The design process resulted in production of seven different design concepts.

The client selected their preferred design.

Four variations of the preferred design were then produced, in conversation with the client.

After selecting one of the variations, the client worked with me to make a few further modifications to the design.

The result was a fully customised WordPress theme that is unique to this client.

The total cost to the client for this custom theme design and website build in WordPress was a little under $2,000 AUD.

This website is typical of the type of work I am currently doing.

I’m very happy with the result and particularly pleased with the Wallpaper Galleries page, which is generated by the NextGEN image gallery WordPress plugin.

I would recommend the NextGEN image gallery plugin to anyone wanting to put together different types of photograph galleries using WordPress.

Site URL: http://www.inhabitwalls.com

I haven’t yet committed time to developing a cogent argument for a carbon tax over an ETS. I’m glad to discover Mr Hukin has done a better job than I would have done.

A carbon tax is based on logic.

A direct tax on carbon is honest. It has integrity.

A direct carbon tax won’t distort the market or protect polluters with ETS smoke and mirrors like Rudd & co in Australia, Obama in the USA and the Brussels-based EU bureaucracy.

To understand the smoke and mirrors nature of ETS / Cap-and-Trade, watch The Story of Cap and Trade

Taxation of natural resources and pollution according to usage and impacts is equitable.

Resource and pollution based taxation would create an environment that is designed to reward clean, careful, industrious people and punish destructive, polluting, wasteful people.

To each according to the value placed upon their productivity by the market, and from each according to the value placed upon the physical resources utilised and environmental impacts inherent in that production as determined through international political agreement.

Does that make it easier for the average worker and business owner to support resource and pollution based taxation, knowing that such a taxation system can replace labour based taxation?

I fear that in our current global paradigm of economic struggle and the quest for individual monetary advancement to the detriment of ecological health, it does not.

As far as I am aware, in Australia only the Greens have introduction of a direct tax on carbon for primary energy as a policy point.

Australian Greens Policy G1: Economics: Point 25.1 “a carbon tax levied on generators of mains-supplied electricity or gas”

Note the preceding qualifier:

“implement a gradual and long term shift in the tax system from work based taxes to taxes on natural resources and pollution including…”

However, a carbon tax is only workable within a globally binding agreement for each nation to tax polluters at equivalent levels.

Politically it doesn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell.

The elites who run the global economic and monetarist systems will never willingly make such a necessary concession of their personal power and economic domination, until its too late and the seeds of their hubris have borne the bitter fruit of global ecological catastrophy for us all.

That will remain so for as long a majority of people support the power system devised by the elites by placing their individual personal comforts ahead of any commitment to holistic solutions designed to deliver the best outcomes for the greatest numbers of people.

It is self-evident that taxation of a person’s labour in any degree is a form of economic slavery.

What is not so obvious is that most people acquise to this abuse of their liberty primarily through ignorance of any superior alternative paradigm.

People whose choices are largely based on fear and greed, or aversion and craving (as the Buddha taught), cannot see clearly the trap they are in and fail to understand that some pain and sacrifice in the short term can yield a correspondingly greater benefit in the longer term.

Henry George wrote “Progress and Poverty”, the greatest treatise on the evils of labour taxation and the virtues of resource based taxation, 130 years ago.

I suggest to anyone who wants to gain an understanding of why the world is in such a mess ecologically, economically, politically; read “Progress and Poverty”.

If we are to survive and prosper as successful custodians of our natural world, I believe that economic and taxation reform that the Greens have proposed for many years will have to be adopted globally within twenty years.

One hundred, or even fifty years, will be far too late and see us living in a hot, dirty, polluted world that is closer to the Christian conception of Hell than the mythical Garden of Eden, that we could re-create if we were mindful of our choices now.

The world is in desparate need of a spiritual revolution.

I go so far as to assert it is a necessary prerequisite, before we can have the economic, monetarist and taxation reforms necessary to safeguard our life-sustaining planetary ecological system.

That logically invokes a challenging question.

What religious vehicle is best suited to supporting a life-sustaining global spiritual revolution?

I may share my thoughts on that if enough people express an interest in knowing what I perceive in this matter.

The amount of paper is greater than what I can in good conscience shred and put into a worm farm.

The worms would get indigestion if they tried to eat their way through all these deals and offers!

So. I have decided: Enough is enough.

Time to take swift and decisive action to turn back to hordes of advertising memos, flyers, catalogues and booklets bombarding our letter box.

Perhaps this problem does not exist to any great extent in the USA, where the mail box is considered the domain of the Postal Service and any junk mail can be retrieved, weighed and billed/charged to the originating entity at commercial mail rates.

United States of America
The mailbox is the domain of the US Postal Service, granted by law. Therefore, no materials
other than properly stamped mail may be placed in the box. If flyers, pamphlets, etc. are
found in the box by the postal worker, they collect the pieces and return them to the
Postmaster. The items are then weighed and the firm responsible for their distribution is
charged accordingly. These rules are included in the Postal Service’s Domestic Mail Manual.

So, I need “No Junk Mail” or preferably, the more precisely worded, “No Advertising Material” stickers.

Where to get them?

I performed a quick Google search and came up with an address that Australians can write to for a free sticker.

The Distribution Standards Board (DSB) is the self-regulatory arm of the Australian Catalogue Association, whose members print and distribute around 90% of all unaddressed advertising catalogues.

The DSB members abide by a strict Code of Practice to maintain standards of privacy, litter control, cooperation with local authorities and compliance with all EPA guidelines.

DSB maintains a database of all known addresses that carry a restrictive sign on the letterbox, and provides free of charge a reflective No Advertising Material sticker, on receipt of a stamped addressed envelope to DSB Sticker PO Box 6252 Karingal Vic 3199.

The DSB provides a Hot Line for consumers to report illegal or irresponsible distribution practices.

Consumer Hotline Phone 1800 676 136

Too slow, I want to solve this now.

So, I have made my own printable page with the text “No Advertising Material” repeated twice, for two stickers.

Popping it through the laminating machine and cutting it up gives me two waterproof  signs ready to tape onto the top and front of our letter box. Photo to come later.

For now, you are welcome to download the Word and PDF versions of my simple Printable, so you can print and tape your own “No Advertising Material” sign onto your letter box.  Feel free to vary as required.

No Advertising Material Word doc

No Advertising Material PDF file

Let’s drink a toast to No More Junk!

Peter Schiff explains why gold and silver are entering a big rally phase. He points out its because the US dollar has a huge inflationary action occurring due to the massive amounts of liquidity pumped into the dollar by the Federal Reserve. That is weakening the dollar as every new round of dollars dumped from Ben Bernanke’s helicopters dilutes the purchasing power of every dollar already in circulation.

If the Rees Government’s proposed bill is passed, every NSW rural rail line will be potentially under threat of arbitrary closure decisions by the State government.

12 - 1 pm, Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Outside NSW Parliament, Macquarie St, Sydney

Join the protest to oppose the new law that will allow viable public rail corridors across the state to be sold off.

People are coming form northern NSW and the Hunter Valley to defend their rail corridors. Please join us and please forward this email to your contacts.

The Rees government’s new legislation if passed would pave the way for the closure and sell off of rail lines and associated land to developers without scrutiny.

A century ago MPs had the vision to pass a law to provide legal protection for our rail tracks. This has meant the closure of railway lines can only proceed by an Act of Parliament, requiring debate in parliament.

This is an action supported by the Greens NSW

Speakers include:
Lee Rhiannon, NSW Greens MP
Jamie Parker, Mayor of Leichhardt
Gail Broadbent, Australian Conservation Foundation
Reps from Combined Pensioners & Superannuants Assoc
Rail Tram and Bus Union
Newcastle Transport for Business Development
Trains On Our Tracks (TOOT)
Save Our Rail

More to be advised.

TOOT organising on behalf of NSW public transport groups
Karin Kolbe - 0411 594 599

More information on govt bill
http://leerhiannon.org.au/Campaigns/stop-rail-sell-off-1
————————————————–
Lee Rhiannon, MLC
The Greens
Parliament of New South Wales
Macquarie St
Sydney 2000
Tel: +61-2-9230 3551 Fax: +61-2-9230 3550
Email lee.rhiannon@parliament.nsw.gov.au
Web http://www.lee.greens.org.au/

To get Greens media releases emailed, sign up at <http://lists.greens.org.au/mailman/listinfo/media>

“Environmental Challenge No 1.”
http://www.rentoid.com/blog/?p=995

This proposition made in that blog post is a tough proposition to approach from a philosophical perspective.

I’ll write this post from a Sydney/Australia centric perspective, as life in the city of Sydney is the core of my world experience and world view.

On the one hand there is the consideration that the elite decision makers are out of touch with the median urban dweller’s situation and therefore ill-equipped to make decisions appropriate to the median urban dweller.

On the other hand, there is the consideration that the elite decision makers have the outlook and perspective they enjoy because they and their families do things differently than the median urban dweller, who is situated where they are and with their outlook as a result of choices they and their families have made.

Some would argue that better equips them for decision making, while some would contend that their environment and consequently their decision making framework is biased against the interests of the mass of people.

As an aside, we cannot necessarily make predictions about the personal ecological footprints of the dwelling occupiers based solely on pictures of the dwellings.

If I take the proposition at face value, that the greatest challenge is that our decision makers inhabit an environment that is atypical of that inhabited by the greater part of the citizenry, how much further removed relatively speaking are both groups represented, being in a top 1% urban environment, compared with those eking out a subsistence existence on less than $1 per day, often without adequate safe drinking water, somewhere around 2 billion of the approaching 7 billion people on the planet.

What then are the impacts of the decisions made by the decision-makers on the 40% to 60% (wild guess) of the world’s population who have no effective political franchise via which to express their dissatisfaction with the way global affairs are governed?

Furthermore, what are the impacts of the decisions made by the greater part of the educated free citizenry of the planet, the 2 billion or so people who have a standard of living not too dissimilar from the range depicted by the images above.

While I acknowledge the effort to highlight a disparity in living circumstances in our society, and the consequent framing of perspectives between its elites and its median members, I definitely don’t consider that in itself to be our greatest challenge.

My belief is that our greatest challenge is our own individual contribution to things being the way they are.

I submit that collectively the individual choices and actions of billions of people play a far greater aggregate role in shaping our world than than the decisions made by the global power elites.

They only have power by virtue of the choices we make to cede that power to them. For example, by choosing to drive cars and buy fuel, we support and maintain an oil-dependent society that provides huge profits and massive economic, social and political power to the oil pirates. For the origin of the term “oil pirates”, I refer you to “Critical Path” by R. Buckminster Fuller.

The same applies to our usage of electricity. We demand cheap energy (collectively as a society) to run our plasma screens (I own one myself), our computers, our air conditioners (I don’t have or use A/C, this is Sydney, not Kuala Lumpur).

A few years ago, just after new years day, early in January (2006 I think it was?), hundreds of thousands of people in Sydney got literally and mentally all hot and bothered when at least quarter of a million air conditioners were turned on when the mercury rose above 40C, causing large chunks of Sydney’s power grid to shut down for up to five hours.

Our collective inability to tolerate some level of discomfort caused an effect that resulted in a much greater level of discomfort, inconvenience and resource wastage, as the contents of many thousands of refrigerators and freezers warmed and defrosted and consequently spoiled. Not to mention the impacts of lost productivity. I was attempting (in my non-airconditioned home office) to get my annual business taxation return completed and had to abandon work for the day.

That’s because I choose to do my accounts using a computer, rather than in a hand-written journal and ledger.

I saw a mother at the shopping centre today who had an entire trolley-load of disposal nappies (diapers in USA) for her baby. We’re talking at least a cubic metre here.

My mother and her maternal lineage before her, all used cloth nappies, soilage of which was returned to the earth via septic tank or sewerage treatment works and the nappies were washed and re-used many times.

No decision-maker is imposing that kind of decision on that mother. It’s her free choice to spend a small fortune on disposable nappies for the sake of convenience in our fast-paced, disposable society.

Imagine if the (wild guess here!) 50% to 70% of people on the planet who are not yet using disposal nappies, let alone driving cars and all the other ‘necessities’ of our modern urban existence were in a position to make the same choice.

That’s an awful lot of plastic, packaging, petro-chemical processing and fuel required for transport to landfill, just to dispose of infant excrement.

Personally I try to recycle everything I can, to limit the usage of energy as much as practicable, to extend the life of objects through regular maintenance and replacement of components.

One recent example is my engagement of a technician friend to replace blown capacitors in a PC power supply. We desoldered $3 equivalent worth of capacitors out of other failed PSUs and used them to repair the damaged PSU, to save throwing it out and avoid buying a $45 replacement cost PSU.

There is always a trade-off in time and convenience. It would have been much easier, faster and simpler to purchase a replacement PSU and we both could have used the time required to source the components and effect the repair to make more than $45 to cover that expense.

But we chose a more sustaining approach, out of our commitment to waste reduction, by repairing an item that still had utility.

My choice is always to evaluate the possibility of repairing the faulty item first.

For decades there have been proponents of piping Sydney’s sewerage out west through the Blue Mountains to fertilise land for food production on the central table lands.

There appears to be some kind of cultural taboo preventing this idea from gaining serious support; we prefer instead to pump our crap into the ocean where that resource is lost to us.

There are so many good ideas for resource utilisation optimisation lying fallow for want of rational consideration and social support for their implementation.

Its through the choices we each make that we create the results that we see and experience in the world today.

Consider that structural impact of our taxation system. We have a GST now which increased the cost of technician’s services by 10%. At the same time it was introduced there was a reduction of 22% sales tax off a wide range of consumer electronics items.

Consequently, people don’t get things repaired nearly as much any more. Something has broken, eg. TV not working? Toss it and buy another one. It makes better economic sense.

But what is economic sense other than a construct of the human imagination? It’s now accepted as Gospel that we must have economic growth, that recessions are bad and depressions are really terrible.

Therein lies the greatest environmental challenge in my view.

People have been conditioned to look to economic considerations as the primary framework for behavioural modification.

This is a false view of reality, as it is based on a human-created conceptual model that does not reflect physical reality.

That false view of reality, must necessarily be replaced by a model that more closely resembles physical reality, ideally encompassing an ecological framework for decision-making if we are to survive and possibly even thrive as a species heading towards 10 billions, while still maintaining an adequate degree of bio-diversity of life on earth for future generations to exercise custodianship and/or stewardship over.

That contextual switch will not soon come from the global elites, political, financial or corporate.

It must first arise as a phenomena of the mass of humanity who are committed to a sustainable future for humanity and as many other life forms on our planet as we are still in a position to preserve and protect.

Until ecology has gained the ascendancy above economy, until economics has been subsumed into a holistic conceptual framework for perception of reality, we will not see any truly transformative movement toward the type of world that may be possible.

I love to criticise our political leaders; its a national sport in Australia, as in the USA and other liberal democracies in accordance with the tradition established in ancient Athens and reborn in 18th/19th century France and the United States of America; we are fortunate indeed to possess the privilege thereof.

However, I must submit for consideration of any who reads this that it is our own good selves who must constantly seek to self-assess and re-evaluate our own choices and modify our own actions accordingly.

My belief is that http://Rentoid.com represents a valuable contribution towards this transformative shift.

Rentoid is premised around the ideal of sharing out the functional utility of objects, distributing the economic cost and benefit of physical goods amongst those whose use benefit exceeds the cost requested. Thereby extending the useful life of those physical goods so they may have the fullest use value extracted from them prior to discarding or disposal at the end of their functional utility.

How can you contribute today towards an objective that is founded in a similar premise or spirit of intention?

Together, we can be the change we want to see in the world, a proposition given to us by Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi.

This is an area I have been a student of since late 2003, when I first consciously determined to live a healthier life, with a healthy body and sound mind.

For two years prior to that, the primary concern I had for my well-being was whether I was drinking too much coffee and smoking too many cigarettes or not.

And prior to late 2001, my health awareness revolved around evaluating whether I was too sick to start drinking alcohol again after the last bender or not.

I’m pleased with my progress in the past six years, as I am in much better shape physically and mentally now at the age of 38 than I was between the ages of 28 and 32.

While my knowledge of human health and well-being is now quite broad, I make no claims about being an expert herbalist, nutritionist or essential oils pharmacologist.

So, who are the experts?

In Australia, there is the Complementary Healthcare Council of Australia.

http://www.chc.org.au/

There are also some excellent reference and educational materials available in the marketplace.

Here is one such source:

Essential Science Publishing
www.essentialscience.net

Phone: +1 800 336 6308
Fax: +1 801 224 6229

“Welcome to Essential Science Publishing. We publish only the best books on Essential Oils and natural health. We carry many books on various massage techniques, including acupressure, vita flex and the Raindrop Technique. Other topics include energy medicine, aging and vitality, healthy cooking and emotional health. We also carry essential oil bottles and carrying cases. We have a new subscription e-mail newsletter, as well. Whether you are new to natural medicine or a veteran, Essential Science Publishing is the natural health resource for you. Come inside and browse our online catalog.”

If you’re interested in sourcing any of these materials in Australia, please contact me, as I can assist with that.

I enjoy discussing my experiences in improving personal wellness through good nutrition, appropriate supplementation and targeted use of pure natural organic essential oils.

So please feel free to comment and start a conversation on this subject.

warm regards,

Bradley C Hughes

As a veteran of doing small business the hard way and only in my early stages of developing inter-linked systems for my small business, I am rapidly learning the importance of a holistic approach to business systems thinking.

What you write about dress is quite pertinent.

What we wear in our small business defines to those we interact with how we perceive ourselves and our commitment to our business.

It’s 11:38pm but I’m still in suit pants and business shirt, because I’m still in my home office.

On Wednesday I interviewed and hired a new administrative assistant for my business. I did so in my home office.

I could easily have stayed in my track suit and old jumper, after all its my home this young man came to.

But I am taking my small business seriously, treating it as if I am the CEO of a multinational corporation.

Before his arrival, I showered, shaved, dressed in a suit and tie and met him with a sense of purpose, poise and commitment to excellence that I doubt I would have felt or presented had I stayed in the tracky dackies (Australian for track suit).

We consciously create our reality through our thoughts and we consciously create other people’s perception of us through how we present ourselves with our grooming and sartorial selections.

And those are my thoughts for the moment.

good evening,

Bradley

Bradley C Hughes said…

Hi Sarah,

I admire your courage and your forthrightness.

The critics and knockers will always try to drag down anyone who is successful. That’s how they make up for their own insecurities.

I know, I used to be like that myself, before I met some amazing people who helped me to hold a mirror up to myself, and what I saw was a sad, pathetic insecure creature who could only validate himself through trying to bring others down.

I’ve moved a long way from that sad me from the past, and try to be a builder, a giver and an encourager, not a critic or a knocker.

Always reminding myself “If you don’t have something positive to say to or about someone, better to say nothing.”

That doesn’t prevent me from strongly arguing and debating for what I believe in, but I leave the ad hominems at home these days and that makes me a happier person.

I respect your decision to reduce your personal exposure online to the minimum amount possible, so as to maintain your professional profile and support your work.

Wishing you the best of luck with that.

yours truly,

Bradley C Hughes

You know the kind, you actually experience a physical nervous sensation that possibly even triggers muscle movement.

At that moment there is the choice of:

1. Ignoring the twitch
2. Making a note of it to deal with it later
3. Go straight to dealing with it now

My personal preference is increasingly to deal with twitches by pausing to evaluate the likely time requirement to take the first concrete action towards realisation of a positive outcome.

If there is an initial action I can take that will take less than two minutes to initiate a chain of events that will lead in the desired direction, I stop whatever it is I’m doing and take that initial action.

In other words, straight into 3. Dealing with it now.

Otherwise I grab the nearest available information capturing tool and note the twitch and the desired direction and define the initial action.

That is, 2. Making a note of it to deal with it later.

This can usually be done in 30 seconds or less, especially if I’m at the keyboard of my G5 Mac. Hitting F5 pulls up an iGTD task dialogue box. I enter the twitch’s descriptor as the task title and put the additional details in the task description box. Then add the task and that’s done.

If I’m AFK I will either grab a pen, write it on nearest paper, pocket that for later or open my diary to record it in there. Otherwise, a quick voice memo on the iPhone is the go.

After that, I can get back to what I was doing, with twitch resolved and concentration not unduly disturbed.

Once or twice per day, I review all my collected To Do’s, or Twitches, enter them into iGTD, add Contexts and Priorities, any additional supporting information and if appropriate add them to a Project or create as a new Project.

This minimises time wasted due to excessive contextual switching, allowing me to get more time into the highest priority tasks without experiencing that horrible feeling that grows and grows from ignoring the twitches.