World loves Obama

World loves Obama – but they can’t vote | The Australian

For them, Senator Obama represents “a young, hopeful, multiracial society, an international creative child of Europe; useful, energetic”.

I think perhaps that the criticism of us in America is unwarranted. There seems to be a belief, according to this article, that we don’t actually know what we are talking about. The world is very clued up politically at the moment and so it should be. We need to be clued up. We have woken up to ourselves and that can only further us. So we have done our homework and we have done a lot of thinking and discussing. This is as a result of having first Hillary Clinton there as a candidate and now Barack Obama. He is American. We know he is American but he at least represents an intelligent, animated, thoughtful, international and modern America. He is refreshing. He is also very inspiring. What America needs to know from us is that he has the capacity to change the image of America and already has. America needs a different image internationally because although we have good ties and relations with a lot of Americans, its image internationally is not a good one and that is not because of its people , it is because of its government. We see Barack Obama as someone we can relate to and talk to and his popularity spans all age groups. That is pretty amazing. I have never known any overseas politician to generate so much enthusiasm. That has to be of benefit to an ailing geopolitical structure. We need people who can create hope and goodwill…those things we had forgotten about. We also need people who can think, talk and have good interpersonal relations. Of course he will have his weak points, but he is part of a team. It is important to the rest of the world that they have an America they can relate to and include. As it stands there is America and the rest of the world. Individuals engage with each other and can work together but on an international front America is on its own because that is what Mr. Bush wanted. In Obama Barack we see someone unique who will be able to relate to all sorts of people and all sorts of nationalities. It would make a difference .

Vista vs XP

I have had an interesting time with my computers this week and it has set me straight about XP and Vista. I use XP at work but I have a laptop and desktop at home which I was using and they were Vista and Office 2007. I came to Vista with an open mind and quite like the shiny new look. It was irritating me because it kept checking and double checking what I was doing and then the endless updates became a joke. I have had yet another stream of updates tonight. We have an XP laptop and on Tuesday for reasons best known to itself it lost the onboard wifi connection to the Net. I thought it would be easy to get it back. No. I cleaned everything. I checked everything, updated drivers and then did what you do these days…Google. As it turned out I was not alone with this problem but there did not seem to be a solution on any of the problems. The two I tried just didn’t work. So then I did a clean install to no avail and as I did I suddenly thought that XP just was old hat. I re established the connection with a USB wifi adaptor and it’s fine but a bit silly on a laptop. So now I use that laptop for my work things because I don’t really need the Net for that. I was relieved to get back onto Vista. Vista does weirdo things like uninstall my supposedly compatible printer which is highly annoying but it fixes things up pretty quickly. I like how it looks and I like how it is set up for use. I accept it is trying to help people and builds in security against malicious damage and inadvertent absentmindedness on the part of the user. By and large it is very flexible and Office 2007 allows me to produce things which have a wow factor and make me look good. My previous opinion was that XP was better but when I had connection problems with Vista it had the whole lot sorted out within half and hour or less and the thing is, when it goes wrong on Vista, the help is somehow there to get the problem resolved quickly. The other criticism I have heard is that it won’t run old programmes. I have some ancient software and it runs perfectly well as does the new software. There is not a programme I have had a problem with and I have not had to abandon any of my software that I like.

Windows Live Writer

It has taken me all evening to set up Live Writer. All evening? Not quite, but a very long time. I had to load the live writer extension into Firefox and then join Windows Live services. Do I need Hotmail? No. Do I need chat? No. Do I need another photo gathering spot? No. There are lots of the services I do not need. I am using the Live email and I really like the interface. It imported my stuff from Windows Mail and I am really happy with that and how it works. Then I have had to set my blogs up into Live Writer. That all takes time. I used to use Blog It and loved that because it was so simple. It doesn’t work with Firefox 3. Then I had all sorts of issues with inline spell checkers. Not any more!! I can blog just as I did on Blog it…only it’s far fancier. I tried ScribeFire and that was pretty good, but the spelling was erratic and the photo posting I didn’t ever master. I added Zemanta and that has some very useful features and can be really helpful when you want to read around a topic or find pictures. So this is Live Writer and even though I have taken such a long time to get it going I am breathing a sigh of relief because my spelling is no longer up the creek, the interface is very nice indeed and it is a piece of cake swapping between blogs. It also has some nice features which I look forward to exploring. What I do want is justification. I like nice straight edges on my posts!!

Pink Ribbon Day

tiger lilies

“Early detection for breast cancer in young women relies almost completely on young women themselves, knowing their own bodies and picking up the early signs of the disease,” she said.

Dr. Helen Zorbas is quite right and this article is both well times and timely advice . The Sydney Morning Herald online has a pink navigation bar to remind us all about Pink Ribbon Day, but no one here needs reminding . We are surrounded by women who have or who have had breast cancer. There is a woman at work who has a remarkable story which is very moving, but she has reformatted herself and her life and she is just not looking back.Her motto is not to sweat the small stuff. She has grabbed her life with both hands, given herself a makeover and looks and sounds brilliant. There have been 5 other women at work who have been touched by breast cancer. I also have 2 members of my family and if you belong to online communities then there are always people you know. The brilliant thing about online communities is they raise awareness very quickly and people get off their bottoms and do something to help. We have had any number of stories of men getting out here and doing marathon walks or treks in order to support fund raising for Breast Cancer research. We have also had some very young and pretty high profile women in Australia who have died from breast cancer and that touches us deeply and does not let us forget. It is also why young women are frightened they will get it and understandably so. It is no use telling them off. The realities are out there. It is about getting the right information out to them so they can look after themselves…and getting the funding for research so we can nail this scourge once and for all.

Weeds and Pests

Image via WikipediaOur latest pest comes in the form of Mexican feather grass which is one of our declared pest plants. The problem we seem to have in this case is that nurseries have sold them and there are still 44 unaccounted for. It will create damage to our environment, especially pasture lands because people do not realise just how invasive pest plants can become here. They take off like a rocket and just spread far and wide. We have large tracts of land which are really hard to manage. Some sheep stations in Australia are bigger than countries. Dealing with pest plants and weeds becomes a horrendous headache. The problem with the nurseries selling them is they do not seem to be properly informed about our banned species and if plants are banned under the Natural Resources Management Act then we need better ways of monitoring what is actually sold. Likewise, we , as the general public don’t seem to know what is banned. We know a few of the common plants and we know to be on the lookout for them but we’d be blissfully unaware of most of them.I wouldn’t have know about Mexican feather grass had I not read about it in this article. So there is not enough awareness of these plants. In today’s environment with technology, we ought to be able to get the information out there really easily and have information and pictures which help people to know what they should be looking for. We have our own native stipa and there isn’t a problem with that.

Facebook Virus

Image via WikipediaI went on Facebook at the end of August and the first night I was on there I downloaded a virus through an app I put on. There is a report of a new one which is quite nasty because it infects your friend’s computers as well. It is important to have good anti virus software and good cleaning programmes. Facebook does become unstable from time to time because it has millions of users and it is a massive network. There are bound to be malicious people within this network. My way of dealing with it is to have the tools on board to clean my computer and then apply some common sense. There was a Facebook virus which got onto my sister’s computer and it was confusing her and making it hard to type things. I tracked it down and got rid of it. Not everyone is confident on a computer. I do believe Facebook is very quick to shut down malicious activity as soon as it becomes aware of it. It does do what it can to keep the site stable but every once in a while you get the idea it’s gone flighty again. Given what a massive network it is , I think it does an admirable job of keeping it running as smoothly as it can and certainly a darn site better than the less complicated and far smaller work place networks. I always make sure I clean up my computer when I go off line. Keeps interference to a minimum. One day we’ll have automatic filters for all this stuff.

Related articles by Zemanta

• An Experiment: Develop an efficient blogging timeline

Cross eyed parents

Image via WikipediaThere is research here which reveals 49% of parents can’t tell their children are overweight and 43% can’t tell their child is underweight. About half our parents have idea what fat or thin is in a child. Some don’t care I suppose. Some might just see their child and shape is irrelevant to them. Then there are the fat parents with the fat children and that I do not understand.How you could let your child become so overweight but maybe advertising and peer pressure to eat the wrong things are just too strong and parental influence is undermined. Some older children go through a tubby phase and then stretch up and become normal or underweight and then balance up their bodies in their 20s. There is a lot of attention to body shape and weight at the moment and lots of people just go through different phases and then get over it and settle into a normal happy lifestyle. Some people start off well and then deteriorate. I think our sedentary lifestyle with no safe areas to play and walk contribute to it . Then we have people who just eat manufactured food and prepare nothing fresh for themselves. We are getting very good at understanding the reasons. Now we know that parents are not noticing that is something else we can work on. It’s odd all the same….or maybe it’s that their parents made nothing of it and then they turned out to be okay. It’s hard to know but it would be interesting to explore further.

Fed up with Vista

I was prepared to give Vista a whirl and I was prepared to look upon it kindly. I was prepared to go with the flow, move with the times and show my flexibility. Were you? Most people weren’t and I know from the stats on my other blogs that very few people have migrated form XP to Vista. I did because my new laptop and my new desktop came with Vista. In many ways it can be good. Visually it is very appealing but in the long term that is not enough to sustain you. Firefox has made lots of updates since Vista and now Firefox is not as good as it was and one of the biggest problems is the lack of accuracy with the inline spellchecking which used to be perfect. I think it too, was more stable without Vista. At the moment it won’t play Real Player videos consistently. Vista is putting me through the 3rd reconnection of my new printer at teh time. it keeps reinstalling it. The last time Vista played up was because I had the gall to cut and paste my own recipe which I had made up from my blog and print it through my printer so my friend could have a copy. Vista thinks it is onto you for cheating or something and stuffs things up.It lost my sound when it thought I had pirated my own copy of my own music and then I get dopey messages because I run French stuff in Australia. How dare I. Yahoo is not much better. You go onto French Yahoo to find French things which are on French sites and it tells you to go back to your own country. Same if you try and go to American Yahoo…sends you back to Australia. So Vista mania has started to run through all sorts of things. The intention is to be helpful and to keep you honest but in practice it is just plain annoyingly stupid. I am so over Vista at the moment. XP was great…stable, easy to use, great at providing help and I am so glad we kept it at work. Vista is really in your face. My Office 2007 came with One Notes but when I needed Access and had to change my copy of Office I lost my One Notes because that was a different version. I did actually like One Notes and would have really appreciated keeping it but it had taken me so long to get the computer to recognise the new version I had loaded on I was too exhausted to try and do anything about losing OneNotes. Vista makes it all so hard. Doesn’t mean too…so now I am cranky.

Easy Come , Easy Go

How many platitudes come to mind in a crisis…easy come, easy go, pride cometh before a fall, you win some you lose some, look after the pennies…they just keep coming. All that potted wisdom our grand parents put into us and our languages gave us as wise counsel. Out the window! All those adages were ignored and now we keep reading how every country is daily losing millions and how easy it all is. One day they are rich. Six months later they are struggling and this financial crisis is now world wide and you can see just how tied up and dependent our global economy is. People are doing things to try and fix it but we haven’t stopped the flow. Russians are losing millions. The Chinese are now losing money and the whole world is in a flap…except those who have no money. There are millions of people for whom this is irrelevant and yet the great promise by G8 to work on making poverty history is ringing rather hollowly right now. Words come easily, don’t they? All talk. There has been a lot of talk through this financial mayhem too and the subprime mortgages have a lot to answer for. We might get some positives out of the whole thing in the long run but at the moment people believe we can choose between addressing the financial crisis or global warming. The global financial crisis will be of little consequence in a planet which cannot sustain itself. I still want to know how financial people managed to make this mess. People who would want to be considered good at their job and experts in their field. So who do we trust? Who do we call? Never ceases to amaze me how, in the information age we are privy to such poor quality information! If anything has been in recession it’s prudence and common sense.

Hour per week fatherhood

I actually find it hard to believe fathers only do an hour a week’s caring for their children. Lots of couples seem to split things these days in a very sensible way. The research must have come about somehow and in a logical fashion. Around this area it has been great to watch the number of dads who are out doing the family shopping with their children or with their families. There are also dads who get the kids and dog out for a walk. The change which has come about is there appear to be more happy fathers who have really warm , fair relationships with their children. One dad just rubbed the head of his little boy who was getting a bit loud in the supermarket and just said, “We are on our best behaviour right now” and the head rub and words from his dad did the trick and he remembered to be a bit quieter. I think the researcher might be right about dads doing events stuff and the mums being the fall back position for all else. I am really interested to know whether this is a fair assessment of our situation in 2008 because my observation makes me think we are doing better than we were and we have some really happy dads and kids out here who are part of a balanced household.