Greeted in the front garden we were led inside and presented a menu that offered everything from Devonshire Tea, (with an extensive range of flavoured loose leaf tea) with homemade scones, to a hearty Beef Burger with classic shoestring fries & everything from the spicy red lentil soup served with crispy traditional organic sourdough to a mouthwatering moussaka, specialty salads and gourmet treats inbetween. After much deliberation we finally chose and decided we would just have to return another day to try the rest!

I forgot to mention the miniture Easter themed cupcakes with soft pastel icings and mini chocolate eggs on top which I had to have immediately and ate on our way to the table – mmmm so delicious and clearly homebaked! With such an exquisite display of cakes it was hard to walk away to be seated.

But no sooner had we sat our coffee arrived and as we sat and warmed our hands on the cups we noticed all the unique ornaments about the room. An old typewriter – antique I would guess, hessian coffee bags from Papua New Guinea, a range of ol’ farmhouse tins, candelabra and various other knick knacks and brick a brack caught our interest and made for great conversational peices and within minutes the meals were all served.

What’s more they were served enthusianstically and literally within minutes! (What a welcome change to the very lacking service of other coffee houses!!)

Although when we arrived there was only one other table occupied – somehow as we looked up from our meals we realised that we were now surrounded by people and the line was 12 people out the door and counting. The Elm Haus – Under New Management – had drawn quite an afternoon crowd, and the open layout provided for all.

From the motorcyclists eating a late lunch on the deck under the umbrellas overlooking the Maiala Rainforest to young couples who shared coffee & cake on the couch by the fire place, the elderly couple, cosied up by the arch windows with their devonshire tea, to the extended family who filled the large table in the centre of the room, everyone was accomodated for and the atmosphere remained relaxed whilst the high ceilings clarified the acoustics of the jazz band vocals masking just enough of the converstaions and amplifying the ambience of a modern rainforest cafe.

We were amazed to find that we could even grab a chess board and strategize our next move over coffee and a homemade lemon curd tart.

I am sure that there is much more to discover at The Elm Haus and we will be heading back up around the mountain again soon to see what’s new on the menu and relax and unwind. Be sure to stop in as they are open daily for Breakfast Lunch Dinner and inbetweens.

It has long been practice to ‘out’ your political, social and economic competitors in an attempt to damage their reputation and thereby remove them from the field.

One of the concerns expressed by many following the Grog outing was whether The Australian had taken the step in order to discredit Greg – calling into question his right to express views (as a public servant) and his competency as a public servant.

Naturally The Australian claimed this wasn’t a motivation, however careful reading of the articles published by the newspaper on this topic demonstrate the use of a number of emotive and inferential terms which could lead to people believing it was a punishment outing.

For example many would draw the conclusion from this statement from Massola’s original article that Greg was behaving inappropriately:

“The prolific blogger shows a strong preference for the ALP, despite the Public Service code of conduct stating that “the APS is apolitical, performing its functions in an impartial and professional manner”

Well, DR the first time it showed up in my aggregator. I did eventually, although I stand by the TL. An MSM editor would have cut pretty much your entire biblical analogy :)

I didn’t follow the blog in question (my days of obsessing about Australian political blogs were largely concentrated in 2004, and subsided when Chris Shiels’ wonderful, and not anonymous, blog “Back Pages” shut down), but it certainly did seem to me that the blogger’s outing by the MSM was a case of the third motivation in your list.

I would present a fifth motivation, though.
(5) The high-profile blogger is making assertions about events or documents to which I don’t believe they actually had access. I wish to ascertain whether they are speaking (blogging) from an informed position, or telling stories.
(NOTE: Just saying. I have no reason to believe this was the case for Massola/Jericho).

http://freewifiwiki.net/index.php?title=Australia.

Any major search engine calculates using a complex algorithm. All algorithms of Yahoo relies heavily on links back to your site. Your responsibility as a webmaster is to make sure a hefty amount of those anchor text links link back to your site.

If you don’t know what the hell backlinks are and what they can do for you

A large amount of anchor text links tells MSN that your site is popular for whatever string that is given by the text link. So if you have 1 hundred thousand anchor text links scattered around hundreds and thousands of web sites, you are way better off than robert noname who only has 1.

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Peace

If you want to read, probably the best starting point is a recent post in my blog: http://etuttounmagnamagna.blogspot.com/2009/03/whats-wrong-with-scholarly-publication.html.

If you look at the entries tagged “peer review” in the blog you’ll find more.

Have a look. I think this topic is very interesting, and I’d be much happy to collaborate.

S.

Went to an IIB seminar this week and a guy from IBM was speaking about what they are doing to try to clean up the mess that is the current patent system in the ICT space. The gist of it is that they are advocating more peer review of patent applications in order to weed the weaker ones out BEFORE they are awarded.

Made me think about your project, and how there might be another potential application of the app for you.

My notes are here.

Cheers!

Paul