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Castlemaine Goldrush

Background

Established during the gold rush of 1851
The Home of the Castlemaine XXXX beer

Hot Rod centre of Australia

Robert O’Hara Burke – leader of the Burke and Wills expedition, was stationed in Castlemaine as police superintendent from 1858 to 1859.

Frank McEncroe – creator of the Chiko Roll which is a sausage in batter on a stick

Climate

600 mm of rain a year (approx) which is similar to that of Cambridge (where I grew up) but less than Sheffield (1000mm per year). It is much warmer and sunnier than both though.

Videos about Castlemaine and the surrounding area

The easy gold is long gone but there is still goldmining going on in Maldon 12km away from castlemaine at the Maldon gold project

below is a video from a guy who has been doing a bit of gold mining on his property

Some brit has saved me the trouble of videoing the Castlemeain and Maldon

THeres also the Maldon Folk festival

Just down the Road is Newstead below is a video of race they had there in 2006 on lawn mowers

houseofnumbers-movie

Does HIV / AIDS actually exist at all?

I was recently listening to an interview with Canadian filmmaker Brent Leung has released a film called house of numbers about HIV / AIDS on the Lew Rockwell Show.  The film is called House of numbers and the interview blew my mind. The filmaker started making a film about aids and through the course of making the film discovered that the scientific knowledge on what is HIV and what is AIDS is far from the homogeneous. Some well respected scientist even question if HIV exist at all.

The scientist that won the Nobel prize for discovering the HIV virus claims in the movie that HIV / AIDS can be cured by a naturally healthy immune system! At its heart is a focus on numbers (as the name suggests) and the film rips into a number of the huge numbers that a talked bout around HIV / AIDS. Probably have a look at the trailer below and listen to the podcast for more details.

The Link to the films website is here

skype_logo

Guitar Lessons by Skype

To keep my music fresh I have been wanting to improve my guitar technique with some guitar lessons. My last guitar teacher moved further away which meant I found it too difficult to get to his new location. For this reason I started my search looking for lessons very close to my home or work . I couldn’t find any teachers that were really close that would have been suitable and it lead me to an innovative solution to my problem.

Lessons by Skype

I have found a new teacher from Sydney called EMZ who gives lessons worldwide Via Skype.

I have to admit I had my doubts about how effective using a webcam would be. The teacher did offer a free trial first and once I took up the trial it worked pretty well. I have now had 3 lessons and my teacher is great (I am currently learning “Play Misty for Me” theme to the film “Play Misty for Me” – I think I’m gonna have to hire it)

It is so convenient just skype him at the allotted time and pay him by payPal.

I think skype is going to revolutionize guitar lessons watch this space.

My teachers website is http://www.emzonlineguitar.com/index.html
Below is a video of him

zoom-h4n

Zoom H4 vs itouch mic

Lapel and zoom microphones

To help me with my podcast I have bought a couple of microphones one lapel and another from Zoom

The itouch mic $13 US (which is a lapel mic for the iphone)

and a Zoom H4n (a bit over the top for podcasts perhaps but I’m also in a band so have used it to record demo tracks) $450

I have used them to record my latest podcast on my bands website www.jimmyyukka.com I used the iphone mic as a backup mic (which was just as well as the Zoom H4n filled up halfway through the recording).

My Opinion on the itouch mic
cheap and easy and sounds better than the iphone headset mic (worth the $30)

My Opinion on the ZoomH4n
Gorgeous as a portable recorder or an small a/d for my laptop it even has gates

iphone

iphone synths and sampler tunes

I have been dying for a decent sampler on the iphone (I tried beatmapper) but all of the apps have disappointed until now. This thing is just sooo good!

It is called nanostudio it costs money but it really is breathtaking

This is the muts nuts. I can create tracks on the way to work! I  have created a bunch of tunes my favourite a couple are below. The interface is so slick.

Virgin Outbound (recorded whilst waiting for a flight to sydney)

Theres something going on outside recorded using the iphone mic for vocal samples. It is track 3 on my new concept albumn.

liver cleansing

Started The Liver Cleansing Diet

I am a pretty healthy individual however in the last couple of years I have develeoped a few chronic health problems

  • Dry eyes
  • Sore eyes
  • Headaches that can last 3-4 days and put me in a bad mood (I think casued by painfull eyes)
  • Hot flushes in the afternoon
  • The headaches are made worse through doing headstands and handstands
  • Corneal errosion – I scratched my eye a year ago and it still hasn’t healed. The eye specialist reckons I may just have to live with it.

I am not content to “live” with theses symtoms anymore and have declared war on my ailments. I am going try everything I can think of to get rid of this (apart from stopping work on a computer)

My Hypothisis

  • Overworked Liver and maybe spleen
  • causing chemical inbalances and dehydration that is
  • casuing a lack of nutrients getting to my eyes which is
  • causing pain in my eyes
  • casusing my preloged headaches (migranes)

The Plan

Action 1 – Medical doctor (Got prescribed sandamigraine for my headaches which I stopped taking after a while because it wasn’t a cure just a way to reduce the symptoms)

Action 2 – Chinese Doctor I- I had acupuncture and some herbal remidies. 5 weeks into it I had a bad bought of headaches and nasty eyes. He suggested that the cause is most likely my liver speen and the herbs were to treat my eyes and liver. It is possible the reoccurence could have been due to a few beers that during a couple of days. However it was not the “miracle cure” I had hoped for so I decided I would try to sort it out myself.

Action 3 – The Liver Cleansing Diet I have been banging on about doing a fast or the liver cleansing diet for ages. I was winging about my headaches at work and saying how I was going to do a fast at some point and caught myself being pathetic. At this point I added to my todo list to get hold of the liver cleansing diet. At this time I have been strictly on the liver cleansing diet for 2 weeks. I have also been pretty free of booze (1 glass of wine and 2 beers).

Action 4 – My corneal errosion played up on the weekend. As a result I hit the internet again and found out that magnesium and zinc contribute to healthy eyes and depending upon the performance of your body your ability to metabolize these minerals can be reduced. For this reason I changed my hypothosis to

  • bad liver / speen
  • causing reduced minereal absorption causing mineral deficiency
  • causing bad eyes

For this reason I thought it worth taking some suppliments I have been on berroca for now 3 days and currently my eyes are not actually dry (exciting)

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Gmail spam

I was almost tricked by a very convincing spam that I received this morning claiming to be from gmail.

“Due to the congestion in our Gmail servers,there would be removal of all unused Gmail Accounts.You will have to confirm if your E-mail is still active by filling out your login info below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.”

It then goes on to ask you DOB and some other details.

This is spam ignore it