad if he followed the news. Dad said he didn't read any newspapers or watch the TV news, instead getting his information from the internet. Lawrence said what, not even The Courier Mail? Haha. Dad then spent a while explaining news on the internet and how I subscribe to Crikey and follow US politics by downloading podcasts. He also said that there isn't time to read newspapers with so much to do in the day, especially ones that have so little news in them (like The Courier Mail), and pointed out that lots of people listen to podcasts on their iPods on the train to save time. Lawrence was most taken with this and seemed genuinely interested. 'We don't do any of that', he said, 'we'll have to get onto it.'

So there you go. If you see a National Party podcast or Lawrence Springborg with an iPod sometime in the future, you'll know perhaps something sunk in.

A year later, The Borg has a new website, a Facebook profile and a YouTube channel. He's still no new media maven, but maybe talking to people like Dad and others has helped him get the message (not to mention focus groups and having campaign advisors not born before World War II)

Well, it's official - I've been accepted into university!

The City Campus of RMIT, to be precise, to study a Bachelor of Social Science (Policy and Research). It's what some would call a political science degree.

What do I want to do with it? I'm not really sure yet. Policy and Research may not even be the major I end up with as the electives don't kick in until the second year. But the social sciences are definitely the area I resonate with most strongly.

I'm an academic chappy really. I always did well at school, got top marks in most subjects, especially in anything that involved writing or communicating a point of view. It all came fairly naturally and I breezed through.

I hated school though, by the end. I was bored out of my skull and no-one seemed to care or even acknowledge there was a problem. Everyone assumed I would go on and become an academic. I even started doing a couple of uni subjects while I was still in Year 12 through a special program.

I have always had an enquiring mind and like to question things, but this rarely went down well at school, at least not the sort of questioning I was doing anyway. It seemed I was celebrated for my imagination and creativity, my ability to analyse and communicate, to investigate and learn quickly, but only when it followed the accepted way of doing things. To my mind, a lot of the accepted way of doing things were bollocks, so this was disappointing and in the end I found playing the academic game to be hollow and pointless.

When I started doing uni subjects in Year 12, I just saw more of the same stretching out in front of me for years on end. Boredom. Loneliness. More hypocrisy. But my academic 'excellence' was all I had. Suddenly I didn't know who I was anymore and I panicked, rebelled and became destructive. Grades dropped and I became angry and withdrawn, often skipping classes. I became more and more destructive, waiting for someone to say something, but no-one did. Eventually I dropped out of school altogether, a few months before I was due to finish. I was going to make my own way and find out who I was.

After jumping from job to job, never spending more than a few months anywhere, I ended up starting my own business in multimedia and computer teaching. That's another story for another day, but it was the first time I had really thrown everything I had at something. It was challenging, in a way I'd never encountered before. It was hard work, it was exhausting, it was fun, but most of all, it was mine. It was a test of my strength and ability and I relished every moment of it.

Eventually, the business self-destructed. As it turns out, I had neither the strength nor the ability to maintain it. Passion and willpower weren't enough - I was lacking experience. It was an expensive lesson. People lost their jobs, my investor lost his money and it sent me bankrupt. And although I do not take any of that lightly and accept full responsibility for what happened, I found myself strangely calm about it afterwards.

Suddenly I knew the limits of my abilities. Having never been truly challenged before, I had been floating in a world of infinite size and no walls. Nothing meant anything because I had no context for anything. Life was meaningless without relativity and I was often depressed. Now I had hit a wall, and hit it hard. It felt fantastic.

Life changed after that. I wasn't afraid or depressed any more - I was excited. Exhausted, fragile and totally broke, yes, but I knew that would pass eventually. I spent 2008 lying low, recovering. I read a lot. I watched a lot. I learned as much as I possibly could about all sorts of things. I reflected about what had happened, what could've been done differently and what it all meant.

During what I can now call my recovery, I returned to a lot of things I had kept buried in the 8 years since I left school. I rediscovered my love of writing. Other things are personal and don't need to be shared here. I decided to move to Melbourne in the new year, a city that has the culture and activity that I love and thrive in.

In what was a brave decision for me personally, I decided to apply for uni in 2009. Doing so would force me to directly confront my painful school experience, something which I had tried a couple of times since, each time with disastrous results. I wasn't even sure if they would accept me, given I had never completed Year 12 nor had much that looked good on paper to show for my time since.

There was an agonising three month period between when I applied and when I found out where I changed my mind endlessly. I hate waiting for things that are out of my control and I was often restless and distracted, projecting my frustration onto things and people. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to be accepted. Part of me wanted to be denied, so I could indulge in some sort of self-righteous anti-establishment rage and live life against the world until the inevitable flame out.

Thankfully, we've all been spared having to consider that possibility, because I was in fact, accepted. What a relief it was. What a humbling moment too. Thankyou, RMIT. You didn't have to accept me and my crazy application that didn't fit in the allocated boxes, but you did.

I'm excited and I can't wait to begin, to rediscover everything I did love about being in a group learning environment. I still find it all a little daunting, but that's probably for the best. It will be hard work, and frustrating at times no doubt, but I relish the challenge that awaits. Not just the material itself, but dealing with the system. It has its high points and its failings, but I know all about that. In a way, it will be like greeting an old friend, and I look forward to sharing the journey, warts and all.

Oh, and I will ace my results, because I'm a competitive little bastard who likes to win

I'm recovered now. A little wiser, a lot older and grateful to be given a chance to start afresh. I'm ready for whatever life has to throw at me next - so bring it on!

Click to see more posts from the 'Moving to Melbourne' series, or start from the beginning.

It's been a while since the last post - I haven't lost interest, I've just been busy working on my book. I had originally planned to have it finished by the end of last year but it has turned out to be a bigger job than I thought. I'm nearly done and should have it finished by the end of January with any luck.

In the meantime, here is some interesting stuff I've found that's worth a look if you haven't seen it already.

The Magic Four Chords

I'm always pointing out to people the use of similar chord progressions between different songs. This video really makes the point. I love it

Sri Lankan journalist writes from beyond the grave

Sri Lanka is a country in turmoil. Lasantha Wickrematunge was a journalist who sought to make sense of that turmoil through honest and even-handed reporting in the newspaper he set up - The Sunday Leader. Recently he was assassinated, but he knew it was coming eventually. He wrote a stirring, emotional piece in advance which was published in The Guardian last weekend.

I travelled to Sri Lanka in 2004 in the middle of elections and a schism in the Tamil Tigers. It was my first overseas trip and an eye-opening experience. Wickrematunge's final article is a powerful piece and had quite an effect on me.

A Hilarious 2 minute conversation

A theatre group in Chicago - the Neo Futurists - has a show where they perform 30 acts in 60 minutes. One of those acts was broadcast in a recent episode of the popular radio show (and podcast) This American Life. It's too hard to explain so just listen, it's only 2 minutes and you'll love it.

Play Audio

The Bavarian Restaurant Sketch

It's come to my attention that not enough people are familiar with the Monty Python canon. Here's a rare (but classic) sketch from their German special.

Vicar went to hospital with a potato stuck in his bottom

This is a news story from a few months ago that I was recently reminded of. The vicar reckoned he was hanging curtains (in the nude) and fell backwards onto the table at which point the potato became lodged up his rear. Yeah right buddy.

Read the article

Click here for previous editions of In Case You Missed It

• Establish and maintain a clear focus and purpose
• Build a loyal base of subscribers
• Raise my profile and reputation

How'd I do?

Establish and maintain a clear focus and purpose

Although both the topics and tone on my blog vary wildly, there are some common threads that tie everything together. I've discovered I have four styles of writing - playful, objective, personal and soapbox.

I write playfully when I want to say 'gee, the world is a huge mixed-up place and isn't it fun to be here'. I write objectively when I tackle a serious issue and try to help people understand it from all sides. I write personally when I'm going through a new experience myself and want to share it as I go. I get on my soapbox when I'm feeling idealistic about something I think is important.

The underlying theme of my blog is a sense of learning and discovery about life. I love to learn new things and new ways of thinking about old things. I love to share what I know and what I've discovered, and give people opportunities to think in new ways about what they know.

So far, everything has been mixed in and thrown together. The clear focus and purpose isn't something I planned, it's something that has emerged. I started out writing the blog just for myself, as a way to get things off my chest, but since then I've discovered there is actually an audience who's interested in what I have to say about things.

The next step is to restructure the blog to better communicate what it's about and make it easier for people to find what they want. Expect some changes to the layout in the coming weeks and months.

Build a loyal base of subscribers

By subscribers, I meant regular readers, rather than feed subscribers in the technical sense. Looking at the numbers, I'm calling this one a success: (click on an image to enlarge)

Look at the graph of visits for the year - it's been on an upward trajectory since July when I made the changes and set these goals. The split between new visitors and returning visitors is about 50/50, which suggests a fair amount of the traffic growth is being converted into regular visitors.

What's especially interesting to me is who these people are. I am an Apple user, but this is not an Apple-themed blog. In fact, I hardly ever mention Apple. But while Apple users make up less than 10% of traffic on the internet overall, on my site they make up over 40% of visitors. More interesting still, Safari is the most popular browser for people visiting my site, and these people spend longer browsing my site than anyone else!

What does it mean? The simplest conclusion to draw is that people who are interested in the things I write about are most likely to be Apple users. This is something for me to bear in mind in future.

Raise my profile and reputation

Looking at this now, it seems like a silly goal. Raise profile and reputation with who? Just in general, would've been my reply. Sounds like attention-seeking to me. I guess that's exactly what it was. I think we can probably translate this goal as 'is anyone out there really interested in what I have to say? Really? REALLY?!' The answer, apparently, is yes.

By far the most popular post on my blog for 2008 was How to Defeat Internet Censorship, which I'm surprised to note was written only around six weeks ago. This was one of my soapbox posts, and not really what I would consider an example of my best work. But it got me noticed.

Since then I've written a follow-up piece on the internet censorship issue as well as two articles for other publications. All of these follow-ups have been better written (I believe), two of them in the objective style and one playful. This has driven more people back to my original post and had something of a circular effect.

What this means is that in six weeks I've become someone who's name is, if not talked about, then at least recognised, in certain circles - specifically, professional geeks with an interest or involvement in politics. Since I've been wanting more contact with politically-minded geeks for some time, this is a good outcome.

Every time I write something on the topic of internet censorship, my traffic surges, I get a burst of new followers on Twitter and a flurry of comments and emails. Nevertheless, I've resisted the urge to exploit that. It's far too easy to get swept away in a tide of popularity and find yourself somewhere you don't necessarily want to be.

I've become more thoughtful about with whom I want to raise my profile and reputation. To be honest I'm not sure. I would like to become known for my writing, but I don't have a specific audience or a specific field in mind just yet. I consider my blog as an experiment and a way to practice while I find better answers to these questions.

Goals for 2009

Well, the first six months anyway. Setting goals for the entire year seems a bit too far, so I'll go for the six months until the end of June and then see where I'm at. They're really more 'areas of focus' rather than goals in the true sense anyway.

Here's my three areas of focus from now until the end of June 2009:

• Improve my writing technique and skill
• Find opportunities to write for other publications
• Finish my book and get it published

I'll also be continuing my blogging experiment of course, but my focus is now on making better material rather than building a bigger blog.

Stay tuned - I'll be posting more updates as I go.

Here they are, in order of when I read them - click on the cover pictures to find the books on Amazon.

The Appeal

John Grisham

A return to the classic legal thriller for John Grisham, where he seems much more at home. I read this while in San Francisco.

Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror

Richard A. Clarke

A fascinating inside account of US national security over the last 30 years, leading up to and including the Iraq war, from the first of the Bush Administration whistleblowers.

Ronan the Barbarian

James Bibby

A fun, fictional fantasy tale with plenty of bad puns. It was good, but I couldn't escape the feeling that Bibby is living in the shadow of Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and others.

The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family

Dan Savage

I've been reading Dan's sex advice column - Savage Love - for years now. This is his book about gay marriage. It's entertaining, insightful and, surprisingly, far more compromising than his column.

The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

John Battelle

An engaging look at the history and development of search technology, with particular focus on Google. Battelle is a master of this subject and makes a good case for why search is pivotal to the future of technology.

Animal Farm

George Orwell

Heard lots about it, never read it until now. I had no idea it was so short - finished it in an afternoon! It has definite themes in common with Nineteen Eighty-Four, most notably how people's minds are exploited and manipulated by a controlling class.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

Darren Rowse & Chris Garrett

Can't say I thought much of this. It was short, written in big type and was like reading a bunch of blog posts rather than a book. The different writing styles of the two authors were jarring and disjointed and they spent a lot of time repeating themselves. The information provided was good, but for the most part fairly obvious and lacking in depth.

Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide

Charles Wyke-Smith

I'm a professional geek, but not a professional web designer or developer. I searched long and hard for a good introduction to CSS with the right mix of theory and practice. After reading this book I have a much greater understanding. Highly recommended.

The Economic Naturalist: Why Economics Explains Almost Everything

Robert H. Frank

In an attempt to make economics more interesting, university lecturer Robert Frank likes to get his students to think of real-life questions such as 'why do the keypad buttons of drive-up cash machines have Braille dots?' and then use economic theory to find answers. It's a fun, practical approach, and it works. I learnt more about economics by reading this book than all the textbooks I've read combined.

Predictably Irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions

Dan Ariely

One of the big flaws in economic theory is that it assumes people behave rationally when they make choices. They don't. Dan Ariely, a leading researcher in the relatively new field of behavioural economics, conducts a series of real-life experiments to try to discover if there are patterns that can predict people's irrational behaviour. This book is the result of those experiments, and it's amazing.

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins

Dawkins is what many people regard as a fundamentalist athiest. In his uncompromising book, he tackles the tenets of religion using science and logic, and makes the case that religion is not only nonsense but also a deeply harmful influence on society. It's entertaining and well-written, but I'm ambivalent about some of his conclusions. I'm a contented athiest, but Dawkins' militant attitude towards religions seems a step too far to me, even if his reasoning is perfectly valid.

Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth

Steve Pavlina

I'm a long-time reader of Steve's website, which has hundreds of great articles on many different aspects of personal growth and development. Steve is an ex-programmer, so his approach is very structured and practical - either it works or it doesn't. So much self-development stuff is inconsistent waffle, but Steve digs deep to find consistent principles that underpin all personal growth and then applies them to different aspects of life. Challenging, uncompromising and brilliant.

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

Jonathan Haidt

Haidt is a social psychologist who researches morality for a living. After watching his captivating TED Talk on the difference in morals between liberals and conservatives, I was inspired to order his book, which explores the concept of happiness as a social science. In each chapter, Haidt tackles a different aspect of human emotion and experience and looks at how it has been treated by scientists, philosophers and religions throughout the ages. He then blends his own research and offers his opinion of where truth might lie. Some of his conclusions challenge society's traditional views on such matters, and I can't help but feels he's onto something. A great read.

"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself."
- Oscar Wilde

New Years Resolutions are coming up...

Shuffling slowly over the sand, she finally finds a spot in the dunes, uses her flippers to dig a hole of surprisingly precise dimensions and, in a trance-like state, settles in to lay her eggs. For a moment it seems like time has stood still as they emerge slowly, one or two at a time, in a steady stream. Over a hundred tiny lives.

Suddenly she is done and, wasting no time, she uses her flippers again to fill in the hole with sand and smooth over the nesting site. She won't be there to watch when her babies are born, and she surely knows the dangers that await them. Without looking back, she shuffles her way back to the ocean, the moonlight glinting off the salty crystals around her eyes that look for all the world like tears.

Turtles have a special gland around their eyes that secretes excess salt. It's a miracle of evolution, as is their amazing ability to return to the same beach on they were born, a sense of the earth's magnetism that is imprinted on each young turtle as it scampers down the beach moments after being born.

These are beautiful and majestic creatures, yet somewhat mysterious too. For decades scientists have studied their habits, but still little is known about the life of a turtle for the 30 years between birth and breeding. Nevertheless, for the dedicated researchers at Mon Repos on the Central Queensland coast, studying these animals is clearly a lifelong love affair.

The lead researcher, Col Limpus, has been studying loggerhead turtles at Mon Repos for over 40 years. He has fought long and hard for their protection and been instrumental in increasing awareness and understanding of turtles worldwide. Mon Repos is the central research station for all of Australia, collating and processing turtle data from around the country.

Though Mon Repos is famous worldwide for its unique turtle-watching experience, in no way does it feel like a typical tourist attraction. It's all about the turtles, and from the moment you arrive, it's clear that you are a guest - a privileged observer, but that this beach belongs to the turtles. The researchers and an army of starry-eyed volunteers won't hesitate in kicking anyone out who doesn't know their place.

The experience begins at 7pm. It's explained to the waiting guests that during the summer mating season, turtles come ashore to lay eggs anytime between dusk and dawn. There may be many turtles tonight, or there may be none at all. There is no way of knowing when or how many. Guests will just have to wait and hope they're lucky enough to see one.

For the moment however, we are free to look around the information centre, which is well designed and has lots of interesting things on display. We are about 100 metres from the beach, separated by a forest of specially-planted trees. Even this far away the lights are very low, as artificial light disorients the turtles and may cause them to turn around and leave without laying their eggs.

The guests are divided into groups based on who booked first. Researchers are already down at the water's edge looking for telltale signs of any turtles that have come ashore. When they find one, they will quickly notify the staff at the information centre who will call the first group down to watch. They will get to watch the whole experience, which lasts about an hour. The other groups will have to wait for their own turtle. It could be minutes, it could be hours. John, the jovial researcher, reassures the huddled guests that he has enough videos and things to talk about to keep us through until dawn if need be. Tonight there are three groups. We are in group two.

There is an air of excitement as the first group is called down at around 7.30pm. By 8pm, the rest of us have finished looking around the information centre and the gift shop and are sitting around in restless anticipation. John calls us over to the ampitheatre to listen to a talk and watch a slideshow. He tells the story of Mon Repos and its long history with turtles. He talks about the turtles themselves, their characteristics and behaviours.

It strikes me that John has been giving this same talk every night for years, yet it feels like he's telling it for the first time, such is his enthusiasm. It takes a certain kind of devotion to work from dusk until dawn in and out for decades, but John and his team make it sound effortless. Most of the staff are volunteers, giving up their nights to be a part of something. I can't help but feel the turtles are in safe hands.

8.30pm and we're still listening to John. The first group have been gone for more than an hour. People are starting to fidget.

At 8.45, our moment comes. A turtle has been spotted making her way up the beach, apparently in a hurry. Group 2 is quickly mustered and given stern instructions about keeping a respectful distance, staying out of the turtle's field of vision and not using torches or cameras. Then we're rushed down to the beach, the way lit only by dull, periodic flashes from the strobe lights that line the boardwalk.

It's dark on the beach, but it's a clear night with a dazzling array of stars and a nearly full moon. We're led up the beach a little way until we come across two thick lines in the sand, the unmistakable sign that a turtle has been this way. We follow the tracks up the bank and into the dunes and suddenly there she is - a real life turtle. She's huge, and beautiful. For a moment, no-one speaks.

The turtle - now in some way our turtle - has dug her hole and is settling in to lay her eggs. The researchers have set up a torch behind her so we can see. Now they are taking measurements and doing an ultrasound. A ranger explains what is happening but I'm only barely aware of her words, captivated instead by the turtle and the magic of the moment.

After about 20 minutes, she lays her last egg and begins filling in the hole. At this point there's a short window in which we are allowed to use cameras, which we're told do not bother the turtle. I took a few photos and some video which you can see below. The quality isn't very good and certainly doesn't do the moment justice, but you can use your imagination.

As she finishes smoothing things over, we're told to turn off the cameras and get out of the way so she can make her way back to sea. For me, this is the most amazing part of the evening. Her job done, she shuffles slowly back down the beach, followed by a small awestruck crowd who have just witnessed a natural miracle. She is our turtle now. We only met her moments ago and already we must part. Yet every one of us is silently cheering her on, and when she finally makes it to the water and slips away into the night, we send her off with as much love as we can muster.

It's now past 10pm and the strange ritual we've just been a part of has come to an end. We turn our backs and make our way back to the information centre, where Group 3 are still sitting around, waiting. Some appear to be asleep. I look at them with a strange mixture of sympathy and smugness, a huge goofy grin on my face. I wait in line for a certificate to honour the event, and then it's time to go home.

As I walk to the carpark, giddy with childlike wonder, I look at my certificate, where I learn that my turtle's name is K92574. It occurs to me that the good people at Mon Repos see this every night, every year, thousands of times. Thinking back to John's face, it's comforting to know that even after 40 years, the childlike wonder hasn't worn off.

If you get a chance to visit Mon Repos during the mating season, do it. It's an amazing experience. The turtles lay their eggs from November to January and the hatchlings are born from January to March. If you're lucky, on a night in January you might see both. I'm planning on go back to see the babies next month.

Sydney Harbour in a bathtub

A time-lapse movie made from photos using tilt-shift photography. It makes everything look tiny!

TV Weather man keeps cool in a crisis

A piece of the set falls on him in the middle of his presentation. Watch how he reacts.

Does This Vote Count?

Over six weeks after the US election, there is still no result in the Minnesota Senate race between incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger and comedy writer Al Franken. A recount is underway where Al Franken is currently leading by around 30-50 votes.

Why does it take so long? Because so many votes are ambiguous, with both sides challenging over the tiniest details. But you be the judge - take a look at some of these challenged ballots, decide for yourself who voted for who and see what others thought. It's a side of democracy you don't see much.

See the challenged ballots here.

Proposition 8: The Musical

After California voters passed Proposition 8 in November, banning previously legal same-sex marriage, the issue has been making headlines again. Prop 8: The Musical is a hilariously well done three minute send-up of the issue. Featuring Jack Black, Allison Janney, Neil Patrick Harris and others.

Climbing the World's Biggest Trees

The giant trees of the Pacific Northwest are some of the largest living things on the planet, yet still little is known about them. Science writer Richard Preston gives a beautiful and captivating talk on his experience climbing among their magnificent canopies.

Click here for previous editions of In Case You Missed It

In August 2007 I opened an account on Facebook. It was my first experience with using social media and I really enjoyed it. I've always been a fairly reserved person socially, but I found Facebook comfortable and immediately took to the idea of catching up with friends and keeping up with what they were all doing, especially those who I don't see that often or people I haven't seen in years.

However, just under 18 months later, I'm giving Facebook the poke. Here's why.

It's No Longer Useful To Me

To be honest, I just don't find Facebook that useful any more. Since my first foray into social media, I've also started a blog (January 2008) and started using Twitter (June 2008). My blog has become my main public profile and communication outlet, while Twitter has quickly become my medium of choice for keeping in touch with people passively.

While Facebook is addictive and I still check it several times a day, I've realised it's more of a habit than a meaningful use of my time. The only things I use it for are status updates, photos and messages, and these are all things I feel are handled better by other services (ie Twitter, Flickr and instant messaging/email respectively).

It's a Closed System

The internet is an open, connected environment. Facebook is a walled garden. The only people who can see what I do on Facebook are my Friends. To some people this might be part of the appeal, but to me it just seems pointless. I can see the convenience of having everything in one place, but in practice the effect just isn't the same.

To me, the biggest appeal of social media is its ability to help people find ideas and ideas find people. On Twitter and through my blog I've come into contact with dozens of interesting new people and ideas. Some I've met and become friends with offline, others I will never meet. The point is the public web is an exciting world charged with thought-provoking people and peppered with new and meaningful experiences.

You don't meet many new people on Facebook, or at least I haven't. It seems to be more about maintaining the social circle you've already got.

People Come and People Go

I get a temporary buzz from making contact with people I haven't seen in years, but the novelty soon wears off. It's not about being a snob, it's just that life changes and so does the network of people we stay in touch with. Friendships can be for a reason, a season or a lifetime, and although it's nice to hear how someone from your past is doing, I don't need to keep up with their every move and I'm sure they feel the same way about me.

Looking through my list of Facebook 'Friends', there's only a small group I'm in regular contact with, and it's usually not through Facebook. There's a lot of people from school, including some I don't even remember, some from old jobs and a few old flames. They're all nice people, but I find it hard to escape the feeling I'm just collecting 'Friends' like trading cards - "I've got that weird dude from Chemistry class - who have you got?"

The point is - the people I want to keep in regular contact with, I do, just not through Facebook. It can be fun to spy on people and see what they're doing, and I'm sure that's why some people have friended me, but on the whole it's not really a productive use of my time.

If anyone from a past life wants to get in touch with me, it's not hard to find my contact details. A simple Google search for my name returns my website as the first result, and from there it's easy to instigate an email exchange, which seems much more natural than maintaining a list on Facebook of everyone you've ever known in your life.

Why get rid of it altogether?

Why not just keep a basic profile? After all, Facebook is hugely popular, and it could be risky to be left out, especially as Facebook is the only social media app many people use.

Maybe that would be a sensible approach, but the truth is it just doesn't feel right to me. I'm an all or nothing kinda guy. If something isn't working for me I'll try to fix it first, then give it some time to change, but if there's still no magic then I don't see the point in lugging it around with me. I feel better when I travel light. As for the risks of being an outsider, it depends what they are and if you consider those things important.

MySpace is also hugely popular, but I never felt interested in trying it out in the first place. I don't feel like I'm missing out there.

As a professional geek, it's important for me to keep up with what's going on in all aspects of the industry, especially in the trailblazing area of social media. But that's the point. I couldn't possibly join every social networking service - there are too many of them. I wouldn't want to anyway.

It's possible to avoid something without ignoring it, in any case. Microsoft is a huge player in the tech world too and I am diligent about keeping up with what they're doing. But I don't personally use any of their products, and I certainly don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by making that choice.

I am missing out on over 90% of the tutoring and consulting market by choosing not to deal with Microsoft products, but I'm never short of work. The part of the market I do focus on is plenty big enough and is also far more enjoyable and rewarding.

The internet is continually making it easier to keep a strong focus while at the same time reaching a larger audience. When it's so simple to connect with the people you want, who needs to be part of a mainstream popularity contest?

One point worth mentioning is that currently, Facebook accounts for more referrals to my website than any other source. I could easily continue to boost my visitor count by simply using Facebook to broadcast my latest posts or announcements.

To me, this violates the spirit of what Facebook is for. It's a place for friends to keep in touch, and in many ways it's very good at what it's for. But I don't feel right about using it as a megaphone to shout a stream of self-promotion at people, because that isn't what it's for.

Sure, I'll lose some traffic in the short term by lopping off a major avenue of promotion, but again, it's about finding the right audience, not necessarily the biggest one. The people on Facebook who were truly interested in my work will likely seek me out anyway.

The Moral of the Story

Facebook isn't a bad service, it's just outlived its usefulness for me. It served as a good first step into social media, and continues to do so for millions of people as it becomes ever more mainstream. In fact, getting the mainstream public comfortable with social media and sharing information online may be the most valuable part of Facebook's legacy.

But speaking as a lifelong geek who likes to be at the cutting edge, it's time to move on. I'll keep an eye on Facebook's progress of course, and if it becomes useful again in future no doubt I'll be back. But in truth I don't see much of a future for Facebook personally, at least not without some fundamental changes to the way it operates. Chief among those changes would be a move to a more open format and a total revamp of its applications platform. They'll also need to find a way to pay the bills.

I could be wrong of course, and often am, but I get the feeling that in a few years time neither Facebook nor MySpace will matter much. For now they're helping people become familiar with social media and I believe they'll continue fill the gap until a better breed of services comes along, at which point they'll both be soon forgotten.

At the moment, Facebook has many Friends. But perhaps they're the sort you have for a reason or a season, rather than a lifetime. For me at least, that season has now passed.

"Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet."
- Sam Seaborne, The West Wing [written by Aaron Sorkin]

This lights my fire every time. I couldn't agree more.

For real change to occur, we need to change the way we think about things. For most people, that isn't easy. Certain ways of thinking about things become so entrenched that we can't even imagine the idea that there might be a different way to think about them.

Can you imagine a calendar that didn't have 12 months of roughly 30 days? Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a world without such a calendar? If not, why not?

Can you imagine if every map of the world had the southern hemisphere at the top and the northern hemisphere at the bottom? What would that be like?

I'm not saying we should change the calendars or the maps, but if we can't at least imagine doing so, there is a problem. Big change is always a rough ride; not everyone survives it. The sheer scope of the change human society needs to go through to adapt for the future is simply staggering.

But as a society, we still seem to be struggling with the small stuff. Remember the obsession everyone had over fuel prices a year or two ago and what would happen if they ever crashed through the psychological $1 barrier? It seems silly now, but the point is it was silly then too.

There has been a lot of chatter this year about how old media is dying and new media isn't replacing it fast enough, along with much wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding the future of journalism. But the way the discussion is framed is totally absurd.

There was an article a few days ago in The New York Times about the closure of news bureaux in Washington DC.

Those that remain have cut back drastically on Washington coverage, eliminating hundreds of journalists’ jobs at a time when the federal government — and journalistic oversight of it — matters more than ever.

Where does the assumption come from that more journalists means better journalism? Do more politicians mean better laws? More lawyers better justice?

The world doesn't owe journalists a living, no matter how worthy an ideal journalism might be. Old media is dying simply because its business models don't work any more. It has nothing to do with journalism. The old music industry is dying too, yet people listen to more music than ever. There's every indication the same is true of journalism.

Many people then complain that the business models for new media aren't coming fast enough, as if old media and new media were somehow like two tanks of water where a finite amount of journalism flows gracefully out of one and into the other. That sort of thinking demonstrates a total misunderstanding of the relationship between 'old' and 'new'.

There's nothing graceful about big change from old to new. Those who cling to the old always die in the end, and those who are focussed on the new can rarely wait for them to leave. The sad part of it all is that those who fight for the old and those who fight for the new are often fighting for the same ideals. But for the time between them they might have fought side by side.

So why haven't the new business models arrived yet? Some would say they have. But new media certainly isn't mainstream yet. Why not? Because people need to change the way they think. New media will never truly take off until enough people stop thinking in an old media mindset. Alternative energy will never truly take off until enough people stop thinking in a carbon-dependent mindset.

That's all it is. Never underestimate the power of denial. It won't make a damn bit of difference to the outcome, but it certainly affects the way change happens. The more people resist change, the bloodier it is when it finally arrives. I wonder how many people realise just how bloody this is all going to get in the next few decades. If the $1 fuel debate looks silly now, just wait and see how important the current global economic 'crisis' seems in another year or two.

If you've read this far and you're feeling bleak and concerned about the future - slap yourself now and pay attention! Haven't you been listening?

Old. Always. Dies.

New. Always. Wins.

Keep up with the new. Think different. Keep imagining. It's that simple. There has never been a more exciting time to be alive. What a privilege each and every one of us has to be here in this moment. To be here at all. Why waste precious moments trying futilely to hold on to a way of life that was far from perfect to begin with? Why not help build a better one?

As for the stuffy old Luddites in positions of power who wouldn't know a new way of thinking if it rose up and threw them out of office - get off the world stage already! And to those waiting in the wings to replace them - slap yourselves now and pay attention! Haven't you been listening?

New. Is. Different. To. Old.

That's. What. Makes. It. New.

Stop waiting around for change you can believe in and go make your own. In case you hadn't noticed, the political system is broken too. People seem to want it to work so badly. It already works badly. Why not start thinking about building a better one?

Gotta keep up with the new. You might have your eye on the ball today, but where will it be tomorrow?

Just imagine...

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written."
- Oscar Wilde

Not Just a Job

It's been years since I had a genuine full-time job. I've been self-employed in some fashion for around eight years now, and the jobs I've had during that time have mostly been to support my self-employment in some fashion.

However, since my company went bust last year and I declared bankruptcy, my appetite for self-employment has been dampened somewhat. I promise I will get around to sharing that story one day, but for the moment it's still a bit too raw for me to talk about in detail.

When I move to Melbourne, I've ruled out self-employment as a viable option, at least to begin with. My two best options are to study fulltime study or to find fulltime employment. I've made an application to RMIT to study a Bachelor of Social Science, but I won't know if I've been accepted until January 20, 2009. Given the fact I've been basically broke for the last 18 months however, it would be nice to have some money again, so a fulltime job certainly sounds appealing.

What I'm Looking For

Assuming I go the employment route, there are three main things I'd be looking for in a job opportunity:

• Something in a field I'm passionate about (technology/media/politics)
• Something with a certain degree of independence, autonomy and opportunity for challenging self-development
• A salary over $50,000

That's what it would take to get me interested. Beyond that, I'm open to ideas. I am very capable, committed and resourceful when I'm set on a task, but I have to be engaged and motivated otherwise it's just a waste of the employer's time and mine.

What I'm Like as an Employee

In eight years of self-employment, and especially in the wake of monumental failure, you really develop a deep understanding of yourself. Nevertheless, rather than use my own words, I find it difficult to improve on the assessment of my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - INFJ - with which I resonate strongly. Here's an excerpt from an INFJ personality type analysis:

INFJs are distinguished by both their complexity of character and the unusual range and depth of their talents. Strongly humanitarian in outlook, INFJs tend to be idealists, and because of their J preference for closure and completion, they are generally "doers" as well as dreamers. This rare combination of vision and practicality often results in INFJs taking a disproportionate amount of responsibility in the various causes to which so many of them seem to be drawn.

INFJs are deeply concerned about their relations with individuals as well as the state of humanity at large. They are, in fact, sometimes mistaken for extroverts because they appear so outgoing and are so genuinely interested in people -- a product of the Feeling function they most readily show to the world. On the contrary, INFJs are true introverts, who can only be emotionally intimate and fulfilled with a chosen few from among their long-term friends, family, or obvious "soul mates." While instinctively courting the personal and organizational demands continually made upon them by others, at intervals INFJs will suddenly withdraw into themselves, sometimes shutting out even their intimates. This apparent paradox is a necessary escape valve for them, providing both time to rebuild their depleted resources and a filter to prevent the emotional overload to which they are so susceptible as inherent "givers." As a pattern of behavior, it is perhaps the most confusing aspect of the enigmatic INFJ character to outsiders, and hence the most often misunderstood -- particularly by those who have little experience with this rare type.

Usually self-expression comes more easily to INFJs on paper, as they tend to have strong writing skills. Since in addition they often possess a strong personal charisma, INFJs are generally well-suited to the "inspirational" professions such as teaching (especially in higher education) and religious leadership. Psychology and counseling are other obvious choices, but overall, INFJs can be exceptionally difficult to pigeonhole by their career paths.

In their own way, INFJs are just as much "systems builders" as are INTJs; the difference lies in that most INFJ "systems" are founded on human beings and human values, rather than information and technology.

Read a full analysis of INFJ here, or find out more about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator here.

I Hate Resumes

I have a resume, but I don't like it. For all my love of writing, structure and systems, I find it impossible to compile a resume that makes me look like anything other than a scatter-brained chronic underachiever.

I'm not entirely sure what to do about this problem. Once I get to the interview stage I'm totally comfortable, but I find the first step intimidating and embarrassing to the point that I'm genuinely scared of applying for jobs in the first place. If I'm allowed to express myself freely in an application I'm fine, but I find the restrictions of the resume format and the cattle-call recruitment process deeply upsetting and uncomfortable.

I've made my resume, such that it is, available as a PDF.
References are available upon request.

Job Search Websites

I truly hate job-search websites. I'm sure I can't be the only one. All the ones I've seen are designed in a way and for a purpose that's totally unhelpful to someone like me. Occasionally I'll feel compelled to give them another go, but they invariably they just make me angry and frustrated.

In the past I have usually found work by applying directly to employers in response to a job posting on their website, by hearing about a position through friends and colleagues or simply on-spec.

The Bottom Line

I've been told by some people in the past that my attitude to things like finding a job seems stubborn, unreasonable or unrealistic. This is a criticism I've learned to live with. The truth is I simply have a personality and a set of skills that lend themselves to a certain way of doing things, and is largely incompatible with what is apparently considered normal.

In the past I have remoulded myself to suit this 'normal' that I hear so much about, but it has never brought me anything other than misery, frustration and disappointment. Eventually I realised that all these attempts to change the fundamentals of who I am are actually quite insulting. I don't ask anyone to compromise their values, and as far as I'm concerned mine are off-limits too.

All this means I've ended up taking an unusual path through life so far, but an interesting and exciting one. My hope is that someone will recognise my unique qualities and point me in the direction of a meaningful and worthwhile opportunity.

If that doesn't happen, I'll find something else to do. I really can't see myself getting a pointless job just for the sake of it. Life's too short to waste time.

Click to see more posts from the 'Moving to Melbourne' series, or start from the beginning.

The articles are as follows:

Tear Down Australia's Great Firewall Reef - Guy Rundle

'Digital Natives' take on censorious Kevin - Danu Poyner

Liberal tyranny on the World Wide Web - Kerry Miller

Spiked describes itself as:

an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms.

Governments think they know best

Many of the Howard Government's key policies were deeply unpopular with the electorate. The position it took on gun control, the GST, the Iraq war and WorkChoices all provoked massive public anger and widespread riots. And yet every single one of these policies was implemented anyway.

When you hear Howard and Co. tell it, they invariably dismiss the public sentiment and say they implemented the policies anyway because they had to do what was right. That in itself is grounds for a debate on the nature of government and democracy, but it can wait for another day.

Governments can't see outside their own ideology

One gets the impression that at the time, members of the Howard Government honestly did not understand why people were so angry at their policies in the first place, and that a year after being booted out of office, many still don't. Peter Hendy, former Chief Executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and longtime Liberal Party insider, said he thought all the uproar surrounding WorkChoices was a retaliation for what happened during the 1998 Waterfront dispute.

Alexander Downer said:

It was a political mistake. It might not have been an intellectual mistake or a policy mistake, but it was definitely a political mistake.

Peter Costello said:

The probabilities that people were going to be ripped off in this environment were lower than in the last several decades.

John Howard himself says of WorkChoices in an interview:

If ever we were to enact this further reform, this was the time to do it. A strong economy, a falling level of unemployment. If you didn't do it then, you'd never do it.

With such an attitude, any resistance on moral or ideological grounds was never going to be heard or make the Government change its mind. The resistance certainly helped change people's minds about the Government however, which lost in a landslide to Labor in November 2007. But by then, for those who opposed WorkChoices, the damage had already been done. WorkChoices had already become law.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

The point is - a year later, the bulk of WorkChoices is still law. Sure, Labor promised it would get rid of it, but will it? It seems more likely that they will simply tinker with the existing legislation and rename it 'Forward with Fairness'. That's not the same thing as getting rid of it at all. That's keeping it, but adjusting it to suit yourself.

The Australian internet censorwall must not go ahead. And yet what have we learned from the last 11 years? Sure, we can yell till we're blue in the face about free speech, and we should, but will it really change the Government's mind?

Make no mistake, the Rudd Government is every bit as prone to ideological misadventures and moral panic as the Howard Government was, and indeed most governments are. They're the ones in control. They see it as their duty to 'do what's right', regardless of public opposition.

If the censorwall becomes law, we will never get rid of it, just like we'll never be rid of the GST. It will just get tinkered with by successive governments as it suits them. The biggest threat the censorwall poses is not from what this government wants to do, it's about what every government that comes after will do.

This fight is too important to lose

We cannot allow the censorwall to become law. Thankfully, there are dozens of good reasons why it's a terrible idea and they are easy to explain and verify. I implore you all, fight this fight on policy, not on ideas. It's much harder for the Government to defend a policy that clearly won't work and is a waste of money, as opposed to one that the public simply doesn't like.

The Filtering Fallacies website has a great list of over 100 reasons why the censorwall is a terrible idea. I strongly encourage you to check it out.

"Yesterday was one thing, today is a whole nother thing entirely!"

The practice of splicing the word another with the word whole sounds quite natural when spoken, but really makes no sense when you write it. Is there such a thing as a 'nother'?

The word another only came about in the 16th Century. Before that it was 'an other', but could easily have been mistaken for 'a nother'. That sort of mistake has happened more than you'd think, especially when it comes to words beginning with 'n'. Some interesting examples are:

• an adder - originally from the Middle English naddre, meaning snake
• an apron - originally from the Middle English napron (for some reason the word napery has survived intact)
• a nickname - originally from the Middle English eke name, meaning an additional name
• an umpire - originally from the Middle English noumpere

Linguists call this false splitting, which basically means mistaking where one word ends and the next begins.

The word another isn't an example of false splitting however, it's an example of juncture loss, where two words become one. This is how 'an other' became 'another'. Other examples include:

• atone from at one
• alone from all one
• alligator from the Spanish el lagarto, meaning 'the lizard'

This means when you say 'I saw an alligator', you're really saying 'I saw a the lizard'. There are many similar examples, particularly from Arabic words which have become English words which start with 'al', such as albatross, algebra, alcove, alchemy, alfalfa and alcohol.

But back to this business of 'a whole nother'. Putting one word inside another is a form of what linguists call infixation. It may not be technically correct, but English is so messed up anyway that you may as well live by the motto that if it feels good, do it.

So are you free to go on saying 'a whole nother'? Abso-bloody-lutely!

The Watch Your Language series is a tongue-in-cheek look at the way we have with words.