Chris Betcher

During the month of October I'll be riding my bike to help raise money to support childrens' cancer research. It's all part of the Great Cycle Challenge , raising funds for the Children's Medical Research Institute , one of the major research bodies aimed at finding a cure for cancer. I think it's a worthy cause. So many people I know have been affected by cancer. We desperately need to find the solution to this awful disease and it can only be done with research, and research costs money. I've committed to ride 250km this month to raise $1000 for CMRI. So far people have been very generous and the fundraising has gone pretty well so I might revise that goal. I think the 250km will be enough of a challenge, but it would be nice to raise more money. If you'd like to support this great cause, you can head over to my fundraising page at  https://greatcyclechallenge.com.au/Riders/ChrisBetcher and donate whatever you feel works for you. And on behalf of the kid...

There is an advertisement on TV at the moment for an Australian car insurance company that encourages drivers to download an app to their phone to find out who is " Australia's Best Driver ".  When you download and install the app it starts by asking you a few questions...  your name, gender, email address, home address, etc. Then it keeps track of your driving using GPS location, timestamps, speed tracking, etc for at least the next 300km. In fact, it even defaults to an autostart mode so that you don't have to remember to turn it on. Every so often it will check in with you to make sure that you are in fact the driver of the trips it's been tracking. Then it scores your driving style in an attempt to find out who is the best driver in Australia. Think about it. As well as knowing exactly who you are, it knows how fast you're driving, when you're driving, where you've been, who was driving and how long for, and even what your phone was doing as you dr...

As we celebrate Christmas and 2010 draws to a close, here's a little video to make you smile. Special Christmas wishes to everyone who has been part of my world for the last 12 months.  It's been a wonderful year, full of learning, fun, travel, meeting interesting people, connecting with my network, and sharing ideas with each other.  I've had the good fortune to do some travelling this year and met many wonderful folk in person that I've only ever known online, as well as meeting a whole of great new people, and that's been a real highlight for me.  You know who you are, and I feel so much richer for it.  Thanks!   I feel like 2010 has been an amazing year of connecting with others, and it's been incredibly rewarding on many levels.  To everyone who has left comments on the blog, connected via Twitter or Facebook or Skype or email or the many other ways we have of being connected (including face to face of course!), thank you... those connections mean a gr...

Hope 2010 is a great year for you all! This photo is made of three separate images stitched together with Photoshop.  It's the calm before the fireworks storm !  I thought it turned out quite well considering I didn't have a tripod and was just leaning up against the wall to hold the camera steady on a 4 second/f3.5 setting. CC photo by betchaboy http://www.flickr.com/photos/betchaboy/4233820172/

I was in New Zealand recently for a conference and thoroughly enjoyed my time in the Land of the Long White Cloud. I got to meet other passionate educators, talk geeky edtech stuff and just generally hang out with them for a couple of days.  As part of the fun of hanging out with fellow geeks, I made a short video from my Nokia N95 using the live streaming ability of Qik.  The live stream was just a bit of fun, and went for a total of 5 minutes and 15 seconds.  Apart from the brief live stream, I also checked my email twice using the mobile Gmail client, and also checked my location on a Google Map while wandering through the streets of Napier. While in Napier, a text message arrived from my carrier, 3 Mobile , saying that my account balance for the month has just reached $535.  What??!!  I mean, I know that mobile roaming can be expensive, but surely this had to be some sort of mistake!  I switched my phone off and left it off until I returned to Australia. When I arrived back home ...

I'm in a hotel in Montreal, Quebec at the moment, just about to leave to spend the day with Sharon Peters at her school. But before I leave I wanted to share this little note that was left in the hotel room. "To our guests, Because this hotel is a human institution to serve people, and not solely a money making organisation, we hope that god will grant you peace and rest while you are under our roof. May this room and hotel be your second home. May those you love be near you in thoughts and dreams. Even though we may not get to know you, we hope that you will be comfortable and happy as if you were in your own home. May the business that brought you our way prosper. May every call you make and every message you receive add to your joy, and when you leave, may your journey be safe. We are all travelers. From birth to death, we travel between the eternities. May these days be pleasant for you, profitable to society, helpful for those you meet, and a joy to those who know and ...

What a world we live in. I'm sitting here in Sydney Australia, watching Clay and Eunjeong getting married in Seoul, South Korea... They are quite literally getting married as I write this, with a live video stream being sent to viewers from all over the world using ustream.tv . To be sitting here in Sydney Australia, watching the wedding of someone I've never met, but yet feel I know, joined by a group of people who I also feel I know but have never met, is quite amazing. And yet, as amazing as I think it is, there is another part of me that says this is quite normal. After all, the technology that has enabled this event to be shared, and the technology that has enabled there to even be an audience with which to share it, have become an integral part of the world in which we live. This event is a wonderful day for Clay and Eunjeong, and it was an honour to be able to share it. Far from feeling impersonal, being able to share in their special day thanks to these networked t...

Fellow blogger Judy O'Connell (from the HeyJude blog) recently started working at a large Marist school in Sydney, and she was kind enough to share some insights about her new school on her blog recently. St Josephs Hunters Hill is not just "a Marist school", but is really THE Marist school. It is the flagship school for the brothers here in Sydney and has quite the reputation for providing a quality educational experience. For anyone who may not know, Marist schools were founded by Marcellin Champagnat in the early 1800s, a Frenchman who saw a specific need for boys' education and proceeded to set up schools to meet that need. I read Judy's post with interest as I attended a Marist school as a kid. I also spent 8 years teaching in a Marist school. So as an ex-Marist boy I can personally vouch for both the strength and the gentleness of the Marist way of doing things. Because the Marists have a particular devotion to Jesus's mother, Mary, there is a pe...

The Kiwis got there a few hours before us, but Sydney's New Year's Eve celebrations have come and gone for another year. Linda and I caught the train into the city last night, along with more than a million other Sydneysiders, and watched $600,000 worth of gunpowder get launched above the harbour. As always, it was quite the spectacle. We got in there a couple of hours before midnight and wandered through Martin Place, then down George Street towards the Quay. The crowd was getting pretty raucous the closer we got to the harbourfront so we turned up Hunter Street and tried getting a spot at Mrs Macquaries Point but it was completely full. We kept walking all the way past Wooloomooloo, Garden Island and eventually found a decent vantage point in Potts Point, just below St Vincents School. I took a little bit of video, as I promised I would on Twitter... here you go Jen Wagner! At the time of posting this, the Pacific, Australia, Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe have a...

One of the runaway success stories of Australian television is a subversive comedy show called The Chaser's War on Everything . This very funny show takes constant potshots at every conceivable social and political norm, often drawing attention to the many stupid and inconsistent things we do. During 2007 the show aired every Wednesday night on ABC TV, and was also podcast via www.abc.net.au/chaser My son Alex is a huge fan of the Chaser, and one of his favourite sketches was one in which the show's host, Chris Taylor, rants about how annoying those waiters are that interrupt your meal to ask you if you'd like any cracked pepper. The sketch goes on to look at a variety of interesting situations in which a pepper-toting waiter might interrupt to offer his wares... if you've not seen it, here is the clip... [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/n1rxixtXt8A" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] So the other da...

Is this an example of a world gone mad, or what? A 10-year-old Florida girl faces felony weapons charges after bringing a small steak knife to school to cut up her lunch, according to a report on WFTV.com. School officials say the Ocala 5th grader had brought a piece of steak for her lunch, and had brought a steak knife. According to the report, a couple of teachers took the utensil and called authorities, who arrested the girl and took her to the county’s juvenile assessment center. "She did not use it inappropriately. She did not threaten anyone with it. She didn't pull it out and brandish it. Nothing of that nature," explained Marion County School Spokesman Kevin Christian, who added that it made no difference what the knife was being used for, they had no choice but to call police." Anytime there's a weapon on campus, yes, we have to report it and we aggressively report it because we don't want to take any chances, regardless," Christian said.The gi...

My good friends Brian and Wendy picked me up from the IWB conference and took me to stay with them in Brisbane. They used to live in Sydney and we got to spend lots of time together, but I haven't seen them much since they moved... so it was great to see them again. They took me to see Riverfire, a huge fireworks spectacular on the Brisbane River. It really was pretty spectacular. I took a bunch of photos and made a little slideshow, then put it on YouTube, then linked it here. Hope you like it. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZQO-mHQBaZE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] Tags: riverfire , brisbane , fireworks

Have you ever needed to create an anagram for a word or phrase? An anagram is where you take all the letters in the word or phrase and rearrrange them to form a new word or phrase.  For example, the word "betchaboy" can be rearranged into Hey Bobcat, Tabby Echo, Batch Obey, Ace Thy Bob or Echo by Tab.  I never said they had to make sense, but they might make good names the next time you need an alias for some website login where you don't want to use your real name. Short words are pretty easy to make anagrams from, but the longer they get, the harder it is to come up with something coherent.  Unless you enlist the help of a bit ot technology to help you of course... try heading over to the Internet Anagram Server , type in your name, word or phrase and see what you get. If you come up with anything really good, share it in the comments. Tags: anagram

Do you have as much sense as a Goose? I first read this little piece of writing many years ago and thought it was wonderful... As each goose flaps its wings, it creates an "uplift" for the birds that follow. By flying in a ‘V’ formation, the whole flock adds 71% extra flying range. People who share a sense of community can help each other get where they are going more easily… because they are traveling on the thrust of one another. When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back to take advantage of the lifting power of the birds in front. If we have as much sense as geese, we stay in formation with those headed where we want to go. We are willing to accept their help and give our help to others. When the lead goose tires, it drops back into the formation and another goose flies to the point position. It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks. We should respect and protect each other’s unique arrang...

Do you have kids?  Do you teach kids?  Are you a kid? Teenage Affluenza is a serious disease that is inflicting many of our young people.  World Vision have put together this short video explaining a little about it...  it's about 5 minutes long, but well worth the watch. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/KFZz6ICzpjI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] Seriously though, seeing the point made in this video makes one really aware of just how lucky we are in the developed world, and ought to be a wake up call for many of us.

Since my Year 7 students will be doing a unit of work next semester on Superheros, I was doing a little surfing around the web to find some resources. (Or should that be " silver surfing "?) In the process I stumbled across this little quiz that asks you to select a bunch of your personality traits so it can tell you which famous superhero you are most like. Apparently, I would make a good Iron Man... Inventor. Businessman. Genius. Your results: You are Iron Man Iron Man 75% Spider-Man 75% The Flash 70% Supergirl 60% Robin 55% Hulk 55% Superman 55% Wonder Woman 50% Green Lantern 50% Catwoman 45% Batman 45% Inventor. Businessman. Genius. Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz Not being a huge comic book fan, I've never actually heard of Iron Man. However, according to Wikipedia he was a Marvel Comic books character based loosely on the rich and eccentric Howard Hughes. "Howard Hughes was one of the most colorful men of our time. He was an inventor, an...

You may have noticed that I changed the tagline at the top of my blog to the rather cryptic phrase "Rumour. Open your ears; ". You may be asking what that's all about... I was looking through that recent post about monkeys and typewriters and discovered that there actually have been experiments where they have done exactly that ... set a bunch of simulated chimpanzees loose on a simulated typewriters to see what happens. Interestingly, so far they have not managed to recreate the entire works of William Shakespeare. However, apparenty the 24 character string of "Rumour. Open your ears; " is so far the longest coherent phrase typed by a sim chimp randomly pressing keys on a typewriter. I don't know why I thought that was so funny, but I did. And it seemed a perfect tagline for a blog. technorati tags: chimps

I blogged recently about my effort to raise funds for MS research by taking part in the MS Walk and Fun Run here in Sydney. Thanks to a great deal of support from friends, family and workmates I've managed to raise a decent amount of money for this great cause. The people from MS Australia rang me recently to ask if I'd be prepared to do an interview with the local newspaper to help promote the event and naturally I said yes. So one of the journos from my local paper rang me at work the other day to ask a few questions, and organise a photographer to come by my house. The angle I suggested to the journo was that I was really impressed by the online tools provided by MS Australia, such as the fundraising websites that are created when you register for the event, and that one of the reasons I have been able to raise as much as I have was due to the connections and tools that the Internet enables. I pointed out that many of my friends and aquaintances from the Blogosphere h...

I like this cartoon. It reminded me of that old story about an infinite number of monkeys tapping away on an infinite number of typewriters, and how they would eventually rewrite all the great works of Shakespearian literature. Infinity is a big number. Someone, somewhere, is bound to write something worthwhile eventually. A little bit like the blogosphere perhaps. technorati tags: blogging

When I started teaching at a girls' school after many years teaching boys, I was surprised when one of the students came up to me one day and said "Sir, has anyone ever told you that you look like Russell Crowe?" In fact, at that point in my life, nobody ever had. In fact, it had never really even crossed my mind that I looked like anyone at all. Over the next few months at the school however, I heard the "has anyone ever told you that you look like Russell Crowe?" comment quite a few times. I had never really considered it. Funnily enough, over the next year or so I started to hear the same comment from people outside the school as well, which was odd because in my previous 40-something years of life, no one had ever said it to me. It wasn't until I arrived in Canada during the year of my teaching exchange that one of the neighbours said to me one day "Do you know who you look like?"... "Russell Crowe!" that I started to wonder if ...