Shorncliffe beach park

Shorncliffe is a very nice quiet place to be. One could almost say a retirement village on the beach.

So I went for a walkabout looking for camp site and a place to cool off.

Pier looking back towards the beach

Initially I figured the pier would be perfect. The sea water and necessary shade to kill the 35+ degrees all within meters of each other.

And what did I find in floating in seawater – also enjoying the sun?

Blue bottle jellyfish

In Australia and New Zealand, this jellyfish is called the “blue bottle” due to its color.  In other countries, they called it the “Portuguese Man o War“.

This apparently lightly armed jellyfish normally has 6-inch (15 centimeter) tentacles but they can grow to around 10 meters long !!! This growth is being caused by the warming of the oceans.

These tentacles are filled with a long string of barbed hooks. Once wrapped around the meal, the poison is released paralysing the prey.

If a human gets snagged, it releases the poison using nematocysts.

To reduce the pain, don’t touch the area because that releases more poison. The best thing to do is wash the area with some vinegar.

Now the blue bottle jellyfish might sting you and that will definitely hurt, however this “Portuguese Man o War” has a deadly cousin which conveniently is also a blue color!!!

The Box Jellyfish – alias Chironex Fleckeri - has the potential to inflict fatal stings. Once stung, the pain is so excruciating that you’ll probably go into shock and drown before reaching the beach. You have virtually no chance of surviving this venomous sting.

Sea filled with an armada of blue bottle jellyfish

I posted the YouTube video here. The video ain’t that great but I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s impossible to know if a box jellyfish is hidden within the jellyfish armada.

So here I am – the Brush Turkey ripping up the garden, the crows damaging my hearing and the jellyfish hogging the pool – still want to visit?

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ADSL Broadband

Better value – lower costs – can definitely be obtained if you integrate the Internet plan with a mobile and/or land line.

Obviously it can be argued that if you have a good, reliable Internet connection, VOIP connection, you don’t need a “standard” land line phone connection. Just like Skype, there are a couple local providers in Australia that offer an Internet to standard phone line / fax service at an even lower cost.

Some of the wireless broadband deals are listed below:

Wireless Broadband

The last option with 3, whilst having the appearance of low cost becomes rather expensive as you exceed the 2GB quota. Each additional MB incurs a 10 cent penalty. There is also roaming surcharge of $1.65 per MB!!! The 3 deal is also a 24 month contract!

It is better to accept a provider plan that has integrated speed shaping than get a bill a horrific account at the end of month.

What do you think?

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Well, not anymore – “To survive, all you need is the Internet!”

Australia has become a virtual nation.

In Australia, everything imaginable can be ordered or arranged over the Internet. This includes all the basic goods and services to insurances, government and state paperwork, bank accounts, investments, rental properties, travel and entertainment.

If you live in Brisbane, you can even find out where the cheapest fuel prices are with the Triple M Bowser watcher! No need to be late for a date – get the latest from the live traffic webcams here. With a streaming audio connection, you can plan your route around the radars…

Overall, internet performance is quite reasonable – obviously some will disagree – and those that do, have never been to Africa!!!

Basically, your internet performance depends on the following factors:

• Firstly, your link speed (dial-up or broadband) to the ISP – Internet Service Provider. Forget standard dial-up unless you’re planning on cutting your wrists Accept nothing less than ADSL, preferably ADSL2+ Broadband. More than 15% of Australians have home broadband connections.
• Secondly, your ISP’s connection to the Internet. Avoid those ISPs that oversell their bandwidth – get an ISP performance benchmark (like for the UK) before committing to a broadband contract and package option.
• The download server’s connection to the Internet.

The last factor is completely out of your control. The only advice here is that if there is an option to download via FTP (file transfer protocol) – take it!

FTP carries at lot less baggage – protocol overhead to manage the download – and so downloads generally take less time. The FTP protocol also supports recovery, which helps if your connection is unreliable.

Ideally, starting another download should have little effect on the download performance.

Depending on where you are in the world, even if you have the best available ISP, Internet performance could still be poor. This is caused by the country itself having a poor Internet Backbone connection – 400Mbps for South Africa – Ag shame

Twenty million Australians struggle to share a couple 10…40 gigabit links growing to lousy 2-terabit PIPE Pacific 1 (PPC-1) USA link in late 2009 ;-(

If you can’t deal with the pain and own a bank, use a satellite link! Now that’s a really expensive option but available if you can afford it.

Internet performance is also affected by the local time relative to the target server time. In Australia, mid mornings during the week are generally reasonable when connecting to servers on the west coast of the USA – California et al.

Overall, weekends – in particular Saturday mornings are the best as shown in the figure below. The destination server in this case is lives in Berlin, Germany, Europe and so they’re asleep, so I get to use all their bandwidth

To find out where the destination server lives, use tracert or a tool like VisualRoute to perform a network trace.

Many Australians are currently unhappy with their ADSL, ADSL2+ broadband speed. For some it is a question of raw performance whilst others have issues with wireless broadband coverage. Wireless internet coverage is an issue! As a slave to this coverage, just changing the angle of the high gain antenna swings signal strength from 90% to 40% – that sucks! This change in signal strength drops transfer rate down to an unacceptable 40KB/Sec.

I hear the 3G network that Telstra has been promoting, supposedly giving cellphones broadband connectivity and performance also has issues with coverage.

Now in Australia it could all be jealousy at 1.7Mbps – some of our Asia Pacific cousins like Japan have an average internet connection speed to the home of 45.6Mbps ;-(

Later this week I’ll add some costing for the Broadband Internet Packages in Australia.

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For many job applicants, the most difficult task will be deciding what job offer to accept.

This has put the pressure on employers to differentiate their offer and stand out early in the recruitment process to avoid a tug-of-war.

The obvious way to entice the candidate accept the employment offer is the salary or wage as shown here:

In the following table you’ll notice that the first listing is the construction industry. So gone are the days where mums and dads said university was best way to secure your future.

Now in 2008, a trade or apprenticeship is the way to secure that dream job you’ve always wanted.

The demand for construction industry trades and apprenticeships are growing at 15% pa.

It’s been 25 years since traditional trades have been in favor as the lucrative career path. This fact shocks the tertiary education sector as many school leavers look forward to rolling up their sleeves and immediately earning an income.

Together with the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006 Census, the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) released a “Skills in Demand List” that said the skill shortage is here to stay for the foreseeable future!

So does your boss recognize the hard work and extra hours you put in?

Now is the time for a “don’t thank me, pay me” attitude – you’ve got nothing to loose!

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Or maybe that’s the African mentality?

In South Africa the criminal has degenerated into brutal animal. You can easily without hesitation be shot for your mobile, bag, wallet, car etc.

Serious crime – that’s murder, attempted murder, rape, assault and robbery account for 33% of all recorded crime in South Africa. In Australia, serious crime is a fraction of a percentage point.

The crime statistics listed below were extracted from official press releases or advisories – they’re not manufactured!!! The South African release was dated 31 July 2007, whilst the Australian was August 2007.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), approximately 82% of persons felt safe or very safe when at home alone during the day, compared with 72% feeling this way after dark.

How many South Africans can say that?

None – South Africans live in fear!

At night South Africans lock themselves up behind barbed wire, high walls, electric fences and security gates. The only thing that differentiates the law abiding citizen from those still left in prison is that they have the key to their cell door!

According to a Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) report, to compare favorably with other INTERPOL countries, South Africa must reduce its violent crime by 7-10% pa for the next 10 years.

As the 2010 World Cup draws closer, pressure is mounting to stem the out of control crime – if this does not happen, the country will fall short of a target of ten million tourist arrivals.

Hopefully with this crime statistics comparison you will understand why I love Australia

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