… for anyone and everyone to see it. Recently as some of you will know I won a competition with Nova 969 to have an ad done up to find a date. While at work the other day I was informed that it was highly likely that it would be going out in the work newsletter and they asked if I was OK with that.

Obviously I had no issues, I am always very careful that whatever I post or put on the net is something that I would not have issue with my family, friends or workmates seeing. However unfortunately so many people these days do not think about what they are putting up on things like Facebook and Twitter and often it can come back and bite them in the bum.

So follow this simple rule next time you are about to post something online think carefully, would I have any issue if my family saw this, or if my boss saw this? If your answer is yes you may want to rethink posting your thoughts online.
Stu

So, let me explain last week I heard on Nova 969 that Merrick, Dools and Monty from the breakfast show were running a competition to win a 30 second advertisement on the Jumbotron at next weeks State of Origin match.

In true Stuart style for a laugh I SMSd them my idea for the ad which was something along the lines of “Find me a date”. A couple of days later, I get a call from the Nova producers wanting to find out more about my idea. Long story short on Thursday morning I get the call… Merrick, Dools and Monty had me on the phone to let me know I had won the competition.

Not a few hours later I was in a studio in North Sydney recording an ad with the Nova team. Having been an avid listener to Nova since my days in high school I had always wanted to meet the team and last Thursday I got that chance and all I can say is that it was AWESOME. The Nova breakfast team were an absolute joy to meet, Merrick, Dools and Monty were just as funny in person as on the radio and were very kind and friendly especially while I was staring down the barrel of a camera to record a 30 second ad to try to find a date. Thankfully they were able to guide me through it all and we had a lot of fun during the production, I am soooo looking forward to seeing the outtakes.

The ad is still in production at the moment and as soon as it is released I will put it on the DateOfOrigin page. So needless to say I will be at the state of origin next week and if you are interested in keeping up with the details see DateOfOrigin.com to keep up with this insane adventure that Merrick, Dools and Monty are taking me on and a huge thank you to them once again. What can I say, I live every day like it will be my last and haha I have certainly learned over my life how to have a laugh at myself in the process.

You can listen to Merrick Dools and Monty on Nova 969 in Sydney 6am to 9am weekdays, you can also listen on the iPhone App or Online.

So let’s take a step back as that is a harsh viewpoint to start with, I post this to try to promote discussion between those who have cheated the system and those (like myself) who have not. I would like to understand why people do it… During my 6 and a half years at university (thus far) I have personally witnessed two *major* cases of plagiarism that raise strong concerns in just how often this is happening.

In this most recent case a group of students took screenshots of a public computer store’s website, proceeded to photoshop out the logo and put a new logo in its place, following which the group presented this as a prototype of a system that they themselves had developed.

Much to their dismay I recognised the site they had used to take their “prototype screenshots” and brought this up with both them (during the presentation) and the tutor following the conclusion of class.

What I wonder is why these student’s choose not to use their brains, for me university is a time for learning and a time to develop new skills hence I ponder these questions. Are they not happy in the degree they are doing, don’t they want to be there or do they just think that their is a very good chance that nobody will notice what they have done and they have saved themselves countless hours of work?

I have to wonder what type of graduates the industry will be getting, it seems more and more that I am encountering students that have little to no ethics what so ever so how will this translate into the professional ethics that are expected when working in the industry?

However the reason I ask this is to hopefully get some feedback, perhaps you are someone that has tried to slip someone else’s work through as your own or perhaps you have had to deal with it yourself. I am hoping that a few students can post on this (if you wish anonymously by just using the name Anonymous, email address donotreply@donotreply.com) and give me a little insight into why…

Random questions that have come to my mind that you might like to ponder (and hopefully discuss):

1. Have you cheated, plagiarised or the like?
2. Why did you, was it a lack of time, a lack of planning or was it just easier?
3. For those that haven’t have you seen it or encountered it? How does it make you feel?
4. For anyone and everyone is there something that would deter you from copying or cheating, is there something lecturers could do to make processes easier? I guess what would it take for you to never do it again?

If you are a student please share this with your friends on Facebook to get some discussion going and I look forward to finding out peoples thoughts.

So you are having a mate over and need to cook something up for dinner. Domino’s or Pizzahut have made you feel seedy just one too many times so what can you do? Cook yourself some homemade gourmet pizza.

Recently one of my mates gave me a very interesting new idea for cooking a wicked garlic and cheese pizza. Rather than using olive oil use some Danish butter. So I sourced myself some good Danish butter and made the following:

1. If like me you don’t have time to do a base, get your hands on either a gourmet pizza base from your local supermarket or lebanese bread also works surprisingly well.
2. Put 4 good sized tablespoons of Danish butter into a bowl
3. Add 4 to 6 cloves of fresh, crushed garlic (change depending on your taste)
4. Mix the crushed garlic in and leave to infuse the butter for an hour or so before cooking
5. Turn on your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (fan forced), and put your baking tray in the oven to heat it up
6. Grate up some fresh Mozzarella, Provolone, Asiago and Romano (in 60%, ~13%, ~13%, ~13% quantities respectively)
7. Cover the base in the garlic butter and top with the cheese mix
8. Put your pizza on some baking paper and put it onto the pre heated tray from the oven and cook until the cheese goes a golden brown (~15 to 20 mins).
9. Dig In

The reason for pre-heating the cooking tray is that it will assist to cook the base of the pizza by ensuring it goes straight onto a hot surface, if you place it on a cold tray the base will not cook as well as the tray has to fully heat up before the base will begin cooking from the bottom.

So what would you do differently? I look forward to hearing what other ideas people have for a gourmet homemade pizza.

Stuart