I’ve been asked to setup a Moodle site for work so that students and teachers can access course information, assessments, learning guides and weekly class content. While I can setup the backend of a Content Management System, I have no idea of how to get my way round a Moodle site.

Think this is going to be harder than I first thought.

One day I might be able to ride like these guys, they really do make it look so easy. If you can snowboard than you really need to give this go….

FreeBord EXPLAINED

Snowboard all year. Ride any hill, any time, no lift tickets, no lift lines, no off season. Think we’re full of it? Watch the video.

TOTAL SPEED CONTROL
Freebord’s outside wheels act just like the edges on your snowboard. The result: total speed control that allows you to bomb the steepest street you want.

SLIDE INTO SWITCH
Freebord’s center wheels act like the petex base on your snowboard allowing you to slide your edge and drift into switch.

STOP
Edge in and slide to a stop, same as you do on snow.

CARVE AND SLIDE
Freebord’s patented truck design is the only board on the market that combines both carving and sliding (think about it: without both, it’s not snowboarding).

http://www.freebordaustralia.com

I was listening to Nova (96.9) last Friday where Merrick & Rosso interviewed the now Australian of the year, Tim Flannery. Tim is a global warming activist and got quiet heated himself when talking about the way governments act irresponsibly refusing to take ownership when it comes to pollution and other environmental issues.

Towards the end of the interview Merrick said something that has played on my mind since. He said he wonders if the people who choose to ignore environmental issues will become the criminals of the future. In 20, 30, 40 years those of us who continue to act recklessly will one day be held responsible for our actions. Think Merrick might be onto something here…I wonder…could I be a criminal of the future

Check this out. Yestersday I went freebord’n with a mate…well, I rode and he sat back and took pics with my new camera. Unfortunately Owen can’t ride at the moment because he broke his wrist the last time we decided to act like 15 year olds. All up he has to wait eight weeks before he can freebord again. That means more time on the bord for me as we shared the cost and now share the enjoyment of our first bord.

Owen amazes me. He is so talented. Today he took some of the photos from yesterday and worked his magic. This is one of the results. I’ve asked him to show me what he does, but I don’t think it will make much of a difference knowing the how to’s. This kind of result only comes from somewhere within the giftedness of a creative soul.

“update + whats been going on + why isnt any one around”

This was the subject line of an email I received recently. It was a rather long email attempting to explain why my then web hosting company had been offline, silent and un-contactable for the past 2 months. Yes two months.

Having accepted another annual hosting payment from me, and I imagine many others, the hosting company seemed to disappear from the face of the earth, well Australia anyway, with servers offline and helpdesk email and phones unattended. After two weeks of trying to speak with someone, anyone, I received an email from a third party support person who had permission to view helpdesk calls, but had no access to fix anything on the system. I was told that the owner hadn’t been heard from for at least a further two weeks and I was encouraged to check out this third part support persons own hosting company – sounded like a sales pitch. But at least he made the effort to let me know something.

So – I moved on. I called my bank and started the process of trying to redeem my money, I found another hosting company, who to date have been very good, and I began trying to restore data from old backups.

This whole situation got me thinking. One of the dangers of blogging and using a hosting company is that my data, public and private, is now sitting on a server hard drive somewhere. I have no idea whether the data is retrievable or not. I have no control over what happens to the hard drive it is stored on. What if the server is still working and sold onto another company? What if it is dismantled and sold of for parts? Some pimple faced teenager buys the hard now has my personal information!

I guess I’m not so much upset with the fact that this company went out of business – it happens. And I’m really not that upset that they took my money. What really upsets me is that they took my trust and threw it away. I trusted this company with my information and they really have not given me anything in return. One email of explanation in over three months. One email and then more silence.

So who is this hosting company that broke my trust, yes I am going to tell you – only because a warning needs to go out to other would-be customers, a warning that this company may not be a wise and trustworthy choice.
The infamous company – Host Web Live (Perth, Australia) - http://www.hostweblive.com.au/

Finally! The site is back up again….so what happened?
In short – LOTS.
The last post I made to this blog was back in October 2006. One day I may share some of the reasons why I stopped blogging at that time – but not yet. For those who are observant you will have noticed that the last blog entry is dated august 10th 2006. This is because the web hosting company that I was dealing with has had lots of problems over the past year (more on that later) and managed to loose mine and I assume a lot of other people’s data from their Perth server(s). So August to October is gone and sadly that contained the blogs that covered our mission’s trip to Tonga. I managed to get the other blogs when I found a backup I had done in august. The lesson here is make sure you always backup on a regular basis – something I always stress to my students –but obviously don’t put into practice.