James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE]

That's right, I support filtering, of old vegetable oil.

I'm running this as a bit of an experiment at the moment. I have a bottle full of waste vegie oil (complete with BCB's) and I'm planning on turning it into some sort of bio-diesel. We'll see what happens.

One of the reasons I've been happy about the advent of mythnettv is the fact that it allows me to slot in stuff like the TED talks.

This morning when I updated my shows, I noticed that they'd included a talk by Adam Savage (warning it's flash and starts playing on load), he of  MythBusters "We like to blow stuff up" fame. So I set my creaking adsl1 account to download and got breakfast ready for the kids.

The talk itself was brilliant. Adam entertained as he talked about his obsession with the Dodo and Maltese Falcon, and he showed that he truly is a great Maker.

A while ago I posted a how to on growing sweet potato in which I essentially filled a tyre with dirt and compost, put a sprouted sweet potato bit in and hoped for the best.

Well it turns out that I was "Doing It Right(tm)". Below you can see out first sweet potato, pulled fresh from the ground:

I'm quite chuffed, I wasn't sure if we would have much success, but we managed to get above from the below:

And there's plenty more in the ground :)

I've put this post in a couple of different categories, because what I'm going to talk about affects so many people.

The term "Clever Country" was a term coined by Bob Hawke waaaay back in the early 90's. Yes I know there are people for whom this is all ancient history given that some of you weren't even born when he said that. While it was politically puffery at its finest it came to symbolise what many of us felt was wrong with the way the Government had been treating the country and its resources. For 109 years now, the federal government has been treating Australia as if the only thing worth supporting is mining, farming and to a much lesser extent, manufacturing (cars especially). Anything based on "new tech" like those new fangled computer thingies was left to the vagaries of a market already dominated by those big Government suppliers.

This continued through the Hawke/Keating years, worsened under the Howard/Costello Government and now the year old Rudd/Swann Government has proven that for them, tech means scary (see the Internet Filtering shambles). This doesn't look like changing any time soon.

There are many things about this that frustrate me.

It frustrates me as a business man. I run a business that is internet based. My business is trying to provide new and innovative services (notice no blatant linking in this post) to areas that can really use it, like Local Government and the Not For Profit sector. However thanks to incredibly high data pricing I'm paying through the nose for hosting in Australia instead of heading to the states. I don't want to head overseas to host my data. I want to support our local industry and I want my Government to ensure there is true competition.

Today I'm going to spend some time planting radish seeds through out the various beds. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, both Karin and my father in law are big fans of radishes, so they're a surety to be actually eaten (rather than ending up in the compost heap). Secondly, they are also a good companion plant for other fruit and vegies.

Companion planting is something else I'm going to be looking into for the Autumn/Winter season. If I can get pest control through the development of symbiotic relationships rather than the use of chemicals, all the better I think.

Well I'm still looking at different CRM's, however I have decided that it isn't going to be CiviCRM. While CiviCRM looks good for the online community management sector, it certainly doesn't meet my needs as a specialist small business operator.

So that leaves vTiger as the lead  at the moment.

On a side note, one of the biggest challanges I've noticed in this search for the best CRM is the fact that I really am not up to speed with the marketing speak that seems to be an essential part of this software. So all in all, the process is providing a bit of an education.

One more note, I was talking to Michael Chesterton regarding the new fivedash Accounting Package/CRM system. This is an Australian open source system aimed at small to medium businesses. They claim that it's in beta at the moment, well while Michael seems to be having success with it, I haven't been able to get past creating my first company in the system. So it's back to ledger-smb and trying to figure out how to link that with vTiger I go.

I haven't blogged in a while about the garden so with the changing of the seasons, I thought now would be a good time to reflect on our first foray into vegie gardening.

I started this as an therapuetic exercise. It was something I could do that was away from the computer, got me outside and in the sun. However it soon grew into something that I was genuinely interested in. I found that the process of building the beds, preparing the compost and soils, and dealing with the various challanges that comes with raising vegies gave me a meditative outlet I couldn't find elsewhere.

To be honest, our garden was much more successful than I thought it would be. We were able to grow and in fact we are still growing vegetables that we eat and give to our friends and family. Of particular note of course are the marrows and corgettes, which have reached epic proportions while still retaining flavour and texture. Of course the cherry tomatos have flourished, however I am most pleased about the Egg Plants and Capsicums, which have managed to grow some very nice fruit despite being planted too close together and sharing some particularly nasty bugs.

For winter, we're planning on growing at least half of our total vegie needs. This means we're going to be focusing on staples like Peas, Brocollini, Cauliflower and Potatos. Before that, I'm going to need to rebuild a couple of the beds, both from a nutritional point of view as well as a structural point of view.

For those who are interested, I've got a garden set on flickr

As part of the whole growing the business thing, I've been looking at ways to improve my business work as opposed to my development work.

For the last few years I've been putting the developing of code ahead of the day to day running of the business and this hasn't been helpful at all. If I want this business to grow (and I do) I'm going to have to seperate the business side fo things from the geek side of things.

So with that in mind, this is what I'm going to do:

• Use the CRM system I decide upon for all communications with my clients.
• Keep my personal/development email/communications seperate from the business communications
• Study the marketing of the business. This is going to hurt I think
• Maintain an internal wiki relating to the business

While this is by no means the end of the process and journey, I think it's a good start.

Normally I would say words fail me when it comes to some of the attempts by religious extremists to gather attention to their cause, however this time round I definitely have words enough.

How dare they! How dare they take the tragedy that is the Victorian fires and try and tie it to their anti-abortion campaign. How dare they reduce the deaths of 170+ people to mere marketing to try and bring attention to themselves.

As a parent, it's my job to teach my kids about the world and the fact that it doesn't revolve solely around them, so in that vein I say to Catch The Fire Ministries: "Suck it up princess, it's not all about you!"

Came across this article in the New Scientist. For those who haven't read it, the basic premise of the article is that so called "Renewable Energy" actually isn't due to the reliance on non-renewable and rare materials such as platinum and indium.

My first issue with the article is the sensationalist headline. To be honest I've not read a lot of New Scientist stuff, but this headline reeks of Tabloid sensationalism. The renewable energy sector is not limited to Solar Cells and hydrogen fuel cells. Technologies such as geo-thermal, solar-thermal, wind and wave based generation are out there producing power without the need for such rare elements.

which all leads into my second issue, this last paragraph:

"Renewable energy technologies remain the great hope for the future, and are guaranteed research funds in the short term. But unless a second generation of sustainable energy ideas based on truly sustainable resources is established, the renewable light could be in danger of dimming."

The whole article reeks of blatant sensationalism, it doesn't seem to reflect the reality of the renewable energy sector and indeed seems to be using a few high profile examples to tar the whole sector.