mathewferguson.com

Currently, (as in 9:11am on the 24th April 2013) I have a theme called Skeptical installed. It has a great features but of course as soon as you change anything, you break something. Case in point being a giant book cover a few posts down that now hangs out over the side-bar.

Then you start hitting barriers … have the developers built in the function to alter the width of the posts? Will I need to edit the php myself? What else will that break?

What I really like about Skeptical is that you can insert an image as the thumbnail for the post. You end up with a really beautiful blog once you start doing it. Of course when you have hundreds of entries already, it doesn’t work so well.

If you want to check out Skeptical you can find it here.

***Argh, more broken posts! More images too big or posts with no image at all but it’s showing a broken image link. Urgle bargle gurgle.***

I’m in the midst of updating my project list for a job application and it is taking forever. How many children’s activity books does one person need to write in a lifetime?

I wish there was some way to find out who had written the most books in the world. I know R.L. Stine has some 300 titles (although there is the claim of ghost-writing). I think I’ve written more children’s activity books than anyone else in the world … but how would I prove it?

Once I’ve finished then I’ll post the project list up here.

(Goes back to typing)

Such wonderful playful use of language! I love this …

1. The ratio of house prices to incomes is one of the highest in the world.

2. Superannuation funds in Australia receive favourable tax incentives which make investing in housing a good long-term strategy.

3. All working Australians have mandatory superannuation payments made by their employers and it is this near-trillion dollar lump of money that is investing in housing.

4. Australians at an auction attempting to buy a house can literally be bidding against their own superannuation money to buy a house.

5. The last attempt to cut these favourable tax incentives failed due to the weight of superannuation funds that has accumulated over the years. Politicians could not cut the tax incentives as all superannuation funds would take a sharp drop at the news. House prices would also drop on the news and many Australians would find themselves paying off a loan worth far more than their home.

6. In Victoria, the government introduced a plan which limited the sprawl of Melbourne, calling for higher density housing to be built throughout the city, connected by train lines and other forms of public transport – a plan for the future of Melbourne with a much higher population than today.

7. Most efforts to build higher density housing across Melbourne has failed as local resident groups use local laws and councils to block development. The richer the suburb the lower the success rate of new development. This has the result of pushing development to the poorest suburbs which lack the necessary infrastructure to accommodate rising populations.

8. As a result of the incredibly high ratio of housing prices to incomes, Melbourne has a rental vacancy rate that has dropped below 1%. Like a large game of musical chairs where almost everyone has sat down, the lack of rental properties means that even full-time employed people are at risk of becoming homeless if their landlord decides to end their tenancy. This has also led to other issues such as under-the-table “auctions” for renters to bid up the rent against each other.

9. Lack of housing has contributed to skyrocketing rents which, despite even the high price of housing in Melbourne, mean that renters are sometimes paying close to a standard mortgage payment in order to rent a home.

10. Despite large amounts of land being available for building (mostly held by developers) the Government has failed to pass any legislation forbidding hording of such land or enacting any tax to encourage release of land. As a result we have low land supply, low density housing only, low rental availability, high housing prices and hundreds of millions of dollars invested via superannuation to ensure the situation will not change.

Beachcomber Island, Fiji.

Everything is brought in by boat and obviously the profit motivation is there and so when it comes to food you get … recycling.

Beef on one night turns up the next day as beef curry, etc.

So one night my gf and I are eating and I have one forkful of this beef curry. It tastes sour so I spit it out but swallow some of the sauce. This is enough to put me on the toilet for about two hours with liquidness pouring out. Urgh.

Some other guy on the island ate a whole plateful and then decided to drink and live it up …

About 10pm I head out for a short walk, looking to get some water to replace what I’ve lost and I feel a gurgling in my stomach. No worries, I’ll just head into the public toilet rather than walk back to my room.

I walk in just as this guy staggers past me, drunk and holding the legs of his shorts closed. He gets halfway into the room and lets out this noise, a groan and gasp mixed together before he goes down on his knees and lets go of his shorts.

Liquid shit pours out onto the floor. The stench is instantly revolting.

He falls on his side, tries to pull down his shorts and just lets go. I hear the longest wettest fart of all time … it had pieces in it, a spluttering shower of shit.

He throws up while on his side.

I step back as two Fijians rush past me into the toilets and see what is happening. One grabs a hose and turns it on while the other one gently pushes me back out.

I didn’t realise I’d been holding my breath until I got outside.

Now that Smashwords is distributing to various websites you can find my ebooks all over the place.

Want FREE ebooks? If you’re reading this on my website then click on Free Downloadable eBooks.

Want to TORRENT free ebooks? Check out the sidebar under Mathew Ferguson’s Download Torrents. Use uTorrent and away you go! Those book are in pdf form.

Want to pay me some moola? Check out my books for Kindle on Amazon.com

Got yourself a Nook? Head over to Barnes and Noble, my fine friend.

Got yourself a Kobo? Chicka-cha!

Apparently my books are on Sony e-reader and Apple iPad but I’m not sure they’re showing up in the stores yet.

Want paper books? Well, my original work is in eBook form but feel free to buy any of a zillion Disney/Pixar books that you can find here in Australia. There’s a good chance I wrote it.

Man oh man.

So for some dumb reason WordPress’ TinyMce editor decided to stop working. I think it was the upgrade to the latest version of WordPress that did it but then again it could have been something else.

I still had my visual editor but when I clicked on HTML there was none. If I put a gap like this:

Test

Test

It would publish like this:

Test

Test

The WordPress forums are nearly useless on this topic. Hooray a post from three years ago!

Anyways, after messing around for three hours I found a solution.

1) Install New Plugin

2) TinyMCE Advanced

3) Activate then click on the plugin to enter settings

4) Under Advanced (down the bottom in the red box) you’ll see a checkbox “Stop removing the <p> and <br> tags when saving and show them in the HTML editor”

5) Check that box then write a test post.

6) When it works, write my name in some graffiti somewhere.

As an aside — I’d like Google to add some of the search parameter settings under the main search box. I do not need to see posts from 2007 on this particular topic …