BBQ

Has a good BBQ only thing is the noise from the kids next door, I have clean forgot just how much noise 4 kids can make.

Reading

Another book that I think I can say I have read is "The cloud collector's handbook" by Gavin Pretor-Pinney I hope that you can see from the books title why I said that I think I can claim that I have read it, I must admit that it's a great little book for working out what sort of clouds you can see and it will also give you extra information such as what height the clouds are at, and it always to me comes as a bit of a surprise just how heigh some cloud type are.

The other thing that i like about this book is that it goes on to give information on some of the stuff that you can see in the sky that is rare but is well known about.


Such as Sun-dogs I had heard of them, I have now since reading the book realised that I have indeed seen them and not realised just what they are.

This is not a book that is entertaining, it can't be but as a useful reference book it works a treat.

Hot

Looks like today will be the hottest day of the year, and about time to so I thinks, I mean we have had a very cold winter so I think that it's only right that we now have some warm sunshine.

Well I know for once that I deserve some sunshine.

Reading

I have had some free time, well leave. I managed to do some reading this first post is about the first book that I read.

Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson.

Not too much too say other than its a great book and I can see why it has sold more than 1 million copies, based on the qi shows some of the items in the book made me think how much stuff you think you know that is wrong.

Well worth the read.

Posts

I see that I have not done very many blog posts of late, mainly as I have not had anything to talk about, so why say fluff?

Reading

I have finally finished another book, for some reason this year I am not reading as many books as I do normally and also I don't seem to have as much time to read, which is strange as I don't feel any busier than this time last year, perhaps it's old age or something, who knows.

So the book is called "A little history of the world" by E.H Gombrich, all I can say is that it is great and I see why it sold 6 million copies, its easy to read and I did learn lots

Website Updating

Years 1987 and 1988 of Dirk Maggs Radio productions are now live on the website.

But search which used to work real well does not for some reason search the whole site, strange.

Weymouth

Just a note to be Bank holiday going to Weymouth see the kites.....

Re Build Website

The rebuild of the Dirk Maggs website is on going in that I have 83 pages so far, but only 4 or so of them are done and are fully working, as I estimate that the Dirk Maggs website had some 200 pages to go until; I have the website fully back up and running.

I have taken advantage of the fact that the software used to drive the website has been updated, and so have updated the software, which I must say has made a very big difference to the rebuild.

I think if any thing it has made it quicker if such a thing is possible.

Still even with that I still think that we are taking weeks before the site is any where near what it used to be.

Website troubles

So I have the software installed, the database installed and working. I have chosen a theme for the website I have even put up a holding page.

I think there is about 198 pages of information to now reinstall, which is going to take weeks and weeks to do.

Then there is the navigation system and all the pictures to sort out.

The plane and simple truth is that the Dirk Maggs website is not going to be back up and working fully for sometime.

Bum

Website troubles

Dirk Maggs website is lost... all of it, backups as well. Not happy....

Website troubles

The bad news is that my Dirk Maggs website has gone bang and is now broken...which is not good not good a tall, I am hoping that my backups all work and that I shall have the website back up in a day or so.


If not then I will have to start all over again, which is not good.

Reading

Just completed a book that was really fun to read and I learned a lot which was nice and a surprise. The book as you can tell is a fact book and on a subject that I have not really thought about that much.

The book is called The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer and its a good read and well worth the time and effort to read it.

Reading

I have just completed reading a book that has left me not to sure about the main subject matter, and when I tell you the name of the book you will see that when I say that when they are dead we may then learn some of the truth then I think you will understand what I am going on about.

I did and did not enjoy this book I say this because the author appears to have become emotionally involved I was all ways told that with this kind of book that is the very last thing that you should do.

Any way the name of the book is Clint The life and Legend by Patrick Mcgilligan

Dirk Maggs

I have just fixed a problem where by for some reason the link to the Dirk Maggs website was not pointing to the correct start point on the website, I don't have any ideas as to what broke it or even how long it has been broken.


It all now appears to be working correctly which is good, as I noticed the number of hits had dropped right off.

I also sadly noticed that I am no longer the No 1 on google search for Dirk Maggs so bloke called Dirk Maggs! is now number one I don't know how he managed that!


So it would appear that my Dirk Maggs website has disappeared from google, I wonder just for how long.

Warm

Today was nice and warm 16c I know and I am told that there is more to come

Blue Sky

I just want to record this as it's happening.


Yes there is bright blue sky as I type this at 16.56 hrs on 4 th April, I know even I am surprised, I mean come on its Easter and some sunshine, even if its only for a few minutes is better than nothing.

Gammon

As it's Easter we had gammon done our way, result was wonderful!

Weather

As it's Easter you don't need to be told that the weather is as you would expect for a Bank Holiday, wet cold and dull


Simple question why?

ipad

I see from looking at the internet news that in the USA today the ipad version 1 was on sale for the first time. Now the interesting thing will be just how much an ipad will be in the UK when they decide to sell them here, which is rumoured to be later in April.

I suppose that as normal we here in the UK will get charged more. So I will not hold by breath for the price to be similar to the USA one.

It has made me start to think what would I do now for version or generation 2 of the ipad ? and that's were it can get a bit difficult in just what do you add to a generation 2 device?

So of the things that you can do to9 a generation 2 device are easy in that you can update the operating system to a newer one with more features.

But do you start to add new hardware to your Gen 2 device?

I have been told by many that the Gen 1 ipad is not the right one for me and that a Gen 2 will be better, I have been told that Xmas 2010 is when a Gen 2 ipad is due and that before that a new OS will be realised updating or adding stuff that just was not ready for the launch of the Gen 1 device.

So as long as my itouch keeps working, and I hope it does I can afford to wait until Xmas 2010 to see what is or is not going to turn up.

Updates and cars

Ever had an update of the firmware to your car?


No nether have I yet My car was supposed to have its software updated today while it was being serviced, it did not happen as and get this the internet was down!

So due to this I will now have to loose my car yet again for a day.

I am not happy

Wine

Just how is it that grapes from different parts of the world can taste so different when they are made into wine.

Read

I have finally finished the book that I spoke about the other day, it really is an easy read. But and there is a but, the book feels like its a draft for a longer book, it felt to me as if the author had run out of time and the manuscript was just handed in as it was. The because of who the author is the editor did not do a full edit on the book and demand changes.

Which I think is a real pity as I am sure the book could have been much better.

Before I forget the book that I have just read is called The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson and Martin Dugard.

I think that the book needed more time and also to be longer, that way part 2 of the book could have been better presented and done in such a way that this reader did not get the impression that this was a peace that had already been written and just the names changed, why I get that impression I just don't know but that's what I got. The parts that are set in the present might have been better presented as author notes or something like that, but the way that they have been present really jar's with the rest of the book.

As for how James and martin have decided there was a crime just does not ring true, when James describes a murder in his other books you get told far more about how and why, but in this book he does not do that, I found it was something that I missed.

Was I entertained?

The answer is yes, but I also came away feeling a bit cheated, like I had not been served the best meal or story that I think and know that James can deliver.

Anyway that what I thought your ideas and that may be different.

Books

I have just picked up a book by James Patterson that I thought he would never write, and I must admit that so far its been a good read, its a while since I have read one of his books and the thing that for me always takes a while to get used to is just how short the chapters are in his books. I must admit that the short chapters do not get in the way of the story it's just something that he appears to do. It certainly has not hurt his book sales from what I can make out.

Any way the name of the book that I never expected him to right is The murder of King Tut, I know it threw me as-well.

but the story is good the way that he is telling it is very different to what i expected but so far it appears to work for me, your mileage may be different.

So I shall carry on reading it just to see how he is going to pull off this subject in his style.

Am I being entertained? you bet ye.

Rose

Rose is nice

Rain

Why does it always appear to rain on Saturday, especially when there was stuff you want to do, but only if the weather is dry.

Problem

I find myself if an interesting problem, and its something that has happened many times before, but the last time this particular problem occurred is so long ago that I don't remember what I did.

The problem is this I have two new books that I want to read and I just don't know which one to start first as both books are about 500 pages long. One book is a biography the other is a SF book.

The SF book is one that I even pre-ordered, the biography is a book about a very famous male film star that I have been looking for, for some time, say years.

So which one do I read both are I am sure god books.

As a principle I don't read reviews of books that I am going to read as I don't want to be influenced by what others have said.

So it's a good problem, perhaps I shall use that most complicated of choice deciders and flip a coin!

reading

Well I have just finished another book, I know its scary this could be my second or third book that I have read this year, I wonder if I can keep up the pace.

The book is called Corsair and its by Clive Cussler with Jack Du Brul. I think that means that Jack wrote most of it and Clive had the chance to change things that he did not like, or something like that.

Anyway to me it does not matter as for this kind of book all I want is to be entertained, which I was and that's all that I wanted and that's what I got.

I suppose it would be interesting to find out just what the real work split is, but in the end its a good story with characters that after several other books in the series you know to a large extent just how they are going to react and they do react as you expect, which is nice.

I suppose as a reader its one of the reasons why series of books always do well in that you are on familiar ground with the hardware and the main reoccurring characters its how the characters react in the different situations is the play off for the reader and I suppose for the author.

So all in all yes if you want a pager turner of a book with lots of action then this is a book that will deliver.

Updates

Work on the websites has stopped for 2 reasons.

1 I had a weeks holiday, which I needed.
2 Work and getting other stuff done has a higher priority, and as doing the websites cost me money life gets in the way.

Daisy

Just a note to myself so that I don't forget saw my first daisy and dandelion today

Reading

I have just finished a book that I pre-ordered on Amazon, so I got it as a hardback book, which is some thing I don't normally do but for this author I thought I would take a chance.

I think that this may be one of those occasions were I may have had just a bit of a bad result.

On the book buying side I have no problems, the book was sent to me on time and I must admit that all the price promises that Amazon made where kept, in that there was a price change and I got to have the benefit of it. So thank you Amazon.

Now the book contents part.

I am not too sure on this one, even though I have had some time to think all about it, I still feel as if I have been let down in some way by the author.

The book is by Iain Banks and is call Transition, I will not try to explain the story as I think that, that is one of the problems, Iain has I think tried to do what a lot of other authors have done and that is to write a story from many view points and times.

I don't think to me that he gets it quite right, in that this poor reader was at times feeling left behind, even when I went back to reread the parts that did not make sense.

I don't know if its his use of language or prose, but sometimes it just did not work for me.

I was entertained that I am sure of, its just that I was expecting to have an easier time of getting entertained.

I shall now that I have read the book go and have a look at what others have said about this book, to see if it just me or if there is a perceived problem with it.

Nothing to say

Its funny how at one stage I had lots that I wanted to say then all of a sudden nothing zip, why?

I don't know why it happens like that but it does and from some reading that I have done I am not the only one that it happens to.

I was given a bit of advice a while a go about writing blogs, and the advice was that if you have nothing to say then don't try and force it as what you will write will come out as something that will not read well and it will probably not really be the real you speaking.

So I have followed my own advice over the last few weeks.

Which is good.

ipad

i have been looking at what apple have done in the past with the release of new products and it dos not look good.

What I mean is that when the ipod came out e.g gen 1 it had some shortcomings and the software had stuff missing, which in hindsight should have been there from the very start, even the Gen 2 and 3 devices had stuff missing, but by gen 4 its good.

Now I own and ipod touch, and I use it very heavily every day, I keep running out of storage on it, is a 32GB device, I keep finding that I run out of app space even when I have lots of storage space for the programmes, I have seen and used a gen 1 touch and its not very good and is underpowered and stuff that would drive me nuts.

So with all that it stands to reason that Apple will do it again with the ipad, so I am going to wait for the gen 2 ipad which I am told will be out at Xmas 2010, so not long to wait.

Updates

As I think I sad in an earlier blog, I have just started to do some work on the new James Follett website, pretty much in the same lines as the Dirk Maggs one, well why not it all seems to work okay and once everything is in the updating of the website is to tell the truth really really very easy and that's one of the main things that I want to gain from all of this updating stuff.

I must admit that the James Follett site is smaller I think, in fact I'm not to sure how they compare size wise. I suspect that over the next few weeks it's something that I will find out from first hand experience.

So then, on the James Follett side of things the database is set up and the core elements that go to make up the website are now all in place, all and I say this lightly all I now have to do is get the content transferred into the new website. This is a task that has to be done manually which is a pain but there dose not seem to be any other way of getting the job done, so manual it is.

I have so far only put the very first page up, mainly to see if it all works and all that sort of stuff that you do when trying out new stuff, it all appears to be working how I would expect it to which is good.

So I now have the long task of converting it to the new format. I don't know if I should tell James or not, as I am not sure if he is that interested in his unofficial website these days.

I will set up the domain so that when complete it points at the new website, and when I have checked that it all works I will delete the old website.

If by any chance James does realise any new material it will be very easy to update and also as an added benefit he could also with the right permissions edit the site, or at least correct it or even add missing information to it.

So lots to do.

Sky

Looks today as if we are going to have a cold but bright blue sky day, which is nice, as its been just a while since we had that sort of things.

Updates

I have started to create the new James Follett website.

229 of 365 - Watch out! It's Lady No Pupil and she's come to eat you alive!

229 of 365 - Watch out! It's Lady No Pupil and she's come to eat you alive!, originally uploaded by elsvo.

Just found this images on the old flickr pages, like you do. What I like about this images is the eyes, I have been told that the eyes are a portal into the soul, if that's true then this is I think an images that tells that in spades.

Reading

I have just finished reading a book which when it was first out in hardback caused a bit of a storm, well for a few days back in 2009.

You will see what all the fuss is about as soon as you see the books name, but just to prolong things a bit longer, I begin to wonder what all the fuss was about as 90 percent of what the author says is well to be simple and straight forward.

I enjoyed the book and there where parts of it that where presented in a way that I had not seen before.

The book I think losses a bit in that not enough examples of the current state of things is given and then saying where he thinks they are going to go. Don't get me wrong the book is okay its just that I think you need to know where you are before you can say where you could or might go.

Anyway it did entertain me and at the of the day that's all that matters for me.

So after all that the name of the book is "Love & Sex with Robots" by David Levy

Updates

The Dirk Maggs website is a bit nearer to being completed as I want it.

I am now working on the odds section, and so far it has some 16 pages, which is a bit of a surprise, I hope to have it all done soon. One thing that I have done is drop pages that are no longer needed as this new website works in a very different way to the old, so much so that features that the old did not have and so had to have pages created by hand to give the feature are now created or done automatically by the new site software, neat!

I think that a another couple of weeks will do it.

The only thing that I will I suppose have to work out in the near future is how to update the software that runs the cms, and do it in such a way that it is safe.

The other thing that I will also have to do will be to delete all the old pages on the website so only the new Dirk Maggs site remains.

Headphones

Finally got my headphones that Donna brought for me as a Valentines present!

The finally bit is that even though the delivery was supposed to be 24 hours DHL decided that not delivering them on Friday was a good reason to delver them on Monday so they had them Friday am till Monday am, not happy about that rather poor service, I expected better, and there does not appear to be a way of telling them what I think about their service.

Anyway talking about the new headphones is what this blog is supposed to be all about, and they are made by Sennheiser they are an upgrade of my existing headphones, they are noise reducing and they are model PXC300.

I must say that for me they work very well, and do exactly what the manufacture said they would do which is good, even though we got them in a sale they still cost over hundred pounds, but so far I would say they are worth the money. The sound they produce for me is good and the sound reduction technology works very well.

My ipod touch seems to like them and that's all that really matters at the end of the day. I have read else where that they are't as good as expected and that they don't cut out all the external noise, but that's where I think people have misunderstood what a noise reduction headphone is designed to do.

But me I like them and they do what I expected them to do, if I want hifi sound then I would have gone for closed ear type of headphone, and these are not that, so by their very design they can never be better than a closed ear design, but you have to ask yourself do you want to go around the streets looking like Mickey Mouse with big ears?

Updates

I am hoping that to day I can finish the layout changes on the Dirk Maggs website, and that after that has been done the site can be called done as far as this round of changes and updates to it goes.

I suspect that the next changes will be if I get new pictures of any of the voice actors that I haven't already got or if Dirk ever does another new radio production or and yes there are lots of or's in this sentence I get new information on any of the radio productions already featured.

Updates

So I have I think got most of the images in on the major pages of the Dirk Maggs website, which is good, I have decided at this time that the interlinking of pages on the website is not needed as I give every user of the website the chance to search the entire website for whatever they are looking for.

Saying that the number of users for the new Dirk Maggs website never hit more than 75-100 people a day so I suppose I am not going to upset many people by removing the links, and any way its my site and I can do whatever I want with it, and if removing stuff like interlinks makes my job easier for no real loss of usability then its a step that I am going to take.

Reading

I have just finished reading the very latest book by Robert Harris called Lustrum which as you may or may not know is book 2 in the Roman trilogy that he is writing. A the books chart the life of the real life figure of Cicero.

So far both the 1st book and this book have both been a good read, and I must admit I don't know where real life stops and the fiction begins, but checking real life with what he has written he dos not go to far from what happened all that time ago.

Part 3 will be out next year if Robert keeps to his publishing time-scale, which is good because I would love to see how he will bring it all to great conclusion.

Updates

Just do a bit more updating of the Dirk Maggs website, and even if I have to say it myself it's going well.

I think that in the next day or so I should have all the pages in all the pictures in. The only thing that will be left to do will be the interlinks within the website, which will take some time.

I also have an idea for the odd extra page here and there after that the only changes will be if new material turns up or a new production by Dirk appears.

Updates

I have made some more progress on the Dirk Maggs website, in that I think I have worked out how to get some of the tables to center up. Its a bit of a cheat in that all I do is make the table width bigger, and some how or other it center itself when being displayed, no I don't understand how it does it, but it appears to work, this means I now have to go through all 200 odd pages, as I did't keep a record of what pages were broken, oh well

Updates

Have some how found just a bit of time to do some more update to the Dirk Maggs website, I have added a few more images and also added some changes to the layout of a couple of the pages, so hopefully making them easier to read.

I still have a layout issue on some pages where for some reason or other the pictures in a frame will not center up in the page, why I just don't know.

So those pages will remain broken until I find a way of correcting what ever the fault is that breaks them.

Cold

So mister BBC weather man has just said that temperatures this week will be 5 centigrade lower than they should be.


I want spring, when is spring going happen.

Nothing

Funny how you can go from having lots to say to nothing, I suspect that I am in my nothing to say period!

Reading Now

I have just finished reading the latest Matthew Reilly book called "The Five Greatest Warriors" and I must admit that it was a great read and I felt that I had been entertained, which is what I want from most of the books that I read.

This book which I have to wait some 2 years for was worth the wait and completes the story which was started back in his earlier book called "The Six Sacred Stones" which I read back in 2006-7!, yes 2006-7 even I had to check the year that I read it.

Matthew writes books that are just all out thrillers with action and some very clever puzzles in them, they will never win awards for literature, but then I don't read that kind of book, I want to be entertained and to go with the help of the author into a movie that is better than Blue Ray and is more 3d than 3d and better sound than Dolby, and I think that Matthew is for me one of those authors who just does it for me, your mileage many vary.

So would I say to others read this book, yes if you like the kind of stories that Matthew writes.

Last Post

This is the last post for this month and all in all so of the projects that I wanted to work on have been worked on, which is good.

The websites that I have, so far only one of them which is the Dirk Maggs Productions website has been updated, work on it will take some months yet but I think there is light at the end of the tunnel as the saying goes.

Updates 7

Updates

I have managed to update the Dirk Maggs website for production year 2001 and 2003. For some reason that I have yet to work out the layout on pages that I am sure I had sorted out are now all wrong with all the headings all hard over to the left-hand side, why this is I just don't have a clue.

Any way these two years all the production pages where looking okay as of this post on my blog.

So that of course means that the next time that I go and have a look they will be broken again!

Moon

Just a note to me that the Moon looked real big on the horizon and the red "star" by it was Mars.

ipad

So the ipad is out, I don't know why but I wanted it to have more than they gave. By that I mean that as a version 1 device it has some failings that to me here in little old England are so obvious that you begin to wonder just what plant so of the folks in Apple are on.

I suppose will will never know what sort of discussions went to to decide what the machine should or should not have but the sad fact is that for what ever very good reasons, some of the stuff that they have left out are well to me just strange.

Take for instance multitasking, if I understand it right the new cpu that the ipad has, is more than capable of doing more than one task at the same time, the OS in the ipad can multi-task, in fact I think I have read somewhere that it does multi-task if you happen to be Apple and its your software running at the time.

So why does it not multi-task? there must be a reason, what it is I just don't have a clue.

The other thing that is not there is a forward facing camera, which would make the ipad just so much more usable, may be Apple don't want to sell too many devices or the cost of adding a camera broke the budget on the build cost.

Talking of build cost, I wonder just how much it does cost to make an ipad?

One thing that makes me really unhappy is that when I use my itouch ( which I do use very heavily, and have also run out of space on lots of times, its a 32G unit) is the number of website that don't work because I don't have flash on the itouch and I now see that for some reason Apple have still not got over there fears, worries about allowing it to work on the new ipad, why?

I am told by those in the know that the machine eg my touch is more than capable of running flash without any real problems.

So I have looked at other version 1 devices that Apple has done and have decided that a version 2 device is the better way to go.

So I have 12 more months to go before I will have to look at replacing my touch , I hope it lasts that long as the use it gets is stupid.

Reading

I have just finished reading the latest Peter James novel that has come out in paperback. Its called Dead Tomorrow and is the latest in the Roy Grace series, and I have to admit that it was a good read with lots going on, and I think this bit is important the characters in the novels do change and progress and the way they act to the world they are in also change.

I like the main character Roy Grace, not sure why? maybe because he is human he makes mistakes and is not flawed like so many police men in fiction you meet these days.

By that I mean you only have to look on telly what is coming out of the USA to see that all the policeman have something wrong with them, if its not that then they appear to have a budget so large that any new kit that that comes out that could be used to catch the bad guys is brought and suddenly every one knows how to use it perfectly.

What I like about Peter James is that in the story money or resources are tight and sometimes Roy Grace can't have the item or resource that he needs, but and this is a big but he finds another way to do what needs doing.

So this book is a good read, you do not need to have read the early books but you do get more from the book if you already know Roy Grace and his world.

I suppose that it will only be time that will tell when it gets to the small screen which I think would be a pity as this is a series that needs you the reader to get involved, a multicast radio series would I think be really good, but these days the money and the interest for such a thing just will not happen which is sad but that's how it is.

I suppose the only consolation to this is that Peter has written the new book in the series, I just wish he was just a bit like Terry Pratchett and published a book every 6 months, cause I need my Roy Grace fix, I want to know what is going to happen next.

Updates

The updates to the Dirk Maggs website are still going on, the only trouble is that for most users of the site you can't see any changes.

The other thing that I have also noticed is that the number of visits to the site has collapsed, where I used to have thousands I am now lucky if I have 20 or 30 a day. Which is a bit of a surprise as I am still very high up on Goggle when you do a search for Dirk Maggs.

I know that I still have the old Dirk Maggs site, but that is not getting any more hits than the new one, so I am not too sure just what is going on.

I also have the problem of working out just how to safely remove the old website without loosing the new one.

Blood

Today is the 1st time this year that I have given blood. Apart from the booking system not working how it should I have now given 114 units of blood.

To say I am proud of myself would be an understatement. As the worst thing to me about giving blood is when they pull the plasters off that hold the needle in your arm, it real really hurts and the number of hairs that get ripped out of my arm is well lots.

But its a small price to pay to help others.

Updates 6

on the Dirk Maggs productions website I have just sorted out production year 1998, so it joins the list of pages that now have some form of navigation.

Still loads to do.

Website Updating

1996 and 1995 of the Dirk Maggs productions website production years have now had there navigation sorted out and do look much better for it.

I have even managed to reinstall some of the cast pictures that have been missing since the move to the new site.

Not to sure just how many more production years there are to go, one part of me is just a little scared in that I really don't want to know just how much more work is left to be done.

but it's nice to say that we have moved forward.

Tuna

Just had to note here for me that Honey and soy hot noddles and tuna is nice but next time find out just how small the portions are, so that you don't end up hungry.

Blogs

Funny how one minute you have lots you want to say in your blog and the next either you do not have the time or you don't have anything that you think needs to be said.

Updates 4

The updating of the Dirk Maggs Productions website carry s on and on or so it seems, the good news is that all the productions from 1987 to 1993 now have there correct navigation system installed.

The bad news or which there are two is that 1 the years 1994 to 2010 need to be done, and in some of those years Dirk did do a lot of radio work, so there are lots of productions to add the navigation system to.

The second bit of bad news is that as I have gone through the productions from 1987 to 1993 I have found that quite a few are missing cast photo's which I know that I have.

It goes without saying that I will have to add the photo's that I have, but this also means that I will have to search out some of the missing ones and credit them if that information is out there.

As my head was starting to spin with all the edits I have called it a day on the edit front.

Blue sky

So today it looks like we may be very luck and have a day with some blue sky, I can't think when we last had a day with it, its been that long.

I also don't know if the sun will be very warm, it does not matter as long as we have some hours of bright daylight.

Website Updating 3

I have done some more work to the Dirk Maggs Productions website, I have now started on the very long road to put a navigation system in for every production by year. This is something that I said that I started a while ago and I am still doing it!


So far progress is slow as each production pages takes some 5 minutes or so, and I find that after a while my concentration starts to go and I start to make errors. So I have sound the best thing to do is to pick a year that I have not done and do it, and if there are not too many productions in the year then pick another year and do that. I have found that sometimes I can do more than one year at a time before I get *issed off with it all.

I think that at my current rate of doing the editing I shall finish in a few weeks.

There is plenty of stuff that still needs to be done, eg sorting out cast photos and getting them all the right size, I suspect that this task will take months and may never really be complete as I hope there will be new stuff to report on that Dirk has done.

The other final very important job that has got to be done is to work out how my host works so that I can remove all the old Dirk Maggs website and just leave the new one.

Snow

The report on the snow we had is this, its finally going, in fact it has been raining and you know what I don't care one little bit that it is wet.

The weather men are saying that we could see some blue sky tomorrow. It will be nice to see some as we have not had any for so long now. What little snow that is left is where it was piled up after being dug off the roads or the paths

Bread maker

Just some great news got a replacement bread maker

Heating

Well we have had a bit of a situation here the last few days. Yes the heating failed, and it is still cold, and I can tell you a house at 10 centigrade is not much fun to sit in.

Lucky as we have four star maintainance with the Gas board they came out the next day after we placed the call, as we made it at gone 6 pm.

The result the main circulation motor had died and the 3 port valve had failed in that the spindle had snapped.

Gas board man said will be back at 10am on Sat to fix it, and he was and it is all working.

House temp at 16.45 hrs was 18.1 centigrade and rising.

Slush

Today in honour of the thaw my word of the day is SLUSH

Dirk Maggs

I got a bit more of the Dirk Maggs website done, in that I think I have worked out a simple page navigation system for his radio work by year. Well it appears to be working the only snag is that I now have some 100 pages to edit and change, and each one has to be done by hand, which is not good.

As each page takes some 10 to 15 minutes to do it is going to take some time to do every radio production, but then there is no rush, as its my website and I can take as long as I like to get it into the format and layout that I want.

Book reading 2

This is the first book that I have finished reading this year 2010, well I think it is.

The book is called American Connections by James Burke, its an interesting read in that as a Brit I do not know how many men signed the American Declaration of Independence, and I did not know just how close it came to being not signed and not needed.

It would appear that a lot of the men who signed the document all made in some way a lot of money from it, may be that was one of the un-written reasons and why they would not compromise.

So I did learn a lot from this book, but I got the feeling that even James had trouble linking some of the men back to today.

Well worth a read if your history of how or who some of the men behind the declaration is non existent

Updates 3

The Dirk Maggs Website was updated a bit more yesterday in fact I found new information for one of Dirk's lesser known productions of the 1990's in fact it's a pilot show that he did that never got taken up.

I still have lots of layout problems and I still have not yet worked out a good and easy navigation system.

Hills

Living at the bottom of a long hill eg its height difference from top to bottom is some 100 odd feet but the distance from top to bottom is much more and that the top of the hill and to add to the fun there is a set of traffic lights as there is a major A road at the top of it.

Add snow about 9 inches

Add no salt


Add no grit


Result I can't get my car out of my road and it is doing my head in

Website Updating 2

For reasons that should be obvious eg the very bad weather, I am too tied to do any updates to the Dirk Maggs Website. Its not as if I don't want to its just that I am just having trouble staying awake.

Snowed In

So I am snowed in in that I live at the bottom of a hill that does not get salted,( which at this time does not work as its too cold) So at 6.45am I started off for work and got there at 10.15am after walking non stop.

Its not something I want to do again, as walking in deep snow is not nice, and I am very tied tonight.

All being well I have a lift (I still have to walk about a mile to the pick up point)

Snow 2

It has been snowing all day and the end result is we have nearly 10 inches of snow, so you can guess who did not go to work today and why.

Tomorrow dos not look any better with the very hard frost and snow due.

Snow

Why do we have to have more snow?

I mean we had some last year do we really need some in 2010?

CM5 Tables

Why cant I get tables to work in CM5?

Its doing my head in

Editing Website

The editing of the Dirk Maggs website carry on and on, as there are over 200 pages to sort it is going to take some time. One problem that I have still not sorted is the layout of tables with all the actors names and what they did in the radio production in question.

The end shot of all this is that some table layouts are okay but others are broken.

Image uploading works and I have now found how to resize..

So some of the pages on the website are starting to look okay.


One thing I can't help but do is add new bits and pieces as I go so the site has already changes a lot since it was installed into the CMS back in October 2009

Reading stuff

The book that I have started to read is called "Love & Sex Robots" by David Levy so far all I have read is the introduction, which was okay but to be was trying to say don't take all this too seriously and this is not something that should be thought of as dirty and a fetish subject.

But with the title of the book it will be seen as just that, from what I have read of the book its been written too early in that most robots and stuff are no where near the point that people will take this stuff as a serious problem and that it should be something that needs to be talked about.

But as I have not read the book I shall have to say here that I will keep an open mind and I will just have to see where David Levy takes us and if he can prove his introduction.

2010

So my very first post of the year, I wonder how many other people will be starting out doing a blog this year, and just how long they will keep it up for.

I see that last year I did my most blogs ever, this year the idea is to just blog as and when I have something to talk about or that I want to record for later use.

I think one change that I want to do sometime this year is to change the layout of the blog, as it's been then same for sometime.

I don't have anything else to talk about at this time so I will spot.

Edits part 3

The adding of images to the Dirk Maggs website, is I think going well in that I can find the images for the page that I am editing, but I still have not worked out how to correctly scale the images so that they are all one uniform size.

The end result is that the pages that I have done all look well a bit scrappy is a word I could use, I am sure that you could think of other works ect to describe it better but lets not get into that.


So I know that I will have to revisit each page once I have found out how to scale the images but at least now some of the pages look better, in that they don't have large empty boxes on them where the images should be.

I have as I have gone a long made corrections or even added stuff to the pages. I have found so far one page that had no content, which was a bit of a surprise as I am sure that I went through each and every pages at least twice to make sure that I had not missed anything in the transfer from the old site to the new one.

But as I am only human it's something that is bound to happen and so when I found it, it was not to much effort to correct it.

So The Dirk Maggs website is doing well I think, I have changed the theme of the site again, but I don't know if I like it that much it will have to something that I will need to look at in the new year, which as I write this is only some 6 hours away!

Last Day

So the last day of 2009 which means that I will have done more blogs this year than i ever thought I would, not that this blog is about how many time I have bloged a week month year, well you get the idea I hope.

Just want to update the progress on the Dirk Maggs productions website, the good news is that I have started to add pictures to the pages!

The bad new is that I have not found a way to scale the images to the page layout yet, not to sure what is going on with that.

The page navigation issue has still not been solved but I think I now have all the content on the site, apart from the images of course!

I shall just get all the images up on each page that needs them and then worry about getting the layout of the pages right later, as its something I do in my spare time it will take a while to sort out.

Reading Now 3 whatever

Just finished what I think will be the last book I shall read this year. Its call How to make a tornado and its by New Scientist.

A good read but very different in character to the previous books that they published over the last few years.

Not sure why the change in book format, there must be one but I for one don't like the change, as I like it when you got everyday people ask the kind of questions that do occur to you and you have no answer yourself to them.

Uploading

Why is it so difficult to upload images to some programmes

Edits part 2

I have just spent some 4 hours updating the Dirk Maggs website pages, and the end results is that to the casual user there is no difference, but the number of things that I have altered and what's not you would think there should be lots of visible changes.

oh well.

Site updates are not complete there is still lots to do.

Website Nav

I have had a series of website since the very early days of the WWW. I had thought that I had solved for my websites the problem of navigating around the sites even if you come to the site via another page and not the front door.

Since I move the main Dirk Maggs website to a databased one, I have found that I don't like the way it allows me to set up the sites navigation system. This could be me in not understanding how the programme works or it could be that the programme just doesn't offer what I want or what I want is just not possible with a database driven website.

You might shout read the manual, well yes I would if there was one and that it covered what I need to know, may be what I want to do is so straight forward that it appears obvious to one and all, except me

More head scratching is needed I thinks.

The Dirk Maggs website did get edited yesterday so it is a step nearer to be back to where it was before the changeover.

Edits

I have had some time, not a lot of it , it has to be said and have got my finger out and done some work on the Dirk Maggs Website, which has been static for a while as other things in real life have got in the way, such as son braking his ankle very badly and then not having a good time under general anaesthetic.

All of which does tend to steal free time.

So as I was saying I have had some time to look at the Dirk Maggs Website of mine, and as you will know if you have rad this blog, earlier in the year I changed over to a web-host with more storage and all that sort of stuff.

The idea was to have the Dirk Maggs website sat in a database, and that is what I have done or am doing if the truth be told.

Progress is not been good due to all the above and also because the website layout and setting up has had to me a bit of a learning curve.

The end result it that at this time most of the website has been copied across to the new one but and this is a big but some stuff has been broken by the move.

One of the reasons for stuff getting broken is that I have yet to work out a good navigation system for the new site, I also have to work out if I want to have full screens of screens with a menu bar down the side on them.

It turns out that these are not easy to sort out and the help system given for the software that I am using is not to forthcoming on how to sort the problems that I have with the navigation. One of the problems is that I have a lot of pages and that they have very specific ways of being organised which appears not to help with the type of navigation system I need and what the programme can provide.

The other thing that got broken by the move of stuff from the hand created site to the database site is that all my internal links and pictures are broken and do not work.

This means that I will have go through every page and put back the images and also to redo all the links, this will not be a five minute job, but then the site was not built in 5 minutes either.

The number of hits that the Dirk Maggs website gets has dropped off as well.

Nearly Done

So 2009 is nearly all done, lots of things have been done, lots has not. I suppose 2010 will be the same, I suppose that I will not be the only one looking forward and backwards as it seems it's something that a lot of folk do at this time of year.

I do wonder if it does you any good all this reflection, and I supposed it must do otherwise lots of people just would do it the once and then give up.

So I think there are a few things that I want to do next year, I just wonder if I will get them all done.

1. is to finish moving the Dirk Maggs website to its new home
2. is to hand over to James Follett the website that I have being doing for over 5 years to him.
3. is to finish a book which book not a clue but a book all the same, which would be good.
4. is to actually get down and compose some music, as it's something I like to do but for one reason or another have not done for some time now.
5. is to enjoy taking pictures again with the camera.
6. is a bit of a cheat in that I already do this but do want to keep doing it and that is to keep reading.
7. is to listen to music and just enjoy it for what it is and not try and work out how it was done.
8. is to have holidays that you can be relaxed at
9. is to update the family tree, I did a lot of work on it a few years ago and then it all sort of stopped for one reason or another.
10. is to just enjoy what I have got and not what I haven't.

As you can see a large list just how many of these goals I will do will be interesting, as some are easier to do than others but they are all things that I do want to do.

2009

So it's getting very near to the end of 2009 and what a lot of different things have happened over the year, some good some not so but overall apart form some nasty weather not a bad year overall.

I hate to try and even think what 2010 is going to be like, one thing that I think I can be certain about is that it will be nothing like how I can think of it now this minute that's for sure.

I do wonder how many blog entry's I will do next year and I think that the answer is it does not matter, I shall just do them when I want.

Boxing Day

So its Boxing Day here in the UK, which is good as its a day off and also no where else do they have a Boxing Day.

Xmas

is wishing a merry christmas to all

How they used to say it

Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας

Weather

Good news is that a bit of a thaw is going on, I for one am very happy about this.

Good News

Some time today Ty will be home from hospital which is good for him us and I think the hospital, as I am sure there are people with far more serious problems who are in need of his bed

Work

No more work this year ys!

Ty

Ty is still in hospital after breaking his ankle, we hope that he can be home tomorrow, as hospitals and him don't agree with him.

A good phrase would be hospitals are toxic to him.

Snow & Ty

Well the snow started at 12ish here in Hampshire and did not stop. The result is that Caz had been on the M3 for 3 hours and Donna is stuck on the Farnborough road for 1 hour and she is only going a distance of 5 miles.

Ty is still in Hospital and it looks like he will not be let out until Wendsday some time so all in all the weather has a lot to answer for.

Hurt

I am the parent of two children called Tyrone and Charlene, now Ty as we call him is the 1St born and hats had an interesting life in that he has Asapers syndrome ( not to sure how much) any way he is for various reasons without a job, so today what happens to him he breaks his ankle in 3 places, I am told that it is a serious break in that he will need to have surgery.

As a parent this is worrying to me, I know my son is 23 but still I am worried for him, will it go okay, the date and the time of his surgery is not yet known as one of the problems with ankle injury's is the swelling frank goodness that his pain is under control at this time.

I have just heard that they are x-raying him again why?

see I am worrying about all of this!

I feel for him as tonight he was going out to see Avatar the film and have a meal with the friends that he has mad( this is a big event for someone with aspers).

I am told that ankle injury are one of the more painful injury's you can have so the next six to eight weeks are not going to be very nice to Tyrone.

I do hope that he is out of hospital over Xmas

lets hope so.

By the way he broke his ankle slipping on ice.

Global What?

I do wonder as I sit here looking at the weather station gauge sitting at minus 4 C and think what global warming?

Winter Solstice

So the mid winter day will so be with us I am not sure if it is the 21 st or the 22 nd but which ever day it is one thing that is for certain is that the nights will so start to get shorter which means summer is coming!

This is some thing that I can say I am very happy about, as I think one the whole I like summer more, not for the sunshine and the warm days and nights but for all the daylight and the blue skies which is something that I miss in the winter.

I do wonder if at the winter solstice there will be any one at Stone or wood henge at 8 in the morning, which I suppose is far more civilised than the summer solstice which I think sunrise is at 4 am!

Any way I am looking forward to more daylight and blue skies!

212

I have just noticed that this is the 212th blog of this year which is a record. The last time I had done so many posts was back in 2006! so if I keep doing blogs at this rate I might hit 220!