scrambledmindsMixed up thoughts on the web world, photography and life.

We were on a flying visit to London last week after our time in Croatia. It was time to catch up with some old friends. We had a blast! Hopefully it wont be so long before we catch up again. Good times, good times.

Having come from the corporate world, which has more than it’s fair share of boring seminars and dry training, there was only one course over the years that I can remember ever being engaging, entertaining AND educational.   Can you remember one of those?

As part of my new venture to educate businesses about the web and digital technology, I wanted to learn how to provide great, engaging training so I went looking for the training the “Leopard Skin Lady” who ran that training to see if she could help.

The Leopard Skin Lady is one Donna McGeorge.  Speaker, facilitator and trainer and she runs Passion, Energy and Performance.

As a result of getting in contact with Donna I attended her Beyond Cert IV training course (a train the trainer event).  What can I say?  It was a great three days.  I went in with a very good measure of bad training and a very poor understanding of the techniques and tools to run great training and came out enlightened.  I was presented with a whole suite of tips, tricks, tools, techniques and “secrets” that I can now practically apply to develop great training.  From structuring a plan for effective learning, engaging your audience to dealing with troublesome participants.  As a matter of fact, the things I learnt can be applied to any sort of training, presenting, facilitation or public speaking.  Even creative writing.  Even Sales!

So, if you’re interested in running any training, I can’t recommend highly enough the Beyond Cert IV course run by Donna McGeorge from Passion, Energy and Performance.

Have any of your heard of The Flight of the Conchords?  They’re a comedy musical duo from New Zealand with a fantastic album and TV series.  If you haven’t, you should check them out.  Here’s some stuff on youtube.  They’re hilarious!

I’ve found some peculiar inspiration from their song Business Time (linked above).  I’ll let you listen to it, but towards the end of the song is a lyric along the lines of  “… and you know what time it is when I’m down to just my socks?  It’s business time!  That’s why they call them business socks…”.  Genius.

Apart from being genius, and referring to something else entirely, this line holds some truth for me in my career.  After quite a few years in the Enterprise IT space, I’ve been thinking for some time that I needed to do something else.  I wanted a change.  I needed to strip back to my socks and start again.  I came to the conclusion that it was time to merge my love of technology, particularly the web, and my love of helping people.

Great linkage, huh?  But wait!  There’s more!

As a result I’ve decided to start my own thing providing training and advice to businesses about how to bring the power of the web to benefit their business.  I get to talk about the web.  I get to meet cool people.  I get to help said cool people.  Enough?  I think so.

It’s time to give it a go.  I’ll be at least able to say I’ve tried!  So, as the song says – It’s Business Time.

ps. When I launch, which will be very soon, it’ll be called 101 (i.e. one zero one).  The first offering will be training for virtualising your business to work from anywhere, opening the doors of the web through search and getting your goods in an online store.  What do you think?

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So, Jodes has a new job. I don’t. We’ve moved to Melbourne to work on our sun tans! Cool huh? Jodes had already flown down last week and I drove down… if you could call it that. Recently returned Miller the Cat was supposed to be sedated but just looked wasted and whinged incessantly like he usually does whenever we take a ride in the car. I broke down 9km the Sydney side of Gundagai (about 3 hours in), got towed to Albury (~200kms?) had some guy repair the vehicle (wasn’t sure that it could be done and he did a great job), and was back on the road under my own power by about 4:30pm. The rest of the drive was uneventful, if you don’t count the dodgy sausage roll I bought at a BP servo in Euroa. About 2 hours after that I was heaving up on the side of the road. Lucky me!

Anyway, after about 16 hours I made it to Melbourne in one piece, just a little lighter (less money due to towing and repairs and less in my stomach), Fun!

Have you ever lost a cat? We’re on the move to Melbourne and we’ve relocated temporarily to Jody’s folks place and the relocation hasn’t been kind to our little (big) cat who has decided that he’s found somewhere more interesting to spend his days. I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with the personality clash he had with the in-laws dog, Rosie.

Anyway, if you see Miller, let me know!

*** Update ***
Miller came back! Yes, he was away for 5 days and he just decided that one evening he would reward Jode’s continuous efforts to lure him from whereever-he-was. Anyway, it’s good to have him back!

I’m really into cooking at the moment. I don’t know what it is but I’m taking some more time to enjoy it. Given it’s Easter, I thought it was a prime opportunity to cook some Hot Cross Buns. I even put the crosses on them for effect, but unfortunately the only thing I’m religious about is eating them hot with Lurpak butter!

My friend SarahKate over at abercrombieandfeast.com would be proud.

After all that, I forgot to include the recipe. I got it here and it worked a treat. I’ve never cooked bread from scratch before so I was very happy with how they turned out, all the way down to the sticky glaze

Hot Cross Buns Recipe

from Taste.com.au
time 2 hours
yield 12

ingredients

4 cups plain flour
2 x 7g sachets yeast
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups currants
40g butter
300ml milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup plain flour
4 to 5 tablespoons water
1/3 Cup water
2 tablespoons caster sugar

directions

1. Combine flour, yeast, sugar, mixed spice, salt and currants in a large bowl.
2. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add milk. Heat for 1 minute, or until lukewarm. Add warm milk mixture and eggs to currant mixture.
3. Use a flat-bladed knife to mix until dough almost comes together. Use clean hands to finish mixing to form a soft dough.
4. Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Knead for 10 minutes, or until dough is smooth. Place into a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap. Set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until dough doubles in size.
5. Line a large baking tray with non-stick baking paper. Punch dough down to its original size. Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth.
6. Divide into 12 even portions. Shape each portion into a ball. Place balls onto lined tray, about 1cm apart. Cover with plastic wrap. Set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 30 minutes, or until buns double in size.
7. Preheat oven to 190°C.
8. Make flour paste: Mix flour and water together in a small bowl until smooth, adding a little more water if paste is too thick. Spoon into a small snap-lock bag. Snip off 1 corner of bag. Pipe flour paste over tops of buns to form crosses. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until buns are cooked through.
9. Make glaze: Place water and sugar into a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil. Boil for 5 minutes. Brush warm glaze over warm hot cross buns. Serve warm or at room temperature.

notes: • These buns are best eaten on the day they are made. Otherwise, freeze for up to 7 days. To defrost in microwave, place 1 hot cross bun onto a sheet of paper towel. Heat, uncovered, for 45 to 50 seconds on MEDIUM-LOW (DEFROST) (30%) power. Stand for 1 minute.

One other tip that I discovered when I made the Hot Cross Buns, particularly if it’s a little cooler in your house, is to put the oven on when you begin and set it to it’s lowest setting. You can then use the warmth of the oven to let it rise when proofing. Worked a treat!

Michelle’s 31st birthday was last week. To celebrate in style, a picnic in the park was in order. We had to move as we were taking up the space where a wedding had been booked. After the mad rush it turned out we’d planted ourselves right where the bridge made her entrance. We gave our congratulations and sang the wedding march (quietly).

Check out the pics.

I know that the regular readers of scrambledminds.com have been wondering when the next Yum Cha Challenge was going to convene. You’re right, it has been some time since the last one. We’ve had babies, we’ve had weddings, we’ve had honeymoons, we’ve had christmas, we’ve had new years, we’ve had milestone birthdays. I think you get the idea.

So, it was with great gusto that the club responded to the call of Che to try out Manly Phoenix as the next Yum Cha Challenge venue. And what a venue it was. The score clearly shows that this was the most appreciated venue to date. You can see from the picture that this was definitely the case. Luckily there was a view to take the focus off bagging Che out for not making it to the challenge the she organised!

Needless to say, we dug into the food without Che. A pity really as Yum Cha is the best hangover food. Nothing better than tripe, chicken feet and a whole world of indescribable treats being pushed around by pushier trolley ladies. To make up for Che’s absence we alsohad a few newbies (Jay and Hayley).

To sum it all up, there was a lot of raving about the venue. A lot of lobbying by a couple of unnamed individuals (Neil and Julie). However it was adisappointingscore overall. Strange really because I think that the food and location were great!

The Good

• Stunning venue
• The large crowd
• Pretty high standard of Mango Pancakes
• Ruby

The Bad

• Che
• Lack of Lazy Susan!
• Poor overall performance

The Ugly

• Julie trying to hold back from ordering while as everyone was a little late. Not a pretty sight.

The silly season has come and gone once again…

NYE 2008

Xmas 2008

So you’d be hard pressed to pull a swift one on our Niel. Seems that Michelle had the knack though so we headed for some tasty Thai this week gone to celebrate Neil’s 21st (again). Check out the slideshow.