Mac's Picks is a collection of family friendly interesting and useful sites, updated weekly. These sites may be search engines, medical resources, household hints, educational resources, recipe sites, sites I call "head scratchers", and/or new sites dealing with all kinds of things of use to the general internet community. To find the criteria I use, simply click on the "Why and How Info" link on the right side of this page.

This page is updated on a weekly basis, each Tuesday evening Australian (Queensland) time (GMT + 9 hours according to the world clock). Please come back and visit often.

Important Note: If you are returning to my page, welcome back! Please click your "Refresh" or "Reload" button on the top of your Internet browser to ensure you are seeing the current week's page of my "Picks of the Week". Also, I would love for you to make my site your home page. Simply click on Tools - Options in Explorer, or Edit - Preferences in Netscape, and click Use Current and it's done.

Finding good recipes are never entirely easy. Recipes on the net are easy enough to find but good ones can elude you. Interestingly some of the news media find some of the best ones, as evidenced by those on the Sunrise on Seven Recipes site. In Australia, Channel Seven has a breakfast family type show called Sunrise on Seven and we, like many Australian residents, watch it each morning. Hop over and see some of the recipes they have found. They sound pretty good to me.

If you are new to the blogging world (blog=weB LOG), finding one with a subject you might be interested in following can be a challenge. Thus the Blog Search Engine - Blogs & MoBlogs Search site could be a useful addition to your bookmarks or favorites. Just put in the term you are looking for (say "tea cup collecting" ) and you might find a blog on that subject that would interest you. Give it a try.

How secure is your browser? Whether you use Internet Explorer, or Netscape, or Mozilla, or Firefox, or one of the myriad other browsers available to use, you should feel confident that it doesn't expose you to internet problems and nasties, and that your identity is reasonably well kept. If you hop over to Qualys Browser Checkup site you'll be able to test yours, and maybe find ways to make it more secure, or suggestions on which one will provide you with the level of security you need. Have a try and see how secure you really are.

Many folk like to download music and ultimately burn it onto a CD for use in their car or home CD player. The best known programs that get a lot of publicity, namely kazza and other similar programs, can leave your hard drive open to exploitation by others, and can also allow you to get a virused file from someone. However, so far, the Amazon.com Free Music Downloads Top Downloads site seems to be free of those problems, and I'm told it updates with new music every hour. Hop over and see if there is anything there you would like. Let the music play.

There are various simulations and animations online depicting the human body and how it works. One of the cleverest I've seen is the BBC - Science & Nature - Human Body and Mind - Interactive Body site. It actually turns it into a game of sorts, asking you where certain body parts connect with the central nervous system. Since I've been on a pain management clinic for the past 2 weeks (one week to go) I've come to know how important it is to know these locations and to keep them in good running order. This is a great way to learn more about the human system. Enjoy.

You finally went out and bought a DVD player, got it home, seemed to follow the instruction to attach it to your TV, turned it on, and something is obviously wrong as the DVD doesn't actually play back as it should. Do you fret? Do you take the player back and demand a refund? No, you hop over to theDVD Demystified site and most likely find out why it didn't work, or what really has to be attached where. Alternatively, phone your 6 year old grandson or granddaughter and ask him or her to come over and fix it for you. *smiles*

Have you ever had an occasion where you wanted to transfer a very large file to some other location? Maybe it is to a friend or colleague, or maybe it's simply between your place of work and your home. However, you know that if you send a file that size, the chance of it being received at all are very slim as most ISP mailbox sizes are quite small. However, if you hop over to the YouSendIt Email large files quickly, securely, and easily! site, register for free, and upload your file there, then send an email to your friend/colleague, etc asking them to go to a site you provide and download it to their computer, problem solved. This is a wonderful service to the net community that is amazingly still free. Have a try and you'll find that this is the easiest file transfer facility on the net.

You no doubt are aware that Google is the leading search engine on the net in many ways. You will also know that the folk at Google come up with some pretty inventive ways of doing things. I thought I'd let you look at one of their latest projects, which is simply another way of looking at searching on the net. On the Google Beta site you'll find the customary search box to enter your queries into. However, enter the search word or string slowly and watch the page. As you enter each letter a string of sites bearing that word will appear as a dropdown kind of menu, and you can simply click on the one that most suits your search team. Not sure it will take over as the method of choice for finding sites on the net, but it sure is innovative. Oh, and by the way, I still have some Gmail accounts available if anyone would like a web based email address, accessible to you through any computer on the planet with a net connection. Just drop me a note and I'll reply with the relevant links.

There are many journalistic photographers around the world, and those belonging to the National Press Photographer's Association in the US have formulated a contest designed for and by photojournalists to recognize good photojournalism. Have a look. Who knows - you may find tomorrow's photo-headline here.

I, like many, am an insulin dependant diabetic. One of the things that all endocrinologists like to see is the blood glucose readings of their patients on a regular basis so that they can offer advice on insulin dosage and diabetic management. A fellow in the USA wrote a wonderful site which allows the registered user to upload their bsl readings on a regular basis, and then to notify their endocrinologist what the site name is that they provide you with, so that he/she can check their patients bsl at any time they wish on the net. The site, called PlasmaGlucose.com - your web-based blood sugar diary! is a free service and I think deserves recognition. It also sets up either the US/Canada way of measuring BSL levels, and the mmol/ltr scale that the rest of the world uses. Which one to use is the patient's choice. And, this is FREE. I'm amazed that it is and personally send my compliments to this wonderful software writer for providing such a valuable resource to diabetic patients worldwide. Well done, and if you are a diabetic, do look this one over and join today.

Occasionally I find others on the net who do a sterling job of also supplying the net community with useful sites for their use. The site called Wonderful Life Favorite Links is indeed such a site. It lists all kinds of things broken down into categories for you to browse through. Do have a look but remember to come back here as well *smiles at his shameless self promotion.

I grew up in a town that had a major railroad pass directly through the middle of it, in Connecticut in the USA. The town, called Meriden, I believe still has the tracks though as it's been so many years since I was there I have no idea if trains still pass through the town. The reason for mentioning this piece of totally useless information is to introduce you to a site called RailPictures.Net - The BEST railroad photos on the 'net!. This site has all kinds of photos, even going back to the old steam engines (and yes, I'm old enough to remember when those were the major train pullers). If you would like some nostalgia, have a look and you'll relive childhood memories as well.

Have you ever become so frustrated with your printer that you just wanted to literally destroy it beyond recognition? Has it chewed its way through document after document, wasting expensive color cartridges on you, only to ensure that what was eventually produced was totally useless? Then you'll simply love the site called Death of a Printer. I have to admit I had a good chuckle at the site and at the work in putting it up. Luckily I've never had one of those printers (that fail I mean). My old venerable HP LaserJet 4ML is probably one of those that HP wished it had never produced. It isn't the fastest in the world, but it has continued to chug away nicely for over 10 years now, and it's still going. Got to admit, I can't complain. Hope yours works better than this poor bloke's one did.

Rebecca Game of "Digital Women - Women with their modems running...", is a graphic designer who is superb to say the least. Rebecca designed this "new look" web site specifically for me, and I can't praise her work enough. Her site, dedicated to women on the net, is worth seeing and bookmarking for future reference. If you are looking for links of interest to women, please visit her site. And if you need the best graphic designer on the planet, I seriously can't recommend her more highly. Oh yes, and when you visit her site, tell her Mac sent you. Thank you Rebecca. I am eternally grateful for your assistance and expertise. ;-)