I Need That Power Tool Badge

A Gardening Workout That Deserves a Power Tool Badge Over the last couple of days, I have checked off tasks that would meet requirements for several real badge: Adulting Is a Challenge That Deserves a Badge Scarecrows & Garden Gnomes But I really do think a Power Tool badge would be entirely appropriate. In the…

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Knitted Messages

Did Women Use Knitting to Send Secret Messages During the War? I recently read an interesting Facebook article explaining how women during wartime secretly communicated messages through their knitting, using different stitches to pass on coded information. I looked further and found many articles that claim: Phyllis Latour Doyle chatted to German soldiers, then opened…

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Sunflowers for Gnome Badge

I’ve been patiently holding on to a packet of sunflower seeds for six months, waiting to complete a challenge for the Scarecrows and Garden Gnomes badge. The instructions on the packet said the soil needed to be warm, so I had to wait for Ballarat’s weather to deliver a run of consistently hot days before…

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Ray Tomlinson: Inventor of Email

Ray Tomlinson and the Invention of  Networked Email Raymond Samuel Tomlinson (1941–2016) was an American computer engineer who is widely credited with sending the first networked email in 1971. At the time, he was working for Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN Technologies) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a company contracted to develop ARPANET, the early packet-switching network…

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The Myer Christmas Window

Today we embarked on our annual post-Christmas tradition of travelling by train to Melbourne to see the specially decorated windows at Myer. And it didn’t disappoint. This year, Myer partnered with The LEGO Group and Ryan “Brickman” McNaught to create an ambitious display with the theme of “A Playful LEGO Christmas Story”, narrated by LEGO…

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A lifetime of Guiding

On This Day: A Lifetime in Guiding Cherie Brown On this date back in 1980, I was enrolled as a Girl Guide during a candle-lit ceremony in a local church hall. The first time I made the Guide Promise. I wore a blue, zip-up pinafore with a light blue, long-sleeved shirt, and recited the old…

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