Have you ever seen those adverts that claim to do miracles? Like help you loose weight by just drinking a drink. With so totally convincing pictures of a torso like these ones -

Totally the same person – they have almost the same bra after all!!

In the picture the girl is wearing a different bra and has different colour hair, so a total transformation! I clicked through to see how this website was trying to rip people off. The girl on the website has ginger hair so has been very busy at the hair salon! The website is basically a sales pitch which links through to another website for a South American berry juice and  “life cleanse” tablets. If you clicked these links and bought the product this original website would earn referral money.

I’m fairly sure their tactics of showing pictures of unrelated girls of different body proportions to advertise a product is against the law but I guess there’s no way of proving they are unrelated, it may be the same girl who loves getting her hair dyed.

The website had a comment section at the bottom which has comments like this -

“I just happend to click on your page one day. Your story has definitely inspired me, Michelle. I already signed up for my shipment.”

Again these could by true comments, it’s pretty difficult to prove otherwise but then this comment grabbed my attention -

That seems to good to be true, someone in the suburb I live next to ordered some from this site and it took less than a week to get delivered. Using the magic of remote desktop and running a server in the UK I visited the same website -

Same “comment” but with a different geo-location. So the comments are fake and definitely against the FTC Endorsement Guidelines (the site is hosted in the USA).

So I guess the morale of the story is, never click on an advert to buy something or ever think someone who lives down the road just bought the same product!

I just found this video of London from 1927, it’s pretty incredible having lived around the areas where the film first starts it’s amazing to see this in pseudo-colour!

Then and Now

And here’s the full 10 minute video -

The video was made by Claude Friese-Greene who’s father was an early day pioneer of cinematography. The colour was created by one frame being tinted red and the next frame tinted green, when played at full speed the brain makes the images appear as colour. The video above is better than the original as some modern day techniques have been applied. Loads more into at the BFI.

Congratulations to Nancy and Marcus on the birth of their baby, Hugo -

Baby Hugo

Hugo is sporting the guitar rock look in this shot. Looking forward to some fun times with Hugo!!

This blog entry is a copy of an entry posted at the official Australian Kick Ball Down Under blog. Kickball is a game invent in the USA in the 1940ies that is a lot like baseball except the ball is rolled along the ground towards you and you kick it with your foot as hard as you can.

5th of July saw the Sun shining in Sydney, Australia for the third game of the season. A slight change of location due to our normal field being used for a concert. Who do they think they are? The sun was shining and some of the more sensible members of the Sunday afternoon kickball elite were warming up -

The all important warm up.

Sunday’s game was the first to have official kick ball sanctioned supporters, which included Dr. Roberts, Lorraine and Bo a German Shepherd dog.

A few new faces for me at least, at the game who’s names I’ve all but forgotten but very good to see a good turnout. After a few weeks of playing you can begin to see the development and advancement of the teams as tactics for kicking, passing and hitting are used to outwit the opposing team.

Powerdrive

After a promising start both sides succumbed to injuries, a couple of quad tension injuries, a knee injury and general bruises caused by a realisation that no one is under the age of thirteen, the median age for kickball in the USA.

After a good couple of hours of kickball with lovely sunshine and no wind we retired to the Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel for Nachos and cold drinks to celebrate our kickball achievement.

Kickball LA Paparazzi Style

I believe the heads of Kickball Australia were talking about a “one week recess” which for non-Americans means there will be a gap and kickballing will resume at 13h30 on the 19th of July. See you there. Peace.

Another long gap between blog entries! Well this one is a good one, Amy and I met a real internet celebrity tonight, although from the 20 minute ferry journey chat we had I’m fairly sure Natalie Tran downplays her fame.

Natalie, as I mentioned before in this post is a YouTube video blogger, her videos have been watched almost one hundred and eighteen million times to date, she is the number one most subscribed Australian and sixtenth most subscribed in the world, she can probably get through to young Australians easier than the government.

Natalie and me at Manly Wharf

I felt like a bit of a dork going over and telling Natalie I was a fan but I am very glad I did as it was good fun talking to Nat and learning a bit more about the videos and her trip to NYC. She is as funny IRL (which means “in real life” for the grown ups reading) as she is in her videos, it felt like we were getting our very own interactive community channel video!

I’ve embedded Natalie’s latest video below, but you should also checkout her back log of videos on her YouTube Community Channel.

I now have to endure Amy taking the mick out of me for my star struck behaviour for a couple of weeks no doubt!

Earth Hour is an initiative of the World Wrestling Foundation where individuals, businesses and governments turn off their lights for one hour to show their support for action on climate change. The largest climate event in history where millions of people around the world will unite by turning off their lights for one hour, Earth Hour, to demand action on the climate crisis.

I was excited as most people were here in Manly to get in on the Earthhour spirit. Like most things in the world, it takes the people at the top to start doing something to really make a difference so we look to the governments to get in on these things. Here’s Manly Wharf at 19h56 -

19h56 – Earth Hour T-Minus 34 minutes

As the count down began to the start of earth hour where people get to show the world how much we care about  looking after the planet, crowds came from near and far and arrived at Manly Wharf beach with their candles and drums to witness this great event. Drums played and cheers were being expelled by the crowd as the seconds of time ticked away to the start of this amazing event as we all in union switch the lights off and sit in darkness for a short period of time to tell the world we understand its plight.

And then, the moment arrived, the moment of time where human beings can stand together and say lets fight climate change, protect the future for our children and our childrens children and change the world -

BEHOLD! Earth Hour Manly Wharf 2009

This post was created because I felt sorry for the kids counting down to Earth Hour in the group on the beach (you can see them in the second picture) and then nothing actually happening.

Recently when I went up in a helicopter over Sydney I took some photos which I changed to make look like little models the inspiration came from various sources on the internet but the guy who has taken it to the next level is Keith Loutit who also lives in Sydney, he has created some fantastic videos here’s his latest one -

You can see more of Keiths work at his Vimeo Page

Had to blog this, a great video I found on YouTube of some surf wipeouts in the past 40 years or so -

Best of 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and now 2008! I really look forward to doing this list that I’ve added a new category called “Purchase of the Year”.

	Album of the Year – Jamie T – Panic Prevention This album actually came out in 2007 but I did not hear it until Rach and Mike’s engagement party where they had it playing. Jamie T is from Wimbledon so it might not be everyones cup of tea. It is now my iTunes most played artist so it makes album of the year this year. Checkout a Jamie T track on YouTube.
	Cinema Trip of the Year – Batman – The Dark Knight Amy, Jon, Marcus and I went to see this at the IMAX in Sydney which probably made this film the most memorable trip (second was to go and see the Smashing Pumpkins Documentary – If All Goes Wrong with Stu and Lachlan). IMAX is a great experience if not for the screen but for the fantastic sound system that made this film really come at you.
	DVD of the Year – Arrested Developer Season 1,2,3 Arrested Development is an American sitcom that actually debuted in 2003. I do remember it being on TV but never really having any kind of television schedule the chances of watching an entire series was very low. Thanks to low price DVDs and QuickFlix rentals we’ve managed to watch all 3 seasons of this excellent comedy show. If you are fed up of watching random TV then at least rent the 1st season this is comedy gold.
	Book of the Year – Rich Dad Poor Dad This book is great simple as that very interesting and makes you want to save money.
	Game of the Year – Call of Duty 4 I have a love hate relationship with this. I bought this game after getting a new computer which brought me into the 21st century of desktop computing power. The game has an online mode where you can go around in first person and shoot your enemy with various guns. My favourite is the MP5 with dotted scope.
	Website of the Year – Liveleak.com LiveLeak is a interesting site that attempts to “redefine” media. This is basically citizen journalism at its best. Video cameras are so popular that most things that happen are now captured on film. This site stores those videos. It has some fascinating videos from Iraq and Afganisthan and has been mentioned by Tony Blair at press conferences when he was Prime Minister.
	Purchase of the Year – Apple iPhone There’s not a phone that can compete with this one yet. Yes it may have its flaws against the blackberry in the fact it has no physical keyboard but in every other aspect it beats it hands down. Google Maps with Street View Integration is very handy on road trips, Gmail on the go and Facebook on the go is excellent.

That wraps up the best of 2008, looking forward to the best of 2009 I wonder what it will be!

Many people I know including myself are happy that Barack Obama is the new president of the United States of America today.

The huge turn out for this election and especially within the younger than 30ies age group is fantastic and is a turn around from how I thought the world was going. In my opinion it doesn’t really matter who runs a country as long as it is choosen by the people who live in it (i.e. a democracy) and that those people continue to get a say in it which I don’t think was always the case with the previous US government (which no one is still really sure if they actually got elected 8 years ago).

President Barack Obama Attribution: jmtimages

What really interested me about today is that I found out that Obama had won not by watching a news report in the television but from the everyday people of the world via twitter -

New Television

You can see the election page and what people are still talking about on twitter at http://election.twitter.com/.

On a side note I hope the democrats can sort out the current financial crisis as it was the democratic party that contributed to us getting into it in the first place (read: Would the last honest reporter please turn on the lights?).