Greypath Seniors Newsletter

October  2008 http://www.greypath.com

Contents:

• Editors note
• Progress -Our new course on backyard food growing
• Think Tank- Immigration and Guest Workers
• Latrobe Finance Limited
• Chocolate Research
• Free software
• Project Gutenberg e-books
• Cartoon of the month
• Seniors interest DVD
• Latest Poll Results

Editors Note. Each new newsletter presents a problem. Just what new and interesting things do I have to pass on to you all? This time I thought we might seek out links to some valuable free software and get started that way. If you have any ideas as to what you might like to see here, or contributions,  do let me know and I will see what we can do.

Progress - Our new course on backyard food growing.

In addition to all of the 'what to plant and where and how' sections, we now have a university assisting with the nutrition part of the course, and we are also adding a special appendix for diabetic gardeners. We have to call it halt there though, as otherwise the course will try to be much more than is sensible for a simple on line offering. Our thanks to those people who have made suggestions and/or supplied backyard images for this course. Click here to visit the Lyceum and review the course, which is due up any day now.

The Seniors Think Tank. The last Think Tank issue covered what we thought of the nations immigration policies and the new concept for Australia, of so called 'guest workers

I think we showed commonsense here and very little prejudice in our views.

VOTE 1. Should we continue with our current immigration policies?

Increase migration 8%

No Change           26%

Reduce                66%

VOTE 2. Which if these matters is the most sensitive for you with respect to immigration matters?

Accepting the OZ way of life 57%

Not sensitive at all                6%

Learning English                  25%

Locale concentration             7%

Preferential housing               5%

VOTE 3. Do you think bringing in guest workers is a good thing in principle?

Dont know       18%

No                 42%

Yes                40%

VOTE 4. Should guest workers be paid full Australian wages?

Maybe           16%

No                  2%

Reduced rate    4%

Yes                78%

VOTE 5. Do you think out current water supply an polluion matters should have any bearing on our  immigration policies?

Maybe            18%

No                 18%

Yes                64%

La Trobe financial have kindly sponsored this mailer. Please have a look at their site via the banner link here. They are a national financial advisory and mortgage investment group, that we are happy to be associated with. We have spent a long time trying to find such a group to work with, and we hope to soon add a seniors financial advisory area to Greypath as well. 

Chocolate Research. This piece of research is good news for many especially those who deny themselves such,  for fear of getting fat. Click here for more.

There's plenty of great free software about.

You may be interested in a few pieces of free software. (Freebies)

The biggest and best we think, is OpenOffice. It pretty well mimics Microsoft Windows Office suite and includes a word processing programme, a spreadsheet, a graphics package and more. Have a look at http://openoffice.org-suite.com/

If you are in to digital photo managing, (resizing, cropping,fixing contrast, improving colour and more), then irfanview is considered to be the worlds best such freebie.  http://www.irfanview.com/

Free phone calls computer to computer. Using Skype you can make free computer to computer calls. Have a look at http://www.skype.com

Antivirus software. There are a few free anti virus programmes and despite the hammering Greypath might expect,  we have using the AVG Free version for some years now without a problem. See  http://www.avg.co.uk/uk.download-trial  

We have also been very happy with Grisoft free version at our home.

A google search using the term 'free software', will provide a bewildering array of such specialist programmes.  [Note that the the term 'freeware' usually applies to software in more complex form for developers anywhere in the world to add on to and improve, and shareware to software that is free but where they hope you will make a donation.].

Project Gutenberg. Free e-books. This is a splendid resource, sent in to us via at thoughtful greypather. Do  have a look at http://www.gutenberg.net.au/index.html

Cartoon of the month

Do you have a cartoon you would like to see here? If so email it in and we will see if we can feature it and give you an Andy Wahol moment.

It's been interesting to search for cartoons featuring seniors in humorous situations. By far the majority I found, were unflattering and using stereotypes. It's ageism. Try a Google image search on 'cartoons seniors humour'  and see how you go.

Seniors Interests DVD

Our What you need to know in retirement DVD, has just had a huge order that has given us the encouragement to move on with the second DVD in the series. It covers wills, powers of attorney, fraud, pension problems,where to retire, investing wisely and more. Click here to visit the greypath shop . With this encouragement, we will now proceed with the planning for our second DVD project on healthy ageing

Poll Result on what causes us the most financial stress.

The votes were interesting. It's health and home maintenance costs that hurt us most.

Finally

We forever grow, and as we do, the site management demands edge up as well! We are in the process of yet another upgrade but it should be invisible to you all. Currently we seem to be in the top 5% or better of world websites, by traffic count.

 I was also pleased to receive a complaint that this newsletter does not come out often enough.That is because we try and only include things we feel many of you will find to be of interest, and sometimes that takes a couple of months or so...

We hope you found something of interest in this issue. If you have any comments or suggestions for future editions, feel welcome to mail us .

Our best wishes to you

The Editor and team

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