Projects

As you know if you look at other parts of this blog going all the way back to 2005, I have several projects on the go.

Some of the projects have been a success in that I have completed them and that I have been happy in they way they turned out.

Others have for one or more reason failed in some way, which when I read about failure of such things is not surprising as there are always failures of projects whether it's for work or for pleasure.

As all the projects that I talk about here are done because I want to it has also been a bit sad for me that a few of my projects have failed.

As I have just moved hosting sites it has been the cause of a delay now in all my website projects and has pushed the Dirk Maggs book project so far back that I really don't want to even think about it.

Actually that's not true as I did have a good idea the other day about it, and that was to change the name of the book from chronology to yearbook, I think that I will let that one similar for a while just to see if in a few weeks it is a good idea or not.

So I suppose I will like others have to get used to the idea that project failures are just a part of life and that the best thing to do is to just accept that and to move on and learn why so that it does not happen again or is less likely to happen.

Reading Now part something

I am still reading Wireless by Charles Stross, and I have to admit that one of the short stories in the book to me was a total misfire.

So it was just a bit of a surprise when I got to the afterword by Charles that he said it was very difficult to write humour, you should have got from that statement that the story in question was supposed to be a fun piece, in the still of PG Woodhouse, I can tell you now, that there are some very good reasons why Woodhouse is so admired, as what he does in print is very very hard as Charles goes on to say in his afterword.

So out of all the short stories that I have read in the book so far one misfire can't be bad can it?

Has the book been entertaining? Yes

Ipod Touch

Well yesterday that is the 9th September Apple updated the OS in my I pod touch to 3.1.1 now that's not a big event in the grand scheme of things, but for me and my I pod it is.

You see my touch which by the way is named DMP is a big part of my life as I use DMP to play a lot of pod cast's for my music that I like, and also for some of the other pod cast like the IYA year of astronomy pod cast and also the Astronomy pod cast, both of which I have listed to since they started, I also happen to like the fact that I can play the odd game or also check the weather while on the move.

Now as I was saying DMP got updated from 3.0 to 3.11 that all went very well in that I did not loose anything and DMP is okay and works okay, the problem is that when linked to I tunes it decides( and I suspect for a very few reasons ) that it needs to back itself up.

Now DMp is a 32BG touch and has left at this time 9 Gigs free, so why has it been backing up since 5 pm and it is now 8.30 pm, surly it should not take all this time to backup?

Then just to add to all that fun itunes has also been upgraded from 8.21 to 9.0. Now it looks nicer, but apart from that I can't see many other differences, although I am told that there are many.

As for the touch from 3.0 to 3.11 the only change that I have seen is that in the music section there is now something called utunes, at this time I don't have a clue as to what that is all about.

One pet peeve that I have on the backup system is that there are no percentages or tine remaing to give you a clue as to just how long the whole backup process is going to take.

James Follett wiki 3

I hope I have the spare time to push the wiki item count through the 200 barrier.

James Follett wiki 2

Things on the wiki are going okay, apart from some templates that for some reason or other I just can't get going.

the wiki system reports that it has 187 articles and I am still on productions from 1975!

Template and wiki's

Templates in wiki's why can't I get them to work how I want them to?

James Follett wiki

The wiki is doing great, I think, it is growing slowly which is what I expect, to tell the truth as it's a long term project I expect to be saying pretty much that for a while to come.

I have got to 1975 on the content that I am adding to the wiki and I only started in 1974!

So a long way to go.

Reading Now 2

Have just started to read yet another book by Charles Stross, I know I seem to be reading an awful lot of his books lately, and that's because I live the ideas that he puts into his stories, and they are also great entertainment, and that is the main reason why I read his books in the first place.

Now I have to admit that the book I am reading called Wireless by the way is the first time that I have read any of his short stories.

I have so far not been disappointed, in fact because the short story allows an author the chance to play, so far the twists and turns in several of the stories have been great.

It goes with out saying, that there are a couple of stories that I think Dirk Maggs could make into great radio shows.

One thing I like about short story collections, is when the author says a few words about the story as an afterword as sometimes it brings into focus just what was or what influenced him or her at the time they wrote the story.

Wiki pt 2

www.jfw.dswilliams.co.uk is the new James Follett wiki that I am working on, I must admit that at this time it's not very nice to look at and it does not have a lot of content.

Last count today gave it 139 articles, but some of them are very short articles.

I have a feeling that we are talking months before it's got most of the James Follett website.

Wiki pt 1

As you know I have started 2 new wiki's which in time are going to replace my existing static websites, I have to admit that it was something that I have looked at over the years, but for various reasons the use of the wiki's as the main websites did not take place.

But I know think that the time is right, so I have started, but to make it easier I have started with the James Follett site as it is smaller, and hopefully it will not take to long to get the basic content into it.

Once I have done that I will the move the old site out of the way and point everything to the wiki.

Currently I have 114 articles, and have only done 3 radio play and 1 TV show!

So I don't know how big it will be.

wiki

So I have a few new wiki's( 2 to be exact!) which in a later blog, I will give the url's to.

Now I must admit that I have played with wiki's before, and have had a lot of fun in working out all the different things that you can do with a wiki.

The thing is, that as the software that makes the wiki and in this case the software is (mediawiki has got much better) I suppose the time has now come to commit the 2 main websites that I have and convert them to wiki's

This is a process that is going to take a lot of time, which one thing about it is, not so unreasonable, as it took some time for the websites to get to the stage they are now, I think that as a first phase the conversion in that just getting the website content into the wiki would be a very good first step.

After getting the content into the wiki, the next step is arranging the content to take advantage of the wiki workspace as there are big differences in holding the content in the static version compared to the dynamic, which is what you get in effect, when the content is stored in a wiki database.

So for the next few months the plane is to move the content from the static website to the wiki, as I have two main websites the plane is to move the smaller static website, which is the James Follett one.

At the current rate of progress ( remembering that I have to learn the wiki mark-up language)it could take until December, (and as I write this, it's only September) so this is a project for the long haul, when I have got all the website content in the wiki it goes without saying that I will have to change the url pointers such that instead of pointing to the static website they will point to the dynamic of wiki website instead.

The day that I do the re pointing, is in the future as so far I have only done 30 or so pages of the James Follett website and it has over 200 at the last count.

Ark

Have just reading Ark by Stephen Baxter and I must say that for me it was great entertainment. The story does not have too many flat spots and does let you the reader into the Ark.

A couple of things that must have passed me by was what happened to the folks who saw ARK 2?

What happened to the folks on Earth II
What happened to the folks on the ARK after Earth III

Overall a good story told well, if the above is anything to go by there might be a book 3 in the series, not sure if I want it as in some ways its great that the author has left some questions for the reader to decided what happens.

I still think it would make a great radio show, which means that it will never happen.

Wiki

Got on the new host 2 wiki's very early days, but also lots of fun.

Bank Holiday 2

Aug Bank Holiday here in the UK as I write this at 8 in the morning the weather doesn't look good e.g its wet and there is wall to wall grey sky why?

Mediawiki

I have just got the 2 wiki's that I want on my websites working, lots of fine tuning to go but at least I have them working,

Domain Names

As I have said in this Blog earlier this month, or may be even earlier I have changed my hosting company.

Now that was not entirely a painless switch over from the old to the new, for some reason the new host took longer than I thought it would to move my old domain to their DNS system, not that I am an expert in these matters.

I also brought a new domain called www.citrusdreams.info, which at one stage was working well, now for reasons that I can't fathom it has stopped working.

According to one look up service eg whois there is no record on the hosts DNS servers of my domain that I have brought from them and what them to host ect..

So it appears that I will have to have a moan again.

Oh by the way did I tell you that I hate Cpanel?

Reading Now pt whatever 1

Still reading Ark by Stephen Baxter, and I must say that so far the story is great, as I have only just read Flood which is Part 1 of this series its nice to be able to see some of the events in Flood from other viewpoints in Ark!

I am not sure if that makes complete sense but I hope you get the idea as to what I am trying to say.

The entertainment quotient is I think high, I would love for this to be made into a radio series as I think it would work great.

600 not Out

So this is my 600th blog and has taken some time to get too, but there you go these things happen.

I came back from a very intense training course on Friday. Now the trip according to the GPS should take 4.15 hours to travel 241 miles. As you can tell from what I have written above that is not what happened.

Their was 2 hours before I started to travel a truck fire on the M1 near junction 28. The result the M1 was cream knackered from junction 32 to 25!

This added over 2 hours to the trip!

I count myself very lucky as the M25 was okay the way I was travelling and so was the M3!

Folks on the M5 had it much worse with a 28 mile tail back!

Reading Now pt whatever

Now reading Ark by Stephen Baxter, which is good as I have only just completed book one in the series the other week, and the idea of having to wait a year to find out what happens is not some thing I would like to do.

As I have only just started to read the book, eg I am on page 12 of 465 odd pages I can't say much as the first few pages set up things for later.

I did look to see what Stephen Baxter has got next in the pipeline, but nothing is listed.

Books reading

I have completed the Charles Stross book Iron sunrise, and like I said in an earlier blog the book bounces around in viewpoint and time.

You know what it works!

On completing the story it is the only way the story could have been told and for it to work the way that it does.

Well worth the money and the time a great little story.

Changing Hosts pt5

The last update for a while.

The main site www.dirkmaggs.dswilliams.co.uk is working okay
The James Follett site www.jamesfollett.dswilliams.co.uk is working okay

The flash intro to the Dirk Maggs site still does not work even though all the files and links are all in the right places, why? not a clue

The new web domain www.citrusdreams.info works but from cpanel I can't access it, why? not a clue

Changing Hosts pt4

Well just an update to say what I have got working and what is not working.

The subdomains are working now, and I am being to hate cpanel so www.jamesfollett.dswilliams.co.uk and www.dirkmaggs.dswilliams.co.uk are now mostly okay.

www.citrusdreams.info I have a holding page on as I have to decide just what I want to do with it.

What is not working is the flash page I had as the into to the Dirk Maggs website its all there all the files and all the correct links it just does not play, why? not a clue.

So apart from that the new host do give some great toys so that you can look real easy at what pages on the website are most popular.

Changing Hosts pt3

Things have got better I think!

My domain www.dswilliams.co.uk has been transferred to the new hosting company and appears to be working well.

My new domain www.citrusdreams.info also appears to be working well.

The only problem that I have is setting my subdomains on www.dswilliams.co.uk mainly www.dirkmagggs.dswilliams.co.uk and www.jamesfollett.dswilliams.co.uk

Have now tried all sorts and have decided that cpanel is not very friendly to idiots like me

New website

As I said the other day I am in the process of transferring my websites from one hosting company to another.

Now it's been some 7 years since I had to do this and so far the experaince has been poor and as each day goes by it's getting to be poo.

You would think that by now this sort of thing would be straight forward and well painless. But so far my experaince has not been like that, I have the feeling that one of the causes of the hassle I am having is caused by money.

Yes I said money the reason as far as I see it is companies don't want to loose customers even if one of the reasons the customer is moving on is because the company fail to provide what the customer need or wants.

So the company make it difficult, without doing anything illegal for you to chop and change.

So the result is that my Dirk Maggs site and my James Follett websites have for the first time in 7 years disappeared from the web.

To say that I am upset about this would be an understatement, but that is what has happened.

Both the above sites are or were on my website www.dswilliams.co.uk and for some unknown reason the transfer of this domain from one hosting company to another has so far taken 3 days and there appears at this time to be no end in site as to when this domain will once again be on the internet.

I don't know if it's because of something I have or have not done, as the process of moving a domain is a secret, why?

My new domain which I have got is up and running, the new domain being www.citrusdreams.info the only snag with it so far is that I have to learn how to use cpanel, which is something that is completely new to me.

So tonight I am going to plead stupidity and as the new hosting company why the domain transfer has appeared to have disappeared into a black hole, so wish me luck

Changing Hosts pt2

Things are at this time not looking to good.

According to the sites I have looked at my domain should be transferred in 72 hours or less. So far its not happened so all my websites are gone..

The new isp has also not made my new domain citrusdreams.info live yet so I have no sites at all in over 7 years on the net.

What I should have done was had the new site live for a while and then transferred content later.

The just to make me twitch a bit I have now read some very bad reviews on the isp I have just signed up with so not good.

Changing Hosts

Well in an effort to save some money on the running of my websites, I have decided to change to a web host that is some 60% cheaper offers more and has won lots of awards.

But the thing that has got me just a bit worried is the transferring of my domain name from the old host to the new, and all these things called TAGS and ULM's.

If all goes will I should be on the new host in 72 hours or so I am told, if it all goes wrong I suppose my websites will disappear from the web.

Pod Cast or not?

I have reported here before that I have a pod cast which is the audio version or part of my static websites.

As of Jan(2009) this year it had got to 16 episodes and then for some reasons that I can't quite grasp I have stopped, not because I have run out of things to say, it must be said that it did not help with the pod host company going through a bad patch, which also included loosing all my pod casts! luckily they had backups, which I have also, but its the fact that the lost the lot for more than a week, and then there have been problems with uploading and downloading from there site.

I know that I could do it all myself on my own web space, but I don't have the time to learn all about feeds and all that sort of stuff so hence why I went to a pod host.

yes I know that it is a free host so that I should not expect it to be anything special but I think not being able to download the pod casts is some what of a large problem in the grand scheme of things.

I could pay for a pod host, but and this is the big but what if I don't like pod casting it's a lot of money to throw away on something you don't like!

I suppose what I could do and this is a thought that I have had more than once is to just keep recording the episodes and then find another pod host and upload them and see if any one else likes them and the if I go with the host I am thinking of I can then convert the free hosting to a pro package which gives me more space and bandwidth.

Reading Pt 4

I am still reading the Charles Stross book and having got into the book, some 200 pages in I have to say that the multi view point and also flexitime line approach appears to be working and that for the story to work Charles had to employ something like it for it all to work.

I am also pleased that the story is not predicable and that's good, I want to be entertained and not get the feeling that I have been ripped off because the another has gone formulaic or predicable.

So far I have had a good read and have also been entertained, thanks you Charles.

Meteor Shower

Well it has to be said that the weather in the UK is such that you can all most guarantee that if there is anything almost interesting going on in the sky at night that it will be cloudy, and that was just so for where I live in the UK last night.

For you see last night the 12.08.09 was supposed to be a great time to see a Meteor shower, one of the better ones in the year, and the predictions where for a go show, some 100 meteors an hour or so, which is something that I would just love to see, I think the most meteors that I have ever seen has been some 4 or 5!

So you can imagine my disappontment last night when having a look at the night sky at 10.30 pm that not only was it cloudy but it looked like it was going to rain!

I am told that the next meteor shower is going to be in November, so I shall make the effort then to have a look, that's assuming that the weather for once gives us a chance to see what is going on up in the night sky.

Reading Pt 3

Iron Sunrise is going well so far not to sure about the several viewpoints and the switching between them and also going backwards and forwards in time but apart from that the story is good and I believe that the author Charles Stross is proving good entertainment and value for money.

I am at one level glad that it is not his first book that I have read of his, as I don't think so far that it shows just what he can and does do.

As a side note to the above the first book of Charles's that I read is one that he has released into the creative commons and that was called Accelerado, if you ever get chance to read do so it will really stretch your mind, it did mine.

New Book

I have a new book that I am reading yeah, it's by Charles Stross and it's called Iron Sunrise, as I have only read some 20 pages I can't tell you what I think about it as I have not got into it yet.

Odd Thought

I was reading somewhere, not to sure where it was now, but anyway I was reading about how in the late 1890's London's streets had a real problem with the waste material from all the thousands of horses that used the London streets back then.

Now my odd thought was where did all that horse manure go to, and who moved it all and when cars and buses started to come in and started to take over the jobs of the horses, what did the people who cleaned up after the horses do?

I know lots of questions, and when I did a Google it was not very good at giving me the sort of answers I wanted, for some reason it was far more interested in giving me results that lead me to stuff to buy, which not what I wanted, this is not the first time that I have been let down by Google, if this sort of thing carrys on I shall have to look at using a differant search engine.

Sunshine

For the first time in a while the sun is out and I can see Blue sky yeh!

Flood Pt 4

Just been thinking over the last day or so, since completing the the reading of Flood by Stephen Baxter could Dirk Maggs do an audio production of it?, how long would the show or shows be, who would be cast in the principle characters?

I think that yes, it could be done as an audio production, there would have to be some clever adaptation, but I think there is great scope for a fertile mind like Dirk's to get over to the listener just what is going on, since one of the best characters in the book is the flood itself, I am sure that someone of Dirk's talent could find a away to get this character across to the listener in interesting ways without going over the top on sound effects.

The duration of the production? that's a difficult one as the book covers a lot of ground, even with some adapting it will not I think fit into anything less than say 120-180 minutes, of course the big problem would be the cost of production and finding a market for it.

But it is nice to dream, well isn't it.

Flood Pt 3

So at long last I have completed reading this book. I got the feeling that the end of the book was some how a bit rushed? not sure why I think this but that's the impression that I got, I have since read other peoples thoughts on this book and they do not make this comment on its finish, so its just me I suppose.

Overall I did enjoy the book so much so that I even had a look on the internet at a couple of sites that let you see what the area you live in would look like if the water level started to get higher. I am safe at the 10 to 30 Meter mark but after that will Ben Nevis is looking real good.

As entertainment I think I had my money's worth, so I say thank you Stephen for some great hours of entertainment.

Flood Pt 2

Still reading this book by Stephen Baxter, and it has not got any happier, so it would make a great story line for EastEnders?

Flood

Still reading the Flood by Stephen Baxter, it's starting to get a bit ...well depressing with all the bad stuff that just keeps on happing. I am beginning to wonder what book 2 in the series called Ark is going to be like.

Otherwise it's a book to make you think..even if only a little bit

Books read

So just had some days off, and as is normal had the chance to do some reading, like you do. I some how read 2 books they were

Plague Ship by Clive Cussler

and

The Borgia Ring by Michael White

both were very easy books to get into and did there job in proving some great entertainment, I read them as a way of whiling away a few hours and that's what they did, neither of the books are presented as anything but a form of entertianmaent and for that they both delivered.

Reading Now

Now reading Flood by Stephen Baxter
Which so far has been a great read, the way that he destroys London is so real that you feel that you are seeing it on the TV, at this stage in the book 200 pages in I don't have a clue as to how its all going to turn out.

As I only get the chance to read for an hour a day its going to be a few days yet until I find out, and I can't wait to see what Stephen is going to do.

Rain

Why is it so wet this July, I was in June just getting used to it being hot and bright and well you know what I mean, now less than a month later I have a fleece on as its not that warm and I am getting really **off that I can't sit out under a blue sky and read a good book.

Rant over.

Reading

Still reading Alastair Reynolds

Better than static

Just got to thinking what is better a dynamic web site or a static one?

Alastair Reynolds

So its been a while since I did a blog, mainly as life just gets in the way and other things that some how steal your time away and before you know it, the free time you thought you had has gone for ever.

So as you can see from the title of this blog its about this welsh writer Alastair Reynolds. Now I know that I have spoken about him before I know I have and well I have read all the novels that he has done in mass paperback or soft cover as the folks from over the sea put it.

I am currently reading his paperback book House of Suns, and I have a admit that I have not read very much of it, in fact so far I have read book 1. The story has got me interested and I do want to see how all the different viewpoints are going to come together I am sure that Alastair will not disappoint. I must state here that I am reading books for fun, entertainment and not to be a critic if I want that (which I don't) there are lots of places where you can get that sort of thing. Its for that reason that I do not tend to read the reviews on Amazon, as I have found that what some readers want from a book is not the same as what I am after and for some reason lots of the reviews are very negative, and I wonder if any of these so called reviews have them selves every tried to create something like a 400 page novel. I suspect that there views would change some what. Yes I know that there is a time and a place for reviews and that lots of folks find them very useful, I don't but then that's just me.

28 C

17.00 28C so it's getting cooler...

Warm

30 centigrade today, it's warm me thinks the humidity 56%

Website Updating

As you know if you have looked at this blog, I have a number of websites that I have had since the very early days of the internet, not on the same ISP silly!, anyway these websites of time have got to be ...well large in fact very large, in that they are hand edited by yours truly and he is starting to wonder if there might be an easier way to keep the site up to date.

One of the websites is on James Follett and the other is on Dirk Maggs, both sites are I suppose fan sites in that they detail the work both of these men do.

James Follett used to write very good tech thrillers, but he has over the last few years basically stopped writing, if you discount the stuff that he does on the newsgroups, in fact I have a sinking suspection that, all his time when he could be writing books is now taken up with the newsgroups, its become like a drug to him and that he is hopelessly addicted to them.

Dirk Maggs is a director writer of audio productions and I am glad to say still very active in the field and still producing some very good work.

The problem is that both sites have more the 100 pages each! they are all hand done.

The James Follett site does not get updated as much as the Dirk Maggs one as there is very little new material ( in fact in the last 2 years: none) the Dirk Maggs site gets an update every 6 to 8 weeks or so

The other day I had the spare time to look at the website logs, and to my surprise the website that gets the most hits a day is the James Follett one, this was a bit of a surprise as like I said before it does not get updated very often, also James has not got any books in print at this time.

I have not found out why this should be, but there must be a reason for it.

So why this long blog on websites?

The reason for it is that most of the very early websites, that have not gone on to be huge money making sites are as far as I can see dead, yes that's what I said dead, you may have heard a term pod cast fade, well before pod cast fade there was and still is website fade, and I can tell you it's still very much a live and well and still getting lots of trade.

Lots of reasons have been put forward as to why pod casts and websites die and I suspect that most them have to do with the fact that people get board and also they get no feedback on what they are doing so they give up as no one will notice there passing.

It's a sad fact that most people on the internet are users and not creators, that's just how it is, and as far as mu understanding goes it has always been that way ever since there was stuff that could be consumed by others.

As for my websites, well they are made for me, if others like them use them or even comment on them, that's a bonus,

I must admit that when I get feedback it's nice, but I only have to look at the number of hits I get a day to the amount of feedback a day to notice just how much more consuming goes on compared to creation.

So I am glad that I am a creator.

Not Much

Not much to say except that the last few days the weather has been nice and well its time to enjoy it all.

Just a note to myself that I have updated the Citrus Project website, which I last did back in Feb 2009, there is no new content yet, I will really have to get my finger out and updated it.

104 to go

Can it really be true, I only need to do another 104 posts this year to match what I did years ago, not that I feel any need to beat the total, as I set myself the idea of doing 100 posts and that I have done. So any more posts that I do this year will be a bonus.

It does not make it any easier but I have also now got a twitter account, and I am very afraid to say that it does indeed kill boggling as you can say a lot in 140 characters or less.

BBQ

Well is it going to be BBQ weather later on today, the reason for this ask is that 3 different weather sites on the web all give different answers!

100

So this is Blog post 100 for June 2009 so I am doing well this year, so far I never knew I had so much to say.

Blue

The other day after some 5 to 6 days here in the UK I got the chance to see the sky with a blue colour. Now I know that this is not an unusual occurrence in some other countries, but here in the UK the sight of a sky that is mainly blue is something to be celebrated. We Brits do a very good line in grey skies, in fact grey skies are I think what we do best.

I mean for over 50 percent of the year us Brits have to put up with various types of grey skies. Sometimes for just a little bit of variety with have some white cloud but some how we just don't know what to do with it and it tends to get placed here or there, mainly anywhere that seems right.

Sometimes you wonder how people in other parts of the world manage to cope with all that blue sky. I mean it don't seem natural from where I am sitting; I'm sure that the normal state of affairs is that the sky is grey with the odd bit of white sky thrown in for good measure.

I must admit that I have been to places where the skies are blue most of the time; the first few days are rather nice as it’s a nice change, but over time you start to get an uncomfortable feeling that some thing is just not right. And it gets worse as you just can't seem to nail down what it is that it is that is getting to you. It’s only much later when coincidently you are back under grey skies that you realise that it was all that blue sky that was getting to you in some way or other.

Maybe being brought up in the UK makes you sensitive to what the skies above you head are doing, maybe being British is being able to live in the gloom of grey skies for over fifty percent of your time.

I can present to you an observation of mine that famous people who have lots of money move from the UK to places that have lower tax and blue skies, I not sure which one comes first, but tax might be the main reason. any way if these people where in the art e.g. pop stars it seems to me that with in the year they just don't seem to produce the same kind of work and the same quality of work anymore. And that pretty soon they end up either moving back to the UK or having holidays back in the UK, can you image that!

Yellow

I suppose that this is one of those words that as soon as you see it your mind normally brings up something that you normally associate with the colour yellow. Most of the time I suppose people will associate the Sun with yellow, or if they like them Bananas. Another fruit that most people would also mention with the colour yellow is the humble Lemon.

Just as a matter of point I happen to like both Lemons and bananas and I don't mind the Sun either. If we are not talking about fruit that is yellow, another thing that is also yellow that lots of people like is gold. Now Gold is one of those things that can be spoken about I suspect for pages and pages and here I am not going to go into it here in any great detail.

One thing that has just stopped me cold is the sudden realisation that the word yellow is one that looks strange when you stop to think about it. I don't know at this time where the word came from and I have not yet had the time to look up to see how other people in the world describe objects that are yellow.

If other languages have a very similar word to yellow, I suppose this could mean that we share a common language and a common way of looking at coloured objects. If the English word came from the Latin then it would I suppose be no surprise that a lot of European countries will have a word that looks very similar to describe yellow.

Well after all that I then did a few hours or so of research, like you do and I think I may have got just a bit carried away, anyway here I present what I found, hopefully its not too much in the school teacher mode, I hope you find it at least interesting so lets get on with it colour fills our world with beauty. We delight in the colours of a magnificent sunset and in the bright red and golden-yellow leaves of autumn. We are charmed by gorgeous flowering plants and the brilliantly coloured arch of a rainbow.

I know this is starting to sound just a bit flowery and I appear to be repeating myself but honest I will get on with it and tell you things that you promptly forgot when told at school. We also use colour in various ways to add pleasure and interest to our lives. For example, many people choose the colours of their clothes carefully and decorate their homes with colours that create beautiful, restful, or exciting effects. By their selection and arrangement of colours, artists try to make their paintings more realistic or expressive. And most of the time I think they get it right, an example would be W.Turner and his sunsets, don’t tell me that it does not evoke some of the sunsets that you have seen yourself, this assumes that you are not colour blind, and if you are all I can say is sorry.

It goes without saying that colour serves as a means of communication. In sports, different coloured uniforms show which team the players are in. On the roads, a red traffic light tells drivers to stop, and a green light tells them to go. On a map printed in colour, blue may stand for rivers and other bodies of water, green for forests and parks, and red for roads, well on my United Kingdom maps they do, your mileage my vary.

We use the names of colours in many common expressions to describe moods and feelings. For example, we say a sad person feels blue and a jealous one is green with envy. We say an angry person sees red. A coward may be called yellow, yes I know I am repeating myself, but you may have already forgotten what I said earlier in this article.

So it really goes without saying, but I am going to say it that colour plays an important part in nature. The brilliant colours of many kinds of blossoms attract insects. The insects may pollinate the flowers, causing the plants to develop seeds and fruits. Colourful fruits attract many kinds of fruit-eating animals, which pass the seeds of the fruits in their droppings. The seeds may then sprout wherever the droppings fall. In this way, fruit-bearing plants may be spread naturally to new areas.

The colours of some animals help them attract mates, but you know this, but here I will give you the odd example, a peacock spreads his brightly coloured feathers when courting a female. The colours of many other animals help them escape from enemies. For example, Arctic hares have brownish fur in summer. In winter, their fur turns white, making it difficult for enemies to see the hares in the snow.

Although we speak of seeing colours or objects, we do not actually see them. Instead, we see the light that objects reflect or give off. Our eyes absorb this light and change it into electrochemical signals. The signals travel through nerves to the brain, which interprets them as coloured images. However, there is much that scientists still do not know about how our eyes and brain enable us to sense colour, so if you want to get yourself a Nobel Prize then just work out how we see.

This is another techno bit, actually this bit is really needed, as without it the rest of this article will not make sense so to understand how we see colour, we must first know something about the nature of light. Light is a form of energy that behaves in some ways like waves. Light waves have a range of wavelengths. A wavelength is the distance between any point on one wave and the corresponding point on the next wave. Different wavelengths of light appear to us as different colours. Light that contains all wavelengths in the same proportions as sunlight appears white. Some other mixtures of wavelengths appear white too, and no I don’t know why, is this another Nobel Prize question?

When a beam of sunlight passes through a specially shaped glass block called a prism, the rays of different wavelengths are bent at different angles. The bending breaks up the sunlight into a beautiful band of colours. This band contains all the colours of the rainbow and is called the visible spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, the light appears as violet. It consists of the shortest wavelengths of light that we can see. Farther along the spectrum, the light has increasingly longer wavelengths. It appears as blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, each fading or shading into its neighbouring colours in the spectrum. The longest wavelengths of light that we can see appear deep red in colour.

Light waves are electromagnetic waves, which consist of patterns of electric and magnetic energy. The visible spectrum is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum the entire range of the wavelengths of electromagnetic waves. Beyond the violet end of the visible spectrum are ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and Gamma rays.

Beyond the red end of the visible spectrum are infrared rays and radio waves.
Such objects as traffic lights and neon signs appear coloured because the light that they give off contains a limited range of wavelengths. However, most objects appear coloured because of their chemical structure. They absorb certain wavelengths of light and reflect others. When sunlight strikes an object such as a carrot, for example, molecules in the carrot absorb most of the light of short wavelengths. Most of the light of longer wavelengths is reflected. When these longer wavelengths of light reach our eyes, the carrot appears orange.

An object that reflects most of the light of all wavelengths in nearly equal amounts appears white. An object that absorbs most of the light of all wavelengths in nearly equal amounts appears black.

This is a techno bit on how we see colour, so it goes without saying that we have to mention the roles of the eyes and brain. Our ability to see colour depends on many highly complicated workings of the eyes and brain. When we look at an object, light coming from the object enters our eyes. Each eye focuses the light, forming an image of the object on the retina. The retina is a thin layer of tissue covering the back and sides of the inside of the eyeball. It contains millions of light-sensitive cells. These cells absorb most of the light that falls on the retina and convert the light to electrical signals. These electrical signals then travel through nerves to the brain.

The retina has two main types of light-sensitive cells rods and cones. The cells are named after their shapes. Rods are extremely sensitive to dim light but cannot distinguish wavelengths. For this reason, we see only tones of grey in a dimly lit room. As the light becomes brighter, the cones begin to respond and the rods cease functioning. The retina of a person with normal colour vision has three types of cones. One type responds most strongly to light of short wavelengths, which corresponds to the colour blue. Another type reacts chiefly to light of middle wavelengths, or green. The third type is most sensitive to light of long wavelengths, or red.

The brain organizes nerve signals from the eye and interprets them as coloured visual images. Exactly how the brain makes us aware of colours is still much of a mystery, yes you know what I am going to say here, yes Nobel prize time, some scientists have developed several theories to explain colour vision. And I will have a small section later in this article on the history of colour and how mankind has worked out several theories on how we see; no one has one that Nobel Prize for this work yet!

Some people do not have full colour vision. Such people are said to be colour blind. There are different types and degrees of colour blindness, depending on different abnormalities in the retina's cones. In severe cases, one type of cone may be absent or not functioning. People who have such an abnormality confuse certain colours with others. Very few people cannot see colours at all. Most colour-vision problems are inherited and cannot be cured. This means it’s genetic, that is not to say that at some time in the future ways and means may be found to help cure these problems.

While doing all this wonderful research and as I hope you can tell, rather enjoying it I did come across some surprising colour-vision effects. Many operations of the eyes and brain work automatically and almost instantly in providing us with colour vision. We have learned unconsciously not to "see" certain visual effects of these operations, especially as our eyes adjust to changes of colour. When we do become aware of such effects, they may seem dramatic or startling. Some of the colour-vision effects that we normally do not notice can be easily demonstrated.

We can demonstrate one colour-vision effect by covering half a sheet of brightly coloured paper with plain white paper. If we stare at the coloured area for about 30 seconds and then remove the white paper, the area that had not been covered will seem much lighter than the half that had been covered. It seems lighter because our eyes adapt to colours. Such a visual effect is called chromatic adaptation. These are all good techno terms and I will be asking questions at the end of this article, well maybe not its just amazing just how these technical terms get created.

If we stare at a coloured image for about 30 seconds and then look at a white surface, we see an afterimage. The afterimage has the same shape as the original image but different colours. Where the original image was red, the afterimage will be green. Where the image was green, the afterimage will be red. Blue areas become yellow, and yellow areas become blue. Black and white also reverses. The technical name for this amazing colour-vision effect is successive contrast.

We can also demonstrate that the appearance of a colour is influenced by surrounding colours. If we place the same colour against different background colours, the colour will look different in each case. In addition, a colour appears lighter when surrounded by a dark background than when surrounded by a light background. This colour-vision effect is called chromatic induction or simultaneous contrast.

Sometimes, we may see colours in areas that are only black and white. Such colours are called phantom colours. Phantom colours may be seen by staring at flashing black and white patterns, such as those produced by a rapidly rolling black and white television picture.

I suppose that with all the research that I have done, that I should say something about colour vision in other animals, how they did this research, I think would make another great article, which maybe one day I might write, but back to animals such as Apes, monkeys, many kinds of birds, and some species of fishes have colour vision much like ours. However, numerous other animals see colours differently from the way we do. For example, research shows that crocodiles see colours as various shades of grey. The eyes of certain other animals are sensitive to light that we cannot see. For example, bees can see ultraviolet light, which is invisible to people. On the other hand, bees cannot see the colour red. So it goes without saying that many of our everyday plants we see in the garden in summer look very different to bees and other creatures that can see in other parts of the light spectrum.

Right after all that, I suppose I have to say something about different methods of colour production manufacturers, artists, and craft workers produce objects in a tremendous variety of colours. To create so many different colours, they use one of two basic methods. These methods are mixing colorants and mixing coloured lights.

Let’s first talk about mixing colorants a great variety of colours can be created by mixing colorants. Colorants are chemical substances that give colour to such materials as ink, paint, crayons, and chalk. Most colorants consist of fine powders that are mixed with liquids, wax, or other substances to make them easier to apply to objects. Colorants that dissolve in liquids are called dyes. Colorants that do not dissolve but spread through liquids or other substances as tiny solid particles are called pigments.

When two different colorants are mixed, a third colour is produced. For example, when paint with blue pigment is mixed with paint that has yellow pigment, the resulting paint appears green. When light strikes the surface of this paint, much of it penetrates the paint layer and hits pigment particles. The blue pigment absorbs most of the light of long wavelengths light that appears red, orange, and yellow. The yellow pigment absorbs most of the light of short wavelengths light that appears blue and violet. Most of the light of medium wavelengths is not absorbed but reflected through the surface of the paint. When this light reaches our eyes, we see the paint as green. In a colorant mixture, each colorant absorbs, or subtracts, some of the wavelengths of light that strike it. For this reason, colorant mixtures are sometimes referred to as subtractive colour mixtures or colour by subtraction.

Any three colorants that can be mixed in different combinations to produce nearly any other colour are known as primary colorants or primary colours in paint. A common group of primary colorants consists of red, yellow, and blue. When primary colorants are mixed in pairs, the resulting colours are called secondary colorants or secondary colours in paint. Orange is formed by mixing red and yellow, green by mixing yellow and blue, and purple by mixing blue and red. Colour experts have found that magenta (purplish-red), yellow, and cyan (blue-green) also make a good set of primary colorants. These three colorants can be mixed to produce an extremely wide range of colours.

Mixing equal amounts of three primary colorants results in a colour that is almost black, well I think it looks like mud. However, special black colorants, such as a fine black powder called carbon black, provide better blacks. Mixing black with a colour produces a shade. Primary colorants absorb much light, and so they cannot be mixed to produce very light colours. For such purposes, either a chemical compound called titanium dioxide or some other special white colorant must be added. Mixing white with a colour produces a tint. The combination of black and white forms grey. Mixing grey with a colour creates a tone.

After all that talk about pigments and such things I want to talk about mixing coloured lights. When lights of different colours are projected together onto a screen, they blend and form new colours. Mixing coloured lights produces new colours differently from the way mixing colorants does. Mixing colorants results in new colours because each colorant subtracts some wavelengths of light. But mixing coloured lights produces new colours by adding light of different wavelengths. For this reason, coloured light mixtures are sometimes called additive colour mixtures or colour by addition.

In an additive colour mixture, the primary colours differ from those in paint. The primary colours in light are red, green, and blue. When red and green lights are mixed, the result is yellow light. A mixture of blue and green lights forms blue-green light, and blue and red lights form purple light. If you combine all three primary colours in light in the proper proportions results in white light. Now don’t forget I am talking about light not pigments, otherwise what you get is called mud, e.g. not black but a horrible brown mush of a colour. And don’t say that you never made mud in art class, because everyone I have spoken too seems to have done it.

The colours of any two lights are complementary if they form white light when mixed. Therefore, the complementary colour of any primary colour in light is the colour formed by combining the two other primary colours.

The complement of blue is yellow (red light plus green light). The complement of red is blue-green (blue light plus green light). The complement of green is purple (red light plus blue light). Not sure that I am telling the truth?

Well why not go look it up I was surprised that all the above was true.

Colour television pictures are created by additive mixtures of the three primary colours in light. A colour TV screen has thousands of tiny areas that glow when struck by a beam of electrons. Some areas produce red light, others produce green light, and still others produce blue light. When we watch a colour programme, we do not see each red, green, or blue area. Instead, we see a range of many colours produced when the red, green, and blue lights blend in our vision. We see white light when certain amounts of red, green, and blue light are combined. The combining of the primary colours to produce white light makes it possible for a colour TV to show black-and-white pictures.

When neighbouring colours have a pleasing effect, we say that they produce colour harmony. In selecting clothes or decorating homes, many people consider which colours look good together. Artists and scientists have developed guidelines for combining colours. But there are no fixed rules of colour harmony because too many factors affect whether colours go well together.

A colour circle, or colour wheel, shows the relations among colours. It is a helpful tool for choosing harmonious colour combinations. A colour circle consists of a range of colours in the form of a circle. The colours run from red, through the other colours of the spectrum, and back to red again. Three colours an equal distance apart on the colour circle are called a colour triad. The colours in a triad often go well together. The primary colours on the colour circle red, yellow, and blue form a triad. The secondary colours green, orange, and purple are mixtures of two primary colours. They lie at equal distances from the primary colours and also form a triad. Intermediate colours are mixtures of a primary and a secondary colour. They lie between primary and secondary colours. A mixture of two secondary colours forms a tertiary colour.

Any two colours that lie directly opposite each other on the colour circle are called complementary colours in paint. Such pairs of complementary colours include red and green, orange and blue, and yellow and violet. Complementary colours often go well together. A colour also may harmonize with colours that lie next to its complement, such as red with blue-green or yellow-green. Such colours are called near-complementary colours or split complementary colours. Colours that lie next to each other on the colour circle, such as blue-green, blue, and blue-violet, also may form pleasing combinations. Monochromatic colour schemes are made up of shades, tones, and tints of a single colour. Such colour combinations can create pleasant effects.

This is where I go even more techno and get down and dirty on characteristics, so every colour has three basic characteristics. They are hue, lightness, and chroma. Colour experts describe an object's colour in terms of these characteristics.

So let’s talk about the first characteristic and that is hue, hue is the property that gives a colour its name for example, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, or violet or a combination of such names. The dramatic differences that we see among the colours in the spectrum are produced by very slight differences in the wavelengths of light. For example, the wavelengths that appear as yellow are only slightly shorter than those that appear as orange. But there is a great visual difference between orange and yellow. This difference is a difference in the hue.

Lightness is a measurement of the amount of light reflected from a coloured object. The lightness of a colour may be expressed by comparing the colour's level of reflected light with that of samples on a lightness scale. A lightness scale runs from black, through shades of grey, to white. Black reflects very little light. A colour that reflects about the same amount of light as black has a very low lightness level. Grey reflects more light than black. Thus, a colour that reflects about the same amount of light as a shade of grey may have an intermediate level of lightness. White reflects nearly all the light that strikes it. Therefore, a colour that reflects about the same amount of light as white has a very high lightness level. Colour experts use the term brightness to describe the lightness level of a coloured light source.

Chroma is a measurement of the saturation of a colour. For example, a teaspoon of red poster paint powder mixed with a teaspoon of water produces paint of a deep red colour. The paint has a high concentration of red colorant, and so it has a high chroma. If we dilute the paint with a cup of water, the resulting mixture will have a low concentration of red colorant and, therefore, a low chroma.

It goes without saying that some one has to try and classify colour, so it should be no surprise that yes indeed that is what has happened and that from my research I have found two common ways of classifying colour, so without more delay lets talk about how colours are classified. Experts estimate that we can distinguish perhaps as many as 10 million colours. Each colour differs from all others in some degree of hue, lightness, or chroma. Our names for colours are far too inexact to describe accurately all the colours we see.

As a result, people often have difficulty trying to describe or match a certain colour. Matching colours is especially important in such industries as paint and textile manufacturing. Manufacturers of paints and textiles must minimize differences in the colour of a particular paint or fabric from one batch of paint or bolt of fabric to another.

To overcome problems in describing and matching colours, colour experts have developed various systems of classifying colours. Two widely used classification systems are the Munsell Colour System and the CIE System of Colour Specification.

The Munsell Colour System is one of the most popular and useful means of classifying colours. It was developed in the early 1900's by Albert H. Munsell, an American portrait painter. The system classifies colours according to the three basic characteristics of hue, lightness, and chroma. However, Munsell used the term value for lightness.

The Munsell system may be displayed in many ways. A common display shows samples of different colours arranged around a vertical axis. Different hues are arranged around the axis like the spokes of a wheel, with each spoke consisting of a different hue. The axis serves as the value, or lightness, scale. It is divided into 10 sections. These sections correspond to 10 levels of value from black at the bottom, through shades of grey, to white at the top. All colour samples at the same level have the same value. Colours close to the axis have low chroma. The farther from the axis a colour is located, the higher is its chroma.

To match a particular colour using the Munsell system or a similar system, one must find that colour among the colour samples provided. However, the number of samples in such systems cannot approach the number of colours we are able to distinguish. For this reason, it is sometimes impossible to find an exact colour match.

Let’s now talk about the CIE system of colour specification. Manufacturers of such products as foods, paints, paper, plastics, and textiles must often match colours precisely. Because colour vision varies among people, two colours that match for one person may not match for another. For this reason, manufacturers do not rely on the human eye to match colours precisely. Instead, they use the CIE System of Colour Specification. CIE stands for Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage, (International Commission on Illumination), an international organization that establishes standards for measuring colour which as all you clever readers out there know is French.

A paint manufacturer who wants to produce the same colour of green paint at two factories may use the CIE system to make sure that the two greens match. First, colour experts analyse the colour of the green paint made at one factory to determine the wavelengths of light that compose it. They make the analysis with a spectrophotometer. This instrument separates the light reflected from the paint into its various wavelengths and measures their intensity. Then, tables of numbers are used to convert this information into three numerical values one for each of the primary colours in light, which will match the original green when mixed. These tables of numbers, called standard observers, define the colour-matching properties of a human eye having normal colour vision.

The paint made at the second factory is also analysed using a spectrophotometer. Small amounts of pigment are then added to adjust the colour of the paint. Pigment is added until the analysis results in the same three primary colour values that were produced by the paint made at the first factory. When these three primary colour values are reached, the two green paints will match, even though they may contain different mixtures of pigments. I now purpose to leave this classification of colour as it can get even more complicated, and I think I have gone into it as far as I want to here, I suspect that you could if you wanted to go to the library and find some very thick volumes which you could read for the next few years on the subject.

This is where I present my research on the early theories of colour vision. Many thinkers in ancient times developed theories about the nature of colour. Since then, scientific experiments have confirmed some of their ideas and disproved others. I also would like to state here that for some reason progress was very slow, why this should be I just don’t know.

Empedocles, a Greek philosopher of the 400's B.C., believed that colour vision was caused by tiny particles that were given off by objects and passed through the eyes. He thought that the eyes either produced a colour reaction to the particles or recognized them as coloured. In the early 300's B.C., the Greek philosopher Plato proposed that colour vision was caused by rays that shot out from the eyes toward objects. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher of the later 300's B.C., may have been the first person to realize that there is a relation between colour and light. However, he also thought that colour was caused by something transparent between objects and the eyes. Galen, a Greek doctor of the A.D. 100's, believed that colour vision arose because rays from the eyes empowered the surrounding air to carry tiny images of objects to the eyes. He thought that these images then were analysed by a visual spirit which moved between the eyes and the brain, well he could not use any modern terms as they had not yet been invented.

As the early 1000's, turned up, an Arab physicist known as Alhazen recognized that vision is caused by the reflection of light from objects into our eyes. He stated that this reflected light forms optical images in the eyes. Alhazen believed that the colours we see in objects depend on the light striking the objects and on some property of the objects themselves, which I think is a brilliant bit of thinking I suspect at that time he must have been the only person on the planet who had this insight.

Thing then started to progress some what and during the late 1600's and early 1700's, Sir Isaac Newton, an English scientist, yes that bloke who told us all about gravity, performed many experiments to investigate the nature of colour. Using a prism, Newton demonstrated that white light contains all the colours of the rainbow. He also was the first person to show that coloured lights can be combined to form white light. Newton realized that light rays themselves are not coloured but that the sensation of colour is produced in the brain.

Not to be left behind by a mere Englishman, during the late 1700's and early 1800's, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German poet, experimented with coloured lights and shadows. He wrote a book on optics that seemed to contradict many of Newton's findings. Goethe did not believe that coloured lights could be combined to form white light. He thought that all coloured lights were actually mixtures of light and darkness. Goethe's experiments were useful in demonstrating many aspects of colour vision. However, Goethe's theories of colour vision based on these experiments are no longer accepted as being the whole answer to question.

The three-component theory of colour vision was first proposed in 1801 by a Thomas Young, who was an English physicist. It was further developed during the 1850's by a German physicist, Hermann von Helmholtz. The theory proposes that the eye has three types of fibres that are sensitive to different wavelengths of light. When light strikes the fibres, they generate electrical signals that travel directly to the brain. According to the three-component theory, the colour sensations that arise in the brain correspond to the electrical signals in a simple and direct way. Scientific experiments have confirmed the existence of the three types of fibres, which are now called cones. Each type of cone is particularly sensitive to one of three general ranges of wavelengths of light--those corresponding to red, green, and blue.

The opponent colour theory was proposed in 1874 by Ewald Hering who was a German physiologist, who went on to suggest that, somewhere in the nerves of the eyes and brain, there are two response mechanisms, each of which involves a pair of opposing colours. This means that the response mechanisms can signal only one of the two colours at a time. One response mechanism signals either red or green, and the other signals either yellow or blue. A third mechanism signals the level of lightness. The brain interprets these signals, producing our sense of colour.

The opponent colour theory explains many aspects of colour vision better than the three-component theory does. For example, the opponent colour theory provides an explanation for the fact that we see no such colours as reddish-green or yellowish-blue, I must admit that when I found out this bit I had to stop and think, just to check that my research was correct, I am glad to say that it’s all true.

From my research the most recent theories combine ideas from the three-component and opponent colour theories to describe the various stages of colour vision. In the first stage of colour vision, three types of cones in the retina, of the eye absorb light and generate electrical signals, as proposed by the three-component theory. During the second stage of colour vision, nerves in the eyes and brain create three new signals, which correspond to those described by the opponent colour theory. The nerve signals may pass through further stages before the brain finally interprets them as the sensation of colour, or what the brain thinks of or we think of as colour.

Well that’s it I have nothing more to say on yellow and colour, I bet that you could write a whole thick book on it if you really tried.
My favourite Things

I suppose that this could be about anything I like. So what I propose to do is to just talk about those items that have had or have some personal attachment to me in one way or another.

I should state here and now that some of the things that I want to talk about are really very personal tome and that you may say that’s silly that a man of your age should have that as a favourite thing, but hey this is my writing and if you don't like it do some of your own.

The first favourite thing that I have, I suspect that this is one of those items that you may call silly for a grown man to like is...Bagpuss.

You may ask what is a Bagpuss? The answer is that he is a saggy old cloth cat that has bright pink stripes and was the star of thirteen half hour children’s programs back in the 1970's. So this really is a childhood favourite of mine.

Why? You may as and the answer is that the programmes where very well made and the stories where written in such away that you had and wanted to stay to the end to find out what happened. The shows had music that was okay and normally fitted in with what was going on in the particular show.

It goes without saying that my kids have picked up on this like of mine and so I am now the proud owner of a DVD of all the episodes ever made, and also a stuffed Bagpuss. Once sometime ago I did have a mobile phone with the theme tune to Bagpuss as the ring tone, but sadly the phone that it was on has seen better days, in fact the phone has gone the way of the Dodo and has stopped working, and my new phone dos not have a way of putting your own tunes on to it. You also find that going to one of these ring tone companies, they do not offer Bagpuss as a downloadable tune.

So what other things are my favourite things, well some of them are very mundane such as a tune or album by a particular artist, a favourite dish.

What you ask is my favourite dish? That would be ham eggs and chips, which is a simple meal that has lots of different flavours and tastes and is easy to do if you are short of time.

Another thing that is a favourite is those big power kites that you see pulling people along the beach while they are sitting in a 3 wheeled buggy at speeds of up to 50 mph. it is a sport that is great fun and can at times be very dangerous, but like other extreme sports it is only as dangerous as you want to make it.

If you want to go out to the very edge then the chances of you getting hurt go up, but the frill also goes up. I suppose it’s a bit like skydiving or motor racing or any other extreme sport.

The next thing that is a favourite thing is I think a bit of a cheat as you can not call the love of your life a thing. But I have to state that my wife is a favourite thing that I also love very much, but as you can't own your wife anymore, she will just have to be one of my favourite human beings that I love to be with. Also in this category I will have to put my two children as well, they are important to me and I do love them.

Snakes

Snakes

This is one subject that I think causes more fear, than anything else that I can think of as I sit here at my computer. It goes without saying that I don’t dislike them but then again I don’t go out of my way to be with them.

I handled a snake once; I can’t remember what kind of snake it was. It was about two feet long I think. I say think because I was young at the time and was to say the least just a tad emotional about actually hold a snake in my hands. I can only assume that the snake was not a dangerous one, well not as dangerous as snakes go, I would think that in the normal course of things that all snakes, like most animals or reptiles have to be treated with respect and also with some mistrust.

I have been told that you can never fully trust a dog, no matter how well trained it is as there will come some event or another in which the dog reacts in a way that you just would not have expected it to.

Anyway back to snakes, I have seen plenty of the in some of the zoo's that I have been to over the years, and most of them did not look all that happy. I think that this may have something to do with how they are being kept in a cage, even if it is a glass one at that.

Some of the snakes that I have seen have been either very large, or very poisonous. the poisonous ones always looked the more colourful, I am sure that the reason for this being that if one bite from you will kill how ever is trying to eat you starts to get you noticed, and that is being very colourful is always going to be a great way of making sure that you are not on some one lunch menu. The only drawback of this idea is when you get something that quite likes the idea that the found comes already a bit spicy. I am sure that there has to be an animal of some type, out there that can tolerate some of the poisons that some of these snakes make.

I also suppose that if you are a very large snake e.g. some 10 foot long or so that because of your size you are not going to be something that any thing wants to get to know in a real hurry. So it would seem that sometimes size does matter.

Like I was saying earlier in this little article, having had a snake in my sweaty hands all I remember is that is was warm and that the skin was smooth, I expected it to be rough, because that’s the way it looks to the eye. I don’t know if all the snakes in the world have smooth skin, knowing the way that Mother Nature works there are bound to be snakes with skin that is rough.

I did like the way that it used its tongue all the time, tasting the air for where it thought its next meal might come all. One thing that I did not like was the way that it appeared to me not to blink; even to this day I am not sure if it did blink.

It so happens that where I work at this time we have a very large colony of adders. The last time that I ventured down to where they are in the summer the number of adders was possibly in the hundreds, I kid you not.

The sight of all those adders having a sun bathe was a sight to see, but you will not catch me going to close as you may or may not know adders are the UK's only toxic or poisonous snake, and I have found that if you leave them alone then they will leave you alone.

The only incident at work that we have had with the adders was a few years ago. That was when a snakes bit one of the guard dogs that got to close to its nest. Lucky the site has anti venom for just such an occurrence and the dog was saved and lived to tell the tale back in the dog compound.

Ant 2

 

Yes this is Ant again, I am sure that he does not like the flash on the camera much.

Ant

 

Ant looking a bit well you know....

New Beer

Just noticed that there is a new beer from Badger Brewery.

Hot

So its been hot now for more than two days, can it carry on?

Bluesky

Looks like we here in UK are in for 4 days of sunshine in a row, I know I can't belive it either!

Bank Holiday

Well the surprise for me this time is that all we have had in the way of not nice weather has been some very dark grey clouds and the two minute light rain shower. So as Bank holidays go a result and almost relaxing apart from having a patio put in.

Day 1

Day 1

Sunshine!

Bank Hols

So the Bank Hols are on its way, lets look out for some good sunshine ha ha

Tanglefoot

What can I say, but it's Tanglefoot time!

Car Parks & Idiots

Well you would think that parking in a non public private car park would mean that on average your car (witch is 5 weeks old) would be safe.

But the answer is no

And when not one but two cars get hit by the same tipper truck and that both cars that were hit are more than 40ft apart you do begin to wonder what the ^$^$^ is going on.

The damage to my car could mean that its just a rear bumper and light cluster or and this is the one I don't want the car is a write off.

I will let you know how it pans out.

Part of the delay is being caused by the fact that the car is so new that spare parts are not generally available as most of the parts are going on the construction of new vehicles.

Ross

 

Ross & Wye

Just one of the many pictures I took while in Ross & Whye

More than 2007

This the 85 post of this year now put's me ahead of the posts I did back in 2007

3G

Just found out me and the wife have 3G phones, and no I don't know what that means either.

Old TV Shows

Just caught a program on the Discovery Channel about painting by a guy call Bob Ross, he made painting look so easy, so I decided to look him up on Google, only to find out that this quietly spoken man died back in 1985!

So watching tv can take you back in time.

Stuff

Progress on the Dirk Maggs Book project have been put on hold while I try to find the USB stick with the files on!

Yeah I know.....

English Bluebells

 

Yes I know this is yet another picture of bluebells, but and there is a but, these are the real thing. By that I mean these are your actual English Bluebells and very nice they are too.

Stuff

Well stuff has been getting in the way again of my Dirk Maggs book. Have just been away on a hard course that has lots of night work and exams.

I am very happy that I have passed the course and now don't have to do that one for another 4 years.

But being on the course has meant that the Dirk Maggs book is now halted for at least the next few weeks as I have catch up to do at work, and then I am holiday for a week, and yes I really do need a break.

So all being well and all that sort of stuff the book project should then start back up.

I have been told that Dirk has been in the studio again and that there is some new stuff to be broadcast very soon, so that means even more work for the book project.

Bluebells 3

 

This is a close up shot of a bluebell

Bluebells 2

 

Yes the bluebell hunt was a great success and here is another shot

Bluebells

 

So its bluebell season here in the UK and as it was a nice day we went bluebell hunting

Note to Me

Ap Mech 1 week Devon

75 not out

I see from looking at when I started on Blogger back in 2005 that I managed 75 posts in that year so today I have got to 75 yeh....

Bluebells

 

The Bluebells are coming

Edition 4+1

Just had a slight snag on this edition of the book. How do I easily make sure each production for each year in the book is up todate?

I have a very nasty feeling that I will have to compare the paper page with the digital page, if that's true then it's going to take ages

Rats

So I have put the same picture on this blog twice, so it's my site and I can do what I want.

Flowers

Flowers, originally uploaded by davew1.

Not a clue what these are called

Edition 4

Edition 4 work has been going well in that it has been spell checked and lots of corrections made. Which in one way is good and in another bad( as it means there must have been lots of mistakes) personally I think the previous spell checker was as good as the new one, well that's how I am kidding myself!

The book stands at 330 A4 pages and 80 thousand words!

I know! even I was surprised and I have yet to add all the Dirk Maggs productions from 2008 and those so far produced up to this time for 2009.

So at this time I don't know what size the book will end up at.

So at this time I am happy with the Dirk Maggs book

Stuff that I have Done

It's good news this time!

Yes it's true

I have started on edition 4 of the Dirk Maggs Chronology as a said in an earlier blog post here, I have stopped work on edition three after it got stuck in edit hell, and have decided on edition four that the thing to do is to work on the content and worry about the indexes later if at all, yes I know that make the book a lot harder to use but, if I don't do that then I would never get another edition of the book completed.

As like the other editions of the book it will not be for sale but it will be printed, so that it acts as a reference of what the website was like in 2009.

I must admit that I am if anything looking forward to doing the edition of the book as there is a lot of new material and also lots of revising old material to do. If I am also lucky I think that I will also add some new spelling mistakes and also remove some.

Ant

 

Strange Flower

 

Strange flower who's name I have forgotten

Updates and all that

It's been a while since I reported on the various projects that I do here and there on the Internet so as I have some free time, I thought that I would do an update on what's been going on or not as the case may be.

The sad fact is that having started a new job with a new company the process of learning new systems and new ways of doing the same tasks has been a bit, well actually, very traumatic and at this time I still don't know when things will settle down, I am assured by those in the know and also those that have gone through this sort of thing that yes indeed it will get better, I just want to know when!

Anyway enough of my troubles and struggles

The main Dirk Maggs Production website has been updated with his last audio production, which was on 1 st April 2009, I did not get chance to hear this live or on playback, which is a bit sad.

I have also done lots of small corrections all over the website that only I can see the results of, but I know that the website is better for them, honest!

On the pod cast front nothing has happened apart from the hosting site loosing everything!

which was a bit of a worry, the good news is that the backups worked, well they did for me and my pod casts are back up, but due the the stuff that I said earlier, I have not had the time to do any more, and to be a bit honest I don't know if I want to do any more at this time, as I have found that talking to a microphone is a very intimidating experaince, maybe I will have to find a book or a website that could help with getting over this problem?

The DMP wiki's both 1 and 2 are still no further forward at this time, but are still working well with what they have, so that's good.

The James Follett website has had a few internal changes that make the site a bit smaller without cutting down on the content, talking of content there has been no new content now for several years as James appears to have stopped any work on novels, radio shows or whatever, but you can see him on the Internet newsgroups winding up lots of very gullible folks, and it's always fun to see some of them walk right into it!

So that's how the projects stand apart for the last project and that is the Dirk Maggs website book.

This book is still stuck in edit hell and I have not got any further forward with it, and as so much time has gone by it is now very much out of date.

So I have decided that the best thing to do is to freeze it where it is and archive it and start on a new version or edition, which at this time without looking it up could be edition 4 or 5.

So my plan for later this year is to get on with the new edition and not have an index or two in it until the main work is complete, as you can always add an index later can't you?

D90

So I have now had my new camera for a few days and I must say that so far the experaince that I have had with it has been great.

I have not got all the new things that this camera can do in my mind yet, it will take time...

One thing that I have found is that a lot of the images coming off the camera, to me look a lot sharper than on the D80, why this should be so I just don't know, but I am glad that there is a noticeable difference, otherwise you do begin to wonder if your money has been well spent.

The other thing that has made a lot of difference is having an external flashgun on the camera the difference in the pictures is well, wow!

So all I need now is some nice weather so that I can get out there and have some fun, as its Easter as I write this, you can tell that the weather is well grey and wet, about what you would expect for Easter in the UK

Easter

So Easter in the Uk is either wet or sunshine, can you get which one we have this year?

Yes?

Your right if you said that it was grey cloud cool and wet.

Am I surprised?

No

New Camera

I have a new camera, a bit early for my birthday but as prices where going up it was time to get it now.

The new camera is a D90 by Nikon and I must say that it works real well, well as far as I have been able to test it so far, I even have a flashgun with it so that's cool as its something that I have not had on a camera for years apart from the built in flash and I don't think that counts? does it?

MissyB

 

Action shot, which is something not seen with MissyB

Swallow

I think I saw my first swallow of the year.

Dandelion

1st sighting of a dandelion in Hampshire today. Spring equinox as well.

Spring Cold

Just in time for spring I catch a cold, bum.

Daisy

So it goes on spring is I think on it's way finally this year and so I like to report my first daisy of the year spotted in Hampshire

Butterfly Alert

So my very first and I hope of many butterfly's today at Ropley Hants

Watercress Line

 

My very first visit to the Watercress Line and what a great day the weather was great and I got to see lots of trains.

AE35 Podcast

It looks like the site that I host my ae35 pod cast's on has gone bust. Which is a bit of a bummer, luckily I have kept a copy of all the pod casts and honest I was going to do another cast real soon.

So I now have the problem of finding another site to host my pod casts that will do all the hard stuff for me at no cost, and I suspect that in this day and age with the way things are that is something that I will not find.

There are lots of sites who will charge you and I do have a hosting company that does give me the bandwidth and storage but does not give you any of the other stuff that you need to run a pod cast.

Not that the pod cast got lots of listeners, its just it was another part of my website, may be what I should do is keep recording them and archive them until such time as I have somewhere to put them and then put them all up when I get somewhere.

Steam Gala

Well the weather is looking and so today could be a great day in that I am going to a steam gala.

Now I have never been to one so I am not to sure what goes on at a steam gala, the other thing is that it is being held at or on the Watercress line, which is the nearest steam heritage railway, and I have never been on it!

Looking at there site it look like they will have lots of different types of steam trains, so it will be nice to see all these old machines doing what they are best at and that is moving under there own power.

It appears that these events can get very busy so it should be fun.

I shall take the D80 and hope I get some pictures that are worth putting up on here.

Spag Bowl

Why is spag bowl called spag bowl

Not Word

I used to have word 2000 installed on my old machine, since the failure of it I am slowly reinstalling all the old software that I had on it on the new machine.

As I have written here before some of the software I use is old, I mean really old, so it has come as not real surprise to me that I have lost the installation discs for Word 2000.

So I have looked for a free ware alternative to word and I think I may have found it in Free Office version 3.0.

Its a bit download, so I will report back when I have downloaded it, installed it and finally used it.

Fleet Pond 2

 

More of Fleet Pond from this mornings walk, note the sky and that blue stuff, I could do with more of that.

Fleet Pond

 

So this is Fleet Pond overlooking the reed beds which are a feature of the fresh water pound in Southern England, I have read somewhere that it is the largest natural fresh water pond in the south.

The reed beds are also rare these days.