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The Principal: Glenis Guest St Joseph’s School PO Box 403 Dargaville 0340 Phone: 0944398639 Mobile: 0272241095 E-Mail: principal@saintjosephs.school.nz Dargaville Business Profile Jean Sircombe. – A Lady With A Gift! Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity. Remy De Gourmant As a young child of 10, Jean Sircombe started painting. By the age of 12 she was doing black and white sketches for a farming magazine who paid her the princely sum of half a crown (25c) or even five shillings (50c) for her work. The sketches were all done in Indian ink so that they could be used to make the type plates as used in those days for printing newspapers and magazines. No photocopiers or colour back then! 10 years ago this month, after leaving the sawmill where she worked, Jean opened her own art gallery here in Dargaville. For typically 6 hours a day, four days a week, she produces her artworks using oil, acrylic, and pastels. Jean favours seascapes, landscapes, and portraits; however if the mood takes her she will paint a vase of flowers or other objects that catch her eye at that particular moment. She has held exhibitions in Whangarei and Dargaville – the most recent being during the Kauri Coast Festival in 2006. Her gallery is beautifully arranged, with her paintings framed and ready for people to buy, take away, and hang when they get home. In case you might think that Jean has no spare time, she does have Wednesdays off. She also takes night classes as part of the Adult Education programme at Dargaville High School, and also works with the Kauri Coast Rest Home. Another group she helps is Alzheimer’s NZ . “Painting is great for people with this debilitating illness” says Jean “as participants can produce a painting which they can look at later on and continue to identify with. The social interaction of the classes is also therapeutic.” Jeans other interests include country music, travel, gardening and reading. She does indulge herself in these “occasionally” she told Dargaville Online when we visited her. “Painting make timeless gifts” Jean tells us. “When you buy a bottle of perfume, it gets used up and forgotten, but a painting hanging on the wall is there as a constant reminder of the person who gave it to you and enjoy.” Later this year Jean and a long-time friend from Nelson are off on holiday to visit Spain and Morocco. ‘I have always wanted to visit those two countries - ever since I was at school, and yes – I will be packing my brushes”! To celebrate the birthday of the Big River Art Gallery, Jean is discounting all her paintings on display there. Prices are affordable so buying a painting is perfect retail therapy without the guilt! Call in and view her artworks at Big River Art Gallery in Murdoch Street, Dargaville. It is open every day except Wednesday from 9.00am until 5.00pm. For all enquiries phone (09) 439 0255 during business hours. Our verdict - A great place to take our visitors when they want something different to go home with. Rock With John Sat Nights! 8 - 10pm on Today FM 106.7
“Geek Speek” This week we have reproduced two excellent articles from New Zealand newspapers. They have been slightly edited to fit into the available space in this newsletter. VOIP Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering. Anonymous A Guide to Internet Phone Calls By ROSS MARTIN - Fairfax Media | Saturday, 02 August 2008 Tech geeks already know about it. Chances are if you work for a company that has offices up and down the country the calls you make everyday are made over it. It could be just the ticket for you to get a bit of extra cash for your monthly food or petrol bill. It’s VOIP - four letters that could save everyday Kiwis a packet of money. VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, and in everyday terms means being able to make phone calls using the internet or local network (like within your office) for next to nothing. When I talk about VOIP, I am not talking exclusively about Skype. With Skype, users traditionally keep their existing landline and merely make toll calls through Skype, or call other Skype users for free. This does save money, but you can save even more. Recent regulations have allowed the smaller network companies to supply you (the customer) with so-called “naked DSL”, which gives you an internet connection without having to have a landline with it too. Why should you care? Because using VOIP instead of a traditional phone line will save you money, even if you don’t make a lot of toll calls. How it works is pretty technical, but basically each computer is given a unique identification number on the internet. VOIP uses technology that gives your phone its own number on the network and attaches a particular phone number to it. So, for example your friends could dial 03 333 3333 and your VOIP setup would recognize this as the internet address of your phone. If that scares you a bit, don’t worry. You don’t have to understand it for it to save you money. There’s more to it too. VOIP also lets you easily add other lines to the home/office and gives you services such as call forwarding, caller ID and conferencing for dirt cheap or even free. These services will all cost you over a regular phone line. It’s not all toast and jam though, and there are drawbacks. Using VOIP instead of a normal phone line does have drawbacks. First you need power for to make calls. If the power goes out and you need to make an emergency call, you will need to use your mobile phone. Call quality also is probably not as good as a traditional phone line either. When I’m using VOIP on a local call to my dad, he often asks me whether I’m on a mobile. In saying that, I haven’t experienced any real problems apart from the slightly technical setup process. The phone is also not as portable, as it needs to be connected to your DSL router at all times. However, if you have a cordless handset you can get around this. The other issue is that most of the ISPs require you to be a reasonably heavy user to be able use naked DSL and to get VOIP on their network. In my situation TelstraClear said that I needed to be on a 10GB plan. Time for the big question. How much exactly does VOIP save me? First of all I had to buy either a VOIP phone or a little converter box, which allows you to plug your normal phone into your router. I chose the latter. The box itself cost me the princely sum of $89 from Dick Smith Electronics. I signed up with VOIP provider Slingshot’s iTalk (www.slingshot.co.nz/italk), which costs me $9.95 per month for as many local calls as I can handle. It also gives me Skype-like toll rates of 5c per minute to most phones in places like England, Australia, and non-local calls in New Zealand. Calls to mobiles and unpopular countries are more expensive. Obviously, I still have to pay for my internet connection, but I do save on the phone line. Running VOIP costs me about $60 a month, about $25 TODAY FM 106.7 Bringing Back The Memories
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