Fattest People on Earth

And the winners are ....

Australians. Now I know why they call me skinny !!!

UPDATE: 15 JULY 2008
13 july 2008 sunday - I bought us an exercise bike. It was on special at Cole's. Took more half an hour to put it together - I lost probably 100 calories putting it together. I cycled for 5 minutes the first day and 20 minutes yesterday. The person for whom this bike was meant has not gotten on it yet. She grows by lumps and bumps each day.

Migrating

It's now nearly 3 months I've brought back the used Powerbook G4 and now is the time to do a serious move before work overflows. It is tempting and exciting and frightening. I have had this laptop for more than 2 years now - I shall pass it on to neverbeenkissed. And I will move to Mac.

Burn files
- emails totalling >30G
- edited videos >20G

Most docs I can burn onto CD/DVD but these need to be analysed - so I decided to find myself a free online storage. I am writing this blog as I await the upload of madanimator's files to myotherdrive.com
as a reminder, i have logged in with the family optus account

it's very very slow

20 June, Friday
Have abandoned myotherdrive.com - also realised I've signed into something known as scribd which is a file-sharing thing for Office wares, esp Powerpoint. Would be good for dad but he probably doesn't like things online. Definitely not a blogger he.

This week's special at Target was 100discs of Gold label DVD for $29.99. I was one of the first to be in the store yesterday. Got into my head that the best thing is -R. Went home and tried it on laptop. It kept spinning. Very unhappy. Returned it to store even though I had removed the plastic. They took it back after I insisted I didnt write on it. Swop it for +R. So now I know. My laptop burns (and reads) TDK +R. Burnt 10G of data. Deleted these on hard drive. Somehow these deleted files disappear from the recycle bin. CCleaner only managed to clean 700mb... really wondering.

Next step the email from Pegasus. Yaiiii! Very difficult to print and save as PDFs... I think I will have to do a hatch job for the moment. Tried to download ABC Amber's Pegasus Mail converter. With Firefox, it keeps leading me to this Russian site, Beatles Forever. Very annoying. I am sure it's Firefox.

Downloaded zippy Off By One Browser. Bang! Got into the site. Downloaded the trial version of ABC Amber. Good for 10 messages. But heh...

Must remember to bring Off By One Browser to the very old laptop and play with it.

Now there's mail conversion to be done.

Madanimator turns 12

yesterday was his birthday. A few days before I was agonising over what to get him for his birthday that would not entrench him into the quagmire of online gaming. He wanted counterstrike source but the father already got him that. I toyed with various ideas: a better monitor, a better processor which led to better motherboard. Decided it's best to wait till we can afford a brand new system. Which led me to the paths of Carribean Gardens on Sunday morning to search out gadgets that might tease a 12 year old away from his gaming. Ended up with a no name MP4 player made in China... it's an ipod nano clone. Sunday evening was supposed to be relaxing but clone does not come with instructions. I couldnt play the darn thing. Last thing I wanted was to give the lad a gadget he can't manage. Here's the long story on how I finally figured it out. In my blog on suburbangadgets.

Finally big day arrives. Madanimator is over the moon with Counterstrike. He had been dying to have it for ever so long. He was suitably impressed with the Clone. When I thought I might have to settle him down and go through the buttons with him, he turned it on, just like that! Yes, a child of the last years of the 20th century is born with an IT gene.

Stick Insects and Liveable Cities

Heard on the radio yesterday that melbourne is now ranked 17th in the world's most liveable cities. I think this is from the Economist's survey of multinational companies. Melbourne was the leading city for 3 or 4 years running 5 years ago. So what happened? That's the question on the lips of many who are prepared to discuss the state of Melbourne today. My guess: cost of living, high petrol prices, surging housing costs, near zero rental properties, bad public transport and increasing crime [although it is still pretty safe to leave your house unlocked for a couple of hours or so - depending on suburb] and poor public education. Has the government sold out to businesses and forgotten about the people? Think education for a moment... madanimator is due to go to high school next year: his choice school is now out of range because of over population. Yet, said highschool sets aside places for full-fee paying students, (ie foreign students) . This is a public school for goodness' sakes. And what is this about the government giving subsidies to private schools. This is really a "what the!" situation. Did we become 17 because our standards of life drop or did we fail to keep up with "best practices" and meet the international benchmarks...?

I kept thinking about the factors that pulled down melbourne to 17th - - i found a stick insect on the edge of the recycle bin. Nice. For some strange reason, i felt this need to bring in indoors. I let it rest on the money plant, then husband decided it would be better to put it into a used goldfish tank. We found it this morning up the ceiling. Still nice.

18 June 2008, Wednesday
The stick has migrated from the money plant - it started shifting around when I misted it - it spent 29 hours up on the ceiling and 12 hours on the record player and 10 hours in the lampshade. I can't find it anywhere today. It's still around, I just got to find it - the leaves are intact and I wonder what it's feeding on. A bit concerned. "Mum and her stick" seems to be the current joke.

20 June 2008, Friday
Stick has officially disappeared - but tomorrow's weekend cleaning might bring some fresh new hope

The Power of Shutting Down

Mercury in in retrograde which means most mechanical things dont work for humans. The internet is moving slower, computer functions take a longer to access. This is when shutting down and restarting works best. Another example just 5 minutes ago - when the decoder on the cable tv just refused to give more than 2 channels. Shut down for 2 minutes and restarted. Everything back to normal.

And during this moment of non connection to the world, what does one do? I looked at all the things I have downloaded. Most memorable moment would be the youtube videos - which I might add is very simple to download. Just get the URL, add "kiss" before youtube it takes you to the website and click download. From there its just a matter of using VLC to watch or convert. Most stunning video I've seen is Bowie and Gail Anne Dorsey doing Under Pressure in the Reality Tour. What a magnificent force in Gail Anne's voice. I dare say it's a lot better than Mercury's own version (or at least the version at Wembley Stadium)

More Monster Madness

Neverbeenkissed is really going through a very negative, selfish stage - so she went out last night, the third time in the row without telling anyone. Sneaked out through the garden gate. At 1 in the morning, noisy girly chatter from waiting car driven by some one with a lead foot. I knew it was her... the entire house has been locked in. I was obliged to let her in, and felt it in my cultural calling to give her a lecture. So today, I decided to make a list of unresponsive things she has done. My challenge is: you claim you broke up with your Russian bf, well how do you expect people to respect you when you don't show some respect.

1. coming in at 1am with loud music in the car and stupid giggling waking up neighbours
2. not telling parents about outing and forcing them to get up by tapping loudly on the door
3. doing laundry at 1.15am because you needed your favourite pants the next day
4. 10am drying pants in dryer and leaving the house WITHOUT said favourite pants when the sun is shining
5. forcing mum to buy bra because "I desperately need it" and dumping it into the laundry bin with price tag intact. It's been there for 4 days now
6. freshly folded clothes dumped on bedroom floor waiting for clean up day when freshly laundered folded clothes go back into laundry bin to be washed. I think these clothes have gone from one wash to another and have actually never been worn

NVU testing

I find logging-in a very annoying task - I am sure it's psychological but I dont see why it's so difficult to just make notes without revealing my identity and password. So I'm going to try and use NVU to update the post. It's an open-source WYSIWYG editing software. Not sure if it works - so ghibberish may follow.

I know blogger has an MS Word plugin but I have this thing against MS word as well