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Monday, December 21, 2009

DS R4 cards

Robyn asked me about DS R4 cards, and since I figure she's probably not the only one who could use this info, I asked the guy who helped me if I could stick it up here.

This is what he said about writable DS cards:

I got mine from: http://www.r4card.com.au/ The one I got was the R4 SDHC Card for DS / DS Lite + 4GB Micro SD Memory Card

Gotchas: Make sure to get the one which says DS Lite if that's what you have (the DS is different, I think). The SD card is teensy (little-fingernail sized), but you probably know more about that than I do. It comes with a USB-stick-like reader for you to copy stuff onto from your PC. The big gotcha that took me hours to hunt down was finding the right OS to put on the card. The trick was to use the URL printed on the box the card came in (rather than just googling for generic r4 card OS's). D'oh!

Download the OS and copy the files onto the SD card and you're set. Copy your downloaded games/music/pictures into the top directory on the SD card and the OS can find them.

I also had uTorrent (micro-torrent?) recommended to me - seems to work much better than other torrent downloaders we've tried. Can probably dig up places for you to look for games too.
He points out that he's not endorsing this website as the best or only place to buy them, just that he bought one there and it worked. The teensy little cards slot into an R4 cartridge which is supplied and works in the DS itself.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Carols in the Park

Linda asked me to put this up as a general invitation on the blog as a few kindy mums are going including her family and Will would love friends. It's intimate, local and great fun.

Carols in the Park:
Tomorrow, Sunday, December 13
Time: 07:30 PM

Organisation:
Salvation Army Dulwich Hill

Event Location:
Johnson Park, Constitution Rd, Dulwich Hill

Phone:
   02 8324 3034  02 8324 3034    02 8324 3034  02 8324 3034 

A wonderful night for the whole community where family and friends can get together and sing their favourite carols to the music of the Salvation Army band.
BYO picnic or there will be a BBQ with sausage sandwiches, hot & cold drinks and ice-cream for sale.
Lots of entertainment including the Salvation Army Agents of T.R.U.T.H & Santa will be arriving with a small present for the children.

Concluding around 9pm with a fabulous fireworks display.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Personal reminder

Just a quick reminder that the talent assembly tomorrow starts at 2:30pm not 2:20pm and the kids will go in first.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Personal reminder

The last P&C meeting of the year is tomorrow (Wednesday) night. It's a dinner at La Candela (with big people chairs and everything). It starts at 7:30pm (rather than the usual 7pm start time - there's no Spicks and Specks to rush home to anymore).

Kathrine has organised it, and if you would like to come and haven't already been counted, please let her know.

Also, don't forget tomorrow is cake day - send that 20 cents in. You can't imagine the trauma of seeing small kids with puppy dog eyes and no money!

Special Lunch

For anyone who has ever wondered about the why's and how's of special lunch, I thought I would post some information.

Special lunch is a lunch provided for the children once each term as a special treat. It is paid for out of P&C funds and is prepared by volunteers. Providing lunch for 60 children and several teachers is a big task and we have to work within the constraints of our own domestic sized kitchens and equipment. The menu is usually a savoury item (pie, sausage on a roll, etc), fruit and a sweet treat for desert (ice block, jelly etc).

There have been some questions as to why we serve items like pies, when we should be encouraging healthy eating. There are two reasons; firstly, we are very limited with what can be prepared given that we have less than 2 hours between the end of lines and lunch at 11.30. We have no access to refrigeration other than what spare space there is in our own fridges. We rely on being able to heat food in an oven as we simply don't have containers large enough to attempt to cook, heat and transport a dish like spaghetti for example. Secondly, we see this lunch as a special treat, and differentiate between healthy everyday foods and treat foods that are only eaten occasionally. Our aim is to provide something that the children will really look forward to and enjoy. We do try to balance out the "treat" food by always ensuring that a fruit course is served.

We are always looking for helpers. Most of the shopping is done a day or two prior to lunch day; it is on lunch day morning that we really need help as most of the preparation is done then. Of course the fun part is serving lunch to the kids. It is really lovely to see how excited the children are, and to watch them enjoy a special event. Also we are always happy to listen to any suggestions as to new foods to try or better ways of doing things. Let me know if you would like to be involved or have a question or suggestion.

Robyn

Monday, December 7, 2009

Personal reminder

Don't forget the Morning Tea to thank parents at 11:30 this morning.

Tomorrow is Digi-Ed, Wednesday is cake day and the last P&C meeting for the year (dinner!). Thursday is the talent assembly and Friday is Special Lunch day!

I know Robyn needs some people to help with the prep for Special Lunch day, please let us know if you can help. It's a fairly mammoth undertaking to feed 60-odd kids a 3 course lunch and Robyn really can't do it on her own. I'll be helping with the serving, but I have a pre-school board meeting this Friday so I'm forced to abandon her. Please step up and help out!

Finally - the Exodus hamper collection has started, so please bring in some non-perishables.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Michael Kirby speaks up for public schools

Robyn told me about this a few days ago, but I've only just had time to look at it.

Former Justice Michael Kirby spoke recently at Melbourne High School and slammed the current policy of under-funding and denigrating public schools. The ABC News feed covered it here.

Kirby urges us all to become more active as advocates for public schools - and he specifically mentioned using blogs and Twitter. So we have here a blog, and it seems like a good plan to use it if we feel so inspired. At the least we can put links up here to what others might be doing and so on. If anyone sees anything worth sharing, send it on through.

And if you are interested, go track down other things Michael Kirby has written and said - he's insightful and inspirational.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Agave Attenuata for sale


Meng has a bed of agave attenuata that can be sold to the Yeo Park community. She's sold large ones (1m dia) for $40 and medium sized ones for $20. These go for hundreds at the nurseries and appear to be popular succulents.

You can catch her at lines or comment here if you are interested. You can see from the photo here that they are pretty amazing.