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.

Shameless Aggrandizing: This past week I was pleased to learn that my little site has reached the rank of 12th most popular in Goggle's Directory "Computers > Internet > On the Web > Best of the Web" index. Seeing as I've maintained this site for over 10 years I guess that's a sign I must be doing something right. Thank you all for your continued visits, and for those sites I have given a "Pick of the Week" award and who have decided to link back to my site in return. Friends, keep coming back each week and I'll keep trying to provide you with the best, most interesting, and most comprehensive family friendly sites on the net. Thank you again for your continued support.

If you've ever considered making your own blog, you will find the LiveJournal.com site useful. Basically it is a blogging tool and site where you can publish your blog for free. If you have something to say on a regular basis, try it. Remember, blogging is only good if it is updated regularly.

How long does it take to tell a good story? Think you could do it in a minute? Well, the folk at the 60 second story website not only thought so, they submitted their video clips of telling their original story to the site, voters voted on who was the best, and all the results (and a fair amount of 60 second stories) are here to be seen. Remember that these are video clips, works of fiction, 1 minute and 1 second or less in duration, told in low-bandwidth. Have a look.

All cultures, it seems, know and use honey as part of their diets. The benefits of using this natural health giving product go back to ancient Egyptian times. Honeycomb dating thousands of years old in some of the pyramids, has been found and it is still useful and edible. The Search for Recipe - Honey com site lets you in on some lovely recipes which incorporate honey as part of their makeup. Enjoy.

How is your knowledge about plant life in your garden? Mine is shocking as my golfing partner of many years will attest. However, even I can learn something about this subject from the Botany Photo of the Day sire. It has wonderful photos of lovely plants and gives a fair amount of information about each plant as well. See? There is hope for me yet.

If you live in the Southern Hemisphere and recently looked up at the moon, you would have seen a small dot alongside the moon. That small dot is the planet Jupiter, and though it looks like a dot alongside the moon, that is simply because of distance, not of size. Have a look at the At Home Astronomy - Science Experiments for the Entire Family site and involve your own family in the wonders of the universe. It's a massive place we live in. *smiles*

Folk from around the world usually have a different perspective on life, government, and the way things should be done. The Conversations with History site is especially interesting in that it has many many unedited video interviews with diplomats, soldiers, scientists etc. and covering a wide and diverse range of subjects for you to see. This is a massive project and one I feel you might be interested in seeing for yourself. Enjoy.

Have a look at the house you live in. Now think of how it could be improved - not so much in the sense of adding another room, but rather in the sense of being more environmentally friendly or more technologically sound in its use. Then hop over to the Houses of the Future site and see if their ideas match your own. Some amazing thoughts on what the future holds can be found here. Interesting stuff.

"When I were a lad ..." Goodness, how dated does that statement make me? To be frank, I'll be turning 64 later this week so I guess it probably fits. However, the reason for mentioning this at all is that I can remember being in school and studying the mysteries surrounding the tomb of the Egyptian King Tutankhamen. Surprisingly, this particular pharaoh still is being studied, as seen on the National Geographic Magazine - Unraveling the Mystery of King Tutankhamen site. The art of Archeology has been improved and even the thinking surrounding it has. Thus, this site is well worth a look. I know you'll find interesting stuff here.

Have you ever tried sending a large file to someone, say a spreadsheet or even a high definition photo? Some folk would find it daunting to try and receive that in their email. Enter WhaleMale. If you click on the WhaleMail Send big files fast site you'll see an answer to your problems. Send your file using this free service and your recipient will receive a web link to it so that they can download it at their leisure. Now that's an innovative idea and a great service to the Web community.

You no doubt hear about all kinds of nasty viruses that lurk around the net waiting to attack you. One is called Sulfnbk.exe - or... is it? Maybe it's just a hoax. There certainly are too many of those still floating around. Why not hop over to the SULFNBK.EXE - Hoax, Virus or WHAT site and read what it says there. It sure makes sense to me.

Did you know the Art Museum in Paris called the Louvre is celebrating its 10th anniversary on the net? It is, and if you click on their link called Site officiel du musée du Louvre you will be transported to their site and shown not only the festivities celebrating this feat, but also some of their magnificent displays. Really makes me want to visit it in person. Does it do the same for you?

And this week I'll end the page with one of the most innovative advertising companies and ideas I think I've ever seen. No doubt you, or your family, at one time or another, has tried to make a sandcastle. Usually they turn out to be two or three bucket shaped objects playing at being a castle of some sort. Hop over to the Sandsational Sand Sculpting site and have a look at their gallery of previous works. Yes, it's commercial as they would like to be hired to do your next piece of advertising but you must admit, this has gone a LONG way from being three buckets of sand. All I can say is when you want WOW, come to these folk. What they do is simply amazing.

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. ;-)