Kalgoorlie Miner award winners
I’m really proud that two Kalgoorlie Miner photographers were recognised tonight at the Western Australian Press Photographer of the Year Awards 2008.
Mary Mills won the picture story category for her series on the Kalgoorlie Cup. Mary came second in the section for best country photographer and fellow Miner shutterbug Jodi Kingston came third.
Photographs are an understated part of the news media. It’s very true that every picture tells a story and good photographs should not be under estimated.
I’m fortunate to work with some of the best in the state.
Our sense of compassion
The Red Cross released results from a survey this week which show 45 percent of Australians believe we are less compassionate than we were 10 years ago.
While Australians overwhelmingly believe the vulnerable groups in society need more help, far fewer actually involve ourselves in providing it.
I asked Kalgoorlie Miner reporter Zoe Rudder to look at the local implications of these survey results. Read more
Google launches wiki
Google has added another feature for selected users: a wiki or collaborative site builder. This follows the juggernaut’s acquisition of Jotspot 16 months ago.
It’s branded as Google Sites and is currently available only to Google Apps users. Google Apps requires the user to own a domain. I have my email for gorey.com.au hosted with Google, which gives me multiple accounts and a Gmail interface.
I’ve already set up a GoogleSite for Gorey family history. I transferred content and had this running in less than an hour.
There are several themes to select from and various optional features with the promise of more to come.
As with everything Google the search feature is terrific.
What can it do? In essence, multiple users can work together to build a site within a standard framework. The edits and revisions are clearly marked.
The design is WYSIWYG. Images can be easily inserted and files attached.
I haven’t experimented with this yet, but Google Docs can also be embedded.
Python eats family pet
Overseas readers will be interested to know the story reported in the Cairns Post of a monster python stalking and devouring a family’s pet dog.
Daniel Peric said he now would not leave his two children, aged five and seven, alone in any part of the house, after the “enormous” python ate his silky terrier-cross chihuahua.
Mr Peric said in the weeks before, the family had found their cat’s body, which looked like something had attempted to swallow it and on Sunday a smaller python had eaten their pet guinea pig.
Add cyclones to the location risk, cane toads and various marine nasties, and you have to wonder why anyone would live in the tropical north.
Australia doesn’t have lions or other large animals of prey, but we do have plenty of hairy eight-legged creatures and slippery ones with fangs.
In the water, watch out for sharks, jellyfish and stingrays.
And as Baino wrote in her blog earlier this year, beware the Drop Bear. This great scary kangaroo pic came from there too.
Think twice about complaining
I’ll think twice before I ever complain about slow service in a restaurant after reading this report in The Age:
“A restaurateur has been jailed for seven years for the manslaughter of a patron who complained about slow service. After a fight broke out at the Bon Mua restaurant and karaoke bar, co-owner and chef Khanh Vo went to the kitchen and grabbed a small-bladed paring knife, normally used to cut fruit.
“He then returned to the scene of the conflict and stabbed 56-year-old Anh Dung Nguyen three times to the left side of his body.
“Mr Nguyen was helped outside, but died the next day in hospital despite emergency surgery.”
I’m generally not one to complain. I once sent a steak back to the kitchen because it was rare and I had asked for medium; the chef didn’t come chasing me though.
It’s hard to love Telstra
I’d like to like Telstra, I really would. They have the best network and they are currently majority Australian owned. They used to be our national public telco.
In addition to having the best network, you’d think one of their competitive advantages in regional Australia was having a network of Telstra shops.
I visited the Telstra Shop in Kalgoorlie today and left unimpressed. Read more
Staying patient
My Firehorse horoscope on Facebook today includes: “Bureaucracy will be slower than usual, which will cause you to be in an execrable mood; but at least spare your near collaborators.”
I’m waiting for the bank to approve finance on a new housing investment loan. That seems to be a circular process which has no logical timeframe. Based on our last experience I’m actually happy with how smoothly this one has gone.
If the stars were flagging a work issue I can’t say the wheels are turning any faster or slower than usual. Read that as you will.
I filled my former deputy in this morning on some recent events and she replied it’s fortunate I have “the patience of a Saint”. Read more
AFL pre-season competition
The Australian Football League stages a pre-season competition named after the sponsor: variously Ansett, Wizard, NAB, etc.
The league uses the competition to experiment with various rules. For the past few years, goals kicked from outside 50 metres have been worth extra and rushed behinds register three points instead of one.
As my brother-in-law noted, they’ve been trying that rule now for so long surely they can decide if they want it or not!
I like the idea of penalising teams for rushing behinds. Football should be an offensive game and there should be no easy escape in the last line of defence. Read more
Windows Live SkyDrive
Thanks to TechCrunch I discovered that Windows Live is now offering SkyDrive in Australia. It’s a free online storage solution with 5GB of space.
Online storage is a crowded market and I’ve said before that reliability is an important factor in choosing a service provider.
Microsoft’s offering is attractive, ad free (at this stage) and easy to use. The 5GB of data is more than enough for most people.
I like the fact I was able to source an image from my public folder to appear in this blog.
Fake magazine covers
I had some fun today playing with fake magazine covers at MagMyPic. It’s very easy to upload a picture and select your cover theme.
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