Superannuation growth
I received the 2006 benefit statement from my main superannuation fund today. It’s an employer plan called Plum associated with MLC Vanguard.
The good news is that my total superannuation increased by 18 percent in the year. Total earnings growth (excluding employer contributions) was 13 percent.
My financial planner, who I saw earlier today, will tell me if they are good results. I read somewhere that many funds have achieved 15 percent growth.
Looking at my asset classes, I probably have too much invested in fixed interest (10 percent) and too little in property securities (8 percent).
The best earning rates were Vanguard Property Securities Index Fund (22.9%), Invesco Australian Smaller Companies (19.8%) and Marvin & Palmer Emerging Markets (18%).
Web stats and discovery
I’ve just installed Clicky Web Statistics on this site. It’s a useful free service which provides handy information on visitors: where they come from, what they’re reading and how long they stay.
There’s an option to make the data available to the public and I might do that after I’ve tested the service a bit longer.
The stats led me to discover something unfortunate. I had some visitors coming from a strange tripod.com web address. I checked it out and the owner of the site was using a photograph of my twins that I had published here.
The site was an amateur compilation of “femdom” pictures. I had used the phrase “female domination” in the tag and I assume it must have been showing up unwanted in Google searches.
The link was directly to my server, so I promptly deleted the picture from there and changed the tag.
ABC Radio’s cricket coverage
This article is a rant against ABC Radio’s coverage of international cricket. I grew up loving the ABC for its superb uninterrupted coverage of cricket.
Gradually, over the past few years, that coverage has deteriorated as the national broadcaster tries to be all things to all people and ends up pleasing nobody.
Australia is playing New Zealand tonight at the WACA ground in Perth. Instead of broadcasting the game, as it has thousands before it, ABC Radio is covering the Australian Open tennis at Melbourne.
I just heard the host say that people can choose tennis or cricket online. He said “we’ll try to keep you appeased my friends” as they belatedly crossed back to the cricket. That’s the problem. If they stuck with the cricket hardly anyone could complain.
Tennis makes for bad radio. You need to see the ball and the players to understand what’s happening. Football and cricket, by contrast, are ideal for radio where commentators can paint the picture.
My other gripes against ABC Radio’s cricket coverage include:
- Hourly news bulletins. If I want the news I’ll switch to the news channel;
- Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race obsession. This elitist minority sport gets way too much coverage on the ABC;
- Fire bulletins. I haven’t noticed this for a while, but in past years the ABC used to interrupt the cricket for local fire updates in other states.
The cricket should be sacred.
PS: I finished up tuning into the web broadcast, which provided a good demonstration of ABC Radio’s lack of professionalism. Yes, it was great to get uninterrupted coverage of the cricket, but during a rain delay silence reigned except for the commentator chatting to the studio occasionally, totally unaware that he was on air.
The carnival is over
Like the title of The Seekers’ song our holiday has come to an end. I actually have a few more days before I return to work but they will be filled easily enough with domestic duties.
We returned from Mandurah to Kalgoorlie today, completing the journey in 7.5 hours with only one stop.
We had a great time staying at a holiday house and visiting the beach twice a day on most days. Mandurah also has excellent dining venues, which Juliet and I normally enjoyed for lunch so we could go to the beach in the evenings.
The weather was perfect on about 15 of the 18 days we were there. Most of our holiday photos can be found here.
The nearest beach at Falcon was where we went for most of the first week. It’s a sheltered bay and was ideal for the little ones. The beach was a 15-minute walk from our holiday house. Unfortunately there was a fair bit of seaweed on the shore, which the twins didn’t like, and there weren’t many waves for Dude to ride on his boogy board. Read more
Australian national holidays
Many of our public holidays are obscure or meaningless and should be replaced. Although a lot of positive effort has gone into making Australia Day a significant occasion it comprises an odd mixture of citizenship awards and wet t-shirt competitions.
We are the only country in the world that celebrates the founding of a prison. The origin of the day is exclusive to New South Wales and insults some of the indigenous population.
At least Australia Day has some meaning. Few however, will argue that the Queen’s Birthday deserves to be retained as a national holiday.
Even those who support the constitutional monarchy have to acknowledge that the holiday is not formally celebrated and falls several months distant from the Queen’s actual birthday. Read more
Sunset at Falcon
I’m not very good at taking sunset photos with a digital camera, but this one gives you some idea of how beautiful the coastline is south of Perth, Western Australia.
We’ve been staying at Falcon, near Mandurah. The beaches are great and the sun sets over the Indian Ocean.
I hope to get a better picture tonight when we go to Preston Beach.
On holiday
Just a short note because I’m typing this on my mobile while on holiday at Mandurah. Had a surprise 40th birthday with my cousins, having a great time.
Test your web design
A free online service called Browsershots is available for web site developers to test how their sites look in different browsers and on different operating systems. You’re able to select from various options and then submit for screenshots to be created.
In my case it took over half an hour. I had gone with all the default options for creating the screenshots and there were no surprises.
On the Linux versions my Flash plugins were missing. Apart from that, this site came up well in all browsers. I’m now using the Anaconda theme for Word Press.
I’ve never actually used Apple’s Safari, so I singled that one out for the screenshot (above).
Naughty miss Margaret
Margaret is gorgeous (pictured right with big sister Kathleen), but she’s also naughty sometimes. Today she got hold of some scissors and cut her own hair.
We found great piles of it near the couch in the spare room.
The little rascal just had a haircut, which was very cute, and now she looks like mum hacked at her instead.
Jung personality test
I undertook a free Jung personality test just now. These were my results:
|
ISTJ - “Trustee”. Decisiveness in practical affairs. Guardian of time- honored institutions. Dependable. 11.6% of total population. |
Free Jung Personality Test (similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI)
Now that I know I’m an ISTJ, I went here for a clearer definition of me as a “duty fulfiller”:
ISTJs are quiet and reserved individuals who are interested in security and peaceful living. They have a strongly-felt internal sense of duty, which lends them a serious air and the motivation to follow through on tasks. Organized and methodical in their approach, they can generally succeed at any task which they undertake.
ISTJs are very loyal, faithful, and dependable. They place great importance on honesty and integrity. They are “good citizens” who can be depended on to do the right thing for their families and communities. While they generally take things very seriously, they also usually have an offbeat sense of humor and can be a lot of fun - especially at family or work-related gatherings.
ISTJs tend to believe in laws and traditions, and expect the same from others. They’re not comfortable with breaking laws or going against the rules. If they are able to see a good reason for stepping outside of the established mode of doing things, the ISTJ will support that effort. However, ISTJs more often tend to believe that things should be done according to procedures and plans. If an ISTJ has not developed their Intuitive side sufficiently, they may become overly obsessed with structure, and insist on doing everything “by the book”.
The ISTJ is extremely dependable on following through with things which he or she has promised. For this reason, they sometimes get more and more work piled on them. Because the ISTJ has such a strong sense of duty, they may have a difficult time saying “no” when they are given more work than they can reasonably handle. For this reason, the ISTJ often works long hours, and may be unwittingly taken advantage of … etc
Sound like I might be rather boring, albeit dependably so.
Recent comments
- Sue: mmmmmm… *drool* Tim Taaaammmmmsssss Heaven in a rectangle. Sues most recent article …Accents to...
- Michael: Congratulations Sue. That was the 1000th comment on this site. You win a Tim Tam.
- Sue: One more reason to love your country… awesome plate! Sues most recent article …Feeling Disconnected
- Angela Aguilar: READ CAREFULLY Hi to all, My name is angela and im one of the reservation of TIMESHARE here in the...
- Stephan Miller: Cool. I have tried so many ways around the javascript in post issue. I went as far as using an ad...
Links
Random posts
Archives
Useful stuff
