Blog Marco

No. Female chickens are called hens. Male chickens are called roosters or cocks or cockerel. And yes all the chickens we eat are females. The egg-laying hens are genetically-modified/bred so that they only lay eggs that are female. Any male ones are wastage and are often gassed to provide food for snakes. This is because male chickens tend to have a tougher meat.

Yes, all cows are female. However, the species as a whole are referred to as "cattle" are also known colloquially as cows. But strictly speaking, male cattle are bulls, female cattle are cows and castrated cattle are called steer. Most beef we eat are from steer. Dairy cows don't have as much meat in prime cuts such as loin and rump so they are mostly ground to make hamburgers.

Racehorses are both. Stallions, geldings and colts are male race horses. Mares and fillies are female race horses. In Australia, the males and females usually race against each other. There are races for one sex only, but most of them have them competing against one another. A mare named Makybe Diva is the one and only race horse to win the prestigious Melbourne Cup three times. Phar Lap was a Gelding who won the Melbourne Cup in 1930.

OK Go - the band responsible for the treadmill dance video "Here It Goes Again" which was a youtube viral video have created another viral video for the band's new song "This too Shall Pass". "This Too Shall Pass" has been viewed over 300,000 times in less than two days, and according to link-shortening service Bit.ly, the link has been shared over 26,000 times on Facebook.

The video, depicting an elaborate series of chain-reactions known as a Rube Goldberg machine, may be rising in popularity by tapping into a YouTube trend. Rube Goldberg machines, named after the US cartoonist and inventor, are a popular subject of YouTube videos. Users share clips of the best contraptions, often created for real-world competitions, with some clocking up to 1.9 million views online. The four-minute video was shot in one take and took 60 tries to get it right over two days, according to Wired.com.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - RGM version

Dictionary reading was a favourite pastime of mine when I was younger. I love discovering new words such as psychosomatic and many others. Other popular words... I was taking a quiz on definitions online when these 10 words popped up:

Banal: lacking force or originality; trite; commonplace

Erudite: having or showing extensive scholarship; learned

Loquacious: characterized by or showing a tendency to talk a great deal

Lugubrious: excessively mournful; doleful

Maudlin: foolishly tearful or sentimental, as when drunk

Obsequious: obedient or attentive in an ingratiating or servile manner

Perturbing: 1. To disturb greatly; make uneasy or anxious; 2. To throw into great confusion.

Platitude: 1. a trite, dull, or obvious remark or statement; a commonplace; 2. staleness or insipidity of thought or language; triteness

Here's a topic which would interest frugal shoppers and businesses who pay for outsourcing, services, gifts and other products online with Paypal. Comparing Paypal vs. Credit Card Currency Conversion - Which gives better rates? Personally I thought my credit card would get the better rate. But it turns out Paypal gives the better rate taking in consideration the whole transaction including fees. I though Paypal was only trying to be difficult when they try to force me to use Paypal for the currency conversion process and not my credit card.

Ok this is the experiment I did: First I took note of how much it was to convert from Australian dollars to US dollars using Paypal's payment method, with Paypal Conversion Rate. For $100 USD, it would cost me $115.78 AUD. That's including all the fees and currency conversion costs and Paypal allowed me to pay this bill either by using my Direct Deposit, or credit card or current Paypal Funds. But then I switched my payment conversion method to my own credit card company - so my credit card will do the currency conversion. My bill came to this: $100 USD cost $113.56 AUD.... BUT... there was an additional International transaction fee of $3.35, bringing my cost to $116.91 - which is $1.13 AUD more expensive. I did the same experiment with another transaction of a smaller value, and it was similar: PayPal was cheaper to use. Yes the Credit card companeis give you a good exchange rate, but then they charge their fees - and that's when they double dip as the card companies make money on the exchange spread and the supposed "international transaction fee" which is a fixed price per transaction plus a percentage. Check with your own credit card if this is the case.

How to stop "PayPal Instant Payment Notification Disabled" emails. Go to https://www.paypal.com/au/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_profile-ipn-notify and you'll find your offending Paypal setting. I turned my IPN off since I don't use that shopping cart anymore. "To stop receiving IPNs permanently, click Turn Off IPN." Usually the result of an abandoned shopping cart website development project of yours...

Went to Eastern Creek Go Carts in Western Sydney last weekend. These are my racing cheat notes for their track for the next time I go there. I love how they say on their website that "The circuit has a total of two kilometres of the best quality Bitumen available. The racing surface was produced by Boral and is the finest ever laid on a kart circuit." But in reality, the track has degraded over the years and it really needs resurfacing. My local road has a better surface than their track! Watch out for loose gravel!

When you first hit the track from the pits, just gun it. There is no starting line. The faster you go, the more muscle you need to put into steering your go-kart, lose control and you'll find yourself hitting the kerb or the tyres. Oversteer with too much acceleration around a corner will send you spinning. It takes a little courage to not brake through a curve because it feels like you're going to run into the grass. You'll get faster times when you don't brake around shallow corners and just follow through by releasing the gas a little before the curve then gunning it after you've passed the main curve while completing the turn. For tighter turns, you need to enter the turn wide and brake before, then 50% into the turn start accelerating. You get a printout of your time at the end of the race.

Go Karting at Eastern Creek costs $85 for the 13 HP karts for 2 x 15 minute heats. It gets busy during weekends and holidays so if you can, go on a weekday, otherwise get a group booking so you're only racing with your mates and not some other randoms.

Ella Fitzgerald's music is awesome. When I discovered her music a long time ago while browsing the selection of CDs at the local public library, I was lucky enough to pick her CD. Below are the two songs that are really memorable to me: Mack The Knife and Let's Call the Whole thing off (duet with Louis Armstrong).

Ella Fitzgerald - Mack The Knife

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves, she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. She is widely considered one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook. Over a recording career that lasted 59 years, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Art by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.

According to this report, having a siesta, or an afternoon nap not only refreshes you, but it can make you smarter by "improve the brain's ability to learn by clearing out cluttered memory space". I love taking afternoon naps, especially on a Sunday afternoon... maybe I should schedule it as a daily task? I tend to nod off towards the afternoon anyway, so if having a siesta in the afternoon could improve my performance - why not? (I work for myself anyway so I can do this easily!).

People who nodded off for an hour after lunch performed better in learning tests than those who stayed awake all afternoon, the scientists found.

A study of students revealed that their brains were refreshed by napping only if they entered what is called stage 2 non-REM sleep, which takes place between deep sleep and the dream state known as REM, or rapid-eye-movement, sleep.

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Submitted by Marco on Tue, 23/02/2010 - 5:58pm.

Being an entrepreneur and starting your own business leads you down a path to being unemployable. There are two types of being unemployable: either that you are a bum and don't have any skills, or you own a business which provides you an income stream and you are the master of your own domain.

Entrepreneurs are unemployable because they love what they do. They have a passion for their work, they are dedicated to their cause and their goals and don't count the hours of their work. We think in terms of how much work we can do in one day and wish that there were more hours in the day to work.

Entrepreneurial individuals also are massive control freaks. We like to get our own way and we want control over what we've worked hard to build. We are also super independent but have a can-do attitude, We tend to jump into things, not really knowing what we are getting ourselves into, but we are determined enough to find out what needs to be done to get to where we want to get to.

I checked my online Credit Card statement this morning and I found that Sydney City Council double charged my parking in Sydney last week. (unfortunately there were no free parking spots available). So I went on the hunt on how to contact the parking meter department for Sydney City Council. I found their email address as: parkingmeters@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au and contact number: 02 9265 9333. In my email I included as much information as I could as well as all the details of the ticket that the machine gave me on that day.

To my pleasant surprise, Sydney City Council is very efficient, and I got a call an hour later asking about more details about my double charge parking and credit card details. So good work to the City of Sydney for having great Customer Service.

The Laptop Family has grown in the past decade there are so many categories to choose from: MID (Mobile Internet Device), tablets, subnotebooks, netbooks, mininotebooks, booklets, smartbooks, personal Internet devices, ebook readers, e-readers, smart phones and ultra mobile Internet devices. So many gadgets to choose from. So many choices. Argh!

According to Charles Darwin's theory of Survival of the Fittest (aka Natural Selection) means the better adapted for immediate, local environment survive and not in the best physical shape - Otherwise you would have thought the strongest and the leanest would suvive because they can run away from dangerous animals and be able to hunt effectively.

If you believe Darwinian theory, there are fat people because they survived the times of famine in the past. There are genes out there where people are more prone to weight gain. These people would definitely survive a famine and would be "the fittest" during those times. Random fact: Older women who have get pregnant tend to have chubby kids. Random theory: It's easy to put on weight because fat cells can easily be added when you over eat. But the body can't kill off fat cells. So they can shrink and always be there. So when you over eat again, you'll get fat.

I bought this Mini Foldable Bike from Japan when I was in Japan last year. The brand is a "Mini". I brought it home with me as check-in baggage. Weighing at 11.8 kilos the bike isn't too heavy. I reckon I'm the only one that has this in Australia.