Pod racing becoming a reality?

Imagine for a moment, that you are looking out from the cockpit of a state of the art rocket-powered aircraft. The flag has yet to go down, and you are waiting with intense anticipation. All around you a vast crowd is yelling team slogans and various professions of support for you. Suddenly you see the countdown begin, and you brace yourself. 3...2...1 *Whoooooooosh* you engage the twin thrusters of your vehicle, and are pressed back in your seat as you accelerate to a top speed of around 400 kph (350 mph). You hold your line, aware of the nine other racers above, below...all around you, like you, following the 3d paths sent to their individual HUD's inside their helmets. 4 laps later, your adrenaline ebbing, you eke out the final burst of power from your engines and scream over the finish line. You have won, you are a hero.

Anyone who thought the pod-racing was the coolest thing (apart from darth-maul's lightsaber) in Star Wars Ep1 listen up!

Enter the Rocket Racing League: an up and coming sports and entertainment league that will provide a platform for high-powered LOx (liquid oxygen)and kerosene ran rocket-planes who will clash ailerons with each other around a fast-paced 3d aerial racing circuit.

Granted, there will be few if any pod-racer style courses with close calls through canyons and the like, but I can see this kind of thing being added along the way as the competition evolves.

Founded in 2005 by two-time Indianapolis 500 champion team owner Granger Whitelaw and aerospace pioneer and X PRIZE Foundation founder Dr. Peter Diamandis, the league promises a virtual nascar of the air. See the video below for a sneaky peak at this exciting future competition.



As a fan of both rocketry and aviation, this video gets me giggling like a three year old girl. Imagine the mid-air collision mayhem!

I believe the league is set to have its first season in 2010, with hour and a half long races, with 6-10 races throughout the season, each race involving up to 10 rocket-planes!

Until then...

Meh...

In a great day for "The Simpsons" fans and anyone under 30 worldwide, the word "meh" has today been awarded a permanent place in the Collins English Dictionary.

"The origins of "meh" are murky, but the term grew in popularity after being used in a 2001 episode of The Simpsons in which Homer suggests a day trip to his children Bart and Lisa.

"They both just reply 'meh' and keep watching TV," said Cormac McKeown, head of content at Collins Dictionaries."

The dictionary defines "meh" as an expression of indifference or boredom, or an adjective meaning mediocre or boring.

Full story here.

Can anybody think of any more words that have become used in everyday speech, yet aren't in the dictionary yet?

hmm...

(Actually it seems that "hmm" is another one)

No more bank fees!

So a little while ago, I decided I was sick and tired of being charged through the nose for loaning banks my money for a miserly interest rate, and then charged some more every time I withdrew from an atm without their label on it. What to do?

About a year ago, a transaction account with no fees sounded a bit like an urban myth. One that a friend of a friend had read about in a tabloid. Not long after that, something changed, and a few banks began to offer fully online bank accounts.

My first experience with a fee free account was with an HSBC Online Savings Account. The only problem I had here was, living in a regional area there were no local HSBC branches. As such, the account creation process was a protracted and frustratingly error-prone affair. In the end the account was set up, I had a visa debit card, and an interesting little security device that generated random access codes for further online security.
This was all great, but I found that the online interface of HSBC's online banking began to get me down, and there were a few unexplained issues with some of my scheduled transactions which worried me. So I decided to shop around for another.

For a while previously I had maintained a high interest, fee free online savings account with BankWest, the Telenet Saver. This is a terrific account with easy access online and an above average interest rate. You simply link it to your existing transaction account from any institution, and are then free to transfer back and forth. Brilliant to set up a regular savings plan. Then I had a look at other BankWest offerings. This is what I ended up with:

A Bankwest Zero transaction account (you need to credit at least $2K per month) with a Mastercard debit card, with which you can access funds from any atm in the country for free! There are no account keeping fees, and if you like online banking, then this is the one for you. If you link the Telenet saver account I mentioned previously to this one, you get instant transfers between both a high interest and a transaction account, all with no account keeping fees!

This is the best deal I have found so far, and remote account creation was a cinch (for those who don't have a branch nearby).

Currently, the BankWest Telenet Saver is offering a 6.35% p.a. intro interest rate for the first 12 months. This is exceptional in the current economic climate.

If anyone finds out about a better or equally good deal, let me know!

Until next time.

Paid Surveys: Are They Any Good, Or Just Scams?

Seeing how this post on making money online has featured high in the keywords referring to my blog, I thought I would expand on one of the elements mentioned: paid surveys.

Are they any good?

Well, after trying out a fair few myself for more than a year, I can decisively say...maybe. Now don't all jump down my throat at once, I am not avoiding the issue at all. The fact is that a few sites that offer paid surveys are reasonable, and most are either useless, outright scams, or simply a waste of time.

Straight off the bat, try to avoid sites that offer to give you a list of sites offering paid surveys. You don't need them, and they are not offering from the goodness in their e-hearts. These sites either want you to pay, or receive commission from the sites they endorse. There are a few sites out there that do link you to the actual companies conducting the market research without trying to rip you off in some way; these are obviously different from the ones mentioned above in that they do not promise you untold riches and 10 virgins if you tick a few boxes now and then.

This brings me to my next point. You will almost certainly not make enough cash from paid surveys to feed yourself, let alone make any serious dint in your mortgage. Surveys come intermittently, and pay only a few dollars if you're lucky, and if you qualify for them, and if you have reached the necessary amount to get a cash payment. In my experience, I have only completed surveys from one site that has ever sent me anything in return. Valued Opinions pays fairly well in comparison to most survey sites, and from them I have received and used two $20 Coles gift vouchers. Not a fortune to be sure, but it paid for a few meals.

If I were to receive nonstop surveys from Valued Opinions, qualified for them all, and had the time to do them, I could make around 12 dollars an hr. This is just not feasible considering I receive a good survey once every few days, not 3 or 4 times an hr.

A few of you have asked questions about http://www.surveyadvise.com. I have been a member there for a long while, and granted, they introduced me to valued opinions. However, I never completed their $10 offer challenge, as some of their suggestions requested too much personal information. As a member, they send you emails regarding some site or other that is offering paid surveys or some other money making opportunity. I must say that 99.9% of their suggestions are filled with the sort of hype I warned you about in the post I linked to at the top. In effect they are rather useless, though not really a scam as far as I can tell. I believe they get commission from the sites they link you to should you sign up.

So to finish up, some are almost certainly scams, most are useless, and a few provide a genuine tiny bit of extra cash.

Have fun and be careful kids.

Hey! Long Time No See!

Well, I have to apologise. I have been on hiatus for far too long. No real excuse, but since I see people have been visiting the site in my absence, I think it's high time I started giving you some more info to boggle your minds with. There have certainly been some interesting events in the world recently.
Here's to a bright new future guys and gals :D