Aussie Bloggers

My favourite stop on the trip from Port Augusta, South Australia to Darwin, Northern Territory would have to have been Mataranka Thermal Springs.

We only stopped there for a couple of hours but it was a very rejuvenating and relaxing couple of hours. We could easily enjoyed a couple of days in such a tranquil environment.

At the time we had a 4 year old and an 18 month old with us and they really enjoyed the warmer swimming water.

What I found most interesting was that our 18 month old’s skin started to heal up. She had struggled with dry skin and excema since birth and yet by the time we returned to South Australia, her skin was completely soft and clear. Given the humidity should have theoretically exacerbated the problem, we can only put this down to the benefits of the minerals in the waters.

What also amazed me about some of these tourist locations in the Northern Territory was that accomodation was easier to come by if you DIDN’T have your own caravan. Finding a powered site beyond lunch time was almost impossible in many places. At Mataranka I actually heard the staff explaining to a caravanning couple that they couldn’t have a site but they did have onsite accomodation available (ie cabins and motel rooms) if they wanted. It was certainly caravan city up there!

Mataranka was a lovely location to visit and I would definitely recommend going there. I can’t wait to go again myself.

An interesting thread popped up on the Aussie Bloggers Forum the other day. New member nicholap wanted to know how other forum members managed to juggle their blogs and social networking sites with “real” life (work, partners, family, pets etc).

Lots of members responded, and the main theme was that you need to pick and choose the services that you use – no one can be expected to keep up with everything! But another idea that emerged was that often, it’s TV that gets “the short shift” (in the words of moderator jeanie).

I know this to be true. In our house, we barely watch broadcast TV at all anymore. In it’s place, we watch TV shows that have been downloaded or bought on DVD – so we can watch when (and if) we choose to do so. And, the times we choose are often while we are doing other things.

Wireless internet and small laptops have made this even more convenient – so a Sunday night at home around our house often involves an after-dinner episode or two of The Office or Gordan Ramsay’s F Word in the lounge room with our laptops - reading blogs, debating on forums and chatting with friends over instant messaging.

I can’t help but think this is a good thing. TV is a passive medium whereas the internet is very much participatory - rather than just watch, you are encouraged to explore, to contribute, to write, to interact.

At the same time, I think we’re becoming more discerning - interest in good quality TV shows is higher than ever before. You only have to look at the Kaos and Mayhem forum to see that our community can’t get enough of shows like Dexter, The Deadliest Catch, and Top Gear.

What about you? Has the internet changed your TV viewing habits? Do you think it’s a good thing?

Back in June on this blog, Sueblimely wrote a great post on Searching For Blogs of Interest. This post will show you one way in which you can manage your blog subscriptions you may have found since then.

I started my blog in January this year and only really started reading other blogs a month or so before that. To keep up to date with what was happening on my favourite blogs, at first I just saved the blogs to my online favourites and would check them when I went on line.

Then I found the wonders of RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS is a format which is used to publish frequently updated content such as blogs, news, Twitter and podcasts. A feed (RSS document) contains either the full text of the content or a summary of the content.

The RSS Icon as shown above, is found all over the internet and tells you that this site has a feed to which you can subscribe to. The benefit of RSS is that you collate the content from multiple sources into one place.

You read the RSS content using software called an RSS reader or a feed reader. These can be web-based like Bloglines or Google Reader or desktop-based like in Outlook 2007.

When I first set up a reader I was using the one provided in Outlook 2007. Two major laptop crashes and wiped hard drives which saw me lose my subscriptions to blogs twice, made me look for an online alternative.

I chose to set up an online reader with Google. Since establishing it back in July, I now have over 130 different subscriptions from blogs, news alerts and Twitter. With so many subscriptions if I don’t check my reader for a couple of days, it can easily be then exceeding 1000 items.

Naturally this is a little overwhelming and it wasn’t until I learnt a trick from Ed Dale on the 30 Day Challenge that I found a way to easily manage this volume of items in my reader.

The image below is a screen shot from my Google Reader. Note where the red arrow is pointing. It is set on the default Google Reader setting of Expanded view. While this view is great as you get to see the post without clicking on it to open it, it doesn’t allow for quick scanning.

In this next image below, I have returned my Google Reader to List View which is how I now use this service. With all my subscriptions listed, I can skim through them quickly, stopping to read those that I want to. Once I have made my way through the list, I click on “Mark All as Read” and I have emptied my reader.

Since making this very simple change to my reader, I have now been able to keep the number of items in my reader under control and best of all, keep up to date with my favourite blogs in a time efficient manner.

Another feature of Google Reader which I love, is that even if I have, as noted above, marked all as read, but realise that I actually wanted to refer back to one of those posts, I can still retrieve the post.

The above image shows a folder that has all posts read. If I want to go back and see a previously read post, I simply click on “View all items” and all previous posts will be retrieved. Effectively they are never really deleted and can be recalled at any time while you are subscribed to that blog.

This is one way to manage your blog subscriptions. How do you manage yours?

As the Australian Rules Football (AFL) season draws to a close, many people will be mourning its end and some will be rejoicing. For those who are rejoicing it means getting television back on the weekends and it means that people in the workplace who are die-hard footy fans won’t be talking about who won or lost, or who might win or lose, or whose team’s better than another.

I must admit I’m in the rejoicing camp. I turn a blind eye to football and pretty much remain blisfully unware of what’s going on except when I’m flicking around the television stations and come across a football game or that dreaded Footy Show. I could do a whole post on why I dislike it so much but I don’t want to waste my breath.

I’ve also been stuck in a hotel in a largish country town where a football team were having their end of year piss-up (for those who don’t know, piss-up is a very Aussie term for getting extrememly drunk). My friend and I had been to see a band this particular night and we went to our room for the night but it wasn’t quiet at all. The footy guys were smashing glass - both of the bottle kind and the window kind. They even knocked on our door. We stayed really quiet as we didn’t want them to know there were two gorgeous women in this particular room and we prayed that they weren’t so drunk they’d try to bash the door down. I know footy players aren’t the only ones who get extremely drunk but they don’t do themselves or the game any favours I don’t think.

All this aside, I actually went to a football game earlier in the season. I thought it would be a good birthday outing for my son. Unfortunately he didn’t agree which was a shame. Even though I’m not a football fan, I don’t mind going to a game every few years because the atmosphere is fun. It’s not a cheap family outing though!

So, for those who are die-hard footy fans, what is it about this sport that you love? Conversely if you’re not into the game, why not?

Photo by The Noodleater

I’m pretty sure that in every country there’s a food peculiar to just that place. In Australia, it’s Vegemite. Vegemite is a savoury spread that as the example in the picture above shows, we put on toast, crumpets, and savoury biscuits etc.

It has an unusual flavour and if you haven’t grown up with it, it’s not something that you’ll probably like. I know I’ve asked many people that have moved here if they’ve tried Vegemite. More often than not if they have tried it, they don’t like it.

As written in an Illawarra Mercury news article about people new to Australia:

‘They wrapped themselves in Australian flags, plastered their faces in flag tattoos and munched on lamingtons - but one Aussie tradition repeatedly got the snub.

“They’re turning their noses up at the Vegemite, but they want the Tim Tams,” said Ronelle Peardon from her Everything Aussie Festival stall.’

I could get completely sidetracked here and talk about how lovely Tim Tam biscuits are, but I’ll save that for another time. Back to Vegemite.

I don’t eat Vegemite a whole lot so a jar will last a fairly long time in my house, but it’s great to have because sometimes Vegemite on toast is just the thing to get a savoury fix.

Luckily for Australians living overseas many places sell it. I know I was able to get it in London when I lived there (I had to get Tim Tams sent to me though). Similar looking spreads like Marmite are quite different in taste and I’ve never acquired a liking for Marmite.

If you’re a person who hasn’t grown up with Vegemite, do you eat it? If you have tried it, did you like it?