IMHO

Allen Banks

2012-01-25T04:26:00.000Z

I'm quite proud of this picture. it's of a bridge over the River Allen near where I live. The original picture is very large (2048 x 1536) and makes a great desktop wallpaper. If you want a copy of it you can download it free here. The reason I'm so proud of it is it was taken with a low resolution camera. It's actually four pictures stitched together. Bet you can't see the joins! There's more of the picture - a 360° panorama at this location.

The area, Allen Banks, is owned by the National Trust in the UK. It is a great place to go for a walk on a hot summer day. It's not too bad on a winter's day either. I'm just waiting for about four inches of snow and I'll be back there to take more pictures - but this time I'll take a better camera.

I have no idea who the people on the bridge are. I'm glad they were there though because the image wouldn't have been as interesting without them.

The night I saw a ghost

2012-01-22T05:09:00.000Z

I didn't believe in ghosts. I'd always told myself, 'There's always some sort of explanation.' Either it would be an over-active imagination, something misinterpreted or just the words of a liar trying to sound interesting. Graveyards at night held no horrors and ruined houses? Only a fool would enter in poor light where they might easily hurt themselves. Ghosts? No such thing!

At least that's what I thought until the night I saw one.

I was driving in Northern England at about ten at night. There were no street lights and few cars sharing the road from Allendale to Hexham. I was on my way to Hexham, the site of a famous abbey. There was no Moon, an overcast sky and a slight mist. The road was mostly downhill though, fairly straight and the sort that it's easy to speed on. The council had even improved the road by taking out the sudden rise and dip which left your stomach behind near the racecourse turnoff. As I came round the corner near the turnoff just before I dropped down to the long straight stretch to Low Gate I saw it. A vaporous cowled figure with outstreched arms and two glowing red eyes. It was approaching rapidly and I was going too fast to stop!

Icicles ran down my back. I could feel my hair rising and with awful dread at that moment I BELIEVED IN GHOSTS!

Then I figured out what it was. The road although straight, had a sharp rise and fall in it. A car, hidden from me behind that rise, was lighting up the mist with it's headlights and the trees on either side of the road were the exact shape to frame the mist into the cowled figure. The two glowing eyes were the tail lights of a car in the distance braking to turn the corner at Low Gate.

The effect had only lasted a second or so but in that second I didn't know what I was looking at and jumped to the wrong conclusion.

I still don't believe in ghosts but I can now understand why some people do.

The ghost road in daylight (Google Earth image) Even in daylight you can't see the hidden dips in the road.

Oops! I just broke US law. Hope they don't extradite me.

2012-01-20T00:49:00.001Z

When I click the 'Post' button on this blog I will have broken US law by linking to a site which hosts copyright material. Now that's not illegal in the UK where I live but the US has some pretty stupid laws and that is one of the things that they've made illegal.

Richard O’Dwyer a a British computer student has just fallen foul of that law. He produced a website which listed sites where pirated material could be downloaded. Note he didn't host any of this pirate material on his website, he just linked to sites which do host it. The US says he made money from his website and that's against US law.

The US applied to have him extradited to stand trial in the US and used the Extradition Act, passed in haste by Labour in 2003, designed to allow terror suspects to be extradited. Richard and his family naturally objected but the law is the law and final approval now rests with the Home Secretary.

Now let me invite you to watch a video at this point which tells you about this. It's about ten minutes long so watch as much as you feel you want to, then I'll explain how I'm breaking the US law.

Did you find that interesting? It's hosted on YouTube and I just linked to it from my blog ...and that's where I broke US law!

You see there are often copyright videos hosted on YouTube. They are not hard to find and most shouldn't be there because the person who put them there did not have the permission of the copyright owner to do so. Now YouTube is aware of this problem and frequently takes down this pirated material but as fast as they do so, someone posts it back up.

Now linking to YouTube isn't illegal. You tube even were nice enough to give me the code needed to embed it in my blog. The problem is I posted it on blogspot and down the sides of this post you'll find some advertisements from which I make a few coppers a month. Heck just to make sure I'll post an advertisement for some of the books my wife and I write below:

			Take a touch of humour, add some genetic science and nanotechnology. Steep with conspiracy and stir in murder and despair. Season with romance between three people in a secret location. Garnish with morality. The result is 'A Vested Interest', a novel series by John and Shelia Chapman
UK £9.29	UK £1.91	UK £1.53

Now if someone decides to buy one of these items advertised here (Please do!) then I will have made money from a web page which has links to sites hosting pirated material and that's against US law!

This is a classic example of 'reductio ad absurdum' or taking something to a ridiculous but logical conclusion. It's a stupid US law and the UK allows another stupid law to compound it.

Now SOPA and PIPA...?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087135/Richard-ODwyer-US-extradition-pact-misused-says-Sir-Menzies-Campbell.html#ixzz1jx8WgemZ

Cover to Cover

2011-11-06T22:32:00.000Z

If you search the Internet you'll find lots of advice on how to write and also lots about how to get published. Up to now the route has always been:

write the book
edit it
submit it to an agent

get rejected
submit to another agent
get rejected
revise the book
repeat 'submit to an agent

Either give up or self publish or, if you are one of the lucky few, negotiate a contract
Agent submits to a publisher.... and so on

Now however E-books have made it possible for many new authors to publish work that would otherwise end in agents and publisher's slush piles. You can test the water by releasing your book as an e-book, publicize it yourself (For how to do that read John Locke's excellent book 'How I Sold 1 Million...') and then, if there's a demand, produce a paper copy.

Somewhere along the line though you'll need a book cover and there the advice stops. Granted there are websites which offer template solutions but most of them leave a lot to be desired and frankly - a book is judged by it's cover.

We've written and published five books so far in our A Vested Interest series and in the hope that our experience will help, here's what was involved in designing the covers.

Book 1 - A Vested Interest

We wanted the cover of this book to reflect what the story was about so we had to include:

DNA to indicate this was about medical science
A semi-transparent mechanical bug to show that technology was involved
A castle to represent the location Langston Castle in the book and to show there was a bit of history involved
An old mine tunnel to represent the secret underground base

Now Shelia and I are not bad at using graphics programs - we picked up that skill when we spent three years as illegal immigrants in Canada, supporting ourselves by building websites. So we took some pictures using a very basic digital camera and started putting together a cover. The actual process I will detail later but here's the result:

The original background image was a picture I took of Blackett Level near Allendale, Northumberland. It was a little overpowering so I faded it out by putting a semi-transparent white layer over the top. Into that I merged a picture I took of Langley Castle and that DNA picture. The 'bug' was inspired by those in the film 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'. On the e-book copy we moved that to the other side. Later we added the Triplet family coat of arms to help identify the book as part of a series.

Book 2 - Dark Secrets

The plot of this book involved an unpleasant secret buried in the family for almost a thousand years. The secret was revealed in an old diary. To reflect this we created a cover looking like an old book and featuring the coat of arms of the Triplet family. The old book was to be dark colored to reflect the title but when we got the first proof back from the publishers it was almost black. The final version was a lot lighter. For the old book I scanned an old copy I have of Uncle Tom's Cabin and then removed the text. With the aid of my son Adam we created a 'coat of arms' and then turned it and the book cover text gold.

On this one we didn't put the coat of arms on the spine since it was already on the front cover and the spine is much narrower.

Book 3 - No Secrets
No Secrets was very much a continuation of Dark Secrets so we decided to use the same layout. Obviously we couldn't use the same image on the front so chose a Celtic knot instead, symbolizing eternity. Of all the covers it's the one we are least happy with and it may change.

Book 4 - Stones, Stars and Solutions
In this book the Triplets travel the world visiting pyramids and other locations while following clues left in an ancient document. One of the locations is Death Valley, another is the Mayan pyramid at Chichen Itza, Mexico. We started with a black and white picture of Death Valley which we colored dark blue. To that we added the pyramid viewed through a 'window' on the front cover and framed in vegetation from the jungle in Mexico. On the back we added our idea of the power mechanism revealed at the end of the book.

People liked this cover so much they asked if they could use it as a screen background. We obliged with a version without the text, coat of arms or vegetation. Find it here.

Book 5 - Leap of Faith
In this book there's a location Spirit Canyon in Arkansas. It was one of the places mentioned in Stones, Stars and Solutions and also appeared in No Secrets. Spirit Canyon features a stone cabin which you can only get to through a cave and a waterfall. We wanted to show this place on the cover. The problem is that though we know it's location, the actual place doesn't exist so we had to make it with bits and pieces of other pictures.
For a book cover you need high resolution pictures because the file you send to a printer is 5,700 by 3,900 pixels in size although the image I need is 3,510 by 2470 pixels. I start with a template document from the printer. It's actual size depends on the size and thickness of the book. If you use CreateSpace as your publisher this template is worked out for you when you upload the book contents. It can be a little difficult to find but it's there.

Here's what we started with:

a picture of a log cabin in Texas
A cave in Arkansas
A woodland picture in Arkansas
A stone cottage near where we lived
A picture taken inside the old lead mine at Swinhope Moor, England
a blue eye

...and here's what we ended up with

In case you wonder, here's where the joins are...

Now this picture is a little busy for a book cover and it's not perfect. I chose to add text with a semi transparent background to hide the imperfections.

Making a cover like this isn't hard. You just need a computer with lots of memory and a decent painting application which can use layers, masks, feathering and bézier text. The industry standard program is PhotoShop, but there are others such as Corel PaintShop Pro or The Gimp which can do the job and are much less expensive. There are lots of tutorials available on the web explaining exactly how to merge images so I don't plan on explaining this here.

I'm still not happy with the front and spine text on the cover since although it's fine on a printed book it fails to stand out in the smaller versions used for e-books and at Amazon. The spine text could be made clearer by turning it through 90 degrees but I, for one, hate having to turn my head sideways to read the text on book spines.

Now - I've explained how we chose the covers. What are your thoughts? Which cover do you like the best and which do you think we should change?

If I can't write in the box...

2011-10-23T18:28:00.000+01:00

According to an old diary I found, 45 years ago I watched my father filling in a tax form. I noticed he was busy rubbing a candle over part of the form.

"Dad - what are you doing?"

"You see this box with 'Do not write in this space'? If I can't write in the box, no-one else is going to!"

I often wonder if this was an original idea of my father's or if he had seen it on some comedy show.

A mean trick to play on your wife

2011-10-19T16:14:00.000+01:00

I went rash and bought a new Kindle ebook today. 'Stairlift to Heaven' by Terry Ravenscroft. I'd heard the writer was funny (he was a scriptwriter for Les Dawson, The Two Ronnies, Morecambe and Wise , Ken Dodd and others) and I needed a laugh.

In the books he relates the story of his wife 'The Trouble'. She'd put on weight over Christmas and as normal had gone on a diet to remove it. This time however she hadn't weighed herself before Christmas and relied instead on a pair of slacks which she'd bought before Christmas and which 'fit her perfectly'. Now imagine you are a woman who's stuck to a rigid diet and after thinking you'd been successful try on those slacks.

...but even a nicefigure cannot get away with an
attempt to force itinto a pair of trousers deficient in
the waistmeasurement by two inches. Consequently
the small amount offat she normally carries round
her waist had becomea roll of fat spilling out of the
top of thetrousers...

Terry had seen this as an opportunity and had persuaded his sister to take the slacks in two inches.

Now I've played some tricks in the past such as the 'Who nettled the teacher' but I'm full of admiration for Terry. I'm just not in his league.

So if you feel the need to relax and laugh check out 'Stairlift to Heaven' - it's worth every penny.

How to fix the mess the government is in.

2011-10-18T19:54:00.000+01:00

Browsing my Facebook account recently I came across this image copied from Revolution News Network's site:

Now of course someone was quick to point out that this would matter if the US was on the gold standard but that had stopped long ago. The problem is that the vast majority of people have this sneaking impression that if you spend more than you earn you are heading for disaster. No amount of explanations from economists will ever convince them otherwise either.

It's not just the US. Things aren't quite that bad in the UK; here we are only 146 billion in the red. Taking into account the US has five times the population of the UK that equates to 730 billion by US population standards.

So do these guys in government know what they are doing? Ask 'the 99%' and the answer will be a resounding 'NO!'

So what could we do about this? It seems simple to me - we change the form of government so that people who actually know what they are doing run the country instead. After all the last person who should be given the job of President or Prime Minister is the egomaniac who wants to do the job and tries to convince us that although he/she is not qualified, we should elect them.

So here's my suggestion. Make a selection of the top five industrialists - those that make the most profit and tell them it's their duty to run the country on our behalf for the next four years.

"...but what about democracy?" I hear you say. No problem. Allow the candidates selected to campaign and we then use standard election procedures to make the final choice. Of course there will be one subtle difference. None of the candidates will want the job and will therefore campaign for their opponents instead of themselves. As a result there will be no 'mud slinging' and no need for campaign fund raising. The candidates will fund their campaigns themselves - these people are rich. That may be a little unfair but they can afford it and anyone who manages to be so successful really has a duty to make the lives of the less able (us) better. Look on it as a minor tax which will help reduce those budget deficits.

How about local government? Use the same method, just apply the requirements on a local scale.

What incentives should we offer these people? If they do a good job and the electorate feel their lives have improved then we'll undertake never to elect them again! fail and they still could be elected for a second chance.

The bad news is there's one tiny fly in the ointment. To modify government like this would require our current politicians to accept it. There is NO WAY they will ever vote themselves out and we are stuck with the present system.

Odd Page on the Right - Creating a Book in Word 2010

2011-07-29T02:10:00.019+01:00

As an author I use Microsoft Word and rapidly came across one of it's limitations. Word insists on starting any new document on a left hand page in a two page layout. There is nothing you can do to change this. Microsoft tell us that Word isn't a publishing program and apparently expect us to import Word documents into a program such as Publisher before printing. Now that for us authors is the last thing we want. We want a single program on which to create our work and format it for printing. Word Can be made to do it - almost.

So this is how to set up Word 2010/2007 to produce a layout suitable for self publishing through Amazon's Create Space publishing or Lulu.

First. If you have an existing correctly formatted document then create a new document using that existing document. It will be a lot quicker.

In Word 2010 the procedure is File → New → New from Existing

If you do not have a document to copy then you'll need to create one as follows. To illustrate it, I've used examples from our book 'A Vested Interest':

In Word choose File → New → Blank document

Select 'Print Layout' view

From the Page layout tab select in the Page setup group the 'Size' button and then at the bottom of the dropdown 'More Page Sizes'

Using the 'Paper' tab, select what size pages your book will have. I use a custom size of 13.33 x 20.32 cm (5.25 x 8 inches) which is one of the standard book sizes. Your self publishing firm will tell you what standard sizes are available. I suggest you measure a few books too.

On the 'Margins' tab select a top margin of 2 cm; bottom margin of 2.54 cm; inside margin of 1.27 cm; Outside margin of 1.27 cm; gutter of 0.95 cm; Gutter position Left; Portrait; Multiple pages should Mirror margins; Apply to This section.
On the 'Layout' tab select Section start New Page; Check in the Header and footers tab Different odd and even; Un-check Different first page; set the header and Footer to 1.25 cm from the edge; Under Page select vertical alignment Top. Then click OK.
Turn on the ruler and set it as shown in the image above with no indents.
Double click the page area where the header would be (i.e. above where the cursor is currently flashing)
Check 'Different Odd & Even Pages'. You should now see 'Odd Page Header' at the header and 'Odd Page Footer' at the footer.
Close the Header and Footer view
A little down the page type in CAPITALS your book title and center it. (This is NOT your main Title Page)
Insert TWO page beaks . If you are looking at the document in Print Layout view, two pages per screen your first page will appear on the left
The next page will be your main title page where you put the title, the author. I also add at the bottom the location and year of writing. Format this page as you wish it.At the end of the page insert a Page break.
Your next page will be a copyright page and if you have one, put your ISBN/EAN number here. Example text - customise and space appropriately:

John and Sheila Chapman have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 John & Shelia Chapman

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

Copyright Conventions.

ISBN 1-456-30018-0

EAN-13 9781456300180

Add a page break at the end of this.

Your next page will contain any acknowledgments you wish to make or will be blank. Add a Page break then a Section Break (Odd page) at this point.
The 'Section Break (Odd Page)' is the crucial step!

You are now ready to start the text of your book, to reset the ruler, to add a page header and a footer with page number 1. If your book has contents pages add them at this point. Contents pages should always be an even number of pages so add a page break if needed then a 'Section Break (odd page)' so that Chapter 1 of your book always appears on a right hand page.
At the top of the Chapter 1 page (or first contents page if you have one) double click the header area. In the Navigation section of the Header & Footer toolbar make sure 'Link to Previous' is NOT selected. make sure Different Odd & Even Pages IS checked then add the book title in Capitals. Center it.
Double click the Footer area of the page (or click the Footer button on the toolbar) Use the Page Number button to add a page number either centered or at the right. Format the page numbers so that they start at '1'.
In the Navigation section of the Header & Footer toolbar click 'Next'.
In the Navigation section of the Header & Footer toolbar again make sure 'Link to Previous' is NOT selected.
In the Header add in capitals the author's name and center it. In the footer section again make sure 'Link to Previous' is NOT selected and add a centered page number at the bottom. Select and right click the number and choose Format Page Number. It should be set at 'Start at 1'. The actual page will show page 2.

You should now find that from your 'Chapter 1' the pages will be displayed on the correct side in 'Print Layout' view. If you Add the 'Print Preview Edit Mode' button to the Quick Access toolbar (22) you'll find on using it that all pages (in a two page view) are shown on the correct sides. Extra blank pages will be inserted to make sure the main title page and Chapter 1 pages are on the right hand side.

Following chapters should each start on a new page but usually it is not important that they should start on right hand pages. If you have a short book of less than 80,000 words though you might like to insert a 'Section break (odd Page)' rather than a standard 'Page Break' to force this.

I hope you find this post useful. It was the result of many hours of frustration at MS Word when writing my 'A Vested Interest' series of books. You may also like to take a look at my book on what comes next - after you've written a book. You can find this 'So you've written a book?' at Amazon or get it free here.
Follow @JChapmanAuthor

Clairol nice'n difficult

2011-06-18T02:47:00.002+01:00

Shhh... don't tell anyone but my wife uses hair colourant.

Clairol have been advertising on TV a product called nice'n easy colour blend foam. The advert made it look easy to use and I'm the one who gets to apply it so we gave it a go. Here's my opinion and you can probably tell from the title what it's going to be like.

First - it's NOT a foam. A foam is defined as a colloidal suspension of gas in a liquid. In other words it's thick and creamy with very small bubbles. Think shaving cream or spray cream - they are foams but Clairol nice'n easy is a FROTH - much bigger bubbles, think of the froth you see sometimes under a waterfall or the froth on top of a bubble bath.

Second - it's NOT easy. In fact it's the hardest colourant to apply I ever used. It runs. It fails to wet long hair. it's far too easy to get on skin and clothes.

Third - the results are poor. There's not enough 'froth' to cover hair as long as that in the picture on the box. Added to that the colour isn't as deep as it's made out to be.

Maybe if you have very short hair this stuff might be OK but we will NEVER buy this rubbish again. Back to the drawing board Clairol!

Well done Number 10!

2011-01-29T10:04:00.006Z

Today I went to the 'Number 10' website to find out if anyone had created a petition about one of my pet hates - VAT on ebooks.

It took a while to find what has to have been the last government's better ideas the e-petition site but when I did find it I discovered that it had been closed down in the run-up to the general election (6th May 2010) and hasn't re-opened for new petitions.

Just after the election we were told that it would reopen later in 2010 but now here's what you get if you go through the process:

Notice that the date is now 2011 and that no date other than the year is given!

So well done UK Government! You've taken a valuable method of the UK public making their feelings known to government and squashed it! Maybe those petitions were just too inconvenient? So much for your 'big society' policy!

So I can't voice my opinion on the Number 10 petition site. I can however put the details here and the public can voice their opinion by adding comments.

Petition to the UK prime Minister

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to remove the VAT charge on the sale of electronic books and magazines.

More details from the petition creator

Paper copies of books, newspapers and magazines are subject to a VAT rate of 0%. It is anomalous that electronic copies of these same items are subject to the current standard rate of VAT (20%). The effect of this tax is to make, in many cases, the e-book version of literature more expensive than the paper copy despite being less expensive to produce and requiring almost zero shipping costs.

The manufacture of printed paper products requires thousands of tons of raw materials and an enormous amount of energy in production and transport each year. The public is reluctant to pay more for an electronic copy than for a paper copy. Many look for a less expensive and often 'pirate' source.

By charging VAT on e-publications the government is encouraging piracy, squandering raw materials and adding to fossil fuel use.

That darn cat...

2011-01-22T00:51:00.012Z

...decided to have a lazy afternoon.

...decided that it wasn't a good idea to jump from the fence onto the surface of the neighbor's algae-covered pond.

...is convinced that if it's raining at the back door then it will be just fine at the front door.

...decided not to play with the goldfish.

...decided that the Christmas tree was a new toy for him to climb.

...somehow decided we were moving and made sure she wouldn't be left behind.

...decided to sing to us every inch of the 300 miles to our new house.

...decided to wait and see if anything came along.

...decided earphone cables and broadband telephone lines make a great teething ring but power cables don't taste nice.

...decided that baby rabbits should be carried over the rabbit-proof fence round our garden so that they could play with them. Since they proved pretty boring playmates they were left to munch on our flowers.

...decided to jup onto y laptop and in doing so hooked a claw under a key on it. As a result y '' key no longer works!

Installing MS Office 2010 - What a palaver!

2010-10-24T01:27:00.004+01:00

Having finally bought Microsoft Office 2010 to replace the pre-release version I've being using for the last year I sat down to install it at 11:00am this morning. I finally completed the process at 3:30pm; a four and a half hour marathon!

Now if you just bought Office 2010 when it was released you probably were able to install it without problem completing the whole process within 20 minutes. Some of us tested the beta product and then the pre-release version. Now, however these are about to expire and it's tie to install the full product. That's where the problem started.

As soon as I tried to install Office 2010 I got this error message:

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):

Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of

Microsoft Office 2010. You must first uninstall any prerelease versions of

Microsoft Office 2010 products and associated technologies.

Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.

Oh well - that meant a trip to the control panel and 'Uninstall a program'. I selected the Office 2010 pre-release version and uninstalled it. Back to the installation DVD and I got:

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):

Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of

Microsoft Office 2010. You must first uninstall any prerelease versions of

Microsoft Office 2010 products and associated technologies.

Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.

Huh? I just uninstalled it! Maybe I needed to do a restart first? One restart later I inserted the installation DVD and got:

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):

Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version...

OK. Now let me just check I actually uninstalled the right version - Yep - it's gone and I remember that I had to remove Office 2007 before I could install the prerelease of 2010. Time to go visit Microsoft's site to see if there's a fix!

As usual, finding what I wanted on the MS site was a torturous business but at least their introduction of using Bing to search the site makes things a little easier. Eventually I copied out the error message and searched for that.

I found quite a few people were having the same problem and I eventually found a post on http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeinstall/thread/52c744aa-d1c5-4aec-9c52-d76bc05eea40 where a Microsoft Support Moderator suggested I run a tool called cleanc2r to fix the issue. I followed the link provided to get the tool and of course discovered it had been replaced by a different tool. Fortunately the link took me to the new location of this 'Fixit' tool and of course when I got there it referred to removing Office 2007 from Windows XP and not to Windows 7. back to Google search engine where I entered the error message AND "Windows 7"

This time I found another Microsoft Support Moderator who pointed at a page http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 This time the link actually worked!

The new page told me to do exactly what I had already done but if that didn't work I should use the 'Fix it' link below to remove the problem. This time there were three of them and I chose the one for Office 2010; Microsoft Fix it 50450.

Running it gave me a brief flash of a command window followed by the usual confirmation window to confirm I really wanted to use the program. A licence agreement window followed next followed by a window making a backup of the registry. Finally I got another brief flash of the command window and - nothing! 'A bit unsatisfactory' I thought ' I would have expected the program to tell me it was finished'.

Back to the Installation DVD and I got:

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):

Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version...

This was beginning to get tiresome! Back to the search engine and I followed a few more of the 29 results to find that all of them eventually pointed me back to the same page which I'd just tried. Eventually I found one saying the 'Fix it' link didn't always work first time and I should try it again!

Back to 'Fix it', the same procedure but this time the second command window stayed open and took ages to run through. Once it finished it was back to the installation DVD and I got:

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):

Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version...

More searching on Internet eventually found Microsoft instructions to delete a couple of registry entries, to clear temporary files from the computer and to empty the recycle bin. 5Gb of temporary files deletion later it was back to the installation DVD and:

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):

Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version...

At this point I began to wonder how someone who is not quite as computer literate as I would be coping. Back to the search engine.

Looking on the forums I found lots of people with the same issue who had all followed the Microsoft advice and still couldn't install Office 2010. Eventually I read something about making sure all Office ad-ons had been deleted including the 'Add a smile' feature installed with the pre-release version. Mine was still there and promptly got deleted and...

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):

Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version...

Out went the Windows Live Office stuff...

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):

Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version...

Out went 'Outlook Hotmail Connector (Funny! I never use Hotmail so I definitely didn't install that!) and...

SUCCESS! I was now the proud owner of an Office 2010 installation.

It only took me four and a half hours. Simple huh?

Finally I could get back to editing my book 'A Vested Interest.'

US Version	UK Version

Facebook Games

2010-10-14T01:02:00.003+01:00

I wonder how many Facebook users have stopped to consider just how much money the writers of the more popular Facebook applications - especially games - are making?

Let's assume that just 5% of users occasionally buy 'extras' for their game.
Lets assume that they spend just £10 on this per year.
Lets assume that the figure of 'monthly active users' you get from the games Facebook website is wildly inaccurate and the true figure is 50% of what is stated.

So here's a list of how much the top 30 Facebook games are making based on those rather conservative assumptions:

Game	Users	£ Earned
1 Farmville	60,343,013	15,085,753
2 Frontierville	31,031,304	4,654,696
3 Café World	22,180,662	3,327,099
4 Mafia Wars	21,793,134	3,268,970
5 Treasure Isle	15,509,210	2,326,382
6 Happy Aquarium	13,052,368	1,957,855
7 Bejeweled Blitz	11,995,628	1,799,344
8 Petville	11,628,197	1,744,230
9 Restaurant City	9,696,574	1,454,486
10 Happy Pets	9135056	1,370,258
11 City of Wonder	8,840,339	1,326,051
12 YoVille	7,579,517	1,136,928
13 Zoo World	7,036,293	1,055,444
14 Fishville	6,873,782	1,031,067
15 Happy Island	6,286,697	943,005
16 Kingdoms of Camelot	5,891,589	883,738
17 Social City	5,575,999	836,400
18 Hotel City	5,246,913	787,037
19 Baking Life	4,904,453	735,668
20 Country Life	4,412,287	661,843
21 Farm Town	4,065,029	609,754
22 Monster World	3,905,525	585,829
23 My Empire	2,819,505	422,926
24 Island Paradise	2,422,170	363,326
25 Tiki Resort	2,364,724	354,709
26 Tiki Farm	1,278,580	191,787
27 My Vineyard	919,963	137,994
28 Zoo Kingdom	727,327	109,099
29 Crime City	628,109	94,216
30 Middle Kingdom	378,463	56,769

It seems to me some of these games are making a fortune! While they are considered 'free' games, sooner or later the majority of users will buy an item for their game and these repeated purchases quickly mount up until they exceed the value of a game purchased on CD/DVD. Unlike the CD/DVD game Facebook games are in a constant state of development too so there is something new to keep the players coming back.

The question is are we, the users, getting value for money from our games? A quick trip to the user forums of many of these quickly lets you know just how many people are unhappy with them. What amazes me is that people keep playing them! Especially the people who are spending real money. I guess it's a matter of not wanting to waste the money spent already.

Let's look at two examples from these games; both zoos. Zoo World and Zoo Kingdom.

Zoo World is making millions yet go to it's discussion board and you'll find complaint after complaint. The only people answering these complaints, however, are the other game players.

Zoo Kingdom's discussion board is the opposite however. There are few complaints and those that appear are quickly answered by the game developers. Read the comments there and you'll find many end with praise for Blue Fang who developed the game.

So why is it that the positions of these two games are not reversed? It beats me! I do know though that I like the community spirit there so much that I host a Zoo Kingdom Hints & Tips website for it.

It seems to me that those game firms who have not yet caught on to the potential of social media websites for earning money are missing out and if you are looking for a profitable investment a small business just starting the climb up the Facebook games league is worth looking at.

The Election. What went wrong?

2010-05-07T21:56:00.005+01:00

The UK held a general election on 6th May 2010 but things didn't quite go as smoothly as expected.

here in the UK we've grown accustomed to feeling smug about how 'we hold elections properly' and smile at the feeble efforts of other countries where there are complaints about vote rigging and people being denied their right to vote. "It could never happen here," we say. Except it did!

Today's news is full of stories about people who went to vote, stood in a queue for an hour or more only to be denied their right to vote when the polling stations closed at 10:00pm. Some people were even in the building but because they hadn't been given a ballot paper by 10:00pm they didn't get to vote.

That wasn't my problem though. I arrived earlier at 18:45 and passed the clerk my voting card only to be told that it's number had already been marked off the lists as having already voted.

The clerk phoned someone to ask procedure and after about 15 minutes got a call back to say I was to be given a pink voting slip and that it and my electors card were to be sent in in a sealed envelope rather than put in the ballot box. Hardly a secret ballot.

I asked the clerk that I be informed of the result of the enquiry that would be made about this.

I told the clerk that I had lived at my address for two years but this was the first time I had voted in an election there (I was away in previous council elections).

It seems to me there are three possibilities:
1. That the clerks made an error and both crossed off the wrong number on their lists.
2. That the number on my electors card for some reason was duplicated
3. That someone had given in my name and address and had 'stolen' the vote.

Let's assume that the first scenario happened. There were two clerks checking the electors lists for each voter. Is it likely they both got it wrong? Only if they were copying each other's work - surely that would be poor procedure.

How about the second scenario? I've seen the electors list used and didn't spot a duplicate - neither did the two clerks.

What about the third possibility? I asked the clerks what happened to the lists they marked the voters off on and got an evasive answer. It seems to me that these lists should NOT be allowed to fall into anyone's hands since knowing who did not vote in elections would allow someone to impersonate that person in a new election. I was surprised to see the clerks giving back electors cards to voters. That hadn't happened in previous elections and I can imagine quite a few being added to street litter or deposited in bins outside the polling station from which they could be retrieved.

It seems to me that apart from a need to get more people through the system quickly there is also a need to tighten up security. I suggest at a minimum voters should be asked for proof of identity if they turn up at polling stations without their poll card.

On a lighter note I received an e-mail from David Cameron. Here it is:
You'll notice that the e-mail was sent to me at 12:24 am on Friday 7th May.
No wonder David didn't get a majority in parliament. He's been telling his supporters to go vote 2½ hours AFTER the polls closed!

Climate Folly

2010-04-27T15:04:00.003+01:00

On the one hand we have the global warming alarmists who tell us we are heading for disaster due to carbon emissions. On the other hand we have the climate sceptics who tell us that Man's impact on the climate is relatively minor and that carbon taxation is just another excuse to raise more money and that it will ham the economy.

There are some good and bad points made by both sides and as a result confusion reigns for many. What is certain, however, is that if we do nothing about the fossil fuels we are burning then we are heading for disaster.

The trouble is that we are burning vital and finite natural resources. We will run out of these - or at least get to the point where it costs more in energy to extract these fuels than we get in energy using them.

At the moment we are like the man who fell off the top of the Empire State Building who was heard to say as he passed the fifth floor "Well I've fallen 97 stories and I'm all right so far!"

We have to stop using these resources other than as chemical feedstock. We must put all our effort into developing renewable energy resources and we have to start doing it now! OK we can devote some resources to nuclear energy but the horrendous problems we are passing on to future generations means that we should concentrate on developing nuclear fusion not nuclear fission.

I hear much of people saying "We'll stop burning oil and natural gas in our cars and use electricity instead." Duh! Where do these people think most of our electricity comes from?

So there is a case for cutting carbon emissions and 'going green' is a good idea. Just don't let yourself be fooled by many of the green claims such as 'Save oil by using paper or reusable bags instead of plastic ones' (See the great plastic bag con) and buy white recycled paper (See Don't print this). As to government vehicle scrappage schemes - they are an environmental disaster for a car less than 15 years old.

NPower Still Doesn't Listen!

2010-04-16T19:17:00.007+01:00

You could read my previous blogs NPower doesn't listen and Maybe NPower does listen but let me save you a little time and summarise the story so far:

I move to a new address in April 2008 and buy my electricity from Npower, the previous occupant's supplier. I pay my bill by direct debit straight from my bank.
June 2008 I get a bill for a Mr & Mrs D Maylor from NPower. I take it round to my neighbours thinking it might have been delivered wrongly. No-one has ever heard of the Maylors so I return the bill to NPower marked 'Not known at this address'
A week later the bill comes back to me and is returned again.
The 'red bill' arrives for Mr Maylor and this time I phone NPower and explain they are sending the bills to the wrong address. 'I don't understand it' the guy says. 'We've been sending bills to Mr Maylor at that address for the last eight years and they have always been paid!' He assures me NPower will sort it out.
Two months later NPower send disconnection notices to my house - two of them - despite the fact that my bill is being paid every month. They tell me that if I'm not in they will break in, disconnect me for a bill I don't owe and then lock me out of my own house making me travel 60 miles to collect keys. Again I phone them and am assured 'everything will be sorted out.'
Two months later NPower send me a reply to a letter Mr Maylor had written expressing concern that he wasn't being sent bills. I get a letter about my own account telling me I was paying too much and reducing my monthly payments to £42. I phone them and tell them they are wrong and ask them to set the monthly payment to £65. They don't.
Five months later NPower send another bill this time for £1,476.86 threatening legal action if it wasn't paid. This time I write to NPower's retail CEO, Kevin Miles.
A week later NPower send out a meter reader to check the number of my meter. 'At last!' I think, 'They are finally going to get this sorted out.' The next day they send another one.
NPower continue to send Mr Maylor's bills to my address.
August 2009. After getting more letters threatening court action I change electricity suppliers to EDF. I write to customer services telling them exactly why I'm changing suppliers.
NPower tell me that there's a £600 balance owing on my account.
September 2009. NPower customer services contact me and apologise for their errors. They offer me £100 compensation for the repeated failure to sort out why they were sending letters to my address for Mr Maylor and repeated threats to cut off my supply. They offer a further £100 as compensation for ignoring my letters regarding the amount I should pay them each month. They assure me I will NEVER get another bill for Mr Maylor at my address.

So today, on 16th April 2010, I get another letter addressed to Mr & Mrs Maylor / Occupier. Here it is:

So yet again NPower are sending me bills for someone I don't know for an account I don't owe and are threatening to break into my house and disconnect me or fit a prepayment meter. And they don't even supply my electricity!

Back in August I told them I no longer intended to answer their letters, return Mr Maylor's bills or telephone them about their mistakes. The question is should I do that and allow them to embarrass themselves in court or should I telephone them yet again and seek another £100 compensation?

Although I would love to have the day in court I think I'll phone them :)

Update 11 April 2011

Well I haven't heard from NPower for almost a year and I was beginning to think it was all over. Today however, a guy rang my doorbell.

"Mr. Maylor?" he said as I spotted the NPower logo on his sweatshirt.

Update 12 July 2011

Npower woke me up this morning at 8:30am with a meter reader. Funny thing was he couldn't seem to find the meter he wanted - mine had the wrong number.

The most informative politics survey ever!

2010-04-16T13:20:00.010+01:00

I just came across an astonishing survey about the UK election campaign. Apparently some genius at the Daily Star decided to ask women aged 20 - 30 which of the three party leaders they would prefer to kiss. Predictably just 3% chose Gordon Brown (left) 14.9% said they would choose to kiss David Cameron (right) and 16.9% chose Nick Clegg (centre).

Now doing a little math that adds up to just 34.8% meaning 65.2% would choose NOT to kiss any of them. Considering that each of them has about as much sex appeal as a home made bar of soap I'm not surprised. It did however make me curious so I did my own survey and offered an alternative choice.

You've guessed it 60% chose to kiss the donkey!

Girl & donkey image by Délirante Bestiole & used under the creative commons licence.

Postscript A Year Later
Remarkably the Daily Star came up with a formula for determining the eventual outcome. Together David and Nick proved much more popular than poor Gordon and as a result formed a coalition government.

I gave some thought to putting up a donkey candidate who would undoubtedly have been a clear winner but in the end decided that I would probably be wasting my money on the basis that parliament has enough donkeys there already.

Is our new parliament any better? Not a jot, still the same old braying. Of course there is a logical solution to the country's woes

Annoyances

2010-01-14T16:32:00.009Z

The world is full of minor irritations; things which could have been much nicer had a little bit of extra thought thought been put in at the design stage. Here's my list of them, starting with laptop computers.

Laptop Computers

Why isn't there a switch or light sensor to turn off or dim those flashing LED lights for power, hard drive,networks etc. at night? Ever slept in a room with a laptop which has been left on to run a malware scan?
Laptops are named as such because they can be used on your lap. So it isn't a good idea to put sockets, buttons and DVD drives at the front edge where they will dig into you when you do use them on your lap.
Why aren't ALL laptops made with the ability to switch off the screen quickly?
There are now 750GB hard drives available for laptops so it takes a special kind of idiot to design one with a 120GB (or less) hard drive.
Painting a laptop? It may look nice for a while but paint wears off and black plastic showing through a silver 'Paint job' makes a laptop look really scruffy. (HP please note!)
Cordless mice WILL be dropped - lots of times. Build them so that they can take it and so that they don't burst open and spill the batteries. (Microsoft please note!) Put buttons where you can use them but not where you constantly press them accidentally.
No-one in their right mind carries a 17" laptop around with the lid closed and using it as an mp3 player. (Dell please note!)
Air vents should NOT be placed where they will be blocked if a laptop is used on a lap.
Why aren't instructions provided which tell people how to clean out air vents and why it's desirable to do so?
Why aren't all laptop screws inserted using an anti-shake fluid such as Locktight so that they don't work loose and drop out?
It's NOT a good idea to lightly solder a power socket directly to the motherboard of a laptop so that if the power plug is knocked it breaks the socket away from the motherboard. (Toshiba please note!)
Which clot is it who thinks mice, USB hubs and the like MUST have multi-colour LEDs built into them? What exactly does this achieve?

Websites

OK I'm unusual in that I have a laptop with a 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution screen. I HATE websites which don't cater for this screen size and which display everything in a narrow band down the middle of the screen. Take for instance the .net magazine website (which really aught to know better) Here it is displayed full screen on my computer:

Now at least if you magnify the text you can still read the site but look what happens if you display the HP website full screen on my computer and magnify the text:

...and they pay people to produce a mess like this?
Again I'm unusual because I live out in the country away from any towns or villages. This means my house has a name not a number and does not have a street or district. It does however have a UK postcode not a five number zip code. You wouldn't believe the number of websites I go to where if you fill out an address form to buy something they can't cope with an address like mine. I get:
Please insert house number
Please enter street
Please enter a valid zip code
Even worse are the sites with incomplete postcode data. For some reason about 20% of the sites I visit insist my postcode isn't real. When eventually I give up and ring them they usually ask "Is it a new house?"
"Fairly new. " I respond, "It was built in 1860."

Domestic appliances

People WILL hang on the doors of tumble driers so why are the hinges not made stronger?
The light bulb lighting the inside of a microwave will eventually burn out and you shouldn't have to dismantle the whole thing to replace it.
Hotplates on stoves don't look hot. Would it be too difficult to fit a warning light which will only go out when they are cool enough to touch?
What idiot designed a plastic bottle shelf for a fridge which isn't strong enough to take the weight of the bottles it contains. (Whirlpool please note!)
Painting instructions in the outside of a deep fat fryer where they get greasy and can only be cleaned with an abrasive cleaner is a rotten idea. (Breville please note!)
Can no-one invent an automatic toaster which toasts the first slice as well as the rest?
Vacuum cleaners which sound like a jet engine taking off should not be made without ear defenders being provided. (Dyson please note!) Have you ever noticed you don't hear them in the adverts?
The person who came up with the idea of region codes for DVDs needs to be 2nd in line for shooting come the revolution. First place should be reserved for the designer of DVD players which lock to a region but claim to be 'multi-region'.
PLEASE will someone produce a remote control for TVs, DVD players, satellite receivers etc. which is programmable and has an LCD display to tell you what the functions are. It shouldn't cost £30 or more! How about one which beeps to help you find it in the same way you can find the portable phone.

Computer software

Computer games which contain anti-piracy (drm) software such as Securom should have this clearly labelled on the OUTSIDE of the case. Come to think of it, let's make Securom's designers first in line for shooting.

Politics

I will probably vote for any politician who can answer any question with a simple 'yes' or 'no'.
We have democracy all wrong. The last person we need as President or Prime Minister is the megalomaniac who wants to be President or Prime Minister! Presidents and Prime Ministers should be dragged kicking and screaming to the job.
I will definitely vote for any politician who suggests hanging as a suitable punishment for spammers. After all, annoying 2 billion people has to be a good reason for this punishment.

Sticky Labels

I just bought a cyclists water bottle from my local branch of Tesco. Nice bottle design but some idiot felt it needed to have a large, ugly, self-adhesive label which proved impossible to remove easily and which left the bottle so sticky that it would stay stuck to a hand which had gripped it. Now I know I can remove the stickyness with iso-propyl alcohol or methylated spirits but that would be absorbed by the plastic bottle and add an unpleasant flavour to the bottle's contents and in any case should I be forced to do that? All this person has done is to ensure I NEVER buy a second one! Listen morons - put the non-adhesive label, along with the bottle in one of those mesh nets Tesco sell onions in.

I'm sure you can think of lots of other annoyances. Why not add them here.

NPower - How to shoot yourself in the foot

2010-01-11T18:08:00.002Z

A while ago I watched an advert for NPower in a survey. I hope that it's not one they are using on TV because it re-enforced my opinion of how the energy provider just doesn't care about it's customers.

A 'Wallice and Grommet' style NPower worker walked in from the pouring rain, leaving the garden gate and front door wide open. Then, with a stupid grin on his face, he marched down the hall without wiping his feet.

"He might get in but he wouldn't get out in one piece" said my wife. "So much for saving energy" I thought.

Who thought up this rubbish? Did they imagine it would succeed in making the public think well of NPower? It certainly makes me remember the name but NOT in a positive way... but then NPower are good at doing that.

Driving in snow and ice

2010-01-02T23:40:00.004Z

1st January 2010 saw what is considered 'heavy' snowfalls in most of the UK. In my own area of Northumberland six inches had fallen by lunchtime. As usual it brought chaos on the roads since snow has been a rarity in the UK for some time and most drivers just don't have a clue about how to drive on snow and ice. A few, who live high enough and are old enough or have lived elsewhere where snow is common have the skill but still become stuck behind those who slide and skid.

I was one of them on New Year's Eve in Newcastle when I spent 30 minutes making a 2 mile journey up Dunston Bank. It was covered in ice and although I didn't get stuck I had to dodge around other cars which were sliding all over the place.

So what is the secret? It's easy - you slow down. Although it is counter intuitive, if you start to get wheel-spin you ease off on the accelerator (gas pedal) and run your engine just a little faster than you need to prevent the engine stalling. Keep in the highest gear possible and if you start to slide, DON'T add power.

When going downhill leave a large gap in front. ABS brakes will help but if your car isn't fitted with them then brake very gently. If you start to slide, take your foot off the brake and let the wheels start turning and tyres start gripping before trying to brake again. This is vital since you have no control over your car's direction once the wheels have locked. If it's really icy then pulse the brake gently rather than braking steadily.

Obviously this is no time to have to do an emergency stop so LEAVE THAT GAP and think well ahead. Assume the worst. That driver at the junction ahead will try to pull out in front of you, the guy you are about to overtake will slide sideways across your path and the guy coming down the hill towards you thinks he can control his skid by braking hard and sliding into you.

If you do get stuck there are three things you should be carrying in your boot which can help.

a shovel

a large piece of a cardboard box

a bag of cat litter

Use the shovel to dig a path clear.
Place the cardboard under the wheel which is slipping.
Cat litter makes good grit to get you traction and is a lot lighter than grit or salt.

So where did I pick up the skill? I was raided on a hill farm 1,700 feet up in the Pennine Hills and have also spent 3 winters in Canada. I'm old enough to remember the 1963 winter too so 6 inches of snow is nothing!

By the way - if you think winter is bad this year - 'you ain't seen nuthin yet!'

Climate conference/disaster/damp squib (COP15)

2009-12-30T14:27:00.006Z

Well the Copenhagen Climate Conference is over with nothing achieved. Lots of people attended and all that was achieved was a substantial contribution to 'global warming' in the form of jet fuel wasted by 150 planes travelling there from all over the world and a probably equal quantity of 'hot air' spouted by media, activists and politicians who obviously didn't know what they were talking about. So here is my summary of the event, trivia and all. If you want more, I've put it in detail here.

First of all you have to admire the timing of holding a conference on global warming during a time when people were freezing to death during the coldest snap Europe has experienced for several years. That really makes people begin to think 'Maybe a little warming wouldn't be such a bad idea'. Obviously the organisers need to take lessons from the organisers of the first international conference on global warming who held their conference during a heat wave in August 2001.

I was impressed by the impassioned plea of Leah Wickham, a Fijian who tearfully told the conference 'Fifty years from now, my children will be raising their own families. It is my hope that they will still be able to call our beautiful islands home.' I don't doubt her sincerity but since the oceans are rising at 1.8mm per year (as they have been doing for the last 12,000 years) and Fiji is a mountainous set of islands with peaks of 1,300 metres I calculate she won't need to worry for at least 70,000 years - assuming an unlimited supply of polar ice to melt. She may find it a little cramped though if all the world's ice were to melt (around 3,500 years in the future at the current rate) and the sea level rises by 70 metres. There's a web page at www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Special:SeaLevel which will allow you to see how any area in the world would be affected.

It's estimated the conference caused an additional 40,000 tonnes of carbon (146,000 tonnes of CO₂) released by the 13,000 visitors many of whom were delivered in a fleet of 1,200 gas guzzling limos. Just 5 of the limos were hybrids.

Does that 146,000 tonne figure include the carbon cost of the 40 ministers who met in Copenhagen November 16-17; the 12 who met in the Maldives 9-10 November; the 19 who met in Singapore 14-15 November; the leaders who met in Singapore on 19 Nov. or the British Commonwealth leaders who met in Trinidad with the UN Secretary-General, French and Danish presidents, to discuss the climate conference?
Rumour has it that there were plans for President Obama to ride a bicycle to the conference but that idea was squashed due to the fleet of extra cars which would be needed to surround him. They would have used even more carbon (and maybe due to the cold).

Full marks have to go to University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) for supposedly sending emails suggesting conflicting data should be suppressed and then having that email released to the media just before the conference. If ever an action could be taken to throw doubt about the IPCC and it's data sources then that was it. Of course reading the emails is one thing but understanding the context in which they were written is another. It certainly seems to me that climate scientists need to be more careful when writing emails. Funny how the investigation of this has gone quiet now.

The conference seems to have been taken seriously - at least that's the impression you would get from looking at the conference photographs. Everyone has a straight face apart from President Obama and a few others. (The last picture of smiling media services excluded)

All that effort and what did they achieve? Nothing!

Now don't get the idea that I'm a climate sceptic who thinks we can freely continue to burn fossil fuels. My personal belief is that we should take every step possible to minimise our use of fossil fuels. However I don't hold that opinion because of 'global warming'; I hold that opinion because these are precious and finite resources which we will need as chemical feedstock later rather than burning them now. As to 'Climate Warming' - well it's been going on for 12,000 years and there's not a lot we can do about it.

Toshiba Nano Mouse

2009-12-29T19:00:00.004Z

I just bought a new wireless mouse for my son's computer, a Toshiba Nano Wireless Laser mouse. I chose it because of the tiny USB dongle it comes with and because I didn't want it to interfere with my wife's Logitech wireless mouse.

It's 25 miles to my nearest computer store so we went while shopping for other items.

My son thought it was cool at first but had problems installing the software and configuring the buttons.

After just four days it stopped working. I took a look and installed the software properly. No effect. I changed the battery, no effect. I reset the connection (not explained in the manual), no effect. I could right click and left click but no matter what I did the pointer wouldn't move.

"Maybe I'm doing something wrong" I thought and went to the Toshiba website to check. I wish I had gone there first because eventually I found 12 customer reviews on the US site all telling the same story. It works at first but stops working within 5 months. Examining the 'Full specification' I found:
Benefit
Cordless YES
Opitical NO
Laser NO Huh! It says a laser mouse on the box
Scroll button YES
Ergonomic NO
Interchangeable Cover NO
Mac Compatible NO
USB Connection YES These cameras plug directly into a port on your PC with an appropriate USB cable Huh! Its a mouse not a camera!
Shortcut button NO

Seems Toshiba doesn't know their own product and PC World & other stores copy this blindly.

So I'm going to have to make a 50 mile round trip to PC World to take it back. I went on New Year's Eve after first making sure the store was open. I got there 21 minutes before the store's closing time only to find that they had closed early due to the bad weather (See Driving in snow and ice). Great - another 50 mile trip!

So that makes me award the Toshina Nano Mouse my award for being the biggest load of c*#p ever sold for £19.99!

Remembering the Winter of 1963

2009-11-25T14:48:00.003Z

Looking outside (in-between downpours) I can't help noticing that this year we have had a bumper crop of berries, a greater fall of pine needles than usual and we had lots of morning fog in August. According to tradition these are all signs of a bad winter to come.

I'm not convinced of any of the 'Lore', it reminds me of the story of Indians who rang up the weather service to find out about the coming winter and were told it would be cold so they started gathering wood. When they checked again later they were told it would be very cold so they gathered more wood. Later still they were told it would be extremely cold so they gathered yet more wood. When they checked next they were told it would be the worst winter for years. 'How do you know?' they asked and got the reply 'Well the Indians are gathering wood like crazy.'

I do however remember an extremely bad winter. That of 1963. It was bitterly cold, the coldest on record, and it snowed in a big way!

That year I was living on a hill farm in the North Pennines. The first I remember of that winter was when my father opened the front door and was met by a solid wall of snow. The previous five winters at the farm had taught us to keep a shovel inside the house so a few minutes digging got us outside. There had been a heavy snowfall but the howling wind had picked up most of the snow on the fells above us and blown it all into drifts in the valley where we lived, one of them burying our front door and the window of our sitting room. The picture shows our family standing outside that door and window later that summer.

We had to dig our way across the farmyard to the cow byre to feed the cows and while we were doing that the postman arrived. He had made it as far as our lane but had then given up. He left the mail for the village of Carrshield at the Chapel below our house saying 'If anyone gets here from there or goes there - ask them to take it'. Carrshield was a mere 2 miles from our house, further up the valley so to a 14 year old boy that was a challenge. I got prepared. By then we had learnt to wear two pairs of jeans, one inside our wellingtons and one outside. Not only did that keep out the bitter wind but it also prevented snow from getting inside wellingtons. I put on a thick pullover, mits, Woolen hat and two jackets, one with a hood. Looking like the Michelin man I made my way down the lane to the chapel, struggled to put the post bag over my shoulder and marched off into the blizzard.

About 200 yards further the road went through a series of bends, through a small wood and over a small stream. It was there I met one of our neighbours, Roland Johnson, trying to dig out his Landrover which had got stuck in the snow. I gave him a hand and he turned back towards his home. I continued up the road - or at least what I thought was the road since the snow had completely covered it, the wall at the left and the fence at my right. It was hard going since the snow was soft and deep. I sank up to my thighs in it and began to think plans for making a set of snow shoes out of old tennis rackets.

About another 20 yards and I got tangled up in something buried in the snow. Fence wires? Nope it was telephone wires still attached and normally 20 feet in the air. That's when I gave up! Carrshield's mail could wait.

The snow there turned out to be 22 feet deep after it had packed down and dug out. One of the pictures I have of it shows my brother-in-law, Colin Graham, standing on the shoulders of a friend, Brian Myers, next to the drift. As you can see the snow still towers above them.

It took gangs of men three weeks to dig their way to Carrshield. Even then there was one road which remained closed even longer where it went through a cutting which had been completely filled with a 44 foot deep snow drift.

As to that 44 foot drift; 1963 was the first year the council tried out snow blowers. They imported one from Switzerland, brought it by low loader to Hexham then drove it from there towards that drift. About 200 yards from it it broke down and the drift had to be cut out by men with shovels and mechanical diggers.

It took a long time for the snow to melt that year. In June, when I came home at half tern for a holiday there was still snow in places.

UK Education?

2009-10-20T16:25:00.004+01:00

Today the BBC news wrote that truancy in UK schools was at a record high, 1.03% of school sessions being missed without permission.

"Missing school for no good reason is totally unacceptable," Schools Minister Vernon Coaker commented.

A Department for Children, Schools and Families spokesperson commented "The rise in unauthorised absence is not what we want to see, but as schools are cracking down on absence it's inevitable that they will be stricter about authorising it - meaning that unauthorised absence will rise,".

Who are they trying to kid? These children are absent from school because they don't like the courses which have been forced upon them! Parents too often fail to see the point of a child following a particular course.

The trouble is that those in parliament and government don't live in the real world. Their social circle does not include those of average or below average ability and by definition that makes up 50% of the population. As someone who was at the sharp end of education for 35 years I was constantly frustrated by governments who decided they knew best and would 'improve' education.

First as a chemistry teacher I was dismayed when the then government said 'We're not producing enough scientists - solution - make all children take a GCE (now GCSE) in science. Unfortunately they failed to realise that 'Scientists' are bred from the top 5-10% of the ability range and no amount of science courses will ever produce more 'scientists' from the remaining 90%. In the past most of the bottom 50% dropped science courses allowing the remaining 50% to have more time and money spent on them. That bottom 50% broke most of the equipment too!

By all means provide the lower ability groups with a science course. Give them a general awareness course which should be fun and interesting but not too demanding and not requiring pupils to learn about things totally beyond them. Let me ask Mps this:
"How many of you understand why relativity says you can't travel beyond the speed of light? How many of you understand about adenosine triphosphate's role in providing energy? Can you explain why the outer electron shell makes the chemistry of sodium similar to the chemistry of potassium?"
If you don't know the answers then you have no right to expect the majority of the population to know it either!

For years too, all pupils must follow a 'religious education' course in UK schools and each school must have a regular collective Christian worship. I always found 80% of pupils hated this as a total waste of time. Now I can see why it's still in the curriculum. Our MPs are afraid that saying they don't personally believe it has relevance in today's society will cost them votes. I found it interesting that, when MPs were recently asked if they believed in 'God', each paused awkwardly before saying 'yes'.

PHSE (Personal, Social and Health Education) This was a course introduced a few years ago. In some schools it's taught by a specialist teacher but in the majority it's taught, often poorly, by non-specialists. In schools where PSHE is taught by non-specialists on a particular day the absence rate is higher on that day. Now I can see the point of having this subject but if schools want it to be taken seriously then get a specialist teacher to teach it properly and concentrate the maths, science and other specialists on teaching the subject they know best. I would suggest merging it with the RE program too.

OFSTED - Few people know that this stands for 'Office for Standards in Education'. Its function seems to be to terrorise teachers and make them jump through hoops. Does it really do anything useful? How much does it cost?

SATs (Subject Attainment Tests) A great idea in theory - or are they? Do we really need to make our children jump through hoops several times in the course of their education? Remember the 11+ examination which regularly sent 40% of pupils to the wrong school? Do SATs allow us to tell which schools are best? Does knowing that 'information' help or does it mean that everyone tries to get into 'the best' school and the majority then arrive at a lesser school already disaffected because they didn't get into the oversubscribed school of their choice. Do the SATs results tell the teachers anything they don't already know?

So if I were the Schools Minister what would I do?

Scrap the SATs - a waste of time and money.

Scrap OFSTED - I can find a better use for £200 million and getting rid of it will reduce stress absence in schools which costs even more.

Forget compulsory science GCSEs. Instead introduce a science appreciation course for those who don't opt to follow sciences at GCSE level. Let's face it an average GCSE grade in science is a grade F which as far as employers are concerned is a certificate proving the person is incompetent at science. Certainly steer that top ability group towards the sciences though and concentrate the expensive resources on those with the ability to use them.

Merge the RE and PHSE courses. Make them non-examinable (although with the option of opting for a GCSE RE subject for those who want it) and have it taught by specialist teachers. Do away with the dictate that each school should have a compulsory Christian collective worship. Keep assemblies though.

See my job as being to provide schools with the funding they need to maintain and create new buildings, purchase resources, reduce class sizes and NOT to interfere.

Original cartoon Matt of the Daily Telegraph

Choosing Genealogy Software

2009-10-15T10:49:00.004+01:00

For the past few months I've been trying out genealogy software to see how they compare against each other.

According to some sources tracing your family history is now the third most popular hobby in the US. Something you've possibly noticed if you count the number of magazines devoted to the subject. I got bitten by the genealogy bug back in my early 20s (a long time ago) and if anything, my interest has increased.

In the past I've kept records:

on separate cards - which constantly get out of order

in loose leaf folders - a disaster once you drop it once

in hard backed notebooks - which drop to bits over time and need re-transcribing

...but then along came computers and Internet offering a much easier (and possibly safer) method of storing information.

For a while I experimented with creating my own database program but it quickly became apparent to me that I was attempting to re-invent the wheel. There are lots of pre-made genealogy programs out there, some of which, e.g.Personal Ancestral File. are excellent and FREE!

I used Personal Ancestral File (PAF) for years but began to wonder if I was perhaps missing out on something. Could it be that there were much better programs available which might suit me better - even if I did have to pay for them?

Of course if you read the reviews of software you'll get as many different 'best buy's as there are reviews. Family history magazines tend to promote the one they offer for sale or are supported by and computer magazines tend not to be written by genealogists (Computer Shopper has reviewed genealogy programs twice in the last 8 years and made glaring omissions). There was only one thing for it. I got hold of each of the programs and tried them out myself.

The full results can be seen on my Genlinks website but here's a short summary of what I found:

The most expensive programs are NOT the best programs

All of them are rubbish at producing websites

The use of information from Internet has increased the number of errors in family trees. Lots of software packages allow you to make errors such as a 69 year old woman having children two years after her death

You'll need to read manuals to get the best out of most of the software and sometimes there's an extra charge for that. Something I find objectionable - (Legacy please note!)

None of the programs integrate with e-mail clients - a surprising omission since much information will come via that route

Few of the programs allow you to add clickable web page links. Presumably the software publishers will say 'Web pages may disappear' (obviously never having heard of the Internet Archive)

A surprising number of the programs offer few facilities for keeping contact information

Adding map information is a great idea but few software programs do it well and none of them offer old maps

DNA information has left most of the programs far behind

Some programs are excellent if you want to write a book about your family. Others are useless at this because you can't edit the result

Most of the programs will run with Windows 7 but some may have slight problems if text and icons are set at 125% or more scale on a large high resolution display. One expensive program does not use standard file windows.

So which one would I choose?

I'm going to keep PAF because despite being the oldest and free program it's the best at providing the text for my website.

I'm going to buy RootsMagic 4 because with a score of 158 points it's the outright winner. It's just a shame that it's so rubbish at making web pages and warning you about errors.

I'm probably going to buy Legacy 7 since I like it's warnings and can read and interpret manuals. I may eventually understand it's awful merge individuals feature. I look forward to Legacy 8

So I'll be using not one but three programs - and that will be a real pain!

I'm never going to win the lottery...

2009-09-27T23:17:00.003+01:00

Don't get me wrong. I never really expected to win because I only buy one ticket for each of the Saturday and Wednesday draws so my odds of winning are not very high. In fact I look on it as more of a charitable donation. It does allow me one thing though - hope.

Hope that against all odds, my numbers come up and I'll suddenly be rich!

I buy my tickets online since I hate standing in queues and there isn't a shop selling the tickets within three miles. Usually I pay in £10 and that covers me for the next five weeks. (As you can see, I'm not exactly addicted to gambling) The trouble is that every now and then I forget to buy my tickets (despite the reminder the lottery sends me).

Eleven weeks ago I forgot and missed a Saturday draw. Three numbers came up and I missed out on £10. Oh well that's unfortunate but I wouldn't miss it. Five weeks later I forgot again and last Saturday, didn't have a ticket. Four of my numbers came up.

Ahgggh! That not won £87 would have paid for almost a years worth of new tickets! I've had three number £10 wins before (not very often) but never a four number win.

I bought a fresh 5 week supply and yesterday - as usual not a single number. I guess fate is telling me I'm never going to get those six numbers.

If I were 'Jaydax Almighty' I would...

2009-09-21T10:40:00.008+01:00

...re-educate laptop manufacturers who continue to design laptops that can't easily be used on your lap! Your personal laptop would redesign itself so that everything, keyboard, sockets and screen was all on the front edge of the laptop.
Let me give you a hint guys - buttons, optical drives and headphone sockets should NEVER be placed on the front edge of a laptop because they cause problems when it is used on your lap or - heaven forbid - in bed.
My Dell Inspiron 1720 is an example. If it's used on raised knees (in bed) then the front edge presses into you and several buttons are pressed which plays havoc with the sound system and for some reason stops some of the keyboard from working. The buttons Dell tells me are positioned there so I can play sound files with the laptop lid closed. Hey guys, if I want to listen to music I use an mp3 player or my mobile phone. I don't lug a laptop around!
HP Pavillion laptops have headphone sockets on the front edge which mean a jack plug sticks into you and which can give you a mild stinging shock if they touch bare skin.
Front opening optical drives? You have to move the laptop before you can change a disk. While I'm on the subject of computer design i WOULD CONSIGN TO AN ASSYLUM THE IDIOT WHO FIRST PUT 'cAPS lOCK' NEXT TO 'sHIFT'

...Spray paint silver those who design paint on laptop palmrests. Don't worry about the paint on you guys - it will wear off just as it does when you use a laptop enough. It wears away even faster if you use a mouse on the palmrest. On my Dell the plastic under the paint is grey so it just looks scruffy when the silver paint covering it wears away but my HP has black plastic under it's silver paint scheme and looks awful after just a year's heavy use.

...give a permanent thirst and only £1.00 to soft drink manufacturers who think its OK to charge £1.65 ($2.67) for a bottle of Coca-Cola! You must be kidding. I stop buying the stuff at my local supermarket when its price goes above £1.00 per 2 litre bottle and that price I consider too high considering I can buy 'Cola' for less than 40p. How about a 1 litre bottle of water for 90p ($1.46)? I have a tap at home and water from it which has stood in the fridge overnight tastes just as good.

...fill the cars of people who litter roads with 100 times the amount of rubbish they dump. I live in the country on a main road which passes through a beautiful area of Northumberland. Each day I clean up rubbish thrown out of cars. Plastic bottles, fast food wrappers, beer cans, newspapers, plastic bags, used nappies (diapers) and cigarette packets all get dumped outside my house. Oh how 'Jaydax Almighty' would enjoy watching them try to dump their rubbish a second time.

...consign those who shrink wrap their products to an environment where everything was shrink wrapped and there wasn't a sharp object or fingernail in sight. I'm sick of plastic wrapping around DVDs. The stuff you spend ten minutes trying to get into. There already is a better alternative to preventing people removing the disks, those red tabs which are removed at the checkout.

... at night I would enter the houses of supermarket managers and move everything in the house to a different location while they slept in revenge for them moving everything in the stores to a new location. I know why they do it - it's so that you have to look for it and hopefully you will see something else to buy as you do so ...but it's SO annoying! Lets see how they would like hunting for their car keys relocated to the bottom of the freezer, a shoe in the oven, the alarm clock in the garage and all their clothes in the front porch.

Advice to spammers and scammers

2009-09-17T10:15:00.004+01:00

No - I'm not going to tell you to see if you can head butt a 5 ton truck travelling at 70mph; (well you can if you want); this blog is about spams and scams which won't work on me!

- I turn on the 'To' field in my e-mail program so that I can see who the e-mail is being sent to. I won't read or even bother looking at the subject of any e-mail which:
- does not have a completed 'to' field
- is apparently sent from my e-mail address to me
- is sent to an e-mail address I do not recognise
- is sent to any of my 'spam trap' e-mail addresses (for information dummy they are all anagrams of 'you are a fool' e.g. louafeaoroy@...)
- is sent to 'undisclosed recipients'
I examine the 'From' field and don't bother with:
- any e-mail with a blank 'from' field
- from anyone with an e-mail address with a random combination of letters e.g. I will accept as possibly genuine david4387@... but not jwp5tzphw@...
- anyone with pharmacy, casino or a drug name or company in the e-mail address
After all of the above are automatically permanently deleted by my e-mail filters they then examine the subject field:
- No subject - deleted unless the sender is on my contact list
- If the subject is 'Hi', 'Hello', 'Urgent', 'ATTENTION!' or any other meaningless phrase - deleted unless the sender is in my contact list.
- I get offended by swearwords and vulgarity so my filters will permanently delete any e-mails which contain either. I will never see them
- there are keywords my filters look for. If these are found in a subject then the e-mail is permanently deleted unless the sender is in my contact list. I will never see e-mails about fake watches, drugs, dieting, banks I don't belong to, parcel services I don't use, lotteries, corporate offers or anything mentioning 'girlfriend', 'sweetheart', 'her', 'super' etc.
- If your spam refers to any body part in any way I won't ever see it unless you are on my contact list.
I will look at the subjects of what is left:
- if it's not in my language - I delete it
- if the subject contains words which contain spaces - V I A G R A or numbers/symbols replacing letters - Cia1;s then you know I don't want to receive it so why bother sending it?
- I will NEVER follow a link in an e-mail from a bank
- While the tax authorities may owe me money I know they never contact people by e-mail to tell them about it. Neither do they e-mail messages to say you owe money, and they certainly don't have a domain such as hmrc.gov.uk.tv
- Only a fool would buy a watch from a spammer without being able to see it - it's merely a good way to receive nothing and lose your credit card details - so I won't read it.
- The same is true for drugs or anything taken by mouth
- No matter how embarrassed a person is they would have to be a complete moron to trust any part of their anatomy to a surgeon promoted by spam. Good candidates for Darwin awards.
- Someone I don't know sends me details of a stock which is going to make my fortune? Yeah. Right - of course I believe it and will invest heavily
- Someone offers me a job working for 'just a few hours each day' - bin it
- Is there really anyone left on Internet who will fall for the Nigerian style money transfer scam? No I'm not going to give any stranger, no matter what he/she promises, my bank details and then wire funds which haven't cleared anywhere.
- Begging letters? No - I'm too mean to respond to genuine ones and too wise to fall for the sob stories
- Online casino promoted by spam? Of course I believe they will pay out and not steal my credit card details if I'm daft enough to bet any of my own money - deleted!
Now what about the rest?
- If a subject seems genuine my e-mail filters will still scan the content and delete any which contain content which had it appeared in the subject line, would have been deleted
- If something seems too good to be true I naturally suspect it isn't and delete it
- If the content is a graphic attachment only - deleted
- If the content contains a 'nasty' - My anti-malware program will get rid of it
- If the content contains lots of downloadable graphics, my e-mail program won't download them - and neither will I
I will open the rest of my e-mail BUT if I find a content unrelated to the subject I will:
- add the sender to spam blacklists
- complain to the ISP of the sender about spam and I will use the IP address of the sender, not the forged e-mail address. If that means complaining about someone who has unwittingly become part of a botnet - tough. Tearn to protect your computer with anti-malware software and stop inflicting pain on the rest of us.
- add the domain of any web host who fails to respond to my complaint about spam to blacklists
- complain to the web host of any URL promoted about the site being promoted by spam
- If you use a spambot to search my website for e-mail addresses it will find LOADS of totally useless e-mail addresses, links to spam blacklists and a very useful link to a site called WPOISON which will provide more useless dummy e-mail addresses to fill up your spam lists.

As you can see I have a thing about spam so my final bit of advise is:

Don't send it to me!

Maybe NPower does listen - eventually!

2009-09-12T11:39:00.005+01:00

If you've followed this blog you might have seen my post 'NPower doesn't listen' in which I related the tale of how Npower had been sending me bills for someone else since April 2008. I had returned bills marked 'Not known at this address' only to have them come straight back to me. I phoned them many times but still the bills kept coming.

Things came to a head when I got 'Disconnection Notices' which threatened to break in, disconnect me for a bill I didn't own and then lock me out of my own house by replacing the locks making me travel 60 miles and pay £150 to collect keys.

More phone calls, letters and complaints to NPower's Retail CEO had no effect. The bills kept coming and when I accidentally opened one in June 2009 I found they had risen to £1,476.86.

When NPower reduced my monthly direct debit payments, despite my objections, causing me to go £400 in debit on my real electricity account that was enough for me and I switched electricity suppliers to EDF and wrote a note to NPower explaining my reasons for doing so.

Finally, too late for them, Npower got their act in gear and wrote to me apologising and telling me they had finally corrected the address of the unfortunate individual with the £1,476.86 bill and I would no longer be sent his letters. As compensation for my trouble, today a £100.00 cheque arrived! They also knocked £100 off the final bill I got (Now £600).

Now I wonder how they plan to treat the other NPower customer - the one who's had free electricity for 18 months and now finds himself with a huge bill?

Totally forgettable restaurants

2009-07-03T13:03:00.002+01:00

There are lots of good restaurants out there and some which have even poisoned their clients but I've also come across some where the food didn't poison me but was totally flavourless and the service lacking. So this is my list of restaurants which are totally unremarkable and which I won't be going back to unless I'm really hungry and don't have the means to go elsewhere. Of course these are just my opinion, you might like it there.

Please feel free to add your own ideas for totally forgettable places to eat.

Orleans Thurrock - A restaurant which looks like a paddle steamer. We went there because my wife is from Louisiana and wanted some catfish. Not quite sure how they managed to make what is normally a delicious dish taste - well of nothing!

The Chattery, Freeman Hospital, Newcastle - We had chicken pie which somewhere had lost all flavour. They obviously haven't heard of using any kind of herb or spice and the chicken? Was it boiled for 10 hours before being put in the pie? Their apple crumble was flavourless too. Next time they do it I suggest they use cooking apples, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla in the custard

The Honeypot Keswick - So slow and boring - enough said.

Sainsburys Thurrock - Tasteless and overcooked food. Could be cleaner too.

Whae nettled the teacher?

2009-06-27T09:09:00.003+01:00

My father met Dick Phillipson in a pub and persuaded him to help us out on our small hill farm. He was already in his 60s but he had a tractor and we didn't. Over the years he was a regular visitor and I learnt a lot about hill farming from him.

Dick seemed to have lead an interesting life, a local historian's dream since he had been one of the last of the lead miners working in the Cumbria and Northumberland lead mines. He was the only person I knew who habitually wore wooden clogs rather than the all pervasive wellie. At lunchtime we would retire inside our ancient farmhouse (It's now a Buddhist monastery) and Dick was always good for a story.

Of course that gave me the idea and my elder sister became the nettle's next victim while I became the only 9 year old at school with a bald patch - but that's another story.

What a Con!+

2009-05-19T13:44:00.005+01:00

Con 1 - The BNP Doctor

It's election time for the EEC parliament and today I got a mailshot promoting the British National Party. On it there's a picture of a doctor with the following quite next to it:

"I'm sure Ive seen that doctor before," I thought and looked up 'doctor' in Google Images. Sure enough there he was as the second picture found. Now it's just vaguely possible that this doctor in the picture supports the BNP but if so why is he also a member of the New Hampshire Prostate Cancer Coalition on the other side of the Atlantic?

The BNP have used a stock image from iStockphoto.com on their leaflet. The cynic in me believes they probably couldn't find a doctor willing to make such a stupid quote since the UK National Health Service would collapse if it were not for all the immigrant doctors and nurses it employs. If they could find a doctor to support them then I could understand his/her reluctance to allow their picture to be used on a BNP promotion - it would be career suicide!

Now maybe it's naive of me to expect honesty and openness from a politician but this sort of thing on a leaflet isn't likely to get my vote. One last word of advice for the BNP - learn the rules of grammar regarding capitalisation of words such as 'Doctor'. It's not a name or in this case a title or sentence beginning.

Con 2 - Sky Satellite Box 'Protection' deal

Every couple of weeks I get a phone call or mailshot from Sky telling me that the Sky satellite box I have is now out of warranty and that I can take out a protection plan for just £6.45 per month or £77.50 per year. A good deal? Maybe not!

In the UK we have a little thing called 'The sale & Supply of Goods to Consumers Regulations 2002' which states we have the right to choose repair, replacement, partial or full refund, or compensation if a fault appears within 6 years (5 years+ in Scotland)and it is reasonable for goods to last that long. That 1 year warranty that 'has expired' has no legal standing! I find a Sky box will fail in it's first 2-3 months or will just keep on working.

Of course the Sky Protection policy does cover your box against accidental damage - but doesn't household contents insurance cover that too? All in all, Sky just seem to want us to pay an extra £77.50 for nothing at all and that makes it Con 2 in my list.

How to get your web pages noticed

2009-05-06T12:23:00.004+01:00

Many brilliant web pages go unnoticed because search engines simply have not 'discovered them' or your page is listed hopelessly far down the search results. So what can you do about it? Here's my recommendations.

First the content - Obviously it has to be something other people want to read! Once you've produced it however; rather than a huge single page you need to break your content down into at least 4 pages produced using a template so that they have a similar appearance and common links to each other. Promote each page as follows:

Make sure each page has a suitable descriptive title which a user might search for - NOT 'Home page', 'Welcome' or the like. For example in my tutorial about creating a Java animated waterfall I produced pages titled 'Creating a Java animated Waterfall (Lake Applet)', 'Getting waterfall speed and source image right', 'Putting the Java Waterfall together' and 'A Java Animated Waterfall'
Give each page headings and sub headings using the <h1>,<h2> or <h3> tags. If the <h1> tag isn't the correct style for your page remember you can change it locally using CSS.
(e.g. instead of using <h1>[Your Page Title]</h1> you can use <h1 style="font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:28px">[Your Page Title]</h1>
Meta tags, in the header of your page, are not as important as they used to be but are still worth adding.
You need a <meta name="description" content="[Put a short description of the page here]"> Make sure the description includes any keywords a user might search for.
You need a <meta name="keywords" content="[Put a comma separated list of keywords on the page here]"> Make sure your page mentions each keyword used at least twice. More is better but avoid meaningless repetition which might get your pages blocked!
Install Google Analytics on your site. http://www.google.com/analytics/
Create and submit an xml sitemap to Google Webmaster Central. There's a shareware download available for a program which will do this all for you - 'A1 Sitemap generator' at http://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/. Use it to generate an xml sitemap and “robots.txt” file. Upload these and 'ping' Google and other search engines to tell them about it. You can use A1 Sitemap Generator free for 30 days without restrictions. ($49 if you wish to continue using it)
Link to the site from any other websites you own.
Get someone to visit the site and tag it with Stumble Upon / Digg and other such social bookmarking sites. Since this will probably be a 'new discovery' they should add a comment on it. If you can't get a friend to do this then visit it yourself - preferably NOT from your own computer - try one at a local library.
Find a forum relevant to your site and post there, put the URL in a link. Submit the page to Stumble Upon / Digg etc.
Set up an account with Blogspot (owned by Google). Make a post about your site's content and include a link to your site. Yes - you're right - I just did it and here's another link to a free genealogy HTML pedigree template page I produced also.

Electric Blanket Safety - Morphy Richards Winterwarm

2009-04-04T13:32:00.008+01:00

I'm making this post because of a disturbing safety issue which I feel there should be a record on the Web about. It could have killed us!

A few days ago, just after the alarm went off to wake us up, my wife leapt up in bed, pulled the sheet off the mattress and frantically reached for the power switch to switch off our double size, Morphy Richards Winterwarm electric underblanket. At the same time there was the unmistakable smell of burning.

She'd turned over in bed and seen a red glow through the sheet and heard sizzling.

Here's what we found on turning over the blanket corner:

This electric blanket has a removable plug which allows the blanket to be washed. Just where the cable enters the plug it had burnt through and was busy burning a hole in the blanket itself and, given time, would have set fire to the sheet and mattress.

I did a little research and discovered in the UK alone in 2008 there were 1,000 housefires attributed to faulty electric blankets. 20 people were killed and 250 were injured. Checking further revealed that 99% of these fires were caused by blankets over ten years old.

This electric blanket was just 9 months old! It had never been washed, had not been moved and the cable was in a position where it was not subject to any movement or stress. The fuse fitted to the blanket did not burn out.

I notified the manufacturer of the problem - and got an apparently 'concerned' reply but which ended 'We regret that we are unable to be of any further assistance with your enquiry and assure you of our best attention at all times.'

Argos, the supplier took my concern more seriously. They sent it away for tests and invited me to claim compensation for any damage caused.

In this case we were lucky, apart from a tiny scorch mark to mattress and sheet there was no injury or damage. We were awake when it happened; but what would have happened if it had failed at 3:00am when we were fast asleep? This has shaken my confidence in electric blankets and no matter what Morphy Richards say - I won't sleep with one switched on again.

Postscript
In all fairness to Morphy Richards I have to report that they contacted me again after apparently reading this blog. It seems that the Winterwarm range is exclusively supplied through Argos on the understanding that Argos deal with all following consumer contact. This was not made clear in Morphy Richards first e-mail. Morphy Richards are now apparently trying to locate the blanket for detailed assessment.
I bought two of these blankets though and as far as the second one is concerned - I can detect no sign of the same problem but have warned my son not to leave it on at night.

Danone - Should it be Damn One?

2009-04-03T12:14:00.009+01:00

You must have seen the adverts for Danone products Activia Yogurt.

We buy the fig and date versions and decided to try the peach and vanilla versions also. What we didn't notice was the small text on the wrapper saying 'fat free yogurt with fruit, sugar and sweeteners'

Sweeteners in a so called 'healthy' product? Getting out a magnifying glass to read the 4 point text on the carton I checked to see just what sweetener was being used. In the Peach I found Aspartame and Acesulfame.

Now the Acesulfame is bad enough - it's only suspected of having 'significant doubt' as to its safety but what sort of idiot manufacturing a 'healthy food' includes Aspartame? There are an unbelievable number of complaints that this stuff is suspected of (See http://www.jaydax.co.uk/imho/aspartame.htm)

Now if Damnone (oops sorry - Danone) can make such a blunder what about their other claims?

'Did you know 56% of healthy women report that they experience digestive discomfort from time to time?' - What an astonishing statistic. I wonder where they got it from. I suspect probably out of the air since I'm pretty certain that 100% of people - male or female, would admit to having digestive discomfort at some time in their life.

'Contains the unique live culture BIFIDUS ACTIREGULARIS®' - Now just what does that mean? First 'unique' is defined as being 'the only one of its kind'. Danone - I've news for you - it's a bacteria and there are billions of them! Maybe Danone have a unique strain of this bacteria? Nope - it seems to be Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. animalis, strain DN-173 010 That's a bacteria commonly found in animal bowels and by no means unique. Danone have given it a new (and unofficial) name, BIFIDUS ACTIREGULARIS® and trade marked it. Hey - what a brilliant idea. If we all do that no one will know that this common bacteria is in no way special.

'82% of people with digestive discomfort said they felt better after eating ACTIVIA' - Err - How long after? Would they have felt better after a few hours anyway? Did they attribute feeling better to eating ACTIVIA - you didn't say!

'It tastes fantastic too' - Nope - it used to taste OK but you ruined it by putting artificial sweeteners in, giving it a lingering after taste.

So why did they add this rubbish? Maybe it's one of these reasons:

Artificial sweeteners are cheaper than sugar so you can make more profit. In fact Aspartame seems to work out as being 1/2000th the cost of the sugar required for equal sweetness
You can claim it's less fattening.
Less sugar means less tooth decay (We'll just choose to ignore the tooth eating acid in the yogurt and fruit)
This paticular sweetner has a reputation of producing a craving for more. That means that instead of eating one pot you might eat two. That of course would increase the product's sales. Danone wouldn't do that... would they?

Guess what? Danone just lost another customer for this product.

Postscript

Now for the positive side of Danone's yoghurt. In December my family adopted a kitten found abandoned on a farm. He was such a sweet thing and so friendly we couldn't understand why anyone would abandon him at about 7 weeks old. When we got him home we discovered his awful secret. To put it bluntly his farts smelt awful and he did lots of them!

We wormed him and gave him a kitten diet of 'Science Plan'. No improvement. Then I had an idea and gave him about a teaspoon of Danone 'Bifidus Actiregularis®' yoghurt. Displaying a good deal more sense than many humans he wouldn't touch the Aspartame sweetened version but really enjoyed the other versions. His smelly farts quickly disappeared.

So if you have a problem with smelly farts from your pet (or maybe yourself) just add Danone yoghurt to your diet for a while.

BT's Important Messages

2009-03-13T00:24:00.003Z

A couple of days ago I got a letter from BT marked 'Important documents inside - Not a circular.'
"Must be a bill" I thought and opened it. Sure enough it was a bill from BT Mobile. I looked at the amount due - £0.00
"Wow - that is important" I thought "Better send them a cheque and ask for a receipt."
Just as I was about to write a cheque for 'Zero pounds and no pence,' I saw the bit at the bottom which told me I need take no action since the amount would be collected by direct debit. What a shame - I was really looking forward to getting that receipt.

I didn't think BT could top that 'Important letter' but today I got another one!
This time the 'Important documents inside' told me that I need do nothing to continue to have unlimited evening and weekend calls at no extra cost BUT if I was not happy with this I could cancel the offer by calling 0800 345 7309 and then pay at the normal price of £2.65 per month for my unlimited evening and weekend calls.

Huh! I bet that number gets inundated with people calling to pay extra for those free calls!

Well Mr Nigel Stagg, Managing Director of BT's Customer Service, I bet you win the prize for the year's most pointless letter - Unless my readers out there know of a worse 'Important documents inside' letter.

Aaagh! Spam!

2009-01-30T13:31:00.005Z

Just 27 minutes into 2009 I got sent my first spam e-mail of the year - from someone signing herself as Beverly and who suggested I go to her website for 'all kinds of medicines'.
It was quickly followed by more and by the end of the day I had 131 spam e-mails in my 'Junk' folder. Now that's a record! Not because of what you think - it's a record because that was the fewest spam e-mails I've had for a very long time! On average I get just under 500 spam e-mails a day.

Now at this point I have to point out that my e-mail filters will automatically delete any message which comes from someone I don't know and which contains certain words such as Viagra, tobacco, degree, bank, 'you have won', or which claim to have been sent from me to myself. The spam mail I'm talking about slipped through the filters.

Looking back at the January 1st spams I find:
40 spams offering me medications - mostly Viagra or slimming pills
29 offering to enlarge my penis
22 offering to sell me a (mostly fake) watch
14 offering me a (fake) degree or diploma
6 offering software
5 inviting me to gamble
4 invitations to online dating services
2 messages attempting to get me to check my password details at a bank account
1 each of messages offering clothes, mobile phone games and fake jobs
1 lottery winner prize
1 invitation to sponsor the next international tennis match
1 botnet test
1 offer to increase my breast size (and it was addressed to 'John'!)
and a spam from Sony about Playstation games (I distinctly remember un-ticking that box 'Do you want to receive...')

Now let's take a closer look at these:

First there must be a great many STUPID people out there on Internet! Now I know from my own experience that there are really two species of 'man' on this planet. Homo Sapiens (That's Latin for thinking or wise man) and just 'Homo'; but really! You have to be a total moron to believe that you can get a better deal buying prescription medicines from a spammer than through your doctor and a pharmacy. Haven't the people who fall for this heard of fake, dangerous drugs and credit card fraud?

How about the 'penile enlargement' ones? Would you honestly trust your member to a doctor promoted by spam? How about trusting it to someone who is not a doctor? Get real folks and for your information after a great deal of research I can tell you that the average size of a fully erect penis is 5¼ inches.(about 40% are now saying 'Phew'; 20% are going for a tape measure; 5% are thinking 'I'm deformed' and those suffering from a diphallic condition - go look it up - are wondering 'which one').

How about those watches? Yeah right - you expect to buy a Rolex for $5.00 or a Cartier for $6.00. IT'S FAKE! Not only that but it looks fake! If you want one - buy it at your local street market where you can see what you are buying and... offer less. It often works (which is more than can be guaranteed by the one you buy through spam).

Fake degrees. Do they actually work? Is any employer really daft enough to employ someone on the basis of a certificate from a university they have never heard about? If you really want a fancy bit of paper - design and print it yourself - that's even cheaper.

How about that software? If you want a full copy of MS Office for $12 and expect to buy it on-line I've got news for you - It's a pirate! If you're going to get a pirate copy of software you might as well go the full hog and get it free from Internet instead. If piracy worries you - it should - then get Open Office from www.openoffice.org which is MS Office compatible and free!

Dating sites? There are lots of chat sites on the net which are free, so why bother to pay for the ones that are not free?

Gambling? You really want to trust a site promoted by spam with your credit card numbers? You really think you will honestly win?

As for anyone who falls for the bank phishing scams - well someone so stupid does not deserve to have money! Just remember - Banks NEVER ask you to check your details online. They ALLWAYS suggest you type in their URL rather than follow a link and GOOD up-to-date browsers will warn you if that link is bogus.

Mr 'buy my games/ringtones' obviously hopes you are not aware of all the free games available or the free software (audacity) which allows you to make your own ringtones. He hopes you'll give him that crucial credit card number so he can take regular small amounts from it before you remember to cancel it or even worse - educate you about identity theft the hard way.

As for the rest - I buy my clothes where I can try them on; have lost faith in the $200 for 3 hours work a week; don't mind if the guy who tells me to claim my lottery win keeps it himself; find tennis boring and definitely don't want bigger breasts!

I'm not going to fall for any of these but it just takes one in a million to buy from a spammer to make it worth his/her while and as a result I get about 175,000 spam e-mails in my inbox each year. Now at say half a second to check each that means I spend a full day of my time deleting the stuff each year. Since I value my time as wasted if I don't make £27 per hour that means spam is currently costing me £648 per year! I OBJECT!

The first spam e-mail was sent on 2nd May 1978 by a guy called Gary Thuerk working for DEC. It was sent to 393 users of Arpanet (the forerunner of Internet). Since then spam has grown a little. more than 90% of all e-mail traffic is spam! It uses our bandwidth, slowing down our connection and costs us all money.

Now as of June 2008 there were 1.46 billion Internet users in the world and if just one in a thousand has the same level of spam and charges a tenth of my price for their time then that means spammers are stealing £94,000,000 ($138,000,000 US) from us per year! This is a MAJOR crime!

So what happens when a spammer is caught? Well here in the UK you could be fined £5,000 but the greatest fine so far has been nowhere near that!

Now what sort of punishment would be sensible for stealing £94 million and annoying 1.46 billion people? How about we bring back hanging for it?

NPower doesn't listen!

2008-11-14T17:00:00.009Z

(Addresses and names have been changed to protect NPower's victims)

When I moved in April 2008 I kept the existing electricity supply - even though I knew it wasn't the cheapest in my area. NPower. I arranged to pay bills monthly by direct debit. After a while I got my first bill and also a bill for a Mr D Maylor with the same address. Mine was in credit since the amount I paid monthly was more than I needed to pay. I returned Mr Maylor's bill marked 'Not known at this address'.
A couple of days later Mr Maylor's bill was sent back to me. I went to my neighbours to see if they knew the Maylors - they had never heard of them.

I sent the bill back again; an inconvenience since there isn't a postbox within 2 miles of my house.

Then the 'Red' bill came for Mr Maylor. I rang NPower and told them he didn't live at my address. It was at this point that I noticed they had my address down as Trackside House rather than Trackside Cottage and that Mr Maylor's bill was addressed to Trackside Cottage. I asked them to correct this.

Three months later I got a new set of bills from NPower for Mr Maylor. Again I returned them and promptly had them sent back to me rather than to NPower.
This time I opened them and discovered Mr Maylor hadn't been paying his bill - not surprising since they had been sending it to me - and owed over £200. Again I rang NPower and explained yet again that Mr Maylor didn't live at my address and that I was paying my own bill and had no intention of paying someone else's.

'Could you tell me the meter number on your meter' the guy at Customer Services said? I got the stepladders and read off the number on the meter. It wasn't the same as on Mr Maylor's bill and, surprise surprise, it was the number of the meter on my bill.

'I don't understand it' the guy said. 'We've been sending bills to Mr Maylor at that address for the last eight years and they have always been paid!'

'Well it isn't going to be paid by me' I said, 'and I'd thank you to get the correct address on these bills so that they don't come to me in future.' I also told him that there were eight houses which shared my postcode and only mine had the name Trackside Cottage and there was no Trackside House.

The phone call took 25 minutes and then I was assured everything would be sorted out.

Today, two months later two more letters were delivered to Mr Maylor at my address. I was about to throw them away but then I noticed the large orange sticker which said:
DISCONNECTION NOTICE GAS/ELECTRICITY
The occupier of this property must act on the contents of this envelope
METERPLUS

I opened the letter and found that Mr Maylor had still not paid his bill and was being warned that NPower was going to disconnect him if he didn't pay immediately.

I opened the second large brown envelope and discovered inside yet another envelope with large disconnection sticker. Opening this I found this:

We called again today to try and resolve the unpaid account, (strange - nobody had rung the doorbell and I hadn't gone out), but were unable to contact you.
IT IS NOW OUR INTENTION TO APPLY FOR A WARRANT OF ENTRY TO THE MAGISTRATE'S COURT

The letter went on to explain that if I wasn't in they would break in, disconnect the meter, then if necessary secure the house by replacing locks. I could then collect the new keys from their team valley office - just 30 miles away. I would be liable for all costs which could be £150 or more

'Wonderful' I thought. 'NPower is going to break in, disconnect me for a bill I don't own and then lock me out of my own house making me travel 60 miles to collect keys'. I got back on the phone.

25 minutes later I was assured that everything would be sorted out. Time to get in a stock of candles I think.

16th Jan 2009 - Two months later and NPower is still getting it wrong!

Today I received yet another letter from NPower. I didn't read the address on it before I opened it and as a result I now know that The Maylor's are getting very concerned about their account. Apparently they contacted the customer complaints department to find out why they have not been getting bills. They wrote back to the Maylors - at my address saying that they were still working on the problem but they had promised it would be sorted out today and they need do nothing.

Bad news NPower - you're WRONG!

12 June 2009 - NPower sends me the Maylors new bill for £1476.86
The bill arrived addressed to Trackside House with my postcode.
They STILL don't live at my address!
This time I'm notifying NPower's retail CEO, Kevin Miles and drawing the attention of the Times newspaper to this blog.

17 June 2009 - Sucess?
It took a bit of experimentation to find Kevin Miles e-mail address (its kevindotmilesatnpowerdotcom) but finally I got some sort of action from NPower. They sent a guy round to check the meter and find out it's number and to ask my postcode. Maybe that's the end of the story?

19 June 2009 - Maybe not!
NPower sent another guy out to check the meter

17 August 2009 - Definately not!
Since I last updated NPower have sent two more letters to Mr Maylor at my address. Both were returned unopened and suitably marked 'Not known at this address' but it's inconvenient for me to do so since the nearest post box is three miles from my address.

OK That's it for NPower got ditched in favour of EDF Energy effective from 15th Aug and today I posted up to NPower's site the following:
'Npower has consistently, over the last 17 months, sent bills to my address for a Mr & Mrs D Maylor. These bills have been returned to you, and you have been advised on numerous occasions that Mr Maylor has never lived at my address. Despite that, you continue to send bills and even a threat of disconnection to my address and even a complaint to Mr Kevin Miles, Npower's retail CEO, has not stopped them. The meter number on Mr Maylor's bills is not my meter number. His account number is not my account number. This has been checked by your meter reading services, twice.

I will no longer return or respond to correspondence sent to Mr D Maylor, addressed to Trackside House, Hexham, NE46 XXX.
I live three miles away from the nearest post box. It is inconvenient for me to return these. All future letters to Mr Maylor will be destroyed. You should note there is no such address as Trackside House at my postcode. Consulting my neighbours who have lived in the area for many years, they have never heard of Mr D Maylor.'

I also cancelled my direct debit to NPower at my banks website and notified NPower of this and my other reasons for ditching them in favour of EDF. Just to add one final touch of annoyance I discovered that if you take too long using the form at NPower's 'Contact Customer Services' page it logs you out, blanks the form and you get to start again! Now there's an original way of annoying your customers!

Of course I've changed the name of those unfortunate people who haven't been getting their bills and the address but NPower - you know who they are and this is my proof that you've NOT being doing your bit. Since I'm now going to ignore all your letters to the Maylors your next step should be to try and take them to court using my address at which point I will enjoy appearing at the court to tell them just how C*!p you are.

The last sound

2008-10-28T20:29:00.070Z

Is the world going to end with a bang - or with a whimper? What about that bit in Revelations - The last trump?

The one thing we can assume is that the world will one day 'end' - even if that means waiting around for a few billion years until the sun expands to a red giant and swallows up the earth. But what do people mean when they speak of 'the end of the world'? Let's take a look at some doomsday scenarios.

Impact events - The impact of a big enough asteroid or comet could create giant tsunamis, global fires, and cause a global winter from the dust it puts in the atmosphere. There is strong evidence that such an impact has occurred several times in the history of the Earth. It is highly probable that such an event was the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs. The chances are that we would receive little or no warning of such an event. (Sorry Armageddon fans - it just wouldn't be noticed in time for Bruce Willis to go and blow it up). Definitely a 'Bang' scenario.

Volcanism - Throughout the history of the Earth there have been huge 'supervolcano' volcanic eruptions which involve the outflow of millions of cubic kilometers of ejecta in a short period of time. By comparison the biggest volcanic explosions recorded by history are tiny. The dust and gasses would poison the atmosphere and oceans and bring on a global winter in a way that may cause extinctions. This cause has been proposed for the End Cretaceous, End Permian, End Triassic, and End Jurassic extinctions. There are supervolcanos at Yellowstone in the USA, Indonesia and New Zealand. Definitely a 'Bang' scenario.

Nuclear war - Apart from the destruction and radiation, a global nuclear war could throw sufficient dust into the atmosphere to cause a nuclear winter which would prevent crops growing for up to two years and bring about mass starvation. Definitely a 'Bang' scenario.

Climate change - Rapid changes of climate may be capable of stressing the environment to the point of causing mass extinction. Such a scenario is suggested in the film 'The day after tomorrow'. Whilst such a scenario would greatly inconvenience us, causing mass starvation and making some species to become extinct, ice ages in the past seem to have had little effect on bio-diversity. Extinctions suggested to have this cause include: End Ordovician, End Permian, Late Devonian, and others. This one would be a shivering whimper

Gamma ray burst - A nearby gamma ray burst caused by a supernova within 6000 light years distance could cause enough radiation on the surface of the Earth to kill most of the larger animals living there and destroy the ozone layer in the process. Insects would probably survive. Astronomers tell us approximately 1 gamma ray burst can be expected every 540 million years. This has been suggested as an explanation for the End Ordovician extinction event. A whimper scenario with a spectacular display in the sky.

A new disease. It's possible that a new disease could develop, either by natural means or by genetic manipulation. Humanity would have little or no resistance to it and only isolated communities would survive. There have been several natural pandemics in the past but none of them came close to wiping out humanity. They did have a dramatic effect on civilization however. The black death killed from 20 to 80% of the population of towns, 33% overall of the worlds population. Labour became in short supply and it caused the end of the feudal system. A whimper scenario.

Simulation shutdown. I'm sure you've seen the 'Matrix' films. Science fiction huh? Well maybe not! It's possible that we are living in a simulation. Consider the way in which computers have advanced. It won't be too long before they advance to the point where it would be possible to create a society in simulation (Sims 2 game?). Given a sufficiently advanced technology it would be possible to simulate an entire world in incredible complexity. Think that's unlikely? We could in fact be in such a simulation and not know it. If that were the case then it would be possible for the simulation to be shut down. There's not a lot we could do about it. One second we are 'alive' and the next - off. No sound at all.

Nanotechnology. This is in effect a man made equivalent to a biological plague. Whilst nanotechnology (the creation of microscopic machines) could have enormous potential for good it could also cause a 'grey death' where the nano-machines convert the entire mass of the Earth to more machines. An unlikely scenario? You would only need one of these nanobots to be created to start the process. Another 'whimper' scenario first proposed by Eric Drexler, in his book 'Engines of Creation' and was followed by Michael Chrichton's book 'Prey'.

Magnetic pole reversal. Geological evidence shows us that the Earth's magnetic poles reverse every 200,000 years on average. The last one was 700,000 years ago so we would seem long overdue for this. When it happens it will have a dramatic effect on the Earth. The main cause for concern is that the Earth's magnetic field which creates the protective Van Allen belts will disappear and Earth will be exposed to very high levels of solar radiation. Some scientists think the magnetic field is already weakening. This would be a 'whimper' event - maybe a good time to invest in sun-screen manufacturer shares.

Runaway Greenhouse. In this scenario, the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reaches a point where more heat is trapped in the atmosphere than can be radiated back out into space. Forest fires would greatly add to the effect. The result is a unstoppable temperature rise over a period of years or tens of years, which would be sufficient to wipe out most forms of life very quickly. Venus, where temperatures at the surface are high enough to melt lead, is affected by this phenomenon. It's possible that the release of carbon dioxide and methane into the Earth's atmosphere could trigger the release of trapped methane stored on the oceans floors causing this effect. This is very uncertain however since it may be that the Earth's oceans will absorb whatever we release. Again a 'whimper' event.

Superseded by technology. Eventually we will create an artificial intelligence which could replace us as the dominant intelligence on this planet. Something like the scenario on which the Terminator movies are based. The war between it and us would be a bang event. Of course we could carefully program such intelligences with something like the laws of robotics suggested by Isacc Asimov and it could go too far the other way with such intelligences stifling our future development by being over protective - a whimper event.

Global Snowball. The very reverse of the runaway greenhouse. Dust from volcanoes or impact events could cause a winter which freezes the oceans. This increases the amount of heat reflected and the temperature in summer is never enough to melt the ice. A very chilly 'whimper' event where we would desperately try to induce a greenhouse effect to solve it!

Solar old age. As the Sun uses up all its hydrogen fuel, helium at it's core will start nuclear fusion causing an increase in solar temperature. The result is a gradual increase in size. This process will continue until, around 5 billion years from now, the Sun will be 100 million miles across - encompassing the entire orbit of the Earth. Life will have been extinguished on our planet long before that. The seas will boil off and all gas will be blown away from the Earth by solar storms. It is estimated that 1 billion years from now, the temperature of the Earth will be similar to present-day Venus making life untenable. Given a billion years this will be a long drawn out 'whimper' where our descendants (if we have any by then) will probably bear little resemblance to us today.

Alien invasion. Could it be the might be an alien invasion on the lines of 'Independence Day', 'Battlefield Earth' or 'War of the Worlds'. If we were to face a hostile advanced intelligence would we really have any chance against them? Probably a 'Bang' event.

Uploads. This is an alternative to developing artificial intelligence which supersedes us. It may be that we will develop the ability to transfer our consciousness to a computer by 'uploading our brains'. If that were the case then many would choose this as an alternative to death. Once this is the case human intelligence can evolve at an ever increasing rate as processors become more powerful, faster and storage capacities increase. The upload would be able to redesign itself and eventually uploads would swamp the 'normal' humans. The question here is whether an upload could count as being human? Humanity as we know it today would wither away. A whimper event.

Divine intervention. Most religions suggest that there will come a time when Man's purpose on Earth is achieved and God/the Gods call an end where the good people are separated from the evil ones.
- In the Christian Biblical account of the Last Judgement, the End of the World is preceded by War, Conquest, Pestilence and Famine, the so-called "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and the blowing of seven trumpets.
- Islam nails the Apocalypse down to a formula in the Qur'an, thanks to prophecies by Muhammad. It's the apocalypse when 'x' amount of famine is multiplied by 'y' amount of drought, divided by the square root of 'z' infidels. (It's any day now, in case you were wondering.) Only Allah will know the exact date however but we can watch out for: Fire, Floods, Pestilence, Wars, Rumors of wars, Strange lights in the skies, The Second Coming, A virgin birth, The birth of the Antichrist, A number of false Christs and/or Messiahs, Cloning, Identifying marks being placed on the population at large, Famine, Earthquakes and The Rapture where true believers will be whisked away to heaven.
- The Hindus believe that the universe is running a cycle which will culminate in a Cosmic Reboot at the end of the Fourth Age (which we are currently enjoying). Currently the world exists in the Age of Kali, the god of destruction. Kali rules over an age of strife, anger and war on earth, which will end with the destruction of everything to pave the way for a new world. Unlike the Christians and Muslims, the Hindus don't believe this event is coming any time soon.
- Buddhists believe that the seeds of the ending of the universe are present in the creation of the universe. (Quite in tune with cosmology). The "Buddha of our time", Shakyamuni Buddha, did not say he was the first Buddha. He did speak of the end of illusion which would change how we see the universe. In Tibetan Buddhism, it is predicted that the physical universe will end with earth and air being subsumed into water and fire, and all will dissolve into space. Within this cosmology, the end is predicted to be a long way off in the future as there will be 1,000 Buddhas who appear in this fortunate kalpa (great eon).
- The Mayans too believed in a cyclic world. Their highly detailed and accurate calendar is a list of days in the Fourth Sun, the current cycle of the world. The calendar simply ends on Dec. 21, 2012 (the winter solstice), and the Mayans did not offer a calendar addendum to specify anything much happening after that.
- The Jews believe they are God's chosen people and that the Messiah will arrive in the future and gather them into Israel. There will be a general resurrection of the (Jewish?) dead, and the Jerusalem Temple destroyed in 70 CE will be rebuilt. I'm not sure on what Jews believe will happen then or to the rest of the world. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could enlighten me?
- Zoroastrians believe in a single supreme god Ahura Mazda and an evil spirit Angra Mainyu who opposes. At the end of time there will be a cosmic conflict involving the entire universe.Humanity will be required to choose which to follow. Evil, and the Spirit of Evil, will be completely destroyed at the end of time. Eventually, everything will be purified. Even the occupants of hell will be released.

So lets see - that's 4 'bangs', ten 'whimpers', a 'last trump' and an 'off'. It seems the whimpers have it.

I'm sick of 'Doom and Gloom'

2008-10-13T10:04:00.011+01:00

If you listen to the media it's all bad news. The stock market is dropping, the banks are failing, we all need to take swimming lessons because of global warming, petrol (gas) costs a fortune, we are all afraid of pandemics, terrorists will kill us and 6:00am December 22nd 2012 (GMT) is rapidly approaching.

Geez. Hasn't the media ever thought of telling us the good news? I for one am sick of 'doom and gloom'. Lets take a look at some of the things they are not telling us about.

If the stock market falls - that's a great time to buy! The real reason it's bouncing around is because some people are making a fortune!
All those bankers getting into a panic. Can you think of a better bunch of people to wish a bit of strife on? (Well - maybe lawyers and politicians?). Lets face it our money is safe provided we all don't listen to the doom and gloom media.
Global warming? Somehow I don't think it will be quite the disaster that some predict. You see there is some great technology rapidly approaching which will turn everything around - more about that later. You just need to be aware that back in 1894 an expert predicted that in fifty years the streets of London would be buried beneath nine feet of horse sh*t.
Not only can technology come to our rescue but are we actually being told the truth? At the moment it's 'fashionable' to talk about global warming but did you know these indisputable facts?

Sea level is rising - at the same rate as it has been for the last 60,000 years.
Ice cores do not show a link between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and temperature
Some glaciers are melting - others, just as many, are advancing
No matter how big an area of sea ice is which breaks off and melts - it won't affect sea level at all.
London and Venice are sinking - that's why they have problems with flooding
The vast majority of temperature measuring stations are in cities which are getting warmer because the cities are growing
The first global warming predictions for the future were out by an overestimate of 300% - that's not even a good guess! Anyone who supports using a computer model this inaccurate is crazy!

Don't believe this? Try watching the video below or reading Michael Crichton's book 'State of Fear
'

Gas prices? In the US they were complaining about $4.00 a gallon. Here in the UK we pay more than twice that. The good news is that we don't live in Sierra Leone where gas rapidly approached $20.00 per gallon. More good news is that the price of oil has dropped 40% in the last 3 months. If you are still furious about it then move to Venezuela where you can buy it for just $0.17 per gallon.
Health? Have you been watching the astonishing developments in medicine? Looks like we may soon prevent cancer, Alzheimer's disease, heart attacks and lots of others including the common cold.
Terrorists? Guess what - the problem is being blown out of all proportion. You are more likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than by a terrorist. Far more sensible things to worry about are heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, flu and pneumonia, kidney disease, septicemia, suicide, liver disease, hypertension, Parkinson's disease and drowning in that order. According to the statistics I found the risk of terrorists killing you appears at number 80 on the list of possible deaths at a 1 in 9,300,000 chance. Just to put it in perspective you have a 1 in 4,297,630 chance of being killed by legal execution.
That 6:00am GMT time on 21st Dec 2012 marks the end of the Mayan Calender. (the Mayans were on Central time, 6 hours behind us Brits). Hey - the calendar hanging on my wall ends on 4th Jan 2009 but that doesn't mean there won't be a 5th Jan!

Now what about those technology advancements I mentioned?

The Large Hadron Collider, is complete and though there are a few technical problems to iron out (and a few repairs to do), looks to give us lots of advancements in physics. It might be possible to produce mini black holes (singularities) which any Trekkie will tell you are used in the power source of Romulan spaceships. Now I know that's science fiction but in theory a mini black hole could be a tremendous source of energy. Its not a matter of 'will' it happen - its a matter of 'when'.
It begins to look like nuclear fusion experiments will soon produce more energy than they put in. When that happens - and it will - then cheap almost unlimited power will be available. It won't produce huge quantities of deadly radioactive by-products and will wipe out at a stroke much of our carbon emissions.
Cheap electricity will offer car manufactures an incentive to produce electric vehicles.
New technology such as the free piston engine which could out perform fuel cells, offers a better, simpler and cheaper way of producing power for vehicles. Couple that with a car like the Extended-Range Electric Vehicle (or EREV), Chevy Volt and you'll have a vehicle which can run on any fuel including pollution free hydrogen, ethanol and gasoline but most of the time will run on stored cheap electricity. Again wiping out much of our carbon emissions.
In the last few weeks we have heard of cures for cancer using carbon nano tubes, drugs such as Abiraterone and radioactive scorpion venom, treatment for Alzheimer's disease using anti-inflammatory drugs, Parkinson's disease being slowed by the use of vitamins and flu vaccines being more effective and quicker by inhalation.
Even more dramatic is the effect genetic research will have on us. Its a matter of time before the death gene is figured out and a virus is used to fix it. How about living a productive life for 200 years! Now I know that that will cause population problems but it will also give us the incentive to move outwards from our planet and secure the future of the human race. I for one don't want to sit and be a target waiting for the next comet to wipe out humanity.
Have you noticed how the power requirement of electrical equipment is dropping? It's not just things like computers and TVs; its even heavy duty items like heaters and air conditioners. The trick is to make them more efficient and better insulated. Technology is doing just that.
We all moan about the price of oil and that's inevitable as this limited resource is used up for heating and as a fuel for transport. Unfortunately that's the last thing we should be using it for. In the future it will be needed as a feedstock for making plastics and other chemicals. Burning oil, natural gas and coal as a fuel makes the price of plastics and chemicals higher than it should be. In the future we can look forward to cheaper products because our energy will come from cheap, pollution free power sources leaving the oil and natural gas to be used for chemical feedstocks. Think what that will do to the world economy!

So there we have it. Doom and gloom? Not in my future.

BT Anywhere Broadband?

2008-10-11T23:50:00.009+01:00

A catalogue of delivery failures.

Since I moved house to an area without cable broadband I've been using Virgin Media 'Up to 8 MB' adsl broadband - or in this case it was 'broadbad'. Despite repeated calls to their technical support my connection speed steadily dropped. It started at 1.7MB in April but when it finally sunk to just 107 bytes per second (yes that's right not even kilobytes) I had had enough. I finally got through to a tech support guy who admitted that they couldn't provide me with the 2MB download speed they had first offered me and that although they had plans to improve things at my local exchange - Hexham, they wouldn't be able to do so for several months.

Part of the problem was my distance from the exchange - 4.7 kilometres; part of the problem is obviously my line which hisses, crackles and is very quiet. The rest of the problem was Virgin's contention ratio and their reluctance to get anything done about my line. Although I was just six months into a one year contract I negotiated a penalty free MAC code from Virgin and contacted BT to join their Anywhere broadband service.

Now why BT Anywhere? Well I had several reasons:

I wanted an 'unlimited' service
I liked the idea of being able to connect anywhere without further charges
I liked the idea of a second Internet phone with it's own number which allowed my family to make up to three simultaneous phone calls at the same time
I wanted a faster wireless N router with a better range that would go through the three foot thick stone walls of my house
I needed a new mobile phone to replace my aging Motorola V3 and O2 XDA Exec brick
I liked BT's mobile price structure. The total cost would be less than my Virgin broadband and T-mobile contract
I reasoned I would have a better chance of a BT Broadband engineer doing something about my awful line quality if I was a BT customer

Although not rated as the 'best' ISP (That honour belongs to Zen Internet), BT offered the most in my particular area.

I contacted BT by phone to order BT Anywhere Broadband and quickly got through to a very helpful lady called Virginia and discussed my requirements.

Yes I could get BT Anywhere in my area and would be able to get 512KB download speed
Yes a new smartphone was included in the price and I could upgrade it to an even better one the HTCs710 for an extra charge of £29.99
The smartphone included 50 minutes talk time and 50 texts, unlimited GSM Internet access or it could be used unlimited on the wireless network, unlimited BT FON system or 500 minutes on the BT Openzone network
A wireless N modem/router was included which 'could give up to twice the range of my existing wireless G router
An Internet phone was included, the BT Hub phone, which would have it's own number and offer Skype style calling to the USA (1.25p/min to both landlines and cell phones) etc
For the first three months it would be £23.99 then £29.99 thereafter, an 18 month contract.

I decided to go ahead and ordered the HTCs710 phone. I was told the broadband would be activated on 7th October and the equipment would be with me by 6th October. (Delivery promise 1)

I was very impressed when at 2:00pm the next day a large box was delivered by a BT courier!
great service I thought and sat down to open it.

Inside was a large packing list telling me what I should have and there my problems started.
I got:

The BT home hub
A sim chip for the mobile phone
an HTCs620 mobile phone
No Hub phone

'Great, they've sent me the wrong phone and not sent me the Hub phone' I thought and rang them up.

The person I got through to was very apologetic and said the wrong phone had been ordered and for some unexplainable reason the Hub phone had not been put on the order list. She would have the wrong phone picked up by the person who delivered the missing bits and it would be with me by the 6th October. (Delivery promise 2)

I waited in all that week, expecting a fast delivery as before but nothing arrived. On 6th October I checked my order progress and had it confirmed by their website that my equipment would be delivered by 7:00pm

7:00pm came and went with no delivery so I got back on the phone. They were very sorry but my order did not show on the system. They said they had corrected this and my missing phones would be with me tomorrow. (Delivery promise 3)

On 7th October at 2:00pm my Virgin Media connection stopped working and I connected up the BT Hub and followed the instructions to install it. The installation CD didn't work, telling me my password was wrong, but I was able to manually enter the information provided to set the new connection up. The connection was a bit flaky at first but the documentation warned me that this would be the case for the first 24 hours and that connection speed would gradually improve over the first 10 days.

7:00pm again came with no delivery of phones although I did get an e-mail telling me it would be with me by 7:00pm. I got back on the phone and after waiting in a call queue for 45 minutes was told their system was down and could I call back the next day?

8th October 9:00am I called again and after queueing for 30 minutes was told that there was no delivery scheduled for my address. Would I like to speak to the BT Anywhere team? I did and after explaining the problem yet again I was told that there was a delivery scheduled and it would be with me by 7:00pm today. (Delivery promise 4). On the positive side my adsl speed rose from an average of 233KB/s to almost the 512KB/s promised. (I really miss the 20MB Cable connection I had in Essex)

7:00pm came and went with no phones delivered. I got back on the phone thanking my lucky stars that unlike Virgin, BT don't charge for calling them. This time I spoke to Robert Wilson who told me for some reason the order had not gone through and that he had re-ordered it for delivery/collection on Friday 10th Oct. (Delivery promise 5).

Friday morning I contacted the BT delivery section and checked that they had indeed a delivery scheduled for my address; 'Yes it will be with you by 7:00pm today'.

7:00pm - still no phones! I called BT yet again and after being on hold 15 min and cut off twice I spoke to Kelsey in Dundee who told me there was now a message on the system that if I called back I should be told that the delivery would not be today. I asked Kelsey if BT had not thought of using the phone to tell me that instead of having me waiting around all day to find it out the hard way! Perhaps BT had the name wrong and it should be called 'BT Nowhere'? Again Kelsey was very apologetic and assured me that the order was in the pipeline and would definitely be with me on Saturday - yes the courier did work weekends. (Delivery promise 6)

You guessed it - 7:00pm came and went on Saturday and still no phones.

So that's six broken promises BT. Guess who's going to get a flea in their ear come Monday? I suspect the saga will continue.

Update 13th Oct
I rang BT (0800 0322 111) and spoke to 'Jan'. She checked and found no order was showing on their system - again. She was very apologetic and told me she would get the Hub phone sent to me. This time she gave me an order number and a delivery date of 16th Oct. (Delivery promise 7) She then passed me on to Chris of the BT Anywhere sales team who looked into the problem. It seems the last order had a delivery date of 10th September rather than October and this confused their system. Chris ordered the correct mobile phone for me and promised I would receive it tomorrow, 14th Oct. (Delivery promise 8) He also arranged a bag for the return of the wrong mobile and gave me order references for both. He checked and confirmed the order number that Jan had given me was on the system and confirmed the delivery date. Best of all he told me there would be no extra charge of £29.99 for the upgrade to the HTCs710 phone.

Full marks to BT for polite sales team and promises but I'll reserve judgement as to whether they are capable of keeping them. I wonder if anyone else has had 8 or more delivery promises from BT?

Update 14th Oct 2008
Finally, after all this time BT delivered my missing mobile phone. Full marks to Chris for being the first to keep a promise.
Update 16th Oct 2008
Jan delivered too. Finally I have the complete package. I'm happy with it and my download speed has improved greatly. It's just a shame it took so many phone calls to get everything in place. At least, however, the phone calls are to an 0800 phone number and free, unlike those made to Virgin Media.
Update March 10 2009
Well I'm still happy with BT Anywhere broadband BUT BT dropped yet another one!
I gave them a PAC code to transfer my old phone number from T-Mobile. I know they used it because I started getting mobile phone bills with the number on them. After a while however the number changed and T-Mobile reclaimed the number. That meant they started billing me for it again and since I'd cancelled the direct debit for it, I built up a £30 bill before they bothered to write to me and complain it hadn't been paid. Naturally I pointed out that the service had been cancelled back in September 2008 and the number transferred to BT.
"Oh - so you did" said the guy from T-Mobile. "But BT never confirmed they had taken the number over so it went back to us. Now if you just pay..."
"Not a chance" said I "Take it up with BT."

On My Cat

2008-10-06T16:04:00.006+01:00

OK - I admit it. The picture is a fake.

The anvil is made of papier mache.

Now if I just wait here - maybe...

Now I know you guys are moving but you won't forget me will you?

...or me!

"Internet Explorer has stopped working" - again!

2008-09-18T13:58:00.004+01:00

A while ago I was getting this message "Internet Explorer has stopped working" whenever I used Internet Explorer. It often happened when I was using the program but always happened whenever I closed the program - something I found irritating since it made closing IE a two click operation. Firefox 3 is my default browser but since I check web pages in several different browsers to make sure they work properly and this was beginning to annoy me.

At first I thought it was merely a bug in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 which I was testing. I researched the problem on Internet looking for a cure but nothing I did seemed to stop the problem.

'Oh well' I thought. 'Time to un-install IE8 Beta 1'. I did and fired up IE7 to test it. It seemed fine until I closed it and got ... "Internet Explorer has stopped working" A little more research was needed.

I disabled all plugins. A number of them have been pointed at as the cause of the problem including Omnipage (which I don't have), Yahoo and Skype (which I did have). I still got "Internet Explorer has stopped working" every time I closed IE (version 7 now).

I reset IE using the 'Advanced' options - Open Control Panel > Internet Options > Advanced (tab) > under " Reset Internet Explorer settings, click "Reset". I opened IE, closed it and got ... "Internet Explorer has stopped working".

I cleared all cookies, opened IE, closed it and got ... "Internet Explorer has stopped working".

I deleted the cache, browser history and cookies again, opened IE, closed it and got ... "Internet Explorer has stopped working".

On one site I found the suggestion that I make IE the default browser and then go through the install and uninstall routine for IE8 beta 1 again before reseting Firefox as the default again. I tried it and got ... "Internet Explorer has stopped working"

Then Internet Explorer beta 2 came out. I installed it and for a while success! I could open and close IE without seeing "Internet Explorer has stopped working". The success was short lived however I soon got "Internet Explorer has stopped working" not only when I closed IE but also at times when IE was not even loaded - probably the latter being caused by EditPlus, the text editor I use often which uses the IE engine to display web pages being worked on.

I'm still looking for a reliable cure. At the moment I've disabled IE's 'Protected Mode' - Thats done in Control panel > Internet Options > Security tab > uncheck 'Enable Protected Mode'. It causes IE to display a warning when using it, but there's an option when you click it to not repeat the warning. It's also something I wouldn't want to do unless you have an up-to-date anti-malware program. I use Kaspersky Internet Security which gets updated hourly.

For the moment I get no "Internet Explorer has stopped working" error messages but then I've been here before. I'll let you know what happens.

My war against the rabbits

2008-07-06T08:27:00.008+01:00

This morning at 5:00am I was out in the garden, dressed only in a bathrobe, wielding a large stick and for half an hour I chased a rabbit with murder in my heart!

The little B*##~% got away!

It all started when we moved to a new house out in the country. There was a lot to do in the house but outside - the garden could only be described as a disaster area. It was a wilderness of weeds, grass, stone, wire a ramshackle shed/greenhouse and a mound of bricks. There were rabbits everywhere.

I suppose that's what comes of living on a hill between a derelict railway line(at the left of the picture) and a main road (on the right) with a forest on the other side of the rail bed. The soil contains a lot of ash from the steam trains which used to run here and in the trees surrounding us on both sides there are rabbit warrens.

At first we thought they were cute. They had been undisturbed for a while and didn't seem too concerned by our presence. They just kept about 10 yards away and kept on nibbling. When we came home in the car there were usually four or five running along the drive (the old rail bed) in front of us.

For a while they didn't annoy us. We were too busy working on fixing up the house inside to bother with the garden. It was April - warm and wet this year - the grass was growing fast but I didn't have to mow the lawn, the rabbits did that for us. Eventually we just had to do something about that garden. It was obvious that with so many rabbits around vegetables were out of the question so we mowed the lawn, used some of the bricks to make a path and planted a few flowers. The flowers were promptly eaten.

"Oh well" we thought, "once we can let the cats out they'll chase the rabbits off and we can just plant stuff the rabbits won't eat for now." A little research on Internet soon told us however that rabbits are a gardeners WORST enemy but that they wouldn't eat daffodils, forget-me-nots or roses. Daffodils and forget-me-nots abounded in the garden already so we bought some roses and planted those. By morning there were just the stems left. Rabbits WILL eat roses!

"Oh there are lots of things they won't eat" said a guy in our local garden centre. "Its just that no one is quite sure just what they don't like. We have chicken wire that keeps them out though."
"They won't eat marigolds" said a customer at the checkout. We bought chicken wire, marigolds and some begonias which we thought we could protect.

Back home we planted the marigolds and started work on surrounding the garden with a 'rabbit proof' fence. It was obvious that this would take some time so we built a cage with some old wire we found to surround the begonias. The next morning we discovered that rabbits do not like marigolds - in fact they hate them so much they bite the flowers off and drop them so that they don't produce seed and spread further.

I used more of the bricks to build a section of wall on the side next to the road and used corrugated iron sheets too. On the railway line side we repaired the fence already there and used more bricks dug down into the ground to stop the rabbits digging under it. Next to the house and at the far end of the garden we completed a new fence and two gates across the paths. "That should do it." we thought after we blocked up the rabbit holes with bricks and finally let our two cats loose.

It was at this point that we discovered that rabbits can get through 50mm chicken wire!
Three of them got in; one escaped through the wire and two were caught alive when they chose to hide behind our garden table stacked on edge at the side of the fence. We used our cat box as a cage for them and started experimenting to see just what they would eat.

We bought 20mm rabbit wire, split the rolls down the middle and put it on top of our existing fence near the ground to keep out those young ones which could get through the 50mm wire. We reasoned that we didn't need the full height wire since the little ones couldn't reach the 50mm section at the top and the bigger ones which could would be too big to get through it. This time we thought we had done it.

Next morning the garden was still full of rabbits which disappeared under the garden shed when we chased them. They had dug a tunnel under it from the warren by the side of the road. I surrounded the shed base with a brick wall sealing them off.

Next morning at 5:00am our son woke me up to tell me there was squealing downstairs. It turned out that one of our cats had caught a rabbit and brought it into the house to play with. It was still alive but only just. I cleaned up the blood from the living room carpet and gave it the coupe de grasse.

The rabbit population started to drop. Our cats killed at least three that we know of, a family of weasels moved into our neighbourhood and a fox can be heard barking at night (much to the annoyance of the local gamekeeper who is rearing pheasants in our wood).

For a few days we thought we had them beaten. The grass on our lawn started to grow and dandelions started to appear. It seems dandelions are a rabbit favourite. Our experiments with the ones we captured seemed to show that they will eat just about anything if they are hungry enough unless the plant is poisonous e.g. foxgloves. Some plants they obviously don't like but will nibble at and drop. Some plants - like marigolds, they won't eat but do their best to destroy. We found a booklet 'Gardening With The Enemy' by Janet Thompson which was some help which has a list of rabbit resistant plants. It's list isn't perfect though since we found some plants they rate as 'rabbit safe' get eaten by ours and others they bite and spit out. We felt confident enough to buy over a hundred pounds worth of plants and plant out the sweet peas we knew they love above all other plants.

And that brings me to this morning when I got up to go to the bathroom and looked out of the window to see a rabbit eating the sweet peas ...aaaggghhh! The worst of it is that I can't find where it got in and it couldn't get out easily until it escaped over the remains of the brick pile.

The great plastic bag con.

2007-12-01T00:30:00.001Z

Just recently the Prime Minister was in the news talking about introducing legislation to reduce single use plastic bags (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7101075.stm). Now I may be a cynic but I suspect he's more interested in the tax other countries have introduced on plastic bags rather than any real green motive.
Ireland has introduced such a tax and now charges 15 cents per bag. In the UK the tax would probably be 10p.

Now, admittedly the Irish tax has slashed the number of plastic bags used dramatically - by 277 million says the Irish government, but it's also raised 2½ million pounds in tax. In the UK if a similar pattern was followed it would raise 70 million pounds in tax. Now this is a drop in the ocean as far as UK tax is concerned - it would cost each of us in the UK just over £1.00 per year and would save 8.4 billion plastic bags each year! That would probably make our environment a lot tidier. But would it actually be much use as a way of combatting global warming?

Let's work it out:
On average each of us in the UK uses 150 bags each per year.
Each one weighs 8 grams - that's 1.2 Kg of plastic which if burnt would produce 3.7Kg of carbon dioxide.
Now that's not quite a true figure because a) CO2 is produced in the manufacturing process and transport of the bags b) many of the bags are disposed of in landfills where they do not decompose but instead remove carbon from our environment.
Let's take a worst case scenario and assume that all the bags are incinerated and that an equal amount of CO2 is produced in the bag manufacture. That would mean each of us is producing 7.5Kg of CO2 each year by just using plastic bags.

Now, let's compare that with other things.
An average motorist in the UK uses 1143 litres of fuel per year and produces 2700Kg of CO2 from it. By reducing his car use by just 0.3% (3/1000ths) each year Mr Average would save his 7.5Kg of CO2
If we all bought 0.3% more local products rather than foreign imports we could save ten times as much CO2 (from transport production of CO2) as we would use with plastic bags.
If we each used 900 fewer sheets of paper each year then that would save the same amount of CO2 as we use in plastic bags - That's equivalent to a magazine per month, two books less per year or just ten fewer newspapers. (Before you say it using recycled paper actually produces more CO2 since there are extra processing costs)

In fact we could produce less CO2 than we use in plastic bags by:

fitting a single low wattage bulb as a replacement
turning down the thermostat by just 0.3 degrees (wouldn't it be nice if thermostats were that accurate?)
fitting an extra 1cm of loft insulation (of course you can't buy insulation that thin so you'll save much more than this)
switching the TV off at night rather than leaving it on standby
recycling glass bottles
recycling aluminium cans
unplugging your mobile phone charger when not using it
fixing a sheet of aluminium foil to the wall behind your radiators (use Blue-tac).

There are lots of other ways - try a search for 'reducing greenhouse gasses' (Watch out for that misleading 'recycle paper' though)

Now what does this mean.

Putting a tax on plastic bags and pretending to be 'green' is foolish. It's easy to say, makes the government a little extra cash and achieves very little other than tidying the environment.
Shops like the idea. Those plastic bags cost them about 2p each. I find it interesting that firms like Tesco offer a 'green point' worth 1p every time you reuse a large bag which holds at least twice the amount you put in single use bags. (2 x 2p = 4p, less 1p for a green point = 3 p extra profit)
There are far more effective ways of reducing greenhouse gases and almost all of them save you money.

Having said all that - Lets get rid of the bags but only because of the litter problem they create not because of the greenhouse problem.

Goji Berries - I'm convinced

2007-11-30T17:54:00.001Z

For about two years now my family has been eating dried Goji berries as a regular part of our diet after reading the many claims about them being beneficial to health. About a year ago we stopped using them for three weeks and quickly went back to using them. Apart from the fact that we like their taste here's what we found compared with the claim made for them:

Claim: It improves sexual libido (OK I thought you might want this first!)
I find: Yes - it's true! Gentlemen - feed your wife goji berries. But be warned you'll need to eat them yourself to keep up with her.

Claim: It improves circulation
I find: Also true. My wife had always suffered from cold hands and feet - but not when she ate goji berries. When we stopped for three weeks her cold hands returned.

Claim: It is beneficial for prostate problems.
I find: Not sure about this one, however after blood tests showed a higher than normal PSA count I recently underwent a prostate examination (that's another blog) and the verdict was - no sign of prostate cancer and why did my doctor ask for the test?

Claim: They reduce cholesterol levels.
I find: Another one I can't confirm but - in those blood tests my cholesterol level was found to be lower than normal.

Claim: They reduce joint problems.
I find: True. My wife had problems with her wrists, she has apparently bones which are too flexible and which bend slightly and bruise becoming painful. Since starting to eat goji berries the problem has been much reduced. I used to get periodic stiff necks. Not a trace of them since starting to take goji berries.

Claim: They improve eyesight.
I find: I think it's true. Both of us have stopped wearing glasses to read. When we stopped taking goji berries we had to use glasses again.

Claim: They improve the skin and make you look younger.
I find: Hmm. Can't be sure about this one but then we both signed the Peter Pan pledge years ago. I'm thinking of retiring and people keep saying ' Retire? Surely you are not old enough'.

Claim: They reduce inflammation more effectively than aspirin.
I find: I haven't noticed any such effect. Having said that the only headache I've had in the last six months was during the three week period when we stopped taking them.

Claim: They promote a general feeling of well being.
I find: I feel just fine but then I always did and can't honestly say I've noticed any difference. My wife however is convinced she feels better when taking them.

Now for the bits we've found out that as far as we can tell isn't recorded about the berries.

They are very easy to grow yourself. Put three of the dried berries in a small pot of damp compost. Seedlings will grow within 3 weeks. Once they are 10cm tall transfer them to a bigger pot. They like practically any soil, shade or sunshine. You'll need to protect them from slugs - they love the leaves. Berries can start forming in the second year but you won't get a decent crop for several years. You'll need to protect them from birds and rabbits who also love them. We have ours where we grow roses and mixed in with hawthorn hedges.
The berries taste great eaten fresh or can be dried for storage. We have a hot air drier which works well. You are not supposed to pick the berries by hand because they are very easily damaged (like ripe blackberries).
Check your local chinese supermarket for a cheaper source of the dried berries, failing that try Holland and Barret or even Tesco as a source. Tesco is an expensive source however. If you live in South East England, especially Suffolk look out for them gowing in roadside hedges.
Buy plain yoghurt and add dried goji berries. Leave overnight or for 2-3 hours. The berries will re-hydrate and taste delicious with the yoghurt. Some people may like to liquidise or chop the berries in the yoghurt before eating it.
If you can't wait, add boiling water to dried berries. They will re-hydrate within 10 minutes and you can drink the liquid too.
Cats love the dried berries. They make great treats.
Dried goji berries are a great addition to oatmeal when making flapjack.
The young leaves can be used to make a herbal tea.
The roots of a goji berry plant can be washed, crushed and work well as an antiseptic for scratches.
You can make a goji berry juice from the dried berries. Try adding a little cherry juice concentrate for extra flavour.

All in all goji berries are here to stay in my family. It's just a shame they are so expensive in the shops and as yet we haven't enough plants to supply all our needs.

Brain teaser

2007-02-23T15:20:00.000Z

It was Jane's birthday and John heard her say -
"I'm twenty-eight today. Last year I was twenty-nine and in two years I'll be twenty. See?"

Everything Jane said was the truth.

Exactly how old is Jane really today?

Answer at the bottom of Sweet Choice

Big brother wants to watch you (even more) - UK Road Tax Scheme

2007-02-16T12:02:00.000Z

The UK government has plans to replace the current road tax and petrol duty with a pay as you go road use charge. (If any US readers are about to move on to a different blog - don't - If this goes ahead in the UK, you're next!)

Here is an outline of the key points of the plan (taken from the BBC website):

Each driver would be charged for every mile of his or her journey.
Prices would start from as little as 2p a mile on quiet roads outside rush hours.
The maximum price would be £1.34 a mile on busy motorways like the M25 at peak times.
Current charges of fuel tax and road tax would be scrapped.
A pilot scheme covering a region or large conurbation could be operating "within five years".
If all goes well a nationwide scheme could be rolled out within 10 years.
A Department for Transport (DFT) feasibility study concluded last year that a national scheme had the potential to cut congestion by about 40% with "only 4% less cars using the roads".
He (Mr Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport) wants a decision on whether or not road pricing should be implemented "during the course of this parliament".
Mr Darling said new technology was already being used to "better manage road space" - for example a new system of "traffic management " on the M42.

Now let's take a look at how this would affect the 'average' driver using an 'average' car (A petrol Vauxhall Astra 1.6).

According to government statistics Mr Average drives 15,872 Km (9,862 miles) per year and pays road tax of £175 ($350) and pays 84.4 pence per litre ($6.39 per US gallon compared with US price average of $2.34!)

Of that 84.4 pence per litre 47.1p is fuel duty and 12.57p is VAT. (in US terms that amounts to taxes of $4.41 per gallon). Minus just the fuel duty petrol (gas) in the UK would cost 29.1p per litre ($2.15 per US gallon).

Mr Average's Astra car uses 1143 litres of petrol per year giving him an average of 8.63 miles per litre (that's 32.7 miles per US gallon). At current fuel costs Mr Average's costs per mile travelled are:

7.3 pence per mile for fuel duty
1.8 pence per mile for road tax

Total 9.1 pence per mile. (18¢)

If the new scheme were to be adopted then both of these taxes will be removed (I know what you are thinking - yeah right) and be replaced with a charge per mile that you travel.

Now if you live in the country and only travel on minor roads at non-peak times that would cost you 2 pence per mile which represents a saving of 7.1 pence per mile or £700 per year ($1,368). But how many of us drive like that? Most of us work in cities and have to travel there at peak times. Some unfortunates could find themselves paying mostly £1.34 per mile travelled or £12,318 ($24,000) a year worse off!

Just what is meant by 'peak' times and which roads will get the high charges? According to a document I found at the Department for Transport website it means 7:00-10:00am and 4:00pm-7:00pm and no fewer than 89 major roads are probably due for the £1.34 charge. Here's the list I found:
A1; A1(M); A1033; A11; A12; A120; A14; A168; A180; A19; A2; A21; A23; A259; A27; A282; A3; A30; A303; A31; A34; A35; A38; A40; A404; A404(M); A417; A419; A421; A428; A43; A449; A452; A453; A46; A47; A49; A5; A50; A500; A5111; A5117; A52; A55; A556; A56; A57; A590; A595; A6; A616; A628; A63; A64; A66; A66(M); A69; A742; M1; M11; M18; M180; M2; M20; M23; M25; M26; M27; M271; M3; M4; M40; M42; M45; M5; M50; M53; M54; M55; M56; M6; M6 Toll3; M60 via Barton; M60 via Stockport; M62; M65; M66; M67; M69

Now what about the 'gas guzzlers'? According to the plan there won't be any advantage in choosing to use a fuel efficient car over a 'gas guzzler'. Does anyone really expect this to be allowed? It seems to fly in the face of our aims for reducing carbon emissions. Perhaps different charge bands will be introduced for different vehicles? Maybe that £1.34 is for an 'average' vehicle?

How's it going to work? It seems dependant on GPS technology. Now judging from the number of times that GPS loses a signal or puts you on the wrong road, I expect there will be a few problems here! It's going to involve a £200 ($390) 'black box'. Guess who will pay for that! Will it offer any advantages such as the box recommending which road to use? Will we trust it? Will we all take to the back roads and cause new congestion on roads less likely to cope? How long will it take someone to come up with a hack to reduce your charges? If your car is stolen do you get to pay for the miles the thief drives?

What about privacy? The system will record exactly where the car is and exactly what time it travels. Who will be able to access this information? The police could use it to cut car theft but who else will be able to get the information? Now I can't think of a genuine reason why I would object to the police knowing my position but I can't really say I would be comfortable with this! What happens if I inadvertently travel from A to B at slightly more than the speed limit? Would I get an automatic ticket or a warning from the black box to slow down?

All in all the system proposed has some good features but is far too complex, open to abuse, will probably cause an increase in carbon emissions and will be expensive to run. Although I hate the amount of duty w pay, it would be far better to leave the current system in place.

As to the road congestion problem I would like to remind the government that around 1900 there was a serious concern about the amount of horse s*#t on the roads and predictions that by 1920 we would be knee deep in it.

So what can we do? Sit there and take it? For the first time it's now possible to have an effect on the decision. In a stroke of genius (rare in government circles) our government in the UK is allowing us to make our voice heard by signing petitions online. Go to the site - http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/ and sign it before the Feb 20th deadline. All you need is an e-mail address, house number and postcode. At the time of writing 10pm Friday 16th Feb 2007 no fewer than 1,535,803 people in the UK had done so. Tell all your friends to sign it too!

Don't print this!

2007-01-13T16:14:00.001Z

I'm always complaining to students about the amount of paper they waste. By the time they print work a few times, use worksheets, exam papers, make paper airplanes and get newsletters they must be well on the way to using the average office worker's 10,000 sheets per year.

Paper is environmentally expensive to produce and most people are not aware of it's effect on the environment.

So lets look at this on a 'per sheet' basis ; (standard copy paper).

Each sheet weighs about 5 grams
Just over 15 grams of wood are used to make it.
For each sheet 5 grams of sludge is produced which has to be disposed of.
To make each sheet requires 200KJ of energy of which 95KJ are bought in as coal/gas/oil or electricity.
Each sheet produces 12.9 grams of carbon dioxide during it's manufacture, transport and eventual disposal by decomposition or burning.
Each sheet used adds 6.1 grams of carbon dioxide to global warming (the remaining 6.8 g is used by the trees grown for the next sheet).
Each sheet of paper produces 0.06 gram of sulphur dioxide and 0.04 grams of nitrogen dioxide in it's manufacture. Both cause acid rain.
Each sheet adds a tiny amount of nasties such as dioxin to the environment.
Recycling means less trees are cut down but does not significantly affect the amount of undesirable gases produced due to it's reprocessing costs.
White recycled paper adds a disastrous amount of bleach and sludge to the environment. The ONLY sensible way to recycle paper is to use it for unbleached cardboard.

Now since that average office worker is using 10,000 sheets of paper per year this means they are adding:

61Kg of CO2 to global warming
Using enough water to fill a small swimming pool
producing about 130Kg of acid rain causing gas.
adding 45 grams of 'nasties' to the environment

Make what you will of this article. Just one thing - don't print it!

Useful websites:
Paper Vs plastic bags? http://www.angelfire.com/wi/PaperVsPlastic/
The paper calculator http://www.environmentaldefense.org/papercalculator/

BSE/nvCJD in the news - Friday 8th Dec 2006

2006-12-08T22:13:00.000Z

nvCJD (variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease) has raised it's ugly head again. Apparently it's been discovered that it can be passed on by blood transfusions. Doctors have no way of detecting it in blood and three people have now been identified as having got the disease from the blood of a nvCJD victim. The worrying thing is that nvCJD has up to a 50 year dormancy period. There is no easy way of detecting just how many people are infected with CJD although it has been discovered to be detectable in the tissue of the tonsils long before symptoms of it appear.

nvCJD is believed to originate from eating beef where the animal had BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathies) or 'Mad Cow Disease'. By 2006 153 deaths had been attributed to eating BSE infected beef or from medical procedures where the infectious agents were passed on.

BSE was first identified in cattle in the UK around 1986. Once it was established that the probable cause of the disease was that cattle had been fed animal protine to increase milk yields, I and my family stopped eating beef from the UK. I realised that if it could survive the temperature involved in the processing and pass from sheep to cattle then there was a good chance that it would pass to humans also.

It was several years later (1990) that the 'BSE scare' reached a peak and the UK health minister publicly ate a beefburger to calm fears. That didn't reassure me though. Next came a daft idea that 'they' would ban the sale of beef from cattle more than 30 months old and therefore ensure public safety. Now it usually takes longer than that for symptoms of BSE to appear in cattle and this idea means that it was then impossible to detect if the meat was infected or not! A much more sensible idea would have been to ban the sale of meat younger than 30 months and therefore give the disease a chance to develop to the point where it could be detected.

The 30 month rule ended in November 2005 and was replaced by the compulsory testing of slaughtered animals for BSE.

The use of animal protein in cattle food was banned in July 1988. It was expected that the appearance of new cases would gradually stop. When cows born after the 1988 ban started to develop symptoms, it became apparent that BSE could be passed from mother to calf. The UK government body which deals with BSE, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) introduced in May 2006 an 'offspring cull' where the calves of any cow determined to be infected with BSE were to be slaughtered. A great idea, but the regulation does not go far enough. It applies only to calves born in the previous two years, and, as DEFRA itself declares, on average it takes five years for BSE symptoms to appear. It has not been established if BSE can be passed on in this incubation period. A safer, (but much more expensive), policy would have been for all descendants of a BSE infected cow to be slaughtered.

So what exactly is the situation now?
The UK has by far had the greatest number of cases of BSE and it is certain that some infected animals entered the UK food chain. Since nvCJD may remain dormant for very long periods - 20 years and more, so far we may only have seen nvCJD in those people particularly susceptible to it. There may be a huge number of cases about to appear in the next few years. See the chart at the end of this post.

Cases of BSE in the UK are now much better controlled. If the steps are effective then BSE will disappear in the UK. I suspect there will still be some since it's possible that the two year offspring cull is not enough to eradicate it. I personally still won't eat British beef unless I know it's from a purebred 'non-dairy' beef herd such as Aberdeen Angus and preferably one which is 'grass fed'.

The table below, based on latest results for 2005, shows the likelihood you have of finding a BSE infected animal. All countries where a BSE case has been confirmed are shown.

Country	Current odds 1 in:
Portugal	23,529
UK	51,152
Spain	64,286
Ireland	97,101
Austria	110,000
Czech Republic	200,000
Luxembourg	205,000
Poland	300,000
Slovak Republic	350,000
Germany	459,375
Slovenia	500,000
Switzerland	533,333
Japan	657,143
France	677,419
Italy	925,000
Netherlands	1,333,333
Denmark	1,572,000
Belgium	1,700,000
Canada	13,700,000
United States	98,000,000
Liechtenstein	n/a
Falkland Isles	n/a
Oman	n/a
Israel	n/a
Greece	n/a
Finland	n/a

What's more worrying however is the graph showing potential cases of nvCJD which could exist:. People in the UK don't seem to be aware that some countries (e.g. Belgium) will not accept blood donors who lived in the UK during the 1990s.

For more information on BSE try http://www.food.gov.uk/bse/ and http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/
For information on new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease try http://www.cjdfoundation.org/ or http://www.stanford.edu/~siegelr/ajai.html

Unsolicited telemarketing

2006-10-18T21:13:00.000+01:00

You're in the middle of watching your favourite TV program and the phone rings - someone wanting to sell you double glazing/insulation/burglar alarm e.t.c. Know the thing?

The easy answer is to just say no and put the phone down but you've probably missed a key part of your program and sit there fuming.

Now my phone number (and that of my mobile) is registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and has been registered for some time. Telephone cold callers are breaking the regulations of the Telecommunications (Data Protection and Privacy) Regulations 1999 and if they make the call can be fined by the Information commissioner. I don't get nearly as many phone calls as I used to but I still get some. Those I do get are listed as 'private' in caller display so I make a point of getting their details and address before I tell them I'm making a complaint against them.

There are numerous websites which go into detail about how to 'get your own back' on the perpetrators of these nuisance calls (My personal favourite is to ask them to call me back on a premium rate number which keeps them on hold for some time without actually telling them anything). I suspect however that it's a waste of time since these callers are probably well used to this and just move on to the next number.

Here's a few suggestions you might try:

Ask them to hold for a while, put the phone down after muting it and leave it for about 10min. Don't give them the chance to say 'I'll call back'.
Tell them you are interested and make an appointment for them to visit the guy up the street who had that noisy party. Ask them to call at 2am when you 'get back from work'.
Tell them you are just about to get on a plane and ask them to phone you in 3 hours on 0041177 (the Japanese prerecorded weather service)
always make an appointment for conservatory salesmen to call and give you a quote if you live in an upper floor flat/apartment
Or you can simply take pity on the poor soul who has such a rotten job and just tell them you're not interested.

Now what about text messages? If you register your mobile number with the TPS (website http://www.tpsonline.org.uk) then you sold not receive advertising SMS messages either. At least that's the theory. I still get them from Bambuubar, a nightclub in Southampton. Now why I would want to travel from London to Southampton to go to a nightclub is a mystery to me! But as a point of principle I would never attend any event publicized by text messages I haven't asked for. Neither would I buy anything.

As far as Bambuubar and I are concerned:

If they can afford to publicize by sms then they are making too much money.
If they are sending free sms messages then that's the same as spamming e-mail as far as I'm concerned and I hate spam!
The place on their website looks too pokey for me.
If I get another sms I'll complain to the Information Commissioner.
I suggest you avoid the place since their text messages are so annoying.
Who the h*** is Tim Westwood from Radio 1 and MTV anyway and does he know Bambuubar seems to be breaking the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations Act of 2003 to advertise him?

Implications of the Relativity Drive

2006-09-23T22:35:00.000+01:00

In an article published by New Scientist Magazine issue 2568 (08 September 2006) Justin Mullins explains the work of Roger Shawyer who claims to have developed an engine with no moving parts referred to as the 'Relativity Drive' or 'EM Engine'.

The drive works by bouncing microwaves inside a specially shaped container with one end wider than the other. At the narrow end the microwaves are reflected more and transfer less momentum to the end wall than at the wide end. Since they are moving at about the speed of light they move, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, in their own frame of reference and independently of the container.

The actual article has been copied many times on Internet and has even it's own section now on Wikipedia (where the controversy about the drive is discussed more than the drive itself.)

Many debunk the drive as being the same as 'Roadrunner on a skateboard with a sail propelled by a fan on the skateboard'. Yet it should be testable even at home using some parts from an old microwave, a copper foil container and a sensitive electronic balance. (It might be advisable to do it from a distance if you don't want to cook yourself).

What's more of interest to me are the potential implications of a working device.

Assuming a superconducting container, preferably one working at room temperature, then Shawyer calculates a thrust of 30,000 Newtons per kilowatt of power input may be possible. That's enough for us to do away with the internal combustion engine and also to lift a vehicle off the ground. New Scientist shows a diagram of a wingless plane lifted by relativity drives and moved forward by a hydrogen fueled gas turbine. What, however, is to stop the turbine being replaced by yet another relativity drive and the power being obtained from a fuel cell?

Without the need for wings there would be no ceiling for such a vehicle. Space would be as accessible to the individual as the roads are today. The drives themselves should not cost a fortune - after all there are no moving parts unlike an internal combustion engine. Granted you will need to spend money on creating a sealed environment for the driver and passengers and on collision avoidance systems and navigation since there are no roadsigns in space.

Want to visit Auntie on the other side of the world? Just hop in your relativity drive vehicle climb out of the atmosphere, accelerate (maybe powered by solar energy) and coast like a satellite around the world. It may take you a couple of hours but you won't have to wait for the airline to check you in, seat you, and so on. With the availability of cheap personal transport international borders will become a nonsense so you can forget about passports, visas, immigration control, airport security and all that rubbish. Instead of going for a night out in the local town a UK resident could pop over to Vegas for a few hours.

Terrorism? No airplanes and no reason for it anyway since the world's population would be free to move, live and work wherever they want. That includes the rest of the solar system too! Now that might unsettle governments but ... who cares about govenment. I for one would like to see a little democratic anarchy.

Live near an airport? Your house value is going to rise without those noisy planes. A relativity drive vehicle (shall we say RDV from now on?) will be silent. After a while though house prices in the city will fall as cheap personal transport makes living in the country more feasable.

Privacy in your garden? Hmm - that may be a problem with silent RDVs floating overhead. But then anyone who has seen Google Earth or local.live.com will know that back garden privacy will soon be a thing of the past.

Work for a rail service/shipping firm/airport/road construction? Better start looking for a new job. Motor industry? You are going to be selling and maintaining RDVs instead.

Work in the oil industry? Well there won't be the demand for petrol (gas), diesel or aviation fuel but oil products will still be needed for heating and as raw materials. It might reduce pollution and global warming.

How about space travel? By that I mean travel between the Earth and the Moon and planets. We'll have to overcome the absence of the Van Allen belts protecting us against radiation but the good news is that the Sun is expected to go through a quiet phase for a while making interplanetary travel much simpler. If you want a good field to invest in for the future try space suit manufacture and autopilots.

I'm sure there are lots of other ways the RDV would change our lives and I invite you to add them to this blog.

Well I thought it was funny...

2006-09-18T15:58:00.001+01:00

Years ago, to earn extra money for my morgage, I worked nights as a taxi driver in Stockton on Tees. One of the other taxi drivers told me this story:

He was driving, as usual, a little too fast and taking a passenger from Stockton to Billingham. As he approached the traffic lights in Norton near a nightclub he saw the lights start to change so started to brake. At this point her realised to his horror that a previous fare had left a bottle in the car and it had rolled forward under the brake pedal preventing him from pushing it. He was doing about 40mph, the lights were now red, there were cars moving out of the junction across his path and there were nightclub visitors crossing the road to a burger van parked outside the club. The only thing he could do was to reach down and pull the bottle out from under the brake. He did that and as he got back up frantically braked. When he finally could see again he found his taxi stopped six inches from the rear of the burger van. He had gone through the lights at red and missed every car and pedestrian.
"Take me back home." said his passenger.
"What for? you've only just left there."
"I need to change my trousers!"

Richard wasn't a very bright student. When he did his technology exam he got everything on the paper wrong apart from one question. He even got everything on the front page wrong.
Surname - he had written the technology teacher's name. "Well you're Sur aren't you?"
Forename - Dickie
Centre Name (the school name) - Alun
The question he got right? he had answered 'Rat shit'
The actual question was 'Name a type of screwdriver.'

I was supervising an English exam at school. I and the other supervisors were run ragged by pupils asking us for pencils - which the English department had not provided. Eventually we ran out and I asked "What do you need a pencil for anyway?".
It was question 5b which said - 'Draw your conclusions...'

Thrush Hall Farm before it was Throstle Hole Abbey

2006-09-15T21:18:00.001+01:00

Until I was eight I lived with my family in Walkergate, Newcastle on Tyne. Then my father followed his brother's footsteps and bought a small farm in the wilds of Northumberland.

My father was very much the 'Mr. Jones' in our street in Newcastle. We had the first car, the first TV, a modern kitchen - we were comfortable. Everyone else tried to keep up with us. Thrush Hall Farm was a bit of a change.

For a start - we had no electricity. It was oil lamps and candles upstairs and Calor gas lights and Tilley lamps downstairs. Our TV sat useless in a corner of 'the sitting room' along with our mains radio and gramophone.

There was no bathroom. We did have a bath - it was underneath a counter top in the scullery. We did have the luxury of running hot and cold water. It was heated by a coal fire in the kitchen. Not for us the luxury of chlorinated mains water. Our water supply ran down the field in a ditch. We had a large settling and storage tank just up the hill from the farm buildings. In wet weather it didn't have time to settle and I remember on occasion a large worm would make it's way into the bath. In dry weather the ditch dried up and we had to use a spring in our fields. That spring never dried up, no matter how dry the summer. Not only did it keep us going but it also served for serveral of our neighbours. Unlike the tap water, which had to be boiled, the spring water was pure and delicious.

Toilet? It was outside. Not for us one that flushed. We had an earth closet in a whitewashed outbuilding. I remember a wooden board with a hole you uncovered. At the side of the building was a stone slab which was removed to rake out the contents. I also remember a healthy population of spiders. One day I moved that slab while my sister was sat there and waved a bunch of nettles inside. My sister shot out of that place in hot pursuit of me. Normally I could outrun her but I was laughing so hard she caught me and pulled out handfuls of my hair.

Cooking was done on a Calor gas hob in the scullery or on the coal fire in big cast iron pots. Baking was done in an oven next to the coal fire. I remember that oven served a lot of purposes, from baking to thawing out semi frozen lambs during frosty springs.

The floors in our farm downstairs were made of stone flags. Slabs of stone about two feet by three. The walls of our farmhouse were over two feet thick. They kept us warm in winter and cool in summer. There were small windows facing south with a window ledge that served as a seat at times. There were no windows facing north west or east other than a tiny one in the scullery and an even smaller one filled with perforated zinc mesh in our walk in 'pantry'. The roof was a bit of a mixture. On one side it was stone slabs pegged onto oak beams with sheepbone pegs, on the other side it was slates. The house was built on a slope so was low enough to easily get onto the roof on the slate side. Between the house and the byre there was a cobbled farmyard.

Fridge? We didn't have one. We kept food cool in the pantry and bought fresh food from the many traveling shops which visited.

There were only two bedrooms so Mam & Dad had one and my sister and I shared the other. If you needed to 'go' there was a chamber pot under the bed.

Winters were something else! We were 1700 Ft up in the Pennine hills in a valley surrounded by open fells. When the wind blew all the snow made it's way into the valley and we were 'snowed in'. We had been warned about this and my mother took care to lay in a stock of tinned and dried food. Once the snow started the traveling shops didn't make it to our farm and we had to rely on our stores. That first year I remember helping my parents to dig snow, and dig, and dig and... The temperature plummeted. We had a thermometer outside and I remember eleven degrees of frost. At night we snuggled under two quilts and lots of blankets. (No central heating.) In the morning it was not unusual to find half an inch of ice on the windows. I learnt to keep my clothes for the next day under the top quilt and to get dressed before I got out of bed.

Our normal footwear was the Wellington boot with thick socks. In winter we learnt to wear two pairs of jeans with the outer pair outside the wellingtons to stop the snow getting inside them.

In winter we had to feed our cattle (kept in the byre) and sheep (outdoors). Feeding the cows was a twice a day job and mucking out I found difficult. My problem was that I wasn't strong enough to wheel the wheelbarrow without the risk of it turning over. When it did it was fill it again. One of our cows we milked, a mild mannered shorthorn cow called Daisy. Mostly my mother did this but both my sister and I learnt it too. The trick is to keep your head close to the side of the cow )so she can't whip you in the eyes with her tail)and avoid her stepping or kicking over the pail (by keeping her occupied with some food). We could only milk her part of the year - for the rest we bought milk from Sarah Clark our neighbour.

Another job my father gave me was to bury dead sheep. Our first sheep were old and several died of age. Try burying a sheep in winter when the already stony ground is frozen hard. You do it with a pick, a spade and a shovel.

In spring there was lambing. I learnt to catch the new born lambs with a shepherd's crook and inject it against disease. Lambs are nice, cute and playful. Adult sheep are smelly and frustratingly stupid however. They would jump the stone walls of our farm to get to the much poorer grazing in our neighbours property. As they did so they often caused the ancient dry stone walls to collapse and these needed rebuilding. They say dry stone walling is an art but I learnt it at an early age. I must have been ok at it because my repairs didn't fall down again.

Summer was a different matter. It meant haymaking and we did it the hard way by hand since we did not have a tractor. We got someone to cut the hay and we then used huge wooden rakes to turn the swathes over after drying a few days. If it rained - we did it again. We then raked three rows into one and again let it dry. Next we raked it into small mounds - Kyles. These were then put together into much bigger mounds - Pikes. After the pikes had dried a while they were taken by tractor to the hay barn where it was forked through the narrow door. It was all hard work and my sister and I being only ten and eight years old didn't get me out of it.

Around 1960 electricity finally made it to our valley and at last we could watch tv again. By this time however our TV was too old to pick up the ITV channels that were now being broadcast. We didn't miss it much. We were too busy on the farm. About the same time we did some building work on the farm and at last installed a bathroom with flush toilet and a third bedroom. The scullery was extended in a DIY conversion and joined with the walk in pantry. My father did the work, taking down the wall and installing a thick oak beam to support the bit left. The following morning we came downstairs to find that oak beam bent nearly in a U shape. There turned out to be another 10 feet of two feet thick stone wall above it. It all had to come down. Fortunately this bit wasn't load bearing at the top. To replace the walk in pantry we knocked through to the stable next door and I helped a friend who often helped out on our farm, Dick Phillipson, build a new wall. I remember him sitting astride a beam while I passed him buckets of rubble to fill the gap between the two layers of wall he had built. Suddenly there was a loud rumble, a muttered curse and Dick got very carefully down from his perch. One half of the wall which supported the beam he was sitting on had collapsed and had to be rebuilt.

We also dug out the back of the house and made a new entrance from the yard into the scullery. It used to get filled with snow in winter so eventually we roofed this area over.

Dick usually cut our hay and brought the pikes' in for us. He lived at Nenthead and came over from there on his tractor. He was already old when I first met him but he didn't seem old to me. He was very strong in a wiry way and was one of the few people I knew who had been a lead miner before the mines in the area closed down. His tractor made all the difference to us. My mother was persuaded to drive it. One day I remember her trying to change gear as she brought in a pike. She missed the gear and the tractor started to roll backwards down the hill. She wasn't heavy enough to get enough pressure on the brake and would have ended up back down the hill had one of the prongs of the pike lifter not struck one of the large Scots pine trees which separated two of our hay fields. A few years ago I visited our old farm again, (it's now Throstle Hole Abbey, a Buddhist monastery) and the mark can still be seen in the tree after 40 years.

With the arrival of electricity we bought a deep freeze. I remember seeing it empty apart from the first item we put in it - a packet of fishcakes. One day when Dick arrived my mother took them out to have for lunch. She wasn't quite used to deep freezes though because when she served them they burnt your mouth on the outside and had a chunk of frozen fish in the inside. We still tease her about hot frozen fishcakes. The freezer didn't stay empty long. We had whole pigs, vegetables and fruit in it.

Electricity meant also that my father could start installing central heating. He bought a coal fired boiler, a pump, pipes and radiators and started connecting things up. When he got sick of the job of bashing holes through two foot thick stone walls I took over. I knew nothing about central heating and simply connected everything in series. When we switched it on the radiator in my room was red hot and the one last in line, downstairs in the sitting room, was barely warm. It worked though and made the house warmer. I then read books on central heating and found out what I should have done. Years later I met a guy in a pub in Allendale who talked about what a botch job the central heating was there. I kept quiet.

My mother did most of the work on the farm since my father worked full time as an electrical engineer. She raised cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks and at one time goats. She gardened, repaired walls, dipped sheep, milked, lambda, calfed, built animal shelters and cleaned them. In addition she delivered children to the primary school and did a post round. After my parents divorced she sold the farm in 1969 to some Londoners who turned it into a hippy commune. Later it became Throstle Hole Abbey a Soto Zen Buddhist abbey; the name coming from the old name for Thrush Hall.

Distorted Carrots?

2006-09-10T20:30:00.000+01:00

OK - so I move to a new house with a massive 150ft garden. Now I don't know a lot about gardening, but I decided it would be worth a try growing vegetables. I got a good crop of potatoes, especially since they were grown from peelings. Peas and beans were great. My sweetcorn, squash, celery, courgettes (zucchini) are delicious. The tomatoes - well, I'm getting sick of them! The cabbage and broccoli are fine now that I've persuaded the caterpillars to go elsewhere.

My carrots though are pathetic. They grow, but I've never seen such distorted efforts.
Now there must be some knowlegeable gardeners out there. What am I doing wrong?
Does Miracle Grow contain testosterone?

TV Adverts (or should that be Advertzzzzzzzz...)

2006-08-15T02:49:00.000+01:00

While on holiday I've been watching a bit more TV than usual. As a result I've been exposed to a fair few TV adverts. Now having lived for a while in both the US and Canada I know that we in the UK get a better deal than elsewhere, we don't for instance, get adverts immediately after opening titles or just before the closing credits. But still - some of those adverts are soooo boooring! Others are intensely annoying, and yet more are unbelievably stupid.

So here's my list of adverts that I really hate and those I actually enjoy.

Hate:
The stupid advert which features a football maniac phoning up for a loan whilst his grinning idiot wife videos everything with her video camera instead of snatching his football and throwing it out the window. It's so annoying I mute the sound every time it comes on. Now I know some adverts are designed to be annoying so we remember the name of the company/product but if that's the case here ... Who?

The NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) advert featuring children suffering. Isn't this a case of cruelty to children? Maybe some of them are brilliant child actors but that tot in the baby bouncer? Sorry NSPCC I'm NOT going to donate because no amount of money will stop some parents from being cruel and I'm certainly not going to help you pay for more of these adverts!

Like:
The Renault Megan adverts - funny, sexy and almost enough to make me interested in buying a very ugly car!

Boring:

The Elephant insurance adverts - I have enough trouble staying awake in front of TV without them to send me to sleep!

Amusing - but not in the way they plan:

Years ago I was a member of the AA (Automobile Association). I quit and joined the RAC (Royal Automobile Club) after waiting for nearly 3 hours for a patrol to arrive when my car broke down. After watching the AA advert on TV I finally can figure out why it took so long - all their patrol men are off in Scotland making adverts!

Their latest advert says 95% of their members would recommend them. Now maybe they haven't noticed but that means 5% of their members are unhappy and won't be a member after their subscription runs out. Hey AA - you are losing 5% of your members every year!

Talking of unintentionally amusing adverts - remember these from the past?

'Nothing acts faster than Anadin' - so take nothing and your headache will get better quicker.

'Persil washes whiter' - Than mud?

So what adverts does everyone else like/dislike?

Sweet Choice

2006-07-22T14:18:00.001+01:00

In a letter to New Scientist (issue 24 June 2006) Richard Laming of the British Soft Drinks Association states:

'Intense sweeteners allow consumers to enjoy soft drinks while restricting their calorie intake if they wish to do so. They are always listed on the label so that consumers can have the choice'

How does this stand up to reality? In a visit to my local Tesco supermarket I was unable to find a single 2 litre bottle of lemonade which did NOT contain Aspartame. In each case the bottle was passed to me to read because my wife was unable to read the tiny print on the list of ingredients. (The one brand of lemonade which I know does not contain Aspartame, 7-up, was out of stock). Some choice!

Now I'm not saying Aspartame is bad - I just remain confused as to whether it is or is not safe so in the meantime I choose not to eat or drink the stuff.

Footnote Sept 28 2007
I'm pleased to find that Asda, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury have now stopped adding Aspartame to their own brand drinks. That means you can once again buy low cost lemonade without the stuff. Now maybe we can persuade Tesco to do the same?

Footnote April 2009
It seems that pandas are unique amongst animals in that they prefer the taste of Aspartame. In an experiment they, along with other animals were given a choice of water flavoured with six different natural sweeteners or six different artificial sweeteners. Only the pandas chose Aspartame - all the other animals (apart from cats, who can't taste sweetness) chose natural sweeteners. Hey - maybe that's why pandas are an endangered species? BBC news feature

Answer to Brain Teaser
Jane really said "I'm 2A today. Last year I was 29 (in hexadecimal numbers) and in two years time I'll be 2C"
If she's 2A in hexadecimal then that makes her 42 in the 'normal' decimal system.

ALL CAPS USER AGREEMENTS - Grr!

2006-07-21T20:33:00.000+01:00

I've just upgraded my copy of SpySweeper to version 5. Great improvement but...

Why Why Why do software firms continue to write their 'terms and conditions' in ALL CAPS?

As a teacher one of the first things we were taught in college was not to write in capital letters only. The reason? It destroys the word shape and actually makes the text harder to read. When we read we look for word shapes and recognize the word without reading individual letters. Write the document in capitals and we have to recognize words by looking at individual letters. If we find a document written in capitals only we tend to give up and not bother reading it.

SpySweeper's terms and conditions is a typical example (although they do switch to mixed case after a paragraph or so). Who writes this drivel? Do they want us not to read it? I suspect it's probably a lawyer - a group of people who seem determined to make things as difficult as possible for the rest of us. Now Webroot - Explain this to your lawyers in nice simple language so that they can get it right next time - NOBODY WANTS TO READ ANY LONG DOCUMENT IF IT'S WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS ONLY AND PEOPLE WHO WRITE TITLES IN ALL CAPS RATHER THAN USING LARGER FONTS OR BOLD TEXT ARE JUST DISPLAYING TOTAL IGNORANCE OF GOOD DESIGN. THINGS HAVE MOVED ON SINCE THE DAYS OF TYPEWRITERS AND TO STICK WITH ALL CAPS ( OR EVEN WORSE UNDERLINED ALL CAPS) IS ABOUT THE SAME AS EMPLOYING A CLERK TO PAINSTAKINGLY COPY A DOCUMENT OUT BY HAND!

Sugar and spice? - Err - Not quite

2006-07-09T20:26:00.005+01:00

Acording to the nursary rhyme little girls are made of 'sugar and spice and all things nice' whereas little boys are made of 'slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails'. (Must have been a woman who wrote that one.) No matter how much little girls wish it the rhyme just isn't true.

So what exactly are we made of? Let's take a look at Mr Average: 38 years old, 5' 9" and weighing 79.83 Kg (179 lb)

61% of Mr Average is oxygen. It weighs 49 Kg (107lb) and as a gas it would occupy a volume of 34,000 litres (1,200 cubic feet) That's enough to keep an average person breathing for 68 days. Most of the oxygen is found in the water which makes up 55% of the bodies mass.

23% of Mr Average is carbon. It weighs 18.24 Kg (40lb). Thats about 6 bags if you want to have a BBQ.

10% of Mr Average is hydrogen. It weighs 7.98 Kg (17.6lb) and as a gas would take up 89,400 litres (3,160 cubic feet). In a balloon it would be capable of lifting 220 lb.

2.6% of Mr Average is nitrogen, mostly in the proteins of his body. It weighs 2.08 Kg (4.6lb) and would make enough fertilizer to cover 1/5th of an acre

1.4% of Mr Average is calcium. That's 1.12Kg (2.5lb). It's found in bones and teeth, is important for membrane function, nerve impulses, muscle contractions, and blood clotting. Converted to plaster it would be enough to cover 3 square feet of wall.

1.1% of Mr Average is phosphorus, 878g (1.931b). It's found in bones and teeth, nucleic acids and is important in providing you with energy. It's enough to make about 500 boxes of matches.

0.2% of Mr Average is potassium, 160g (5.6oz). It's important for proper membrane function, nerve impulses, and muscle contractions. Since potassium perchlorate is also used in making matches there's enough in Mr Average to make 160 boxes.

0.2% of Mr Average is Sulphur, 160g (5.6oz). Its found in fats, bones and proteins. there's enough sulphur in Mr Average to make the sulphuric acid for 50 car batteries.

0.14% of Mr Average is sodium, 112g (4oz). It's mostly in body fluids. Thats enough to make salt to put on about 1000 bags of fries.

0.12% of Mr Average is chlorine, 96g. (3.4oz) It's important for membrane function and water absorption. The chloride ion is the major anion in body fluids and it's essential in digesting food. There's enough to make several bottles of bleach or as pure chlorine gas it would occupy a volume of 30 litres - enough to kill Mr Average several times.

0.027% of Mr Average is magnesium, 21.6g: It's needed in enzymes, for bone formation and in using energy. Converted into antacid tablets you'd get 120.

0.006% of Mr Average is iron, almost 5g (0.1oz) It's needed in the blood to transport oxygen. There's enough in Mr Average to make a 2½ inch nail.

0.0037% of Mr Average is fluorine, 3g. Thats enough to make 660 tubes of fluoride toothpaste and again more than enough to kill Mr Average if taken all in one go.

0.0033% of Mr Average is zinc, 2.6g. It's found in enzymes. There's enough zinc in Mr Average to galvanize 74 square centimetres of steel on both sides.

0.0014% of Mr Average is silicon, 1.1g. It appears to help bones absorb calcium. That amount of silicon is found in ½ teaspoon of sand.

Rubidium and Strontium together make up about 1g of Mr Average. Rubidium seems to help the body select between sodium and potassium ions and strontium helps in the formation of bones. There's not enough of either to colour a firework.

There's about .3g of bromine (about 1 drop) in Mr Average. No-one is quite sure what it's function is.

There's about 0.1g of lead in Mr Average. In the past this was thought to be of no use and only harmful. Today a trace amount is believed to be necessary. That amount is enough to make one piece of birdshot.

Mr Average contains 0.08g of copper. Its used to make hemoglobin (in blood) and melanin (what colours your hair and suntan). That amount of copper could fit in a cube 2mm (1/13th inch) square.

There's enough aluminium in Mr Average, 0.07g, to make a piece of thick kitchen foil 7cm (2¾ inches) square. A tiny amount is needed in our bodies as a catalyst.

There's 0.06g of cadmium in Mr Average. It's found in some enzymes. Too much will kill painfully. It would take 75 Mr Averages to make just 1 AA size rechargable battery. (OK this was written in the days of NiCad rechargable batteries)

The remaining elements in Mr Average are in vanishingly small quantities. So here they are in a table.

Element	%	Weight (g)	Comment
cerium	0.000057%	0.046	,
barium	0.000031%	0.025	,
iodine	0.000029%	0.023	Enough to make 3500 cuts sting!
tin	0.000029%	0.023	Enough to tin plate a tomato puree can
titanium	0.000029%	0.023	,
boron	0.000026%	0.021	,
nickel	0.000021%	0.017	You would need about 75 Mr Averages to make a US nickel
selenium	0.000021%	0.017	,
chromium	0.00002%	0.016	,
manganese	0.000017%	0.014	,
arsenic	0.00001%	0.008	,
lithium	0.00001%	0.008	,
cesium	0.0000086%	0.0068	,
mercury	0.0000086%	0.0068	About as big an amount as the head of a pin
germanium	0.0000071%	0.0057	,
molybdenum	0.0000071%	0.0057	Enough to make a small light bulb (or at least the wires that hold the filament in place)
cobalt	0.0000043%	0.0034	,
antimony	0.0000029%	0.0023	,
silver	0.0000029%	0.0023	,
niobium	0.0000021%	0.0017	,
zirconium	0.0000014%	0.0011	,
lanthanium	0.0000011%	0.00091	,
gallium	0.000001%	0.0008	,
tellurium	0.000001%	0.0008	,
yttrium	0.00000086%	0.00068	,
bismuth	0.00000071%	0.00057	,
thallium	0.00000071%	0.00057	,
indium	0.00000057%	0.00046	,
gold	0.00000029%	0.00023	Enough to make one tiny gold chain link worth 0.6¢
scandium	0.00000029%	0.00023	,
tantalum	0.00000029%	0.00023	,
vanadium	0.00000016%	0.00013	,
thorium	0.00000014%	0.00011	,
uranium	0.00000014%	0.00011	,
samarium	0.00000007%	0.000057	,
beryllium	0.00000005%	0.000041	,
tungsten	0.00000003%	0.000023	,

The Last Supper

2006-07-07T23:12:00.000+01:00

Wow! In the month since I wrote a web page about Leonardo Da Vinci's painting 'The last supper' it's had almost a million visitors! So here it is reproduced here and you can, if you wish, leave comments.

The Last Supper
- A Study of the Painting by Leonardo Da Vinci

The Last Supper is a painting painted between 1496 to 1498 by Leonardo Da Vinci in the refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The painting was made using experimental pigments directly on the dry plaster wall and unlike frescos, where the pigments are mixed with the wet plaster, it has not stood the test of time well. Even before it was finished there were problems with the paint flaking from the wall and Leonardo had to repair it. Over the years it has crumbled, been vandalized bombed and restored. Today we are probably looking at very little of the original.

There are a number of points of interest:

Was it a 'Passover'?

Definitely not! The meal was set the day before 'Good Friday' - the day Jesus was crucified. The feast of the Passover began at sunset on that day so this meal was a day too early and, looking out the windows in the background, too early in the day. Also the picture shows Jesus and the disciples seated. The passover is traditionally eaten reclining. If you read your bible you will find:

Matthew 26.2 "You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of man will be delivered up to be crucified." 26.3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, who was called Ca'iaphas, 26.4 and took counsel together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. 26.5 But they said, "Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult among the people."

John 13.1 Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to...

The food

The table shows leavened bread (yet another reason it could not be the Passover), fish, wine and some type of herb present. To me there also appears to be cheese present. There is no sign of lamb which would traditionally have been eaten at the passover.

The Cups/Glasses/Wine/Plates

There are twelve glasses shown to be present, each containing a red wine. It would be normal to drink wine with the meal - water was often contaminated. The glasses were odd however. Glass was popular with the Romans of the time but the conservative Jews would have drunk from goblets made from clay or wood. Only the wealthy would have drunk from metal goblets. The same is true of metal plates, several of which are shown. There's no pitcher or jug shown from which the glasses could have been refilled. There is a small, apparently empty, glass bottle, but this is too small to have contained the wine needed.

The instant depicted

This is supposed to be the moment when Jesus, in the words of John says "Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me". The picture shows the reaction of the disciples to this.

What's that bit centre bottom?

Around 1652, some unknown vandal decided to insert another door into the refectory and apparently decided that the only logical spot for it was smack in the middle of that wall where Leonardo had painted Christ's feet. The only evidence we have of what the original painting looked like was an oil paint copy made in the 16th centaury and now housed in Tongerlo Abbey , Antwerp

Just to complicate matters there's also a different version of the picture in a tapestry shown below:

The Knife

Due to it's poor condition there has been some argument about
the owner of the hand holding the knife (or, as some call it, - a dagger):

The theories are:

The hand belongs to John/Mary (whoever you choose to believe they are). Peter is holding his/her wrist. Andrew, who sees this, is horrified at this.
The hand belongs to a separate, obscured person, probably John, with Mary shown at the right.
The hand holding the knife belongs to Peter - he has it twisted backwards away from Judas

Let's look at each theory in turn:

Here's an image which has been doctored to remove Judas. Notice anything odd?

If that knife is being held by John/Mary then he/she has arms like a gorilla! Would Leonardo have made a mistake like this? There's also the evidence of John/Mary's fingers intertwined in front of him/her!

This suggestion assumes that the feminine figure at the right in the image is Mary Magdalene. In that case John, the youngest of the disciples is missing. The idea is that the hand belongs to John who is obscured by Peter and
Judas. I find this very unlikely. If it were true - where exactly would John be?

Maybe he dropped his glass?

The last suggestion is that Peter is holding the knife at a very odd angle. The 'copies' suggest that this is the case and so too does this sketch by Leonardo - clearly that knife in the hand of Peter gave him some problems and he decided to practice.

John or Mary Magdalene?

In the fictional book 'The Da Vinci Code', Daniel Brown has his character Teabing suggest that the figure seated to Jesus' right is not the disciple John but is instead Mary Magdalene. The theory, suggested several times in the past, is that Jesus married Mary and after the crucifixion she had a child by him.

I must admit that to my eye 'John' does look very effeminate. But is that enough evidence for the figure being Mary? We need to consider the following:

Would the Church of the time have allowed this?
It was 'normal' at the time for a young man, and John was the youngest of the disciples, to be portrayed
as effeminate. Not only Leonardo did this.
Leonardo is suspected to have been a homosexual.
If 'John' is 'Mary' then where is John? Hiding under the table?
Is that a necklace around 'John's' neck? If so - whatever happened to 'go, sell what you possess and give to the poor'. However no fewer than six others in the painting have a similar item, possibly a garment fastener.
In 'The Da Vinci Code' Teabing refers to 'delicate folded hands, and the hint of a bosom'. Sorry - I don't see either! John's hands don't look feminine and to see a 'bosom' you need a great deal of imagination.

By far the simplest explanation is that Leonardo portrayed a young and beardless John as effeminate. The Church of the time appeared quite happy to accept this as such.

Who is where in the picture?

The evidence for this comes from a contemporary document discovered in 1800 which gives the names of each person in the picture.

The grouping

Looking across the picture from left to right the disciples are shown in four groups of three:

Bartholomew, James Minor and Andrew form a group of three. All are horrified, Andrew to the point of holding his hands up in a "let's calm down " gesture.

Judas, Peter and John form the next group of three. Judas has his face in shadow and
is clutching a small bag, presumably money. He was quite often portrayed with this in last supper paintings. He is also reaching for bread at the same time as Jesus is. Peter, in the fashion of the time, is shown clutching a knife and, with his hand on John's shoulder, is asking a feminine-looking John "Who does he say it is?". John leans toward him to hear what he says creating a V shape between himself and Jesus which has been interpreted by some as an indication of a marriage between 'Mary' and Jesus.

Christ is very much the calm person alone in the midst of the debate.

Thomas, James the Elder and Philip are next. 'Doubting' Thomas is pointing upward, maybe asking for one shred of evidence that this is so. His other hand is on the table between James and Philip as though seeking something solid. James the Elder looks stunned and seems to be watching Jesus' left hand. Philip seems to be asking 'Is it me?'.

Matthew, Thaddeus and Simon comprise the last group of three figures. Matthew and Thaddeus seem to be asking Simon about Jesus' statement.

The time

It was supposed to take place in the evening - after the sun had set. Leonardo however, shows the outside in the three windows as being sunlit. He also shows a third light source, apparently from the front left - exactly where the windows and door are in the building. It seems he was trying to create the illusion of a bigger building and suspected it would be used mostly during the day.

Incidentally did you know that there are over 400,000 pages refering to this painting of which 50,000 also refer to Daniel Brown's book 'The Da Vinci Code'? 1750 entries also refer to an earlier book 'The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ'
by written by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince in 1997. 750 refer to an even earlier book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (Even Daniel Brown refers to this book within his story and the character 'Leigh Teabing' seems to be a combination of 'Richard Leigh' and an anagram of 'Baigent')

AntiPhishing in Internet Explorer Beta 2 - Grrr!

2006-07-06T22:46:00.000+01:00

A little while ago I installed a copy of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 and ever since I've been getting reports from SpySweeper that my computer has a possible rootkit.

It seems that Microsoft, in it's wisdom, has decided that us lesser mortals will be confused by the presence of a new folder in our temporary Internet files so decided to hide it. Not content with making it 'hidden' or a 'protected system' file, they created a new file type normally not visible to users in the same way as rootkits hide their files. SpySweeper, one of the programs I use to get rid of malware found it and told me the pathname. Knowing this I can enter it into a folder address bar and display the contents - it's:
C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\AntiPhishing (Where [username] is what you log on as)

The hidden folder appears to contain a single file (yes - I suppose they could have more hidden files in there). Investigating this file, it appears to contain the URL to which IE7 refers web addresses to check if they are genuine. You can't navigate to this folder the 'normal' way and deleting it is not possible the normal way either.

Now I think a browser that checks to see if that 'Barclays bank' link is genuine is a great idea. But super hiding the AntiPhishing folder is an idea that sucks! I want - no demand - to be able to investigate EVERY file on my computer. Someone who 'hides' a file makes me very suspicious. What if someone makes use of that hidden folder to 'hide' their malware?

Wonder what else Microsoft has hidden?

As to the rest of IE7? Nice one MS. Apart from that hidden folder - I like it.

Politics - I'm a Democratic Anarchist

2006-06-29T22:02:00.000+01:00

I suppose that if I were to describe my political beliefs I would say I am a democratic anarchist.

Now that seems to be a bit of a contradiction doesn't it? Let me explain. This refers to the UK but I'm pretty sure it also applies to the US and every other 'democracy':

When I was a child my parents voted Conservative so naturally I began to think I was one too. The trouble was I wasn't quite sure exactly what a Conservative was. I still don't because for the life of me there seems to be little difference now between the three major political parties in the UK where I live.

In the old days Conservatives stood for:

Private enterprise
Land/Home ownership
A strong belief in the right to get rich
A strong military
Private schools

The Labour party stood for:

Nationalised major industry
A welfare state
Public housing
State run schools
Powerful unions
A strong belief that the rich should pay taxes at a higher rate than the poor
Less spending on 'defence' (well that's the word they used but really they meant 'offence')

The Liberal party stood for:

Anything they thought could get votes

Now it's all changed. They all seem to want:

Anything that will get votes
Anything that will prove just how bad the 'other lot' is.
The media to dig up scandal about X in the 'other lot'.

If you listen to them in Parliament - well there seems to be little debate - just a slanging match with each side saying how bad the 'other lot' is. Seldom do we hear an MP from one party saying what a good idea the other party has had!

Now I want a political party which represents not the party but me. I'm darn sure that at the moment none of them do that. Not one MP has ever asked me for my views or ever responded if I give them. I know that every few years we have elections but what sort of choice is that? I may like ideas from different parties! If I've needed help from my representative they always seem to be on holiday. I don't need a representative in Parliament - I need one in my local area.

In this era of Information Technology it seems stupidity to send all representatives to a central location at great expense. What's wrong with video conferencing? We wouldn't need massive security or a fortune spent on travelling and maintaining two homes.
Here's what I would like to see:

Close down Parliament - it can become a tourist centre. Maybe a good place for comedians to practice in.
MPs work at home - in their constituencies and talk to each other by video conferencing.
Use the money saved to pay them more! They don't get nearly enough. Let's give them a 1000% pay rise in the hope that the increased money will attract someone to the job that can actually do it.
In a few years we can forget paying MPs - just give them a share of the profits of running the country. If they can't run at a profit- they shouldn't be doing the job.
Pay for several well qualified assistants to help each MP who can act on their behalf.
Scrap the party system - their job is to represent the views of their constituents. Each MP could vote for ministers and Prime minister.
Stop criticising others and keep quiet unless you can put forward a better idea.
Use Internet to communicate with those who elect you. Actually listen to them! When you need to vote on an issue you should vote as directed by your constituents in an online constituency referendum.
Maybe one day we can do without representatives altogether and each do it ourselves.

So that's what I mean by 'democratic anarchist'. It's a true democracy where everyone can take a part in making decisions - if they want to.

As to politicians - well anyone who wants to be one is very probably the least suitable for the job.
Any disappointed anarchists of the 'blow them all up' type should follow this link

Tesco Computers for Schools

2006-06-26T22:02:00.001+01:00

Don't get me wrong - as an IT teacher I'm grateful for any support given to schools by industry and I've been taking advantage of Tesco's Computers for Schools scheme for years.

Did you know however of the following?

You have to spend over £210,000 at Tesco before a school has enough vouchers to buy just one good quality computer.
Vouchers are worth anything from 3.2p to 0.8p each depending on what schools spend them on.
It takes 2½ minutes to count, put the right way round and fasten 100 vouchers. That's 9 hours of counting for that computer!
You need 12,100 vouchers for the lowest cost computer
If you mail vouchers to the school then the stamps you use will be worth more than the vouchers

Now it seems to me that Tesco could save themselves a lot of money printing vouchers and schools a lot of time counting them if people simply associated their local school with their Tesco card and Tesco automatically donated the vouchers electronically. Stores could display what each school has received and parents could check online at Tesco.com to see progress. As it stands this scheme adds yet another time wasting task to overworked teachers.

The writing is on the wall for...

2006-06-24T23:04:00.000+01:00

Back in the late 1970s I remember having a huge 8 inch floppy disk drive - much faster than the cassette tapes I was using then for storing my computer programs. I believe they could store 40K of information. They didn't last and we migrated to storage on 5¼ floppies which stored 100Kb and could be inserted no less than 8 different ways in the drive of which just two worked! We had great fun with them and regularly had pleas for help because 'My floppy won't work'. Getting there I found disks stapled, paper clipped, folded to go in a pocket, the wrong way round, covered in fingerprints and disks corrupted by being kept on top of speakers, fastened to the fridge with a magnet and stored under phones which wiped them when the bell rang.

I remember buying my first hard drive - 10MB (I thought I'd never fill a 30Mb one) and 5¼" floppy disks soon got replaced by 3½" ones (3" ones made a brief appearance). 3½" disks were used to load programs onto the system, to transfer files and to create backups. At their peak they cost just 5p each and could store 1.44Mb. They were still prone to fingerprints, dust and magnetic fields though and those shutters proved irresistible to being flicked until they sprung out and got stuck in the disk drive or, if you were really unlucky, pulled out with a bit of force along with the disk drive heads. As to reliability - well I've lost count of the number of times I've heard 'I can't get my file from this floppy disk'. I've seen figures which indicate that there's a 20% failure rate for floppy disks now.

I was once the proud owner of a laserdisc player which played 12" double sided disks. I had two of them, the BBC Domesday project which now can't be read since the disks got scratched and the computer used with the reader is long obselete. Sorry BBC - the 1086 version on paper far outlasted your laservision disks which took just 10 years to become useless! Today I know
of just 1 working copy - in the national archives where one of the original 1086 versions is housed. (Now wouldn't you have thought that making a freely available version on Internet would be an excellent project for the EEC to fund?)

But then came CD-ROMs and CD-Rs and many floppies got replaced. My first CD-R drive was double speed and could store 650MB! According to the blurb fingerprints dust and scratches wouldn't stop them working. (I wish!) I now find that my early CD-R recordings can't be read. The problem seems to be that the reflective surface used in them is a very thin film of aluminium. Over time the slightly porus surface layer protecting it has allowed this to slowly oxidise to the point where it now contains tiny pinholes and dull spots, destroying the disk. A 'Gold CD-R' where the reflective surface is gold rather than aluminium is just fine however.

Along came DVDs and DVD-Rs and now we could store up to 8GB at a speed that would have amazed us 3 years ago. In the meantime my hard drive in my laptop computer holds 80GB and a slightly bigger one can now hold terabytes of data. As for floppy disks drives- well I have a USB one somewhere. I don't use them since they seem to have gone up in price again, are painfully slow and have a 20% failure rate.

If I want to transfer files today I use a USB memory stick. Mine hold 1 GB and have successfully survived being put through the washing machine. If I need to move bigger files I write a DVD. I can also use the SD card which fits in my digital camera and which is tiny! Both of these however are easy to lose and can become corrupted. My experience is that the less you pay for them the more unreliable they are as long term storage.

Today I no longer can read cassette tapes, 8½" or 5¼" floppies; my zip drive or tape streamer and I suspect 3½" drives will be obsolete soon. (Update - Yep they're officialy obsolete)

But what of the future? How long will CDs, DVDs and Blue Ray discs last? Not for long I think. Two years ago I predicted their demise. They are just too big and too easily damaged. Holographic DVDs will make a brief appearance but they won't last either. As a long term archive for precious data any form of optical disc is a disaster unless they have a gold reflective layer. It's already obvious what the replacement will be. Look for a credit card sized solid state storage device. Big enough to write the title of a movie on and with no moving parts. They'll get bigger and bigger capacities until hard drives are a thing of the past too. (Already there are a solid state 'hard drives' available but they are still a tad expensive just now)

Not convinced? Well here's a start!
* As a genealogist I've watched the demise of storage systems since the 1960s. Paper rots and becomes brittle, parchment is more durable but costs the earth and has a problem with mould.
Even gravestones crumble and become unreadable. Remember 8 track stereo and Betamax video tapes? VHS machines are now hard to find. Computer storage is constantly changing and today's method won't be readable in 10 years. The only long term method seems to be storage on Internet (might not survive a breakdown of society) or perhaps the method still readable since the destruction of Pompeii - graffiti on a wall.

Religion?

2006-06-24T22:00:00.000+01:00

Constantine - Founder of Christianity?

Religion fascinates me; I collect church memberships. I was baptized an Anglican. I was 'saved' at 10 as a Methodist. At 11 I went to a Quaker school and began to think. I was an agnostic at 15, Humanist at 17, an atheist at 20. I got married at 30 (the second time) as a Unitarian. By the time I went to the USA I was an atheist again - an iconoclastic one too. In Canada at 50 I became a member of the Mormon Church and now - well I'm not going to tell you. In between times I've read the 'rest' of the bible that was left out of the standard one, I've read about Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism, the works of Confucius, Islam, Wicca, Norse gods, and the religion of ancient Sumeria Oh - and I've also read 'The Biggest Secret' by David Icke. So to start with - here's a few questions and possible answers.

Questions and answers
Q. What does God(s) want of man? Does he really want us to 'worship' him/her/them? Isn't the desire to be worshiped a little too human to be worthy of a god?

A1. This is what the Sumerians had to say about what the gods wanted of Man:

At the beginning of time there were only gods and goddesses on Earth. They had to work the land to grow crops to eat. This was difficult and they worked very hard. Each god and goddess had a job to do. Some dug the fields and planted the crops. Others brought water to the fields in ditches which had to be kept clear of weeds. They had to work very hard and they were not happy. They got together to discuss what could be done to lighten their workload. They went to get advice from Ea (Also known as Enki - god of wisdom), who was wise and clever. Ea suggested that he create creatures to serve them by working the land. Then the gods' and goddesses' lives would be easier. The gods and goddesses thought that Ea's plan was a good solution. Ea collected clay from around his watery home and used it to make humans. He breathed life into the clay figures, but he limited how long they would live. Only the gods and goddesses would live forever. The humans were put to work in the fields. As servants of the gods and goddesses they had to provide them with food and drink for their tables.The humans took water from the rivers and fed the dry and lifeless lands. They dug the soil and planted crops. With hard work the humans brought life to the land, and the gods and goddesses, who had brought life to the humans, were happy...for the moment...

Seems reasonable to me.

A2. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (and incidentally the Jews) say:God is our spiritual father - he is literally the father of our soul or divine spark. Like any parent he wants the best for his children. We are put on Earth to learn morality amongst other things before we join him in 'heaven'. The LDS also says: If we make use of the opportunity we can eventually become gods ourselves. (Can you imagine the disastrous actions of an immoral god?) This means he doesn't really want us to worship him but a little respect would be in order.

Q. Is God male?

A. This question seems to assume that there is only one god. Many religions are quite happy to accept both gods and include female gods too. Many primitive cultures worshiped an Earth Mother. The early Christian church took a great deal of care to stamp out such beliefs, seeing it as a greater threat to Christianity than Satan appeared to be. The Mormons are happy to accept a 'heavenly mother' but don't pray to her, worship her or make very public this belief quoting 'people are very quick to take the name of God and Jesus in vain - imagine what they would do to the heavenly mother's'.
Maybe God(s) are neither 'he' nor 'she'. The concept appears unnatural to us but it's possible. For that matter - why stop at two sexes, (which are beneficial in promoting variety of genes), why not have three sexes or even more.

Q. If there is really a god how can he allow so much suffering in the world?

A. You are forgetting the scale of eternity. Suffering while on Earth, no matter how bad it seems to us now, is only a pinprick to eternity. Think about the pain of childbirth and how quickly it is forgotten. If nothing else pain on Earth gives an immortal soul something to talk about during eternity. Whilst this view seems to give the 'bad guys' carte blanche to inflict pain they do so at their peril since they are dismally failing the opportunity they have to become moral beings.

Biblical Plagiarism
Bible Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Ancient Sumerian creation: Ea (Enki) collected clay from around his watery home and used it to make humans. He breathed life into the clay figures, but he limited how long they would live. Only the gods and goddesses would live forever.

He was born on December 25th to a virgin mother; He was called a saviour, the only begotten son, and died to save humanity; he was crucified on a Friday - "Black Friday" and his blood was spilled to redeem the Earth; he suffered death with nails and stakes; he was the Father and Son combined in an earthly body; he was put in a tomb but three days later his body was gone and he was resurrected as the most high God; his body was symbolised as bread and eaten by those who worshiped him. Does this sound familiar? Jesus? No - it's a description of Attis a God worshipped in what is now Turkey about 1000 years BC.

Curius that bit about three days. The bible makes no explanation of why it was necessary. It's very similar to the zoroastrian believe that after death, the urvan (soul) is allowed three days to meditate on his/her past life. The soul is then judged by a troika Mithra, Sraosha and Rashnu. If the good thoughts, words and deeds outweigh the bad, then the soul is taken into heaven. Otherwise, the soul is led to hell. Zoroastrianism pre-dates Christianity by 1000 years and believes in a single God. It was founded by Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) in Persia which at the time followed an aboriginal polytheistic religion. Zoroastrians also believe in a 'Savior' born of a virgin birth.

The biblical story of Noah and the flood is an almost exact copy of part of the Epic of Gilgamesh which was written over a thousand years before the old testiment 'Noah' version was.

The Original Christianity?
There's little doubt now that modern Christianity has it's roots in the time of Emperor Constantine of Rome (272-373 AD). Before that there were a number of variations of which we'll look at two here. The two variants of Christianity being that of the Essenes supported by James, brother of Jesus and the Romanized variant of Paul. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that there was some acrimony between these two variants. James didn't like Paul deifying his brother and adopting pagan stories about him. Paul felt that this was quite acceptable and necessary for the faith to grow.

I was fascinated when I first heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls and looked forward to their translation and publication. I waited and waited - long enough for conspiracies to grow around them. Eventually over a decade later they were published and I began to doubt that the bible as we know it was quite authentic. I started to put my thoughts together on this but in the meantime read Daniel Brown's Da Vinci Code. For a work of fiction it's obvious that he too has done a great deal of research and has chosen to present it in a fictional form. It's a great read and I recommend it to anyone and look forward to the forthcoming film. Once the film comes out in May 2006 I wouldn't be surprised to see the issue raised in the public awareness.1 Just remember it's fiction based upon sound historical facts.
This would be a good place to comment on the court case about the Da Vinci Code being the plagarised version of the non-fiction 'Holy Blood and the Holy Grail' but ... Let me devote a separate page to it.
Footnote
1 Well I've seen the film but have to admit I was disappointed. I don't think it will rate as much and is unlikely to win Oscars. My advice - watch it if you want but buy the book in preference.

The 'Good Old Days'

2006-06-24T21:28:00.000+01:00

I'm now old enough to remember the 'good old days' but were they really good? Here's a collection of my memories from these times.

I spent the first eight years of my life living in Newcastle on Tyne. We then mover to a small farm in the Pennines. I remember:

Gas street lights. Newcastle may have been the first city in the world to have converted a street of gas lights to electricity (1881) but my street 'Julian Avenue' was still lit by gas when the picture, right, was taken in 1953. I remember a man with a long pole coming round every night and morning to switch them on and off. They were replaced before
1957 with electric lamps.

I remember being allowed out after dark at night to get Fish (3d) and chips (1d). No worries then about children being abducted or traffic.

I remember some children going to school in bare feet at my primary school.

I remember shaved heads painted with a purple dye to kill ringworm.

I remember smog so thick you could not see across the street. Everyone burnt coal to heat their house and in damp conditions the smoke combined with mist to make killer smog. My grandmother, who suffered from bronchitis, dreaded it.

I remember at two recovering from measles - it nearly killed me and left me unable to walk and bothered by bright lights. I remember learning to walk again by steadying myself against the wall.

I remember going with my sister to get her pram (that's her in the picture above) and, to strengthen my legs, my tricycle. My trike had a handle attached so that Mum could push when my legs got tired.

I remember we were the first in our street to get a television and being shooed outside to play while my father and friends watched Aston Villa beat Manchester in the 1957 Cup Final.

Kids programs at the time were all on BBC - it was the only channel. Highlights of my day were 'Watch with Mother' featuring Bill and Ben, and Andy Pandy. I thought they were boring but still watched them. Another kids program was Muffin the Mule (which nowardays sounds more like some weird sexual perversion!). I remember too regularly seeing a card saying 'Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible'. Between programs there was music and an 'Interlude' card. My Aunt bought a television too but her's had only a ten inch screen and was used with a huge magnifying glass in front of it.

I remember moving with my parents to our new home, a small farm in the wilds of Northumberland. Our new house had no electricity and no flush toilet either!

I remember going to bed with an oil lamp, 'stone' hot water bottles which made an awful thud if they got kicked out of bed, chamber pots under the bed and the sight of our useless TV in the sitting room.

I remember an earth closet outside in a small whitewashed and very drafty building.

I remember a bathtub built under a workbench in the kitchen. Our water supply came from a ditch above our house. In wet weather the bath water being brown with silt and worms being washed into the bath on occasion.

June
snow
I remember snow in a BIG way. Our farm was high up in the Pennines and in winter we would always have a stock of tinned food available in case we got snowed in. 1963 was the worst.

In 1963s winter I remember getting tangled up in the telephone wires as I walked to the local village. They and the telephone posts were buried in snow drifts that were 22ft deep when they were cut out. That year there was still snow around in June.

I remember the first snow blower being imported from Switzerland by the council. They flew it in to Newcastle, took it by low loader to Allendale and then drove it towards an incredible 44 ft deep drift across the road to Carrshield. 200 yards from the drift it broke down and they had to cut the road open the old way.

I remember being irritated to see the spelling of our local village in OS maps being 'Carr Shield' instead of 'Carrshield'. Guess what - they still have it wrong and so too have Multimap and Google!

I remember greenhouses being flattened by those snow blowers until the council erected 'Snowblower - blow left' signs. I also remember how slippery the rut was that their steel guide wheel left in the snow.

I remember silence, on a quiet night you could hear the river in the valley bottom, the wind in the trees and sheep bleating on the fells. Some nights the loudest noise was the sound of your own breathing.

I remember that a busy road meant two cars per hour.

I remember walking home from a neigbours house having forgotten my torch. No streetlights, no moon and a cloudy sky meant total darkness. I walked until I hit the grass verge then changed course slightly until I hit the verge at the other side. Passing the graveyard was creepy. There must have been some light since I could just see the white marble gravestones.

I remember being sent away to boarding school because I passed the 11+ exam and was the worlds worst traveler. Travel sickness tablets made me sick - my parents didn't believe that until one day our journey was delayed and I threw up without ever getting in the car.

As a kid with poor social skills, a hatred of sport and a love of books, bullying played a major part in my school life. I still remember the names of my tormentors and look forward to hearing that they have been run over slowly by a road roller.

I remember and still have the newspaper clipping of Yuri Gagarin's space trip.

I remember a girl from Liverpool at my school, Penny, raving about a group called 'The Beatles'. We all said they were rubbish. Later Penny went to a Beatles party and was given a cigarette by Paul. She kept it on her dressing table until the day her father found it and smoked it. She didn't speak to him for nearly three months.

I remember being impressed by the Cuban crisis and the civil rights movement in the USA and thinking that Kennedy was a dead man if he pursued it. I was in the lower school common room playing table tennis when I heard he had been assassinated. Having been to Texas I still wonder why he was in an open topped car rather than a sealed air conditioned one.

Da Vinci Code and all that

2006-06-24T21:17:00.000+01:00

In 2003, author Daniel Brown's book 'The Da Vinci Code' was published
and rapidly rose through the book charts to become a best seller.

The plot revolves around the theory that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene
and had children by her whose decendants still survive, protected by
a secret organisation, the Priory of Sion.

In Febuary 2006 Daniel Brown and his publishers were taken to court
by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of the three authors of the
non fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Baigent and Leigh
claim that Brown has plagarised their work.

Brown freely acknowleges that he has based his novel on their book's
theory.

He even quotes the name and authors as a reference book found on the
bookshelf of Sir Leigh Teabing, a character in Brown's book. Even
the name Leigh Teabing seems to be made up of Richard Leigh and an anagram
of Baigent. An earlier character in the Da Vinci Code has the surname
Saunière, a name which features prominently in Holy Blood and
Holy Grail. Brown states that his book however is fiction based on facts
- and facts cannot be protected by copyright.

What do Baignet and Leigh hope to gain by taking Brown to court? If
they win they could prevent further infringement of their copyright and
could bar Random House, the publisher, from continuing to publish Brown's
novel. They could also affect the British release of a star-studded
film version of the story. But hold on a second - Random House? That's
the name of the publisher of Holy Blood and Holy Grail!

Now it could just be my suspicious mind but so far in the case Leigh
and Baigent's seem to be going out of their way to persue an unwinnable
case. It's already been accepted in law that facts can't be copyrighted.
In fact the only way for the case to be valid is for the authors of Holy
Blood and Holy Grail to admit that their book is fiction rather than
fact - which would make their book worthless. While they do this the
lawyers for Brown and the Publisher seem to be doing everything they
can to do to prolong the case, by making clearly false statements.
One newspaper reported that the lawyers for the publisher said that the
Priory of Sion did not feature in Brown's novel. Maybe he hasn't read
it yet!

The judge has put a hold on the case while he reads both books. Something
I'm sure he will find enjoyable and thought provoking since both books
are well worth reading. Maybe he won't notice the Observer comment printed
on the dustcover of Holy Blood and Holy Grail "A marvelous theme for
a novel".

If you go to your local bookstore, you'll probably find them
next to each other. I have the illustrated versions of both and the publishers
have clearly made them to compliment each other. They are even very similar
in size. Holy
Blood and Holy Grail was first published in 1982. It was popular then
but it's sales slackened off over the years. Since the publication of
the Da Vinci Code however it's been re-issued and after the start of
the court proceedings it's climbed to number 4 in the best seller lists.

Now it seems to me that the publication of The Da Vinci Code has not
harmed the authors Baigent and Leigh one jot. In fact it's made them
a lot of sales they wouldn't otherwise have got. As to the court case
- it's probably a cheaper way of advertising than comercials on TV. Win
or lose they'll make money from it but let's hope they lose since:

If they win then their book must be fiction. I like their book and
wouldn't want it admitted as worthless.

If they win without it being fiction it will have a profound effect
on authors. As one expert on copyright put it 'This case...
could open a floodgate of litigation for people who have had their
ideas, as they see it, stolen by more successful people.'

Postscript:

Seems the Court agreed with me. Baignet and Leigh lost their case although
they said they would appeal. The film was released on time and... I wouldn't
expect it to win any Oscars. Buy the book - it's better.