More photos here.

This all has a lot to do with why we are feeling so pagan and connected to the seasons, the elements, our European roots and Gaia herself while living here.

Spring solstice this week! My how time flies.

Gra & Puddy Tat with the grand folly of the royal pav in the background.

Truth
Seek it, Speak it, Live it

Power to the Peaceful

Freedom through Peace

I’m fond of a good political T-shirt. I like to wear a message or two. It feels *hopeful* to walk around with a slogan on.

One Heart Home have a range of T-shirts these slogans (above) and more. I was given a “Power to the Peaceful” shirt for Christmas and I love it.

Go on, order one online…

Her first post is a press release she’s just issued. The press release covers some local activism we were just involved in with some success. There was a proposal to open a child care centre here in Fremantle in a really, really bad location.

The City of Fremantle Council said “No” this week to a proposal for a major child care centre that would have set a dangerous benchmark for children’s health.

Despite political pressure to approve the 86-place centre, Fremantle’s largest, the Council stood its ground and made a decision that reflected commonsense and caution.

“In the absence of controls to stop this kind of thing happening, it was a frustrating and risky process. But in the end, good reason, good ethics and good planning prevailed,” said quality child care campaigner and local mother Ms Libby Davy. “Now we have to ensure this result carries over into safe, healthy child care for all children,” she said.

I’m really glad council made the right decision here. We certainly need more child care in Fremantle, but not at the expense of children’s health.

I scored a very strange 26% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 66% Expert!

26% Beginner? What? I went and looked at the answer key and I’m sure I got them all right. Something not working there. The test is good fun. Not sure about the answers though.

And I just have to add in a link to a really beautiful ad that the greens put in last Saturday’s West. There’s a scan of it up at Kick and Scream.

Crazy Colin’s Water Giveaway!

via Robert

I’ve had the pleasure of developing and now hosting the news service for Kim Murray, proprietor of Margaret River Online, which is the most comprehensive tourist info/portal site for Margaret River.

We based the news service on an open source content management system with a bunch of extensions to suit the style of site we were trying to create.

Here are a couple of things we did to make the site work better:

• The site provides an RSS feed of news stories, which is used on the home page of Margaret River Online to give a ‘latest news’ box.
• Anybody registered on the site (free registration) can submit news which is moderated by an editor before being posted. Registration is made really easy, making it easy for the editor to get community members to write stories which are then edited into news categories and maybe onto the front page of the site.
• There are a minimum of static pages on the site. A club, society or opinion column writer has a category, and a series of dated entries under that category. It is like a bunch of multi-author blogs mashed together.
• We removed a lot of complexity from the handling of stories and comments to make the site easy to use.
• We’ve got the site hooked up to Google News. The Google news folk are really nice to deal with, by the way.

I really like the result and it will be very interesting to see how it goes as content is added and the community gets involved.

Link

But read on beyond that bit and hear their vision for their Delicious Library software. Today, Delicious Library is software to help you catalog your library of books, DVDs, whatver, and manages borrowing for you. But beyond this, they see your personal library as something you’d share with a community of like minded people. And then with some location awareness, you’ll be able to find out if your neighbour has a copy of that book you are looking for, and maybe borrow it from them. I like it, especially for bring social software to bear on a local issue.

So, here’s two weeks worth of blogs in one:

New Years happened. Doesn’t that seem like a century ago. A big party, lot of fun, people, lots of talking. From a week or two weeks later it seemed a bit empty somehow. Perhaps I was looking for something a bit more soulful, a bit more of a ritual. I’m glad to be in the new year. 2004 sucked a lot in many ways.

I had a great time down south after new years, catching up with good friends and having a holiday for a couple of days. Everybody was in a holiday mood.

Look, every time I go fishing I catch absolutely nothing. This has been going on for a while. What god have I offended? Or is it really true, as Kimmy claims, that I don’t really want to catch a fish anyway?

Bill Gates said silly things, calling us free culture creative commons folk communists. Now we are creative commies. Thanks for the meme, Bill. I’ve got a T-shirt on order.

I’ve got lots of new innovation going on in my work life. A couple of interesting new highly secret projects that might be really big one day :-) haha. We’ll see.

Apple are beating up on mac websites that publish rumours of upcoming products. The EFF jumps in to help the websites. Silly Apple.

Then Apple releases new products at Macworld. Gizmodo shows off a couple of cool fake Apple ads that are funny. Despite Apple’s litigious behaviour which deep in my creative commie heart I should punish them for, I immediately order an iPod shuffle.

They are currently playing on BBC Radio 4, and are also available online where you can listen to crisp high-quality episodes. However, the current episode is only available for a week, then it disappears.

Get your ears over to the BBC Hitchhiker’s site to listen and for more info.

Here’s what she says about the gig:

Come and celebrate the spring vibe…

I’m going to be a DJ for goodness sake, at the luscious Luxe bar, 446 Beaufort Street, Mount Lawley this Wednesday [29th Sept] (tomorrow eve) at 8pm.

Here’s a taste of some of the loving, grooving tunefuls and daggy hits that will be played for your wiggling pleasure.

Unashamedly fun and eclectic…

Crazy Penis
Michael Franti & Spearhead
The Cat Empire
Queen
Blur
Rolling Stones
Missy Elliott
Adam Ant
Basement Jaxx
Abba
ZZ Top
Faithless
Deeelite
Kruder & Dorfneister
Adbulah Ibrahim
Jimmy Little
Sweet Honey On The Rock
Iggy Pop
Velvet Underground
Edwin Collins
Backyard Dog
Grace Jones
KC & Sunshine
Salt n Peppa
OutKast
Tone Loc
The Strokes
Air
Bea Bea Primrose
Bjork
The Soggy Bottom Boys
The Police
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
The Strokes

Special prizes for:

the best air guitar or lip-synching/hairbrush wielding rendition of your favourite song

Plus a chance to (re)learn how to wiggle with a hula hoop to one of the classic hula hooping songs of this century (alright alright alright alright)

Yes it’s a mid-week thing and very late notice but really, don’t we always need more music and fun in our lives? Especially the parental units out there. Go on… Call up a dancing buddy and get on up – or just meet Gra and I (and maybe even Miss Bea) and a few others for a cocktail (or milkeshake in her case). Lifts home available for some of the Southern folk at various points during the evening.

Requests in advance welcome, or bring it along on CD or vinyl

With love and wiggles

Libby

So come along!!!! Hope to see you there.

Peter Knapp (Bass baritone/ Presenter)
Sarah Sweeting (Mezzo soprano),
Tomasso Pollio (piano) and special guest
Penny Shaw (soprano).
 
“An evening of sheer delight!” The Evening Standard, London
 
Peter Knapp, opera singer, director and raconteur, invites you into his wonderful world of opera. Laugh at how it really is: the divas, the dramas and the unforeseen disasters. Listen to the loveliest singing as he joins with Prima Donna and pianist to bring you a sumptuous selection of operatic tunes. Look out as Carmen herself mingles amongst you and you find yourself being trained to join in an operatic chorus!
 
Peter Knapp trained in Italy and has sung all over the world. He bases the Revue on his many hilarious operatic experiences and in fact the idea for such a show first came to him whilst swinging from a chandelier as Don Giovanni.
 
“Peter Knapp is not only a fabulous singer, he is also a very funny man.” The Times, London
 
Dress Circle Bar, His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth
 
Friday 15th October, 7.30pm
 
Tickets $30 from BOCS ticketing 9484 1133

They present an ever expanding set of beautiful and convincing manifestos from diverse people about things the need to be changed in the world presented as beautiful PDF presentations.

Download a manifesto and enjoy. Or propose one of your own.

Go Duncan!