I figured that it was about time to do something about my image. I haven't yet had a hair cut, but lets not get ahead of ourselves here. I have wanted to get a logo and some sort of fancy designed site for a while, but time and artistic talent (yay developer art!) conspires against me.

A very talented designer colleague of mine needed some nerd help on his site and in return I asked him to do some work for me. Perhaps he could help out and sort my design out on this site.

I am not indecisive as such, but when it comes to things of an arty nature I don't think I trust myself. With your help, I think we should be able to come up with a funky logo. So let's get to it.

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If you are the average police man from Colombia. Getting shitty money every month (around AU$ 300). You and your colleagues invade a drug lord's house and find this little room...

(big green pile = USD$100, Red = 500 Euros, Purple = 100 Euros)

What would you do?? Travel? Entertainment?

From http://abandapodre.blogspot.com/

The Dalai Lama is now in Australia conducting a tour of all the big centres.

Today he starts in Perth with a free public speaking engagement at the Burswood dome. Bendigo, Melbourne, Geelong, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast follow in the next 2 weeks, with Sydney on the 15th, 16th of June.

On Friday the 15th of June the Dalai Lama will be speaking at The Domain, in a free public speaking engagement from 2pm followed by a tribute concert. More information can be found on the Dalai Lama Australia tour website. There will be another free audience with the Dalai Lama on Saturday 16th from 10am at The Domain.

I wonder if he will do the Bridge Climb?

The Australian government today launched the Do Not Call Register to allow you to register your phone numbers and stop getting Telemarketing calls.

The UK have something very similar since 1999, (which was set up largely due to the massive surge in Double Glazing Salesmen) The Telephone Preference Service.

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At last we have a new home, coming to you from The Planet in the US.

Why? because its cheap (read free) coutesy of my new company Red5

Its also been a long time coming but this move meant I can settle in to a new web life with SQL Server and ColdFusion 7. PHP is still available, but I can now make use of things like Ray Camdens blogcfc blogging software. I have therefore dumped Access, the so called database, and will have to develop a few new tricks for the product section and images.

In the translation between my old Access PHP set up some of the blog items have lost some information and had to be blown away, some of the CF examples with code are all messed up so I will need to dig them up again and replace them. All in good time though.

March 31st has been plugged for a long while now as the day Sydney will show the government how much we care about the environment. Sydney's Mayor Clover Moore put her weight behind the Earth Hour scheme several months ago.

And it turns out it was a resounding success. Over 2.2m Sydney siders turned off their lights for the hour, that's half of the population of Sydney!

Take a look at some of the photos from Earth Hour on Flickr.

It was such a success that the WWF are starting to promote it overseas and turn it in to a global event once a year.

We went to a fancy dress party in Leamington Spa – the theme was dress as someone else in the room.

My mate rob and I only new the hostess, and each other, and we both had kimono’s so we decided to go as each other, as Japanese guys. We were the 2 biggest guys in the room, so we weren’t exactly low profile.

Typically the conversation went like this:

them: “Who did you come as?”
me: “Isnt it obvious? How many Japanese guys are in the room?”
them: “oh…. Yeah but he isn’t Japanese!”
me: “yes he is… go ask him!”
them: “ok” wanders off to Rob “Who did you come as?”
rob: “the other Japanese guy here! ” points at me.
Them: “but he said you were Japanese.”
Rob: “arigato-gasaimas.” He also reeled off some other words (I found out later they meant left right, forward, KFC and McDonalds!)
Them: “cool!” wanders back to me.
Me: “see I told you so”
Them: “but your not Japanese, so he cant dress as you”
Me: “ahhhhh, but he is here as a Japanese man, and I am here as him. He is therefore dressed as someone else in the room….. me!”
Them: “uh…???”
Me: Rolls around on the floor laughing at the drunk guy trying to make sense of the logic I just threw at him.

Hi all,

During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I’ll be growin a moustache. That’s right I’m bringing the Mo back because I’m passionate about changing the state of men’s health.

Male health is a major issue, did you know:

• Men are far less healthy than women. The average life expectancy of males is 6 years less than females.

• Every year in Australia 2,700 men die of prostate cancer – more than the number of women who die from breast cancer.

• Depression affects 1 in 6 men…Most don’t seek help. Untreated depression is a leading risk factor for suicide. Rates of suicide are more than double the national road toll.

Help me change the face of men’s health by sponsoring my mo.

Please go to http://www.movember.com/au/sponsor, enter my Rego number which is 55563 and your credit card details. All donations of $2 and over are tax deductible.

The money raised by Movember will be used to change the face of men's health by creating awareness and funding research into prostate cancer and male depression.

Movember culminates at the end of the month at the Gala Partè where participants will be parading their Mo on the cat walk for a chance to be crowned the Man of Movember. If you want to be part of this great night you’ll have to purchase a Gala Parte ticket for $33.00 (inc GST). More info is available at www.movember.com

Movember is proudly grown by Motorola, Polaroid, Remington and VB. Movember is proud partners with the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative.

We have decided to start a bit of a detox to try and clean ourselves up a bit before the summer hits and start trying to do some exercise. My good lady found this plan in a book called "Joshi's Holistic Detox - 21 days to a healthier slimmer you - for life" by Nish Joshi. For three weeks we will be following the following:

• No packaged foods (to avoid all the E numbers and processed stuff that happens)
• No wheat (So no bread or pasta, unless its a no wheat and no gluten variety, becasue frankly I wouldnt be able to survive without either of these)
• No Tea or Coffee, canned drinks (Neither of us drink coffee, but this one is to try and avoid stimulants such as caffeine for obvious reasons)
• No fruit - We decided that this one should be waived
• No Red meat (because it blocks up your digestive system as its hard to digest)
• Wherever possible eat organic produce
• Hormone free, Organic, free range Chicken and Fish are allowed

Its not actually as bad as it might first appear. We purchased a rice cooker with a timer, so we can put on the rice before we leave for work and that part of our meal is ready by the time we get home - save a heap in the evening.

We have been going for just over a week, and have slipped up a couple of times, but in the main we are doing it right. In the last week I have felt mostly tired, had some blurry moments by standing up too fast (about day 3), and had a headache for one day. Short of that I am feeling pretty good. The biggest drawback is that you have to cook for yourself from scratch all the time, no takeaway and no packaged foods, but we dont seem to be doing too badly.

This isnt something I have done before or been open to doing, but for reasons unknown to me, I said yes to it! I will update when we finish to let you know how we feel!

Congratulations to my good friends, now Mr & Mrs Dominic and Clare King. They were married in a little village outside of Bedford on Saturday 9th September. The honeymoon is a trip away from the UK for 5-6 weeks round the world, taking in places such as Singapore, Sydney, New Zealand, Fiji and San Francisco.

Yesterday they arrived here in Australia for a four day stopover before campervanning around NZ, Heidi and I picked them up from the airport at an hour of the morning that isnt suppose to exist. Its great to see you guys and congratulations!

There is a plan for us to go and climb the harbour bridge on Saturday, you can check this out before I go at the Harbour Bridge Climb site. You can also keep track of their travels in photos by going to Dom and Clare on Flickr