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World Wide Web in Plain English

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:50:16 +0000

I love the work of Common Craft who produce a variety of presentations for work, home or pleasure on the intricacies of life. Often I am asked to explain how something happens. Immediately the mind goes into spin mode followed quickly by rinse, spin, dry and repeat. That’s where Common Craft come in. They do a great job of making the complicated seem simple or at the very least opening the door of understanding.

Here is one key example;

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Australian Citizenship Pledge

apitchford — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:33:02 +0000

Australian Citizenship Pledge

From this time forward, under God,

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people,

Whose democratic beliefs I share,

Whose rights and liberties I respect,

and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

This was a big moment for my family and I back on the 7th September 2005. On a night at the “Kingston Butter Factory” (now an events centre for the Logan City Council), Cheryl and I joined other immigrants who wanted to make our commitment to Australian culture and community a real experience. This way we can truly ‘call Australia home’.

As my work with UCB Australia has a lot to do with serving the needs of the Australian community, I shouldn’t have been surprised how this night affected me. But I was.

On the evening between 150-200 people made a commitment to become Australian Citizens. As the group was so large it was split into three groups. The first two read the pledge above which states “From this time forward, under God”. The last group who chose to publicly acknowledge their belief there is no God, chose to read a pledge that says; “‘From this time forward, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people Whose democratic beliefs I share, Whose rights and liberties I respect, And whose laws I will uphold and obey.’

For me, it was a positive endorsement to remember WHY we do what we do. My work with UCB Australia isn’t for me, or for UCB, it is ‘under God’ to ‘pledge my loyalty (support/service) to Australia and its people’. I remember the point where we had to say the pledge and as I turned to look at Cheryl I couldn’t help but shed a few tears realising that people don’t understand the meaning of patriotism unless they gain it have it taken from them.

Firefox Skype Extension

apitchford — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:06:59 +0000

Have just been taking time to upgrade my new laptop with my usual suite of software. The changover to Windows Vista Ultimate is so far entertaining, nervously exciting and yet familiar. At least most of my favourite keyboard short-cuts return the results I need to manage my way around. What was disappointing is that on loading Firefox and the Skype, I was missing my favourite Skype extension.

Now someone will need to explain, but so far the Skype extension is not available at the mozilla.com / firefox.com website. At this point it is built into the Skype install. Sadly that went wrong, the extension didn’t appear and there was no way to reinstall. Reinstall’s failed, reboots were no go and uninstall and reinstall simply wasted coffee time.

However, despite asking Google’s advice, the final answer came from the Skype forums. OK, I won’t keep you waiting any longer,… If you lose your extension, go to the new Skype Business section and download the MSI version of Skype. This windows installer package allows you to choose both the IE and Firefox install extensions as part of the process. Yahoo, I’m back and connected.