#blogjune 24 KeepMeOut

Here's another one from the Webbys! Are you addicted to certain sites and find them distracting and that they keep you from things you should be doing? Do you find playing with Yoville houses and gardens more entertaining than doing your own housework? Do you want to curb your use of various sites?

Well, in that case KeepMeOut is the tool for you. You can enter various urls that cause you angst, and set up KeepMeOut to warn you if you go there more than the times allocated. You can spell out frequency, limit your usage every day or just on weekdays, and specify times for the limits to be effective. You bookmark the site and store it on your browser. There's a list of most popular bookmarks that you can choose from. These not surprisingly include my favourites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube but also a number I never use. Partly this is because you can set the language of the site to eight European languages or Chinese and some of the bookmarks relate to that.

I entered Facebook as a site whose use I want to limit to once in 60 minutes every day between 9am and 5pm. It was easy to make a bookmark and drag it to the browser or favourite it. You can then easily change the settings if you want. I changed my settings to weekdays only easily. KeepMeOut keeps usage stats for hits - both blocked and allowed. There are various testimonials on the site such as "KMO saved my degree". The idea is that you use the KeepMeOut bookmark to access any limited site, so you need to keep up that discipline yourself. It won't work if you just sign on directly to the url.

I'm not sure that I will use it but if you are in the middle of exams or other deadlines and want a tool to help with some self-discipline it's a neat little thing. Of course, you have to want the discipline and sometimes I just need Facebook to provide distraction from my housework :)

#blogjune 21 Rouxbe

Another site I was introduced to by the Webbys is Rouxbe. Rouxbe is an online cooking school which has over 65 online lessons. The lessons are very comprehensive and each has a series of video steps, practice, quizzes and discussion. The lessons vary from Sharpening knives, making stock, knife handling and many more. It is iPad and iTouch compatible and looks fabulous.

Of course, the catch is that it is a business and there is a price tag. The options are US$29.95 for a monthly membership or US$239.95 for an annual membership (works out at $20 a month). If you want to do cooking school stuff online it certainly is something to consider.

#blogjune 20 Neighbourgoods

I've been inundated with Webbys emails telling me about various sites I might try. I saved them up intending to use them to explore during #blogjune. I am not sure how it has got to day 20 of #blogjune before I have explored any of these though. But a start is good.

One site that fascinated me was Neighbourgoods which is a site where you join up to borrow or lend goods to your friends or connections. So instead of buying a drill or a ladder or a tool that you will only want to use once, you can search here and borrow. You can limit who you lend to if you feel uncomfortable about strangers and you can charge if you want.

Signing up is easy as you can do it through Twitter, Facebook or OpenID though you will then be sent a verification code via email. You can either search directly for availability of a particular item or browse or post a request. As there were only four people registered within 100 miles of me and they had no items registered this didn't turn out to be of much immediate use. I also discovered that none of my Facebook or Twitter friends were registered.

Years ago when I and a number of my friends were all renovating houses in inner urban Melbourne we had a collective where we shared tools such as sanders, ladders etc to say nothing of each other's labour. I think that this is potentially a great way to manage such an arrangement.

#blogjune 19 Martyn Wyndham-Read

I often speculate how we all got along before Web 2.0. Well, I suppose I mean I speculate how I got on as these days I can't imagine my life without many of the tools which didn't even exist a couple of years ago. Youtube is one of the sites that I am constantly finding stuff on that relates to quite long-standing interests of mine, interests that pre-dated Youtube by decades.

Folk music is one of those areas and Martyn Wyndham-Read is one of my favourite folk singers. Well actually, I think he is my very favourite folk singer. He is an English singer but has a strong Australian connection and I have only seen him perform here. I own all his CDs which I have gathered from gigs in Melbourne over many years. In fact I have some cassettes too. Imagine my pleasure when I discovered through a serendipitous search earlier this year that he has been videoed at various folk concerts and festivals in England and that these videos are on Youtube! Joy to the world indeed!

A song that was new to me on his 2011 Australian tour was Farewell to Anzac Cove based on a poem by Cicely Fox Smith. This performance on Youtube was at the Whitby Folk Week in 2010.




It always reminds me of my grandfather, Robert Alexander Leslie Purves, who was at Gallipoli but lucky enough to get gastro-enteritis and be taken offshore to a hospital ship and thence to Malta and then England. I wonder what he must have thought about the comrades he left behind and wonder whether he asked himself the questions that arise from the poem and song. His photo is here on Flickr but also heads this post.