Stuff I found today: toe-up knitting, Stephen Conroy and a cool microfinancing project

This morning I learnt how to knit a sock from the toe up. I find this exciting, as it seems a great way to be able to knit a pair of nice long socks and know when you have to stop the first to still have enough yarn left for the second. I'm trying it out with a mini-sock. The cast on seems very loose, and I need to learn a nicer way to make stitches (the method I currently use leaves holes) but I guess that's all a matter of practice.

So I didn't just find Stephen Conroy. I've known about him for quite a while, more's the pity. Several years ago he came up with a silly scheme for internet censorship via ISPs. No, what I found out today was that apparently the results of the trials that were conducted will be released this week - at least according to GetUp, though I was unable to corroborate that elsewhere. I will be highly surprised (and skeptical) if the results don't show that the system will accidentally block legitimate sites quite a lot of the time, be circumventable, extremely expensive and slow down internet access. Which really makes it worse than silly - it makes it a backwards step for Australians who use the internet (i.e. most of them). Look into it, people. And then let Stephen know what you think.

And the last thing I came across was a really cool microfinancing project in Africa. The women themselves pool their resources for it. How cool is that? I'm all for empowerment. Seems intuitive to me that it would work better in the long run than hand-outs.

Now I'm off to see what other cool stuff I can find...