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 Monday 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.

You may have heard recently that the north of Queensland Australia had a very large and damaging tropical storm. It not only devastated homes and buildings, it also virtually wiped out the banana crop, most of which is grown up there. Thus, our bananas in the grocery shops have risen astronomically in price, making them a prized commodity. If you have bananas as part of your diet, there has to be more interesting ways of eating them than simply peeling down the skin and chomping away, and indeed The Australian Banana Growers Council Inc. Recipes site will show you some delicious sounding ways to use them. One might as well go to the right source for info. Enjoy.

I recently found an interesting new way of handling all of those open applications on your desktop called Deskloops. In effect it slides the open applications on your desktop in and out as you need them. If you are running Windows XP you'll find it works just fine. Unfortunately it doesn't work on Windows 2000 or below, but on XP it seems to work very well and I think would make computing in general a much nicer experience. Hop over to the Deskloops 1.4 Free Download - Softpedia site and give it a try if you have XP on your system. Gimmicky? A little but why be boring just because you are working on a computer? Give it a try.

When looking for interesting and educational sites for my grandsons I came across the iKnowthat.com - Online Multimedia Educational Games for Kids in Preschool, Kindergarten, and Elementary Grades site and I have to say I'm impressed. Kaitoa, our eldest grandson (4) is smart enough to do most of the things on this site and enjoy doing them as well. This is a good one to bookmark for the young ones in your midst. Of course, as with all sites on the net, go with them when they surf to this site and help them learn in a fun way.

Many folk have now changed to the browser called Firefox in lieu of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. If you have, did you know there are many things you can do to make that experience even better? Hop over to Scot's Newsletter - The Best Of Best Firefox Extensions and Customizing Tips and have a browse around. If you use Firefox you might want to bookmark this one too as I'm sure more tweaks will find their way here in future.

When travelling to another country it's not a bad idea to find out what the local laws are on various subjects. Until reasonably recently that hasn't been an easy task. However now that the Global Legal Information Network site is online it should be reasonably easy to check things out before you enter that other country and, quite literally, put your foot in it. Travel safely and know the law.

How many kitchen and cooking myths do you know of? There are many that are passed around as "gospel" but indeed have no basis in fact at all. If you hop over to the Kitchen Myths site you'll find many of them. The good thing about this site is that it debunks the ones that aren't true. My favourite one is "if you add alcohol to something you are cooking the heat will dissipate the alcohol and just leave the flavor". Wrong. I figured out that one long ago because no one tries to light beer on fire but you can hardly say there is no alcohol present. Have a look. It could help you in your own kitchen.

As you may know, I often give talks to interest groups about various aspects of the Internet, and I almost always use Microsoft's PowerPoint to make a presentation and add my own commentary to it. If you have PowerPoint, but are a little reluctant to use it because no one taught you how, you might want to visit the Microsoft Office Training Create your first presentation site and have a read. Yes, Microsoft itself shows you how to use this wonderful presentation tool for that talk or presentation you are about to give. Have a look. It's worth the time and it's free as well.

Do you remember studying about the massive volcanic eruption that literally killed the city of Pompeii and all its inhabitants in ancient times? How much can you remember about that disastrous event? Did you know they are still researching the results of it? If it perks your interest as it did mine, hop over to the Pompeii Stories from an Eruption site and have a browse around. Interesting site to say the very least, and well worth a look.

Those of us in the southern hemisphere are more concerned with the Antarctic continent than the Artic, simply because it's on our doorstep to start with. Many countries have permanent bases there for scientific study, and the SCAR - Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research site will show you the work of that organization in trying to ensure that good solid, and in some cases, collaborative research is done on that wonderful frozen polar icecap. Have a look.

Most of us acknowledge that other renewable energy sources need to be found as fossil fuels are becoming not only less in number but also contribute much more to global warming than many governments want to admit. Thus, The Solar Guide, which bills itself as "your guide to solar and renewable energy" is well worth a look. All of us are in this same predicament friends, no matter where on this little green globe you live. Have a look and discuss it with your friends and family. Who knows - you might just spark the idea that will affect all of us in a positive way in the future.

If you are a frequent visitor to my site you will have gathered by now that I love good jazz. What you don't know is that a very good friend of mine, who has been in the music industry for many years, just celebrated his 90th birthday, and he's still going. This incredible musician, who is without doubt the most accomplished musician I have ever known, beside being a fantastic individual and his lovely wife Gina, have a site that shows a little of what they have collaborated on over the years, called The Time Machine Project- Russel and Gina Garcia. Russel is one of the very few men I've ever looked up to. His lovely wife, Gina, is also one of the few women I've known who I respect with absolute sincerity. Russell worked for Verve Records, as well as Paramount Studios and Bethlehem Records. The people he did background conducting for on many many recordings include such notables as Anita O'day, Billy May, Blossom Dearie, Shirley Horn, Ray Hargrove, Toots Thieleman, Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme, Oscar Peterson, Margaret Whiting, Stan Getz, and the list goes on and on. A quote from the Journal of the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors says "Garcia's ability to combine beautifully the songs, the sections of the orchestra, and the soloists is remarkable, without a hint that these are among his first major works." I couldn't have said it better myself. And the quote about The Time Machine is because, if you've ever seen the original film of that story, Russel did all of the music for it, and conducted the orchestra. Russel, Happy Belated 90th Birthday old friend. Folks, do have a look at this site. Russel and Gina are real treasures and one heck of a couple.

Now I know some folk love to dabble in science and some have actually formed groups to try various things, but I must admit that finding a group, who state as their rational for being, that they wish to make a Sugar Shot to Space might be just stretching things a bit. What the group is trying to do is send an amateur rocket up to space, which is interesting and possibly a good thing, but they plan on using sugar as the primary fuel. Have a look and no matter what your views on sugar and its affect on children might be, you might want to rethink it all. It sure does work as an energy source *chuckles*.

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. ;-)