On the 1st of March 1971 a significant government department report, which took two years to develop, was submitted to the Minister of the day. I've just found a copy and read it from cover to cover. By today's standards it probably wouldn't pass muster - its only 74 pages and it just doesn't look pretty. It is devoid of colour, pictures, and diagrams, but it does have tables and numbers, and more importantly the principle recommendation is in the first paragraph clearly flagged in bold type. The other recommendations are easy to find and follow.

The report is remarkable for its clarity and succinctness. Its also remarkable for its predictions and its recommendations, some of which were enacted just last year, but quite independently of this report! I doubt today's policy and decision makers even know of its existence, yet it could easily have been rebadged and resubmitted. Even more astounding is the report references recommendations made and approved in 1922, but never enacted. Similar recommendations were again made in 1955 and were not enacted. And of course the 1971 report was referenced in 1997, and you guessed it the recommendations were not enacted (I've also found and read the 1997 report). A new report was commissioned in January 2008 and its recommendations approved in July 2008. The recommendations in the 2008 report could have been plagiarised from the 1971 report, and presumably the 1955 and 1922 reports, yet they were arrived at independently and in ignorance of the existence of the other reports.

Well it's a New Year and as you can see the site has a new look and feel - in part because I had to upgrade from Drupal 5 to 6, and in part because it needed cleaning up. The upgrade process was painful in the extreme, probably because on the Drupal 5 site I used a lot of semi-customised modules. Here the benefit of frequent documenting as you go, doing it yourself, and backing up payed off - I knew how the old site worked. I was also able to refer to website hit logs and determine that most users now use a high-resolution wide screen, so my new theme accommodates this requirement (its best viewed at 1024 pixels wide resolutions or higher). That said I've left it as a fluid theme to accommodate users who still use lower resolutions or "square screens". My irritation with the upgrade was I lost all my tailored views and they have to be rebuilt from scratch because the upgrade path is not seamless. It also resulted in lots of broken links. I've used this as an opportunity to search engine optimise the site. This means almost all the links have changed, although the content is still there. I'm still searching for broken links, but I think I've fixed most - please let me know if you find any. I've also changed the logo but I’m not entirely happy with it. What do you think?

2009 was not a good year for blogging, or any form of personal or business productivity on my behalf. There were many reasons for this not the least of which the contract I have with the Australian Defence Force precludes many activities. Other reasons include exhaustion and writers block. I'm over the first, and time will tell how writer's block goes. I have written quite a bit towards my PhD, which I plan to submit at the end of the year. Bits might also form a few blogs, but I don't want to distract myself too much from the task at hand. One thing I did do in 2009 was a lot of reading so my blogging theme for the next little while will be book reviews – these seem to be popular and get lots of hits in any case. I also did a presentation or two; attended three courses, including a Cognitive Edge accreditation course ; published a paper ; and even wrote a bagpipe tune. Beth’s Inspiration is not my best effort ever (the best is Black Pat ), but I think it’s pretty good and more importantly Beth says she likes it – perhaps she’s just being nice!