Rabaelthazar

The H4 was a bit fiddly, trying to cram a lot of functions into only a few buttons, and the architecture of the menus was a bit counter-intuitive, but I got used to it very quickly. I think it's the same with most gear... if you haven't used something similar in the past there's always going to be a learning curve. Climb it and you'll be laughing. H4N does seem to have a more intuitive operating system. Also, as Legba mentioned check out the H2 as well. I totally forgot about it, but spec-wise it stands up pretty well and, yeah, it's cheap as.

Brewster

I second the H4N. I've actually just sold my Zoom H4, which was the previous model. It served me really well for the last two years, good sound quality and decent built in stereo mic, but the best thing about it was that if you needed to you could hook up a better quality mic, even a condenser that relies on phantom power. What this means is that basically, you can buy the H4N and it will do what you need straight out of the box and if you find down the track that you want better quality audio you can fork out for a decent mic. The only reason I sold mine was because I wanted to buy some new kit and my darling wife told me that if I was going to spend out money on musical equipment I had to sell something to pay for half. The H4 wasn't getting much use so it hit the chopping block. Other alternatives are the Yamaha Pockettrack (which is quite a bit cheaper, much lighter and easy to carry around but misses out on a few key features) and the Edirol R-09 (which I haven't personally used but have heard good things about). You should be able to get a good price on any of these recorders if you haggle a bit and most of the bigger music stores in Oz have a satisfaction guarantee, ie: buy it, try it, if you hate it take it back and exchange it for something else.

I may or may not be able to make the 19th, but if that's what happens then so be it. If the date changes, I'll still try to make it down but might end up having to pull out. Let's see what other people think.

A funny watch, although I'd hedge bets against this guy being under the influence of alcohol. I do feel sorry for the dude, but that's what you get for having special K for breakfast. ...and this one's been around a while, but truly epic.... again, alcohol obviously isn't the culprit here.

Alligator Creek is Oz. I thought the seeds were ok here other than in WA, but I could be wrong. Anyone got more info? I'd take you up on your offer Razor, but I've still only made a dent in my last Alligator Creek batch from another member here. Just to point out as well that the Alligator Creek stuff does live up to its reputation.

Yeah, sorry, it was probably I who caused the confusion. I figured you were a yungun too, but given that you didn't actually specify in you post, I went off on a tangent of a possible alternate reality. I don't think age is really an issue here. I know of guys on SAB who are in their early twenties, there seem to be a lot of people mid twenties to mid-thirties and there are plenty of people of here in their forties. The bell curve peters out a bit there, but there are still a few 50-60 year olds who regularly post. Anyhoo, welcome, even though it's a bit weird saying that given that you've been a member longer than I have.

I used to take Avil as a kid for travel sickness (and then again as a teenager for more dubious reasons). It works for travel sickness, but I remember as a kid (I would have been about 9 myself, cos I was a cub scout at the time) having very disturbing dreams after I had had it, and the drowsiness factor being a bit full on at times. One particular memory was going on a cub scout camp and going to bed early the first night cos I was so drowsy from the avil and dreaming about rats eating me. Not particularly pleasant. Having said that, I took it numerous times with no side effects. As a thrill seeking teenager, I experimented a few times with far higher than recommended doses and let me tell you, this stuff creates true hallucinations. As an example, I remember clearly waking up in the middle of the night after taking a packet with a friend and seeing him sitting on the couch looking at me with this weird look on his face. I didn't like the fact that he'd been watching me sleep, so I asked what the hell he was doing there. He just smiled this weird smile and nodded at me. I asked a few more times and he wouldn't talk to me, which pissed me off, so I punched him in the arm. My fist went straight through him and hit the back of the couch that he was sitting on at which point his facial expression turned to that of hurt and he slowly dissolved into nothing. Of course, he had never been there in the first place. It was after this experience that I remembered the rat dreams from when I was a kid. So, Amazonian, what I'm trying to say is that while avil is effective.... perhaps save it for a last resort.

Destiny

mate

the ganja could work. Although, I hope you'd get internet access Amazonian in the detention centre for drop-kick parents, I'd sure miss you around here.

That's cool, brother. I'm all for the fogies wheeling out onto the porch to reminisce about the 60s acid scene, or even the 50s amphetamine scene for that matter, or even the 1720s opium scene. Old farts welcome. If you haven't got a plastic hip yet, you're doing fine, old feller.

Do they still make Avil? Just don't let her eat a whole packet, whatever you do.

<dang> um... spring

Go well Rahli, in whatever struggle you're facing.

Ha ha ha. I've travelled the universe in this contraption, I can vouch for its effectiveness as a mode of transport.

I'll chuck in a fiver. Do you want to set up a joint paypal account or something? 5 bucks each means... ummm... only 400,000 SAB members need to contribute to get one of he top notch islands. Who's going to draw up the roster?

Yeah, I posted the clip. The fungus is cortyceps... I have very strange kind of respect for these guys. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps

extravagant

He he, sorry, you've taken me to the extent of my knowledge in this area. Don't know about this one.

Thanks everyone, Yes, Harry, I very much enjoyed the time spent in the garden sowing the seeds. JLS, nice to see you indulging in everyday conversation... cheers. Thanks for that addendum, mate. Sounds like you've had the hard end of the stick in your case. I appreciate the words. Yeah, I was there for the whole thing last time around. Geez it's traumatic!! but I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I'll be there this time again, of course, but I think I'll leave the video camera until afterwards. I imagine that my relegated task will be providing a forearm for squeezing to pulp as a means of relieving the stress of childbirth. This will be the second, and I imagine the last. I can't complain about the world over-populating if I go further than two. Heffer, Blowng, Watertrade, Amazonian, PD and Shortly.... thanks for the congrats.

ABN is the only thing you need to start trading. A business name and all that stuff is optional. You can trade under your own name to sell your goods or perform your services but obviously, if you start trading under a name other than your own, you will need to register it with Consumer Affairs. I believe brand names are registered in the same way, but not 100% sure of that. Ok, so if you're going to name your operation by a name other than your own given name, you must register it with Consumer Affairs. They will ultimately make the decision as to whether your line of business is distinct enough from the other person with that name registered (are they registered in Victoria, btw?) and may allow a variation of it or refuse it all together. I'm sure this could be argued both ways in court, if it came to that. I would imagine though that if your T-shirt was a print of a piece of art, and that art happened to depict Big-W or K-Mart it wouldn't be an issue whereas if you had big letters saying "K-MART" just in a slightly different font, then it would be potentially a different story. I guess the other question is, how big are you planning for your business to be? If you're going to sell a few bits of merchandise a month, how likely do you think it would be for the corporate giant to commence legal action against you? Or, do you intend for 50% of the Australian population to be wearing your clothes by the year 2012?... a different approach would be taken for each scenario. If you're unsure, seek legal advice. If the legal advice is going to cost more than you expect to make in profit, then I personally wouldn't bother and just run the risk, knowing that chances of ramifications would be incredibly small. If you're planning to name your business something as well known as, say, Chanel no.5 then I'd just ditch the name altogether and choose something original. Saves you any potential headache down the line. Good luck with it. Let us know how you get on.

I'm not qualified to offer legal advice, so the information in this post is for discussion purposes only and should not be relied upon for any reason or in any situation. I'm pretty sure that trademarks are context sensitive. For instance, Cadbury has trademarked the colour purple that they use on their packaging. Now, that trademark protects them against another chocolate company using the same colour on their packaging, however, it wouldn't be relevant if a dry-cleaning company, for instance, used that same coulour purple on the front of their shop. In what context has this person trademarked the word? If it's been trademarked so that they can use it as a name for a product or something, and the word is a common word, or at least in reasonably common use, then I would imagine that you'd have no trouble putting it on a T-Shirt. Eg: someone trademarks the word "elephant" to use as a name for their new computer program, no worries, any other developers of computer programs won't be able to use the word, but you can still draw up a t-shirt with the word printed on it, I guess as long as your imagery is not related to the trademarker's product. The other end of it would be if a guy trademarked a word like "Splendifornicatiblastissimus" then it's pretty obviously not a common word and you'd be doing the wrong thing by using it without authorization. Does that make sense? Once again, don't rely on this as legal advice. If you're unsure, then just don't do it. It would hardly be worth paying a lawyer for advice about whether you can print a t-shirt up. Then again, if you're only printing one and you're the only person who's going to wear it, really what can happen? You're walking down the street and all of a sudden a team of lawyers climb out of a dumpster and say "Sonny, that T-shirt you're wearing breaches our client's trademark". Your response would be "Damn. I shouldn't have bought it from that traveling salesman I met on the beach in Cambodia." Can you share the context of your question?

Ohm