Month: May 2019

Putting an honest-to-goodness lightsaber in your hands and making interactive characters from a galaxy far, far away appear in your lounge room as holograms, Lenovo's Star Wars: Jedi challenges headset is great way to pass the time while you wait for the new movie later this year.

These headsets were originally released almost two years ago, but they now represent a much better value for Star Wars fans (and especially kids). Not only have they shed $300 off the price, currently coming in at $99 each, but the app powering the experience has seen some substantial content updates.

The first thing you'll notice about the package is that the included lightsaber is very cool. It's heavier and more authentically detailed than I expected, and if it wasn't for the light-up rubberised nubbin at the end (necessary for tracking in AR), you'd think it was a collectible to put on your shelf.

The visor itself is an ingeniously simple device, though I was a little nervous putting a $2000 phone into it. There's a stiff plastic case that you snap your device into, after you've set up the app, and then you attach a cable to the phone and put the whole drawer into the headset. Unlike phone-based VR you won't be face-to-face with your device's display, instead a mirror reflects images onto the visor so you see the blue-tinged holograms projected into your real-world surroundings.

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Setup can take some time to work out, what with pairing the lightsaber by bluetooth and finding enough clear floor for it all to work, but once it's ready you get a legitimately magical moment. Holding the lightsaber up between yourself and the included beacon light that you set on the floor, you hit a button and the blade shoots out from the hilt with an electric krsshhhh straight from the films (sound comes from your phone's speakers, or earbuds).

I don't want to oversell what you're getting here. The graphics are simple, and so dull that you really need to play at night or with all the curtains drawn. But swinging a legit lightsaber around your house and having it look (and sound!) like you're hitting stuff is brilliant.

When fighting waves of droids you can reflect blaster bolts with an impressive degree of accuracy to take them out, or wait until they come close and slash. You'll also have to duel against other saber-users like Darth Maul, but you can't just swing away at them. Indicators appear to let you know when you need to block, dodge or strike, and it's a lot of fun even though it's essentially Simon Says with Sith Lords.

The main mode is filled with menus that are a bit clumsy to navigate, but it's essentially a series of scenarios of increasing difficulty, plus a second campaign added after launch that's themed after The Last Jedi. A Lenovo rep told me more content was on the cards going forward, but wouldn't confirm whether a Rise of Skywalker campaign was planned.

The most exciting update since the headsets launched is that you can now wield your lightsaber against a friend. Each player needs his or her own phone, lightsaber and beacon to play, and you need to be on the same Wi-Fi, but with that sorted it works great. The game choreographs the fights and lets each player know where they should be striking or how they should be blocking, and even though you're not physically hitting each other with anything the glow and clash of the two lightsabers can make the battles feel intense.

Outside of swordplay, there are two additional, slower-paced modes that you can play on the floor. The first is a strategy game that sees you commanding troops on the battlefield, while the second is an authentic (and complicated!) version of Dejarik; the holographic chess game that R2D2 plays against Chewie.

What's most impressive about the whole package is how true it is to all manner of Star Wars properties. There are characters from the original trilogy, prequels and latest films, as well as the Clone Wars and Rebels TV shows, and having them show up as enemies or allies is always a treat. Of course, even if you're not a Star Wars buff, jumping around your lounge room and swinging a laser sword at robots can still be very satisfying.

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Few people can quit their day job and start full-time in a new venture tomorrow. Even fewer people should.

The path to turning something from an idea to a side-hustle and, eventually, a full-time enterprise is best taken at a slow and consistent pace.

It's not what people want to hear, but it's true.

People want to hear about the overnight successes whereas there's power in the reality: hopes and dreams won't bring you success, but consistent hard work will.

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In 2013 I started work in earnest on my last company, Tweaky. At the time I was running an agency business and time was in short supply. I tried to shoe-horn work on the business in between client work, in the mornings before anyone got into the office, or any other spare moment I had.

But it was messy. Unstructured. Ad hoc. And ultimately unproductive.

I couldn't afford to go full-time on the venture, but we also weren't making any revenue and we weren't exactly a top candidate for investors.

The tipping point came when my cofounder and I set aside dedicated time each week to build our vision, and guarded this time jealousy.

Within a few months we launched our minimum viable product, signed our first paying customers and eventually raised our first round of capital to transition to full-time.

Here is how we did it.

Create dedicated time and space every week

For us to make progress every week we had to block out all of the intrusions from daily life. To do this we met up in person every Tuesday night and Sunday morning. It was six – eight hours every week with the single intention of making Tweaky into a revenue generating business.

Each session would start with a review of the previous session and the priorities in front of us. We'd then get to work on delivering the next piece of work.

It's easy to overestimate how much you can get done in one of these sessions – some weeks the total output could be a as little as a few emails to prospective customers – but we also underestimated how much we could achieve in a couple of months.

The key is not to let any other activities encroach on this space not matter what happens. Even a single week's distraction would set back our progress streak and risk the milestones we were trying to hit.

Interrogate your idea to make sure it's right for you

There's nothing more wasteful than spending years of your life working on the wrong thing.

Two years ago I was searching for my next big idea to build into a company. At the time I was working at GoDaddy which had more than 3,500 customer support people working around the clock and I was interesting in opportunities to optimise their work through artificial intelligence, "follow the sun" scheduling, and distributed teams.

I spent about two months working on the idea only to realise that while it was a great opportunity, there was customer demand and investor interest, it wasn't something I could get excited about. I mothballed the project and moved on – potentially saving myself years of loveless work.

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Most founders I meet spend as little as a week thinking of their startup idea before they dive into it wholeheartedly. If you consider that this is something that you will invest more than 10 years of your life into, it's worth taking the time to make sure it's the right one for you.

Interrogate yourself to truly understand what your skill set is, where your passions lie, and what work you enjoy doing.

Interrogate industries and ideas to understand where they will be in 10 years. Understand what your options are and make an educated decision before you jump in to the deep end with all your might.

Keep customers at the forefront

Any week that goes by without talking to a customer is a waste. Even more wasteful if you're not using every opportunity to truly understand how they work, and what they need. The best companies of the future are the ones that listen intensely to their customers and deliver on their needs.

Talking to customers does two main things.

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First it keeps you honest. You might come up with all kinds of cool ways to solve a perceived problem, but you won't know if it's relevant if you don't truly understand the problem you're solving and validate it through customer interviews.

Secondly it keeps you motivated. I've had many sleepless nights not knowing if what I was working on even mattered. Competitors launch into your same category with a boatload of funding. Or a customer churns off of your product. Or a key hire quits. You ask yourself "why are we doing this again?"

Then you talk to a customer and it all comes flooding back: you hear the pain in their voice when they talk about their problems, and the excitement when you offer a way to solve it. And then you have the fuel you need to get back to work.

Sell earlier than you're comfortable with

The lifeblood of any business is sales. You can only go so far on hopes and dreams, it's revenue that keeps the lights on.

Many customers you talk to will get excited about what you're building. Or at least appear so. In reality many are just infected by your enthusiasm. Or by wanting to support you. Or by some kind of altruism.

The true test of what you're building – and the path to graduate from a part-time, nights & weekends team to a full-time business – is through sales. This is where the rubber meets the road: do they just like you, or is this a pain so acute they're willing to pay you to solve it.

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Starting anything new is tough. It takes a lot of determination, countless hours worked, and often a healthy dose of delusion to get something from zero to 0.1.

But there is a process you can follow to bringing it closer to reality. It just requires dedicated time, working on the right idea, with deep customer empathy and turning conversations into paying customers. Your mileage may vary but this is how I've done it – working nights and weekends.

Ned Dwyer founded Elto (formerly Tweaky) which was acquired by GoDaddy in 2015. He is LaunchVic's expert in residence at coworking space Neighbourhood in May. 

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From a town that defined Australia in the estimation of poet Henry Lawson, to a town that shamed it, the north-western NSW town of Bourke is on a path to redemption.

Six years ago Bourke topped the state in six out of eight major crime categories, and the Herald reported that it was more dangerous than any country on earth when its per capita crime rate was compared with United Nations data.

These days towns from all over Australia are asking its leaders for advice on how to reduce incarceration rates and improve the prospects of their Aboriginal inhabitants.

It has been an interesting journey from the lowpoint of 2013.

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"That was a stark reality check, finding out how we're being perceived by the broader community in Australia," Indigenous leader Alistair Ferguson said.

"It was a case of just, something was way overdue. We had to take drastic measures."

Mr Ferguson knew instinctively that those drastic measures would have to come from the community itself.

It was not due to lack of funding that the Darling River town found itself in the situation it was in. Hundreds of millions of dollars had been poured into addressing social disadvantage in the Aboriginal population.

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But relationships with the service providers, individuals and the police force were marked by mutual mistrust and cynicism. Bourke needed a new approach.

So in 2013 Aboriginal leaders including Mr Ferguson partnered with Just Reinvest NSW, an independent group that advocates for the reallocation of public funds from prisons to early intervention programs, and started at the bottom.

From that time, the Aboriginal community devised its own programs and all 27 tribal groups in the area had input through representation on a new Aboriginal Tribal Council.

Their relationship with the police and other agencies was reset, and began again in a spirit of goodwill.

Instead of focusing on law and order, efforts were concentrated on addressing the underlying causes of crime.

"It’s the opposite of a top down approach," Just Reinvest NSW chairwoman Sarah Hopkins said.

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"We’re not coming in with a magic bullet. It’s the community looking at a whole-of-life course approach to addressing juvenile and adult offending."

An impact assessment by KPMG last year found the new approach had saved $3.1 million in 2017 alone, mostly in relation to the justice system but also costs such as crisis payments and health care.

There was a 23 per cent reduction in domestic violence incidents reported to police, a 42 per cent reduction in the number of days spent in custody for adults and an 84 per cent increase in the completion rate of VET courses.

NSW Health Minister and designated "champion" for Bourke Brad Hazzard said community-led models always had the best chance of success.

"There are already successes including massive reductions in domestic violence, but it's also provided the glue for the community to come together," Mr Hazzard said.

Some of the initiatives were very simple. The number of people arrested for driving offences decreased sharply following the introduction of a learner driver program.

NSW Police Commander Greg Moore said although crime rates were still high there had been significant reductions in offences such as domestic violence and homicide.

Instead of waiting for a crisis, officers visited known perpetrators of domestic violence and talked to them about triggers, which might prompt the men to stick to mid-strength beer or spend the night away from their partner on nights they drank.

"What’s uncle doing here?" the men asked in the early days. "Uncle is here because we’re worried about you because every Thursday night you have a skinful and put your partner in hospital," Superintendent Moore replied.

Police also became involved in employment strategies for young people to prevent the idleness that sometimes led to crime. An abattoir that opened in January provided 82 jobs to the region, some of them going to young men whose parents and grandparents had never worked.

"A lot of kids are coming from families where there’s been no history of employment for generations. That’s a cycle we wanted to break," Superintendent Moore said.

Nobody pretends that all problems are solved. The number of drug and alcohol-related hospital admissions has increased. High school attendance remains low. Support within the community is not unanimous.

But Mr Ferguson said it feels for the first time like cultural change is afoot.

"We’ve gone from being the most dangerous town, which didn’t go down too well, and managed to turn that into a positive and make our town one of the safest in the world."

Tony Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and best-selling author known for embedding himself in the worlds he wrote about, died on Monday in Washington. He was 60.

His wife, Geraldine Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, said he had collapsed while walking in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and was declared dead at George Washington University Hospital. The cause has not yet been determined, she said.

Horwitz was on the staff of The Wall Street Journal when he won the 1995 Pulitzer for national reporting for his vivid accounts of grim working conditions in low-wage jobs, including those at garbage recycling and poultry processing plants. He later wrote for The New Yorker on the Middle East before amplifying his brand of participatory journalism in nonfiction books.

His immersion in the subculture of battlefield re-enactors led in 1998 to Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War, which was a New York Times best seller.

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He followed that with another Times bestseller, Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before (2002), in which he retraced the Pacific voyages of explorer James Cook; A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World (2008), a revisionist view that plays down the significance of the Pilgrims; and Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War (2011).

His latest book, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide, published this month, retraces the antebellum meanderings of Frederick Law Olmsted, whose dispatches for The Times, long before he gained fame for designing Central Park and other urban landscapes, sought to fathom the soul of the slaveholding states and find common ground among Americans of good will.

Horwitz, who lived in West Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, was scheduled to read from Spying on the South on Tuesday night at Politics and Prose, a popular book store in Washington.

"Tony created his own unique genre of history and journalism in book after book," David William Blight, a professor of American history at Yale and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, said in an email. "His search for Olmsted's journey was Tony's own brilliant mirror held up to all of us about the awful social and political sicknesses we face now as Olmsted's epic journey showed the same for the South and the road to the Civil War."

Anthony Lander Horwitz was born June 9, 1958, in Washington, the son of Dr. Norman Horwitz, a neurosurgeon, and Elinor (Lander) Horwitz, a writer. Norman Horwitz was part of the team that operated successfully in 1981 on Officer Thomas Delahanty, who was shot in the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.

When he was six, Tony learned that his 101-year-old great-grandfather, an immigrant from czarist Russia, had become an American Civil War buff. So did Tony's father, and Tony became one, too. His Confederates in the Attic, he wrote, portrayed the war as a Rorschach test of "all sorts of unresolved strife: over race, sovereignty, the sanctity of historic landscapes and who should interpret the past."

After graduating from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, Tony Horwitz graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a bachelor's degree in history and earned a master's from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1983. He was later a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard and president of the Society of American Historians.

Horwitz turned to newspaper reporting after a stint as a union organizer in Mississippi. He was an education reporter for The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel in Indiana from 1983 to 1984 and a general reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia from 1985 to 1987 before joining The Wall Street Journal in 1990 as a foreign correspondent in Europe and the Middle East.

He and Brooks won the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award in 1990 for their coverage of the Persian Gulf war.

He returned to the United States in 1993 and reported on workplace issues while assigned to The Journal's Pittsburgh bureau.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by their sons, Nathaniel and Bizu; his mother; his sister, Erica; and his brother, Joshua.

"His journalism was always participatory, and he took readers along for the ride," Joel Achenbach, a reporter for The Washington Post, said by email Tuesday. "He climbed masts on sailing ships, rode mules, marched with Confederate re-enactors, and ventured into dive bars in the remote crossroads of America."

Horwitz was driven by an antic energy and unquenchable curiosity. While reporting in the Middle East, he lay down on a battlefield to block Iraqi earthmovers from burying Iranian soldiers in mass graves so that their comrades might claim the bodies, financial journalist Michael Lewis recalled.

He endured a sweat lodge in the Pacific for four hours, all the while feeling as if he were being cooked alive, because, he told an interviewer at Ohio State University in 2009, "I think it's the sickness of writing that however horrible the experience is, some little voice inside is saying, 'Yeah, but this is going to be a great story.'"

"He was easily bored with conventional explanations," Lewis said, "and his restlessness led him to places a normal person wouldn't get to."

Horwitz was a gifted interviewer. In Confederates in the Attic,"he engaged the only living Confederate widow at the time in a conversation about the future, in which she predicted, "If it's like it usually been bein', it won't be so good." And for his latest book, following in Olmsted's footsteps, he got "the drift of things" in the South by cultivating sources in after-hours interviews in dive bars from the Potomac River to the Rio Grande.

Horwitz wrote in The Times last month: "Last week I saw my cardiologist. He told me I drink too much."

Horwitz acknowledged his occupational hazard, but made a case for what he called bar-stool democracy. His sojourn in the South, he said, had him discarding stereotypes and seeing blue-collar conservatives as "the three-dimensional individuals I drank and debated with in factory towns, Gulf Coast oil fields and distressed rural crossroads."

He expressed the hope that they would remember him not as "one of those 'coastal elites' dripping with contempt and condescension toward Middle America," he wrote, but "rather, as that guy from 'up north' who appeared on the next bar stool one Friday after work, asked about their job and life and hopes for the future, and thought what they said was important enough to write down."

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An Australian who was rescued after he was stranded unconscious on Mount Everest has been identified as Gilian Lee.

Mr Lee's against-the-odds survival comes amid a horror climbing season, with 11 mountaineers reported dead or missing so far during the northern hemisphere spring.

Few details have emerged since news first broke of the miraculous rescue, which involved a yak and a team of Tibetan alpine specialists who were on the mountain doing repair work.

The team stumbled across Mr Lee at an altitude of 7500 metres on the northern slopes of the mountain on Wednesday last week.

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Facebook posts from an account in Mr Lee's name indicate he was attempting to climb Everest without oxygen tanks.

The day before he was rescued, Mr Lee posted on Twitter that he'd had a "rough night" at Camp One, a waypoint on the path to the top of the mountain located at an elevation of about 6000 metres, due to a persistent chest infection.

Mr Lee's rescuers used a yak to drag him to the safety of base camp, where people embark on the trip to the summit. The Canberra man was reportedly taken to a hospital in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, where his condition has improved according to China Daily.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has refused to provide any other details about his dramatic survival story, citing privacy reasons.

'Every day of delay is a nightmare'

Mr Lee had documented his frustrations in the lead up to his Everest climb on social media throughout May.

"Plans getting worse by the day," Mr Lee wrote on Facebook on May 9. "Lot of wind at the summit from the south side direction."

He wrote that he was based at the Chinese Base Camp, which is less popular than the base camp on the Nepalese side, but that the Chinese rope fixing team who prepare the path for climbers had not arrived.

"Every day of delay is a nightmare," Mr Lee wrote.

And he spoke about the particular challenges of trying to prepare for an Everest ascent without using oxygen cylinders. Mr Lee said that without being able to climb higher than Camp One, he was unsure about acclimatising to the low oxygen levels further up the mountain.

"The science for acclimatisation for non-O2 [oxygen cylinder climbing] is not as well known. Does one really need to hit high high? Last year a higher point worked OK. It's all out of my hands … horrible feeling," Mr Lee concluded.

Climbing without oxygen appeared important for Mr Lee. When a friend queried his decision on Facebook, Mr Lee said that if he were climbing with oxygen "I might as well chop 50 per cent of the mountain height off."

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He said he had summitted another extremely high peak, Manaslu, which is the eighth highest mountain in the world and also in Nepal, without oxygen tanks.

A day earlier, Mr Lee had been more optimistic, writing that his "support and sherpa team are looking strong and committed."

In a post on his blog, he described climbing Everest as "unfinished business" because of a failed attempt that he blamed on "being horrendously let down by the expedition company", which he called an inexperienced, Indian-run company.

"I have put a lot of pressure onto myself. I am running out of $$ to keep chasing this dream," Mr Lee wrote.

"I will never take supplemental O2, as it is just not me. It is like asking Alex Honnold to use a rope in his monumental solo climb up El Capitan. Defeats the purpose of being there in the first place in my opinion. This will be the last throw of the dice."

A mountain under strain

The heavy death toll from this year's climbing season has put the issue of overcrowding on the iconic mountain back in the spotlight.

Climbers have shared photos taken just below the summit, showing them queued up in a tight column, waiting for their moment to push for the summit.

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Canadian adventurer and filmmaker Elia Saikaly said he was unlikely to ever return after the chaos he witnessed as he made the summit last Thursday.

Mr Saikaly returned from his eighth Everest expedition with a sense of abhorrence, saying he had watched people clamber over dead bodies.

"I cannot believe what I saw up there. Death. Carnage. Chaos. Lineups. Dead bodies on the route and in tents at camp 4," he posted on social media after making it safely back to base camp.

"People who I tried to turn back who ended up dying. People being dragged down. Walking over bodies."

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He later told the Ottawa Citizen he was unlikely to make another journey to the summit.

"It's a really messed up thing to be in a position where you have to walk over a dead body," he said. "Do I think I'll go back? I don't think so. Not after this season. It was pretty horrific."

American doctor Ed Dohring, who made the summit a few days ago, told the New York Times it was "like a zoo" up there, with climbers jostling to take selfies and lined up chest to chest.

"It was scary," he said, describing how, like Mr Saikaly, he had to step around the body of a woman who'd just died.

Nepal's tourism authority has responded to the cluster of deaths by saying overcrowding is not solely the problem.

The authority's director general, Dandu Raj Ghimire, said other factors were involved including only very brief windows of fine weather during which climbers could push for the summit.

Other veteran climbers have also pointed to the inexperience of some climbers and the pursuit of profits by climbing companies.

AAP with Nick Bonyhady

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David Pocock's career has always been a mix of rugby, injuries and politics, so it was fitting all three featured during his Super Rugby farewell announcement on Tuesday.

The champion Wallabies flanker spoke at length about the end of his 13-year Super Rugby career, the frustrating and "rare" calf injury threatening his World Cup hopes and his reaction to Israel Folau being sacked for homophobic posts on social media.

Pocock has been ruled out for the rest of the ACT Brumbies season after medical staff decided it was best to turn his attention to the Wallabies' World Cup campaign rather than rushing into a comeback.

Losing Pocock would be a crippling blow for Australia's chances of winning the World Cup for a third time, particularly after Folau's contract was terminated earlier this month.

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Pocock tore his calf on the first day of a Wallabies pre-season camp in January and he has been unable to full recover since, limiting him to just three games for the Brumbies this season.

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He has had multiple injections and has enlisted the help of AIS medical staff to try to speed up his recovery, but even now there are no guarantees he will be available for World Cup selection.

"I think the best thing now is to take the pressure off and actually get it right rather than continuing to do what I was doing," Pocock said. "I'd be very disappointed [if I never play again]. It could be the case, I don't know. But I'll certainly be doing everything I can for it not to be the case. You've just got to deal with things that happen.

"All the specialists we've talked to say it's fairly rare so something I just really need to get right and give it a bit more time than we have.

"A few times I've got back up to 70, 80 per cent and thought I was pretty close. We'll certainly get it right and I'll be based here in Canberra for my rehab and working with doctor, physio, [Brumbies athletic director] Ben Serpell, who I've spent far too much around over the years."

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Pocock is widely regarded as the world's best openside flanker, dominating the breakdown at Super Rugby and Test level since bursting on to the scene as a teenager in 2006.

His body has copped a hammering on the field, putting himself in positions most other people wouldn't dare go. He has carried that mantra off the field as well, taking strong stances on social issues ranging from same-sex marriage equality to climate change.

Many viewed Pocock and Wallabies teammate Folau as polar opposites because of differing beliefs, particularly about homosexuals. For Pocock, though, it was always about the issue rather than individuals.

He described the Folau saga as sad but hoped sport could continue to push boundaries to be more inclusive.

"It's been a really tough situation for rugby. At the end of the day we've got so much more in common than the few things that might divide us," Pocock said when asked if he had spoken to Folau. "As a sport, we want to be inclusive. We want to create a safe place for people so that when they turn up to play rugby they feel like they can be whoever they are.

"I've always said sport is at its best when its inclusive and it's actually challenging society to be more inclusive. Rugby has done a great job over the years of doing that.

"It's been dealt with now … it's really, really sad to see him go but I really hope we can continue with the work that's been done to create a safe place.

"It's a hard situation to come up with a winner. It's just sad.

"We all need to move on and think about how we can play our part in creating a more kind society. We're facing some much bigger issues than that, we're facing some serious issues with climate change and the ecological crisis we're in. We need people to be coming together and taking some meaningful action.

"There are a lot of great things happening, but it just seems like bad news seems to do better than all the good stuff, unfortunately."

A career in politics after rugby, perhaps? "I'm not sure," Pocock grinned. "It's not something I've thought a lot about. It's a pretty hard slog."

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Notorious paedophile Michael Anthony Guider could be assessed for anti-libidinal medication to reduce the likelihood of him sexually assaulting more children when he is released, lawyers for the state government have suggested in court documents.

Guider, 68, killed nine-year-old Samantha Knight after she disappeared from Bondi in August 1986. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2002, telling a psychiatrist that she died from an overdose of sleeping pills, but he now denies having a role in her death. Samantha's body has never been found.

On Monday, barristers for the State of NSW argued Guider should be kept behind bars beyond the expiry of his 17-year manslaughter sentence next week, noting a "real and unacceptable risk" he will commit another serious offence if released.

Guider's legal team opposed the application, revealing he has been seriously bashed twice while in custody, one assault leaving him with short-term memory loss. He fears further assaults after his cellmate – described as his "best friend" – was killed.

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In 2014, when Guider became eligible for parole, the State Parole Authority declined to grant it. He did not apply for parole after that, believing an application to be futile.

Guider was sentenced to two lengthy prison terms in 1996 and 2000 for assaulting more than a dozen children from 1980 to 1996, taking photos of some of his acts. He used sleeping pills on at least four other children after Samantha was killed, the NSW Supreme Court was told on Monday.

In written submissions released by the court, Crown prosecutors David Kell, SC, and Joanna Davidson outlined a range of options that would reduce the likelihood of Guider re-offending.

They include drug and alcohol counselling, electronic monitoring, scrutinising Guider's online activity, arriving at his home unannounced, and "a request or direction to undergo a psychiatric review for consideration for anti-libidinal medication", which limits a person's sexual drive.

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When Guider was sentenced in 2000 for sexually assaulting two young girls, District Court Judge John O’Reilly said it was desirable for Guider to receive the hormonal injection Depo Provera, "or such other substance as may be suitable to control his compulsive paedophilia".

The use of a testosterone blocker was also suggested in a psychiatrist's report in 1996.

Guider's barristers Matthew Johnston, SC, and Georgia Lewer said in their written submissions that their client was a "model prisoner" who had served a "very long sentence" and done everything required of him. He was given a warning once in his 23 years in custody, for feeding birds, they said.

Guider has taken part in day release 20 times between June 2016 and February 2019, accompanied by the chaplain from Long Bay jail. His most recent day release was in October 2018, according to the documents.

Mr Johnston and Ms Lewer said Guider had access to children on his many day releases, "which he avoided", and should be subject to strict conditions in the community instead of being kept in custody. A further period behind bars could undermine the rehabilitation he has made, they said.

Guider has participated in three sex offender treatment programs, completed a university degree by correspondence, and taken part in drug and alcohol interventions and an anger management course.

His barristers said he had relationships with adult women in the past, and "apparently slowly developed a deviant sexual interest" in children after a "highly dysfunctional and traumatic" childhood.

The state has also applied for Guider to be subject to 56 strict conditions for five years after he is released, including a curfew and a ban on viewing pornographic or violent material.

Justice Richard Button will decide if Guider should be kept behind bars before June 6.

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Along with our Great Barrier Reef and America's Grand Canyon, Mount Everest is commonly and justifiably included in the list of the world’s greatest natural wonders. Like the former two, it’s the whole Everest massif, not just its singular, pre-eminent summit that constitutes this wondrous phenomenon. The stellar cluster of adjacent peaks and the glaciers they feed; on the southern, Nepal side, the valleys carved deep by tumbling rivers, cloaked in rich and distinct altitude-graduated vegetation; on the other side, the starkly different, high undulating plateau of Tibet, where aridity lies bare, the bones of the earth exposed to the thin cold air and intensely bright high-altitude light. All add to the richness and complexity.

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The mountain itself is the central jewel, the enduring symbol of human hope, striving and achievement, the primary reason why, especially on the more diverse Nepal side, tens of thousands flock to make the arduous trek up towards points below it to gaze in wonder at the all-round spectacle, and why climbers, and those who aspire to be climbers, harbour the desire to stand on the highest point on earth.

The crowds have brought comparatively great wealth to the Sherpa people, who live in the valleys on the Nepal side. There’s hardly a house where glass windows don’t feature prominently, whereas in other parts of Nepal, adorned by lower but no less spectacular mountains, glass windows are rare or non-existent, the people are poor.

The government reaps a rich reward as well, collecting more than $4 million annually from climbing permits alone. Yet little of this gets put back into managing the burgeoning problem of overcrowding.

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Once the preserve of only hardened climbers relying on their own skills rather than others’ and even forging new and more difficult routes, Everest’s summit has now become a purchasable commodity via dozens of companies offering to guide the two easier routes.

Every season now we see the farcical and deadly situation of hundreds of climbers queuing up the well-trodden line, all reduced to the speed of the person in front with few, if any "overtaking lanes".  Many of them have a bare minimum of experience and all are relying on their guides’ fragile ability to save them in the event of an equipment malfunction, a sudden change in weather or the onset of the often fatal pulmonary or cerebral oedema.

The record numbers of ascents this year have been accompanied by a predictable increase in fatalities, many of them attributable to the overcrowding caused by unregulated numbers of minimally experienced climbers whose main qualifier has been to have deep pockets.

Above Base Camp all human bodily waste simply stays there to be desiccated and blown about with the snowflakes until eventually brought down into the valley entombed in the glacier. Nowhere else on earth is such a natural treasure treated with such disregard for the impact of overcrowding. Rafting down the Grand Canyon is strictly controlled to preserve its natural integrity, numbers on America’s highest peak Denali are restricted and strict environmental guidelines are enforced, similarly popular walking trails around the world, including in Australia, have limits.

But Nepal is a poor country and officials are not inclined to limit numbers on Everest because they say it would result in a loss of revenue. For many years now, experienced climbers like myself have been lobbying the government to make changes.

To me there is an elegant solution that should not result in any loss of revenue but would spread the windfall to mountain villages below lesser peaks across the country. The rules could be changed so that there’s a process of qualification requiring aspirant "Everesters", or those wanting to ascend any of the other increasingly popular 8000-metre peaks, to first climb a designated 6000-metre mountain away from the Everest region followed by climbing a similarly designated 7000-metre mountain.

As well as spreading the economic benefit and seeing more of these these hardy, wonderful people enjoy glass in their windows, it would automatically reduce numbers on Everest and give those who eventually qualified at least a safe foundation of experience. Finally some dignity would be returned to a sullied icon.

Tim Macartney-Snape is a mountaineer and author.  He and Greg Mortimer were the first Australians to reach the summit of Mount Everest. They did so without oxygen.

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Bernard Tomic has denied not giving it his all despite lasting just 82 minutes against Taylor Fritz in another forgettable French Open for the Australian.

The big-serving American made the most of a disinterested Tomic to run away with a 6-1, 6-4, 6-1 first round victory, the 21-year-old’s most dominant in a grand slam.

World No.84 Tomic raced through his service games at almost comical speed as his main draw record on the French clay worsened to 3-10.

Tomic managed to combine nonchalance and impatience in a first set that lasted just 23 minutes.

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The 26-year-old barely looked up between serves and even tried to concede a winner against his serve on match point, despite his bemused opponent and the chair umpire telling him his delivery had been a fault.

Tomic then shrugged his way through another abrupt post-match press conference, although stopped short of saying he hadn’t given his all.

He did agree with compatriot Nick Kyrgios’ social media post last week that the French Open "sucked", compared to Wimbledon, but said it was just a fact that his game wasn’t suited to the slower surface.

"[I’m] pretty sure I did [try], but, you know, surface is not good for me," he said. "I mean, it’s not difficult. It’s just my game is not built for this surface. Everything I do is not good for it."

His performance – both on and off the court – mirrored last year’s first round exit, although on that occasion he had won seven straight matches on clay to qualify for the main draw.

Slight rain was all that could slow Tomic’s self-driven demise in the first set, while he could only laugh when a trainer was called for him inadvertently early in the second.

Turning away the help, Tomic returned to court with a wry grin, praying towards the sky saying "I love Roland Garros, I love it".

The comic relief seemed to spring Tomic into action, albeit briefly as the world No.84 found himself back on serve, breaking for 4-4 in the second set.

Fritz dug in though, earning the break after winning back-to-back 22-shot rallies against the Queenslander.

Normal service resumed though as Tomic watched an ace sail by as the American, ranked 42 places higher, secured the set and an early break in the third to all but kill off the first glimmers of a contest.

The grass season awaits the former world No.17, who is slated for qualifying at Queens next month, but with another shrug of his shoulders Tomic said the only concrete plan he currently had was to return to his Paris hotel.

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Times are tough. Your relationship is in the emergency room and the last rites are being read. The person you fell in love with has the capacity and the inside knowledge to destroy you. It is time for drastic interventions.

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Divorce has few victors. Children suffer. Everyone, almost invariably, loses. There may be exceptions to this but if you can consider avoiding divorce in your life, do it.

This is about the moment when your partner is on the brink of being out the door or is at the point of running you out, and it's not what you want. Before you connect again we need to build respect, then protect an then re-connect.

First, if you do not want your relationship to end it is likely you are grieving, hurt and sad. Your partner may want to rush things along to a quick separation. For this reason slow the process down, if you can.

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People who want to end a relationship abruptly are almost always out of the resilient zone. They are feeling agitated and usually ascribing the reason they feel this way to you. Usually they are in the 'flight' mode. Alternatively, they are absent and attributing the reason for feeling deadened to you.

As hard as it is to think about their perspective at this time, it is important. Realise that there is often just as much pain the person wanting to leave. This can be hard to believe, especially if there has been infidelity, and they will often put on the appearance that they are determined to be rid of you. In the dark recesses of their mind, however, a shred of doubt will always linger.

We are going to use that shred of doubt to increase your chances of not getting divorced.

Respect

The first thing to know is that the person you hope beyond hope will care for you and love you is not able to do that for you at the the moment. Even if they don't show it, they are going through their own turmoil and pain. Most likely they are concealing this and instead directing their anger and blame towards you. You may well think, 'Well, let them, it's their fault after all – they're the person who wants to leave!'

If you really don't want to separate and divorce, you need to think clearly and be strategic. This means you may need a lot of support from friends and family as you process your feelings.

First, avoid begging, pleading or cajoling. Make sure that the people you vent to or confide in do not make emotional submissions on your behalf.

There is a part of you that is probably hurting like hell. There is probably another part that is furious. The fragile part of you that is in pain wants to cling on. However, if you chase your partner they will feel suffocated or hunted and shift to the agitated zone. They will begin to feel trapped and that everything has to happen quickly. Needing to cope with this will switch them into the avoidant zone. It is time to stop giving your partner reason to leave you.

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This is going to be very hard, but don't be put off by the challenge. It may be the best thing you ever do.

Stop discussing the relationship for a time

Trying to reason with or persuade a partner who wants to end a relationship rarely works. It is never just a matter of convincing the other person. You may be distressed and upset. They are also likely to be confused, reactive and defensive. This situation involves a powerful cocktail of emotions.

Stop pursing them

Immediately stop anything that your partner might view as trying to keep them involved. This means stopping: frequent phone calls, texts or emails; loving messages of any kind; begging, pleading; describing all the good times in your relationship; following your partner around; encouraging talk about the future; asking for reassurances; buying them gifts or flowers; planning holidays or trips away together; trying to schedule dates together; the surveillance program – no spying on them, checking their phone or computers or their arrangements.

Stop saying 'I love you'. Completely stop. Every time you say 'I love you', you might be reminding your partner that they might not love you.

Get a life

As shattered as you likely are, get a life. While this is a really big ask, you do need ot act as if you are moving forward with your life. Otherwise, you might as well seek legal advice and draw up the documents.

I expect you are asking yourself, 'How can I do this when I feel like crap? I can hardly function, it'a  miracle getting out of bed each day, and things are horrible at home.'

Start to treat yourself better. Start doing things that are out of character compared with the way you have been acting lately. Move gently beyond helplessness into action and power.

Edited extract from The Revolutionary Art of Changing Your Heart by Andrew Fuller, published by Hachette Australia on 28 May 2019, $29.99 Trade Paperback.

Dr Andrew Fuller is an Australian clinical psychologist.