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Between state, local and federal elections, it seems that someone is always campaigning about something in Australia. Whilst this means that we are nominally supposed to get representation based upon our geographical area, this does not seem to happen in practice. Instead what we get is a government that is ruled by one authorative leader, who places their vision into all policy that is administered and how the executive and legislative branches of the government operate.
I am not the biggest advocate of a complete separation of power, and provided there is representative responsibility then the system seems to work quite well.
One of the problems that I have seen lately is that not all leaders stay for the full term, when there is nothing left to achieve, like an elite athlete retiring after they have all the records then there is a void. Other leadership transitions can occur through party room battles, death, illness or similar; the fact is that a leader that did not face the election is the leader of the government. This individual then sets their own policies, agendas and ideas and starts to put them into motion.
This assumption of power is not a problem if one assumes that each politician is only there to look after their own electorates, and because of this then if the majority of electorates support the new leader then everything is all good. If however you see the government as being affirmed and the representatives are elected on a geographical area only for convenience of getting people to form the government and as a pool of ministers for the duly elected government. where this view is taken then the leader is elected by proxy by the people at the previous election, and when they go, then there is a leader that the general populous did not agree upon.
I prefer the latter view, that the government, and their leader are elected by the people, regardless of the name on the voting card, they are voting for the leader. This is evident as all the candidates have their photos with the leader on their how to vote cards and it is the leader who sets the policies and how they should campaign. Therefore I feel that the next leader who takes over should hold an election as soon as practicable, continuing with the previous leader’s policies. Anything else feels that they have subverted the mandate given by the people and feels undemocratic.
Why should there be a leader who the electorate does not know, implementing policies that they do not necessarily agree with? If they were that they were representing the wishes of the people then they should not have a problem submitting the scrutiny of the people via an election. If they are not confident and are holding onto power because it has been won, not at the ballot box but by inferior means then they have no place being in government and should have a new election anyway.
Let me know what you think, is it fair that a new leader can lead without the will of the people behind them, or is this just democracy at work?
Sometimes the decision to host your own domain is not as easy as just going to blogger or wordpress.com and using a hosted blog. My post count is down due to a break I have taken over recent weeks and a constant battle just to keep my blog operating.
Currently I am using byohosting.com as my hosting provider at $1 US per month. As I make no income from my blogging this is an appropriate investment giving my limited finances. My current experiences with this hosting company are that you get what you pay for. I get email that does not work reliably (hence the move to google), technical support issues (like when my site is down for 2 days) and no response, excuses that there are hosting problems as their ISP has banned their IP’s and other annoying issues.
I can forgive them these issues, however I have discovered the keys to a good hosting solution, namely No Interference and good communication. As a programmer, I expect my programs to keep on working unless there is an unpredictable third party that comes along and ruins things.
With my blog, I have had it setup with the correct permissions, function calls, access records and databases. I expected it to work in my absence from checking and updating it daily. I was very wrong there. Obviously my provider is making changes on their servers, this is only obvious because of the problems that have arisen and the way they were effected. I have had the site down because they changed apache’s security logs, I have had disruptions because scripts that previously had access to my files and folders were suddenly locked out. Some PHP functions ceased working because php had been upgraded and those functions had been depreciated, finally my database had other issues.
If I had my way then these changes would not have been made, as they were not necessary for my site to continually operate. If I had been told about what upgrades were going to go through and when I could have tested my site. Hence, if they did not change things or told me about changes then I would not have such a negative opinion of this host.
if possible this is what i would do; I would engage one of the new VPS service providers. For those who don’t know a VPS or virtual private server is a setup where you have access to a virtual machine that you have control over. A virtual machine is where a server runs multiple instances of operating systems, each of which acts like an individual machine. Basically this is unimportant to you, it means that the environment where you are hosting your files / applications is under your control. You should be able to setup your own web server, databases, configuration files, libraries and routing. This means that you will not get people fiddling with things and breaking them (when you leave your site it will be as you left it) and if there are changes; you make them and they will only be in your best interest.
Currently the problem with VPS is that for the amateur blogger / web site owner they are still too expensive, but I note they are coming down all the time.
Some of the other benefits, apart from stability is that they are centrally managed, centrally backed up and if necessary you can poach some of the memory that is being used by other virtual machines on the same box. As you are not worried about hardware, you will not need to upgrade yourself and be stuck with co-lo fees or other negatives of servers.
At the end of the day, if your site is important to you, and you can afford the fees then I would recommend a VPS over any shared hosted solution, as control, backups, lack of hardware support is something that all but the dedicated should need.
The title says it all… After a blogging holiday I am back with more spare time, fresh full of ideas and new enthusiasm, I did note however that it was hard to get windows live writer and start my first post back and I thought I’d share some of the reasons with you
At the end of the day, my exams are over, I have time to blog and have got over my other issues to begin posting regularly. Be a doer not a sayer; let people know what you have to say and you and they will benefit!
Although people like me have had hotmail email addresses for over ten years, it does not mean that using this address in the workplace is either credible or professional. I do not think that using a common, free email looks good on a resume to a top tier law firm. Nor does sending emails to prospective clients or even new social networking associates with an email that is littered with ads seem an approach that means that people will take you seriously. Using the email address provided to you by your Internet Service provider does not look much better (In Australia the ominous bigpond.com.au address prevails) and both of these have the disadvantage that the services could end at any time.
I have found a solution (I have not been paid for this) that will provide you with reliable, free, professional looking email for the price of going to a movie once a year. It also means that you can get your own name at your domain (andrew rather than and0ew8492 or similar that you will get at hotmail).
After having a week full of study, exams, routers blowing up and work there has not been much that is positive - however I was able to solve one issue that has been bugging me. I have had email hosted at terabell.com however my hosting account does not give me much storage, nor is it entirely reliable. I have found a service that provides me with up to 100 free email addresses; each with over 4GB of storage and run by one of the world’s biggest companies. (Disclosure; I have not been paid for this post nor will I benefit from it in any way)
Google is promoting its "Google Apps". This is a collection of online tools such as calendar, documents and email that it is hoping will displace Microsoft’s dominance in the business world. So What - I hear you ask, how does that help me create an email that looks professional so I can apply for that lucrative clerkship or job? They are also opening it up for small businesses to host your own email. You do not even need to have a web page hosted; you just need control over a domain.
Here is what you need to do:
You will now have email that is reliable, ad free, comes from a domain that you control (so you are not in the same boat as all those spammers who use hotmail ) and is something that people will take seriously.
These instructions may sound complex but I have been through it twice and it took me 15min the second time. Best of all - provided you pay for your domain each year you should be able to use this forever without having to go through those instructions again.
I doub’t that you will use the 4GB but if you want more you can pay for more.
I think that it is doubly impressive as most people will think what you have done is very difficult and you will increase your technical abilities in their eyes without much effort as all.
So…. I urge you to loose your old daggy hotmail - and use your own email - it is close enough to free and will be something you will not regret.
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Completely avoiding the double entendres that could be drawn out of being a blogger that Does Follow; I have now decided to open all comments on this blog to let their url’s not be shielded by a "link condom". I really like the idea of people commenting on my blog and encourage anyone to do so. To enable this I have not put any measures to prevent people posting, save akismet which has caught over 3,000 spam posts in three months.
I have decided to remove the "nofollow" that is automatically added to posts by wordpress. If you are unfamiliar this is a property that is added to a link that tells a search engine not to give any credence to the links within. This is supposedly to combat more spam and I feel that it is cheating the system. There are many different people who have done research saying that these links are still taken into account and the amount of spam since this has been implemented has only increased.
I feel that this means that sites that should be recognized because of their quality are not being indexed and spammers are being rewarded. If you have a comment on my blog - any links will be picked up by searches and recognized accordingly.
I could go into this in more detail but there are some excellent resources online mentioning what nofollow means and the damage it is doing; please see the sites below;
I encourage you if you have your own blog to do the right thing and make sure your links can be followed.
If you want to comment on my blog in the future, please review my new Comment Policy
What Does Mind Mapping Look Like?
Here is some of my study notes in a mind map. I have contracted the branches using my software - but as can be seen many ideas can be easily linked
What is Mind mapping Good For?
This technique can be used for:
Why Mention It In This Blog?
The reason that Mention this is that I have recently been told how effective this technique can be, and am experimenting with it for my current studying. I have found that it is very quick to be able to look things up, and in open book exams looks like a great way of quickly navigating to where I want to go. I think it is also good for finding patterns from lectures and topics that seem otherwise completely disconnected.
Can I Use Software For Mindmapping?
There is many free and commercial programs for creating mind maps. I have downloaded and tested some, and the easiest and most versatile that I have used is Freemind. This can be located here. This is a free java based program that can create maps such as my example above.. It is easy to import and export to and from a variety of formats, You can expand nodes and its printing options are flexible. Please find a quality pdf here.
Where Can I find More information?
Where Can I download Mind Maps?
There do not appear to be any sites to download mind maps on any topic. I am considering building a site that is a repository of ideas represented in mind maps, If you have any mind maps you would like to donate please contact me above.
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I have one on the right hand side of my blog. This service is called Blogrush. The idea is that you sign up your blog and they will display your posts headlines on other people’s blogs the same amount of times as you display the widget. This is a good idea and I would like to do anything that will get people to read what I have written and to contribute to my blog. They have had all sorts of problems with not initially having any quality standards for the blogs that are displayed and have had problems with reporting and dashboards.
Today, they have upgraded their dashboard and you can view statistics in numbers and graphs about how many times you have displayed their widget and how many people have clicked on them. I have included some of the images about what it looks like after the refurbishment on either side.
I love the idea of this service the reciprocal nature and the way of getting my headlines seen- I also like that you can get bonus credits if you refer people to use their service. The thing that I don’t like is that it takes up a lot of real estate on your blog which I could be using for other things. I don’t like that the super large blogs have so many credits that often you see the same thing when you view the widget. I also dislike that it looks like an ad, I’m not sure how to make it different - maybe as a news ticker; but I would not have clicked on it if I did not know what it was. I also find that most people hide it on their sites, so you are getting your headlines displayed is rather redundant, so it dissuades you putting it in a prime position on your site.
Basically, My stats are - over the past month I have earned 40,000 credits (that many times my headlines have been displayed on people’s sites) and I have had people click on my links 7 times. For my money this is a pretty poor conversion ratio.
Do you know of a way to attract more people to my blog? What tactics do you use? Have you had any good results from blog rush?
I am going to leave my judgement until I see the results of your feedback, but I think that I am going to stop displaying the widget.
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It may be possible that some questions can not be answered, others are those that are not impossible but there is nothing that you have ever heard to explain the phenomenon, below are some of the questions I have been asking myself for some time where I can not find answers…. Are they answerable - you decide!
If you have any answers to these questions or have questions that you would like answered please post below - if you liked this post please subscribe to my RSS feed or have my posts sent to you via email.
There are many different Smilies or Emoticons -Some in the Picture form above, and others in the traditional Text
…..:)…:-)…*<;-}= 
However - When you use a smiley or emoticon - do people really know what you are saying? There seem to be many problems in communication / conveying mesasges that arise because of the lack of consistency in the use of smilies and emoticons. I propose that there needs to be a standard usage across the board.
These devices are relatively new compared to the history of the written English language and different people interpret their use differently.
If you think about when we are communicating with each other in person, much of that communication is not just with the words we say, it is expressed in the way we talk (tone and inflection) about the gestures we use (both facial and with our bodies) how quickly we say what we are saying, and by using the actual language we are using.
If you take away all the visual and audible cues, look at something that has been posted to convey emotion. If you think about the words there can be multiple meanings attributed to each word (this is what I enjoy about studying the law) - there is also tone and inflection, there is no pace, there is no body gestures, and there is not necessarily any familiarity with who is writing. The words are supposed to stand on their own. Some things can try to show the emotion, and meaning to supplement the ambiguous nature of the words and sentence construction - this can be achieved with USING CAPITAL LETTERS or bold or italics to try to show differences or it can be used with the subtle smiley ;->.
I am a big fan of sarcasm. This may be because of the mischievous nature inside me or my Australian upbringing. This is one of the most difficult things to convey when you are in an instant messenger conversation - or especially when writing a blog post. There does not seem to be any standard ways that people can look at your text and see what you mean. Some suggestions I have for this is to:
There are problems with each of these approaches. The first spoils the fun and people may not understand, the second may be interpreted to be just saying I hope you have a happy day, or that what you are saying is a bit devilish, or that the whole text was sarcastic or people may just ignore it. Surrounding comments with tags is very geeky and people may not understand the relevance and think you have broken code - however personally I surround sarcastic comments with a * * with people i know. There is no convention for italics and people may think that you are quoting someone. Joking is something that has the same problems as a smiley face as this is ambiguous. I don’t think that anyone wants to post an apology. And not using sarcastic is definitely not an option (at least for me)
What is the Emoticon etiquette? There does not seem to be one and I think there should be. I propose that people put any sarcastic comments in their own paragraph, where they are proceeded with an opening smiley :-/ and closing smiley :-\ meaning that it is sarcastic. What do you think?? Should it say it all - should it be used for a whole paragraph, sentence - how does one look at it
What do you think? Please post your opinions below.
p.s. I was inspired for this article by the Problogger mishap (
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/10/25/pagerankadsense-clarification-im-not-funny/) where numerous bloggers misunderstood something that I thought was pretty obvious because it was surrounded first by a smiley and secondly by the words joking.
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