Discovering Australia: August 2007

Friday, 31 August 2007

Online friendships

Just an update, the following blogs were added to Ratified Australia

One of the things I enjoy that has driven me to partner with Ratified Australia is being able to keep myself posted on the latest in the blogosphere. Here are some stuff I saw lately:

There's an article at Imaginif on children learn the cycle of violence from our parenting. I believe every parent desires to be a good one. My worry on that article piece is that the writer may insinuate that he or she is a perfect parent and may alienate readers in getting the message across. Of course, reading it as compared to how it gets presented is different. Perhaps I'm missing some emphatic voice in it. Will have to re-read that sometime again.
Suzie made a post about the Carnivals of Australia. It seems my submission missed the deadline. =( However, the format of the upcoming Australian Blogging Conference gave me an idea on how to improve similar events I organize back home.
SwollenPickles gave a preview on how the Audi A4 looks like. I wonder if that car feels like a BMW inside. I guess from a passenger point of view, they all feel the same.
Over the weekend, we get to see some birds and I find myself lost in telling the kids what kind they are. Good thing there's Bird Anonymous that helped me in identifying them. I only wish that I'll be successful in taking their pictures next time.
I just learned from Haalo that there's this presto pasta night and I am thinking of sharing a Filipino style pasta soon.

Stephen made an interesting post about online friendship. I believe that the Internet has allowed us to increase our circle of contacts even more. Depending on our kind of work, some of us will get exposed to a lot of people and keeping up will be hard. I feel kinda bad whenever I receive an e-mail from someone saying they met me years ago and it is likely that I don't remember them anymore. In fact, most of the time, such is true.

When tools like LinkedIn came out, I invited members of my mailing list so I can put a face behind the e-mail addresses. Also in events where I speak, I invite those I met just to keep me posted on their movements. I have at least ten ways of using LinkedIn.

Before Facebook became popular, I'm already using Friendster and use that to monitor friends birthday, announce events once in awhile, and observe what my kids and their friends are up to. ;)

Last April, I also started using Twitter out of curiosity. Definitely, that tool became very important when blog wars started happening in my part of the world.

Tuesday, 28 August 2007

110 Blogs and Adelaide Weekend

Many thanks to everyone who took the time in getting to know how Ratified works. Also to Lavender, Shai, and Andrew for giving a shoutout about the service.

I have added 110 blogs as of this blog post and still have more or less 28 blogs to go from my Australia Top 100 Blogs and Blog Juice list.

Many thanks to the blog owners who submitted the following for ratification: (excluded from this list are those we added directly from the Australia Top 100 Blogs and Blog Juice)

Should you have queries about Ratified, you can reach me at 0423534867.

I just had my first week in Adelaide and got used in being the caretaker of the household while the kids now go to school. My daughter in year 9 is having a tough time to adjust. Good thing she has two older siblings who can check her out during the break.

Running an online business while working on some projects in the Philippines is manageable so far. It seems I will miss the upcoming Adelaide Meet Up as I will be teaching software project scoping and planning at that time.

Last Saturday, we visited the South Australia Museum and checked out the National Science Week exhibit. We've spotted the following:

There's a club called the Starship Mawson that caters to all science fiction, fantasy, and cult genres.
There's a campaign to bring butterflies back to Adelaide where everyone is encourage to create a butterfly-friend habitat. All of us can participate by planting butterfly and caterpillar food plants. You can also join the Butterfly Conservation SA and know more about the butterflies of South Australia.
Jasmin and Janin got the chance to touch a diamond python.
Surprised to find that there's a group called the Mars Society of Australia whose goal is the human exploration and settlement of the Red Planet.
I got hold of information about the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in the Flinders Ranges. If events will go as planned, that is one place I surely want to visit during the school break this October.
I also got a flyer that details activities for children and families up to January 2008 organized by the Art Gallery of South Australia. At the back of it promotes a site that talks about positive minds and mental health. It's a nice site but I think my kids will find it weird if I ask them to check it out.

Last but not the least, I got an email from Charmayne Paul about encouraging bloggers to take part in a global relay as support for the Child Protection Week and make a flag of commitment. Let us all take part!

I'm submitting this article in the Carnival of Australia.

Wednesday, 22 August 2007

Getting the kids settled in Adelaide

Last Saturday, the family arrived in Adelaide with all excitement especially upon seeing our home. The first order of business is to get the kids to school at Seaton Park Primary School and Findon High School. They youngest already started last Tuesday while the 3 in high school will start tomorrow.

From a foreigner's perspective, here are some observations:

The school personnel are very friendly.
It is a weird feeling when no one asks you to pay a fee upfront.
Great to have your kids enter school even if it is already in the middle of the year.
There are hardly any basketball court and they now have to catch up learning soccer.
It is different when you don't have helpers at home as you are struggling to have enough time to do some serious blogging work.

I'm gradually picking up on sites to include in Ratified Australia and some I have made a blog post in relation to it. This includes:

Phone call works best in response to "When to use e-mail and when not to".
Lessons learned in launching and operating a membership-only site inspired by Yaro Starak's article series on membership-only site build-up.

I haven't really shared that much personal stuff in my blogs before. However, after getting to read through Karen Cheng's blog, I think I can also do it.

Tuesday, 14 August 2007

Are you Ratified?

Andrew Dela Serna just made an announcement about our collaboration with me handling Ratified Australia. This is a directory that intends to rank the top 100 blogs in the Australian blogosphere. It ranks based on three different factors: Technorati Links, Google Pagerank and Feedburner subscribers.

So if you’re an Aussie blogger, I encourage you to get Ratified now!

Monday, 13 August 2007

Things to do in Adelaide

This coming weekend will be my 2nd trip to Adelaide to visit a loved one. As these trips will be quite frequent in the next 3 years, I've started jotting down notes on how to make this as productive as possible that includes:

Record video tutorials and podcast for my e-commerce and software process improvement community.
Finish my book and e-book projects.
Catch up with my book reading.
Enjoy Adelaide.

In addition to that, I look forward in getting to know more bloggers in the community as well and that is where I've collaborated with a friend for a blogging project. I hope to make that announcement in a post soon. Cheers!

Discovering Australia