Ballarat Police Frequency – (Repeater, covering most of central western Vic) – 163.8250 Mhz

Ballarat Ambulance Frequency – (covers almost all RAV’s stations) 412.4750 Mhz

Ballarat CFA Frequency - (They use a number of them, main one then go to channels) – Main: 161.0250 Mhz Goto’s: 161.1625Mhz & 161.200Mhz

Ballarat Airport Frequency - (Main Traffic Channel) – 127.7500 Mhz – Mostly available in Wendouree areas, not so clear in CBD

Ballarat SES Frequency – (Not Much Action) – 459.1250 Mhz

Plover Security – (Ballarat CBD, a good old listen on your average Friday / Saturday night) – 469.9250 Mhz

UPDATE (15/02/2013) – This page is getting a huge amount of Google traffic from people looking for scanner frequencies etc if you’d like me to add more of a comprehensive list of local Ballarat frequencies please let me know by commenting below. Include specific information about each frequency you’d like me to add.

The line that reads “For all your IT requirements visit: http://www.transtec.co.uk” is both annoying and advertising another company that you or your company usually have no relationship with. The reason this line is in there is because TransTec sponsors MailScanner.

For web hosts and so forth it’s what I’d consider bad for business to be promoting another IT firm, so it’s wise to remove the promotion.

Each upgrade of MailScanner overwrites the previously edited Language files and brings back to life the Transtec message so I present a solution:

The English language files are stored at

/usr/mailscanner/etc/reports/en

To save you time and effort download the zip archive below containing all the .txt messages used by MailScanner for emails without the Transtec line.

DOWNLOAD: MailScanner v4.84.5 Clean Language Files (English) 12kb

Please note that each version of MailScanner will be different but there are usually very few changes to the language files. I’ll update the zip archive should the language files contain changes in future releases of MailScanner.

I get mail outs from Commerce Ballarat every so often and I can’t help but take notice at the Buy Local, Buy Ballarat emails I’m sent, the whole campaign lead by an organisation that thinks that their members have first dibs on Local trade well I’m writing this to have it said they’re getting it wrong, Jodie Gillett and the crew that do wonders at Commerce Ballarat (majority of the time) have started to dabble once again this year in the argument of supporting local retailers.

Well I’d agree, I’m a local business person myself but I certainly don’t think that I should ever stage an argument against my potential customers suggesting they’re wrong and that they should stop spending elsewhere it makes little sense to me. I have absolutely NO right to expect that I should be the local’s first port of call given the retail landscape I decided to trade in, you know with the internet and all.

First thing I’d suggest to Commerce Ballarat and it’s members is ditch the poorly formed stance and start evolving from their sales heritage, cut the crap essentially!

I’m as passionately against this campaign as Jodie Gillett at Commerce Ballarat is for it… and every un-biased way I look at it my argument stands strong.

Let’s face it, Ballarat traders have been most concerned about their own pockets, which is typically common sense but there is a fine line between common sense and greed, I’d never reasonably expect a business to run at a loss but you can’t expect to push huge mark-ups to the consumer.

What amazes me in Ballarat is the complete lack of will by retailers to differentiate, it means we all end up with a comparable same old same old retail experience with very little risk taking and consequently nothing new for the local shopper.

I’ve been in Ballarat for 3 years and from the day I got here until today I can accurately say that nothing has changed in the way of the Ballarat retailers mentality particularly in small business, however when I compare it to more populated and competitive urban areas there is great change and an ever evolving experience for the consumer, ie Melbourne, Geelong etc.

I could ramble for hours and write pages about my position on this subject but to be concise in my professional business development experience the main contributing factors are quite simply laid out in front of each and every retailer with the following key problems existent as experienced over my time in Ballarat:

- Far too much over valuing on products and services as well as business image.
- A massive lack being consumer centric!
- Staff who lack general manners, etiquette and ability to provide outstanding customer service.
- No point of difference especially no encouragement for the average consumer to feel satisfied if they spend.
- No regard for the ever advancing level of knowledge and whit of the average customer

That’s a very basic and fundamental list of common issues within many businesses but I’ve found in my experiences as a consumer in the Ballarat region that these issues are often significant and I have become far less inclined to shop locally for speciality items because of a consistent number of bad experiences.

Now I’ve given an overview of my position on the subject in question so let me detail a very recent scenario of mine:

I was looking to fit out a house with the basic contents, decor, appliances etc and obviously I’m a smart consumer as are many of the modern consumers these days.

I shopped around locally, for days, itemised EVERY ITEM I was going to purchase from lamps to lamp tables, fridges to washing machines you name it I had it on my list, excluding the national retailers like Kmart, Target and Big W I had managed to come up with a budget based on local retail prices.

I then spent around 1-2 hours researching each product, pricing them, comparing them and generally working out what I could save should I buy online.

I then come up with a maximum budget for each local store, for my example I’ll use Michael’s Furniture in Wendouree, I’d priced what I needed online, as well as in store and set my max budget exactly half way between the difference of Michael’s pricing and the online pricing I had a figure of $1875.00 so I went back to the store and said look I can get all these items at this price online or in Geelong (just the lounge suite was in Geelong) and I’d be most happy to spend locally should they be able to meet me at this figure, long story short they declined and I subsequently made my purchases online and borrowed a ute, travelled to Geelong and got the lounge suite.

Now, this is a very good example of why I can’t and won’t buy local, buy Ballarat. To me it’s an insult to see organisations like Commerce Ballarat making suggestions that locals have a lack of regard for the local economy and local jobs.

Why should I take a hit to my pocket and be insulted like that all because I’m a savvy, smart and educated consumer?

If you could save $590 would you buy online or in another township?

It’s not as if I did not try and buy locally, I did and I also would rather local people to talk to if my lounge suite breaks or needs repairs but there was absolutely no other compelling reason for me to spend my money in Ballarat when I could save like I did.

I would be far more comfortable spending locally for a little more should service be better, should I enjoy my shopping experience or if I had felt as though I was being looked after but again locally that’s not going to happen.

At the end of the day there are dozens of massive national chains who turn over millions of dollars because they offer a point of difference… Look at JB-HIFI for example, they have rock bottom pricing, they’re marketing is appealing to the demographic they serve and they are reliable and their staff work hard for each sale in my experience. This kind of business practice and innovation will rarely be seen amongst your average Ballarat business.

I would openly encourage every local person to start buying elsewhere, don’t lower your expectations on a falsely preached idealistic buy local campaign that I could easily define as propaganda and start demanding more for your money, a better buying experience and a more consumer centric feel to each and every transaction.

That said, if you find a local business that’s ticking all the boxes then get behind them, word of mouth is powerful and well deserved in some (not many) instances around Ballarat.

It’s the best lesson we can teach Commerce Ballarat, it’s members and all the other retailers around Ballarat and it will ultimately benefit you and the rest of us ‘consumers’.

- Get the doco from St George, it’ll help you understand how the Webpay API works.
- Download the Linux dev kit package from St George, Or click here and save to your PC. (wget won’t work because they need a useragent, it’s like 150kb so i had no issues with this but you could possibly use wget -U flag)
- Prepare your server, ensuring it’s got all the required bits and bobs!

Prepare the server with all the bits we need, most should already be installed if not all!

yum install swig
yum install gcc gcc-c++ autoconf automake
yum install sed

yum is great and makes this all fairly easy at this stage. You’ll also need PERL and I think php-devel but they’re there already in most cases.

- Upload your SDK to say the /root directory then decompress the taball

tar -xzvf StGeorgeLinuxAPI-3.3.tar.gz
cd webpaySWIG-3.3


That should expand to webpaySWIG-3.33 and that’s where all the goodies are.

Edit the config within the makefilePhp5 file as follows:

nano makefilePhp5

Now edit the values as below but NOTE: your directory location can be different from what I’ve used, using phpinfo() should reveal the correct extension directory.

PHP_EXTENSIONS  = /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/ - Line 33
PHP_INCLUDE_DIR = /usr/include/php/ – Line 37

LIB_LOCATION  should be the same at PHP_EXTENSIONS and the makefile is scoped this way, if it’s not then change it.

Once done save the file. We’re ready to compile the libraries and complete the first stage. Run the below command:

make -f makefilePhp5

This will build the API for php on your server. But we’re not done yet!!!

Time to test and see how we go, the dev kit is packaged with some test scripts, the simplest is the located in php5 a file caled test.php you may need to edit this file more than just come config varibles but you can avoid this by enabling the dl() function (on cPanel go to ‘PHP Configuration Editor’ and check yes to enable_dl) Now to test we’ll use the certificate file the St George bank sent you… Upload it to the following directory on your server /root/webpaySWIG-3.3/

Now we can edit the test.php file and use some real settings use nano or vi to edit php5/test.php

There are a range of options at the top of this script, all definitions so just edit them, they’re self explanatory but you should use port 3007 for testing and www.gwipg.stgeorge.com.au for the server.

You could potentially run the require tests that St George stipulate with this script, you’ll just need to edit the transaction data part below the main config.

Once done save… we can now run a test from the command line:

php-cli php5/test.php OR php php5/test.php

The output will be displayed and if you get a transaction result and no errors you’ve done it.

Depending on how you’re going to use the IPG you might find it easy to add the library to your servers php.ini file.

Add this: extension=webpay_php.so

In some instances I’ve seen all sorts of random errors that really made no sense when I attempted to diagnose them but I’ve found for a number of issues you it’s because the SSL libraries could not be loaded so we need to create a symlink to them just run the below commands:

ln -s /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 /lib/libcrypto.so.6
ln -s /usr/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0 /lib/libssl.so.6

Now I think you’ll be all done… If you’re using Magento or similar it does not stop there you’ve only installed the API now you need to implement something to interface with it. In my experience Magento users grab this Mage extension from fontis it which in my experience is solid and stable.

Edit: Mage = Magento (Shorter and easier to day)

Please add a comment below if you have anything to add, or wish to thank me for this tutorial… I’ve had quite a number of emails from many people who’ve used this to their benefit but I like comments too.

I’ve just spent a motza on a new car and I just don’t want to see that go to waste

So all these TV ads and all the other propaganda I see about car insurance that I have always tried to ignore have become important to me, see now that’s why advertising works!

So I’m seeing youi as a very attractive option, they advertise a lot and their marketing campaigns fit well with me, they’re fresh and generally target this young market. I see AAMI with their ad’s that easily related to me because they’re filmed in my town and I played my part in the production of said ads. I’ve then got family, who’s word I generally trust telling me they are all with Budget direct! I’m like ahhh ok and I think I’ve made my mind up to go with Budget direct.

WRONG… I haggled the car dealer  down significantly, over two days I’d harassed and talked the dealer down a bucket load! So come time to sign the contract of sale the talk was over. I started talking about more general things like Insurance. They say we hear AAMI is pretty good, I’m like oh yeah tell me more, they start firstly telling me that some insurers base their premiums on the age of the youngest driver others base it on driving share eg: 23yo driver 90% driver and 18yo driver 10% driver and in their experience AAMI is most popular, for me I’ve got the need for an 18yo driver.

So I’m like ahhhh I need to shop around and such, in the process I began to educate myself on the features of Comprehensive car insurance and after no time at all a number of them became important, I was well a truly shopping around, I had started to look beyond the price and I’m now looking into things like rental car cover, new for new cover and the excess.

I google comprohensive car insurance and I’m getting all these comission junkies with their heavily SEO optimised pages offering comparisons with selected insurers. I’m thinking that’s cool I can do with some comparisons and so off I go.

I’m instantly seeing insurers that I’ve never heard of and I’m not seeing all the ones I know of. Ahhhhhh but I’m able to have a side by side comparison of all the important features, I’m seeing 12 month and 24 month new for new and I now won’t settle for less than 24 months, out goes half of the insurers.

I’m looking at price now… probably the second most important consideration I’ve got a quote from youi and it’s $1500+ per year.

I’m told that sounds alright by friends etc but I’m not stopping there, I got to budget and I’m getting $920 per year and they guarantee to beat any price or give you $100 cash! So I’m like sweet that’ll do but then I recall the dealer telling me AAMI is pretty good, and let’s face it I’m a bloke and I think their ‘face’ is attractive (the call center chic that’s clearly a model) so off i go to aami.com.au and fill in the form bang I get a quote, now before I talk about price I wanna talk about their site. Bang, the website was by far the best for me I’m anal and wanna read everything, be sure they’re legit and that I’m not missing some fine print. I get to their quote page and it’s user friendly super easy to use and it’s got every option I wanted and the best bit they’re by far the cheapest coming in at $720 per year!!!

Then I’m reading for under 25′s they will give you a free driver course which reduces the cost by 10% – I’m in!!!

Their price was the best and I’m not even going to go back to budget and have them beat it, because I want my driver course!

So after my shopping around I see AAMI are the best for car insurance, especially for me in my circumstances, and if I’d never compared I’d have settled for youi.

Moral of my rambling, shop around, don’t fall for the elaborate advertising campaigns and look further than price!

In the end I settled for AAMI at $720 per year and I’m booked for their driver course which should be a blast!