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4th of Feb late afternoon I headed for the LunarC MTB XC event with Andrew my team mate. We borrowed the Wolves Support Vehicle, loaded it up with all our gear, 2 bikes each and a couch and a mattress.

By early evening we were working in a practice lap, good thing too as Andrew broke his chain and I hadn't pumped my rear shock up. After a quick pitstop mid lap we continued and decided the course wasn't too bad.

Andrew went home for dinner and a sleep and promised to return by 11PM. I had a rest on the couch reading a book, chatted to the neighbouring competitors, had a meal and relaxed. Come 11PM the site was buzzing as the countdown began for over 140 competitors. Andrew decreed I should ride first and who was I to disappoint. Lining up on the start line with all the other cyclists wasn't a new experience for me having raced many times before, however lining up in the dark with headlights blazing everywhere was. the first kilometre was bedlam and thick dust. After that it settled down a bit and I finished my first lap in a fast 45 minutes, just short of being lapped by the fastest riders but about mid field as it turned out. I was so wrecked that I missed Andrew passing through on his first lap (he was doing 2 laps to my every one) and consequently mistimed his return. I had lost some air from my rear shock, though it was still rideable, and my glasses were covered in sweat. I was still pulling on my gloves when Andrew returned and I raced over to transition (right over the track from our position) without rectifying these things. This proved to be a mistake as about 5ks in there were some very dusty berms and i was unable to see the ground clearly, crashing at a low speed. Bit comical really. I washed my glasses with water from my bladder and then found a checkpoint official who had a tissue. I finished the lap in 46 minutes so consistent with the first one.

I have been using the HTC Mozart for a few months now. Fair to say its the best phone I have ever used in a number of ways.

Best hardware I have every used. Simple easy to use external hard and soft buttons, ordinary 6.5mm stereo headphone jack, micro USB charger - uses both a power adaptor (supplied) or via a USB port.

Best Phone Software - EVER. This kills the previous mobile 6.1, 6.5 interfaces, and the previous HTC TouchFlo software. It is smooth, sexy, responsive and packed with features. The only draw back is its missing copy and paste.

Best ever applications. While there are plenty of stupid ones (I love the Chuck Norris Facts App) there are very good useful apps, including YouTube, Flickr Manager, Facebook, etc.

The built in maps software is fast with amazing fine grained detail.

I have setup access to two separate exchange server email accounts and a POP3 account. The calendar integrates with them and allows separate colours to differentiate.

The following pages were useful in setting up accounts:

Set up or delete an email account

Setting up your Windows Live ID and email accounts

What have I been doing this week?

Running a volunteer project assisting with the terrible natural disaster flooding here in Queensland Australia.

I started www.qldfloods.org website on Tuesday morning as the rains came down. I asked on some technical forums for some assistance and next thing i know its 4 days later and I'm still in my office.

The site provides a one stop hub for resources and news and a bed matching facility for displaced people staying in evacuation centres with people offering space in their homes for them.

I am estimating some 50+ hours for myself and another 100 for my staff. The other volunteers have probably put in 600 plus hours. We have been on national TV at least three times, numerous radio interviews and also on CNN.

The site now has registered nearly 700 families and close to 2000 beds available for temporary accommodation - individual Queenslanders prepared to make room in their homes for strangers to come and stay.

This is my chart of what I've have been doing thanks to RescueTime.

I wanted to shout out to the helpers and sponsors - without whom this project would not have been possible

Thousands of dollars worth of servers in a server farm provided by OntheNet - 5 servers altogether and hours of time to put it together.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques are very important for websites to hit that coveted number number 1 spot on related keyword searches.

With Drupal there are some specific tools that can assist with this. The major Search Engines, (Yahoo, Bing and Google) provide tools to do this and there are some Drupal modules that work with this.

The following process takes you through the entire process - excluding signing up for the accounts at Yahoo, Google and Bing.

Before starting make accounts (or sign in with your existing accounts) to each of these services:

• Google https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home
• Yahoo https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites
• Bing http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/#

Then make sure you have a current download of these modules:

• Global Redirect http://drupal.org/project/globalredirect
• Site Verifications http://drupal.org/project/site_verify
• Xmlsitemap http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap