Since my exams I have had a lot to do, but much of it has been general admin stuff: not really inspiring. However, in the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to consider what really inspires me, and a few people have helped me through the thought process.

Last week I went to a meeting of Christan entrepreneurs which considers the role the church can play within running successful and ethical businesses. There I talked to a gentleman who works with business startups in Birmingham about the book ‘Now discover your strengths’ and the associated online strengths finder test. He took the test a while ago, and although finding no startling revelation about himself, it did allow his to reassess his priorities in light of what he enjoyed.

I recently talked to an old friend on the phone, who explained to me how since her term had finished she had been learning all the world’s countries and their capitals. This struck a cord in me, because since organising my trip to South Africa I decided that I should know all the countries in Africa and something about the geography of the area, and have been trying to learn them.

In the past few days, one of my housemates has started playing the guitar. I have still not been able to overcome my first hurdle (spelling guitar!) but I have been inspired to give it a go. I have no idea how long this attempt will last, but time will tell. I’m currently on the lookout for songs that I know that consist only of A,C,D,G and E: Bryan Adams and The Corrs are scoring highly, although both have nasty bar cords in them occasionally.

Many people do not admit to like schooling, but I love learning, I like knowing things and look forward to a challenge, and I don’t think I am alone.

For the past few months I have been working on a project codenamed motortrace which is a piece of server software which allows real time tracking of cars, caravans and other equipment. Previous journies can be viewed and animated on the map, and detailed reports generated. Driver mileage and speeds can be monitored and analysed.

The software is suitable for most tracking applications, from wanting to know the current whereabouts of a single caravan or cherised vehicle to managing a whole fleet of trucks.

This is an exciting project to be part of, and because the mapping engine uses the Google maps api, in order to comply with the Google api the website is free to use! It should soon be possible to sign up for a free account and start tracking your car from your PC or mobile phone. Watch this space!

It felt like it might never come, but here it is, finally! Eight exams later I can emerge from my procrastination state to complete the many tasks that have been waiting for this very moment.

Forms for stuff I am doing over the summer and a call to return off the bank wondering why I have no money are just a few of the many tasks I now have to complete. At least I have almost made a to-do list- virtual post-it notes on my computer desktop.

Anyway, back to the exams: Six of the eight exams were, perhaps as I arrogantly put it ‘A walk in the park on a sunny day’, one was mediocre and one was really quite nasty. I don’t think I would have done badly in it, but I annoyed myself how much I had forgotten since last year.

Roll on the summer!

It was a while since I last posted an update on my bike project. On 1st May I had to give a presentation to a few folks in the Engineering department and this spurred me on to make some progress.

Over the past eight months many designs were come upon, some more sensible than others, but each sporting at least one good idea. Here are a few of those designs:

The final design takes aspects of many of the ideas, and is currently under construction.

I would just like to say thanks to all those that wished me a happy birthday and to those that made it to my BBQ. Special thanks to one particular friend who traveled over 300 miles in a silly car to be there.

For those that attended, it really did end with a bang. When I get photos of that infamous bottle rocket traveling at 70mph I will post them on here!

This summer, between 9th July and 4th August I am going on a WEC Trek to Brakpan, in South Africa.

WEC Trek is the short-term programme of WEC International. They sends individuals and teams overseas to participate in sharing their faith, practical help, and language learning alongside WEC workers.

There is a team of 11 of us going, and we are going to be helping with a mixture of activities including helping to run a children’s camp, helping out at an orphanage, practical work like painting and doing some work in the local church.

I am really looking forward going and sharing God’s love with the kids at Rainbows of Hope, and hope I can be a great encouragement to local church and community.

I would greatly appreciate your backing through prayer and financially if you feel you wish to support this work. I am not doing this trip in my own strength, but through God’s, who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. [Eph 3:20]

Most browsers still do not display CSS3 rounded corners (border-radius), although Mozilla Firefox has implemented its own version of corners, -moz-border-radius.

This is an attempt to recreate rounded corners, which work on most browsers without resorting to images.

The theory is that if you nest a few div’s each with differing borders, then you can create a rounded effect. The upside it that most browsers respect border widths, but the downside is that you end up with more div’s in your html than you really need. So much for separating content and style.

Individually:

A 75×75px div with a 15px left and top border, and a 60px bottom and right border

A 30×30px div with a 15px left and top border, and a 30px bottom and right border

A 0×0px div with a 15px left and top border, and a 15px bottom and right border

When Nested:

Make the colours the same:

A more useable size

Whilst the large one is nice, and we can even make circles by putting 4 of them together, the application in my mind needs to make them somewhat smaller

It is important that the ratio between the div widths/heights and border widths stays the same. Here each value is 2/5 of the one above. (i.e. 30px square)

Or even smaller…(although smaller ones may as well be made with only 1 nested div, this one has 3)

Or even smaller…

One for each corner

Now, all that is needed is to make 4 of these things, and put them in each corner of a page.

After missing “The great climate change swindle” on channel 4 yesterday I decided I was going to watch it on 4OD, hoping that it might help me with an essay that I have to write for tomorrow as part of an energy studies course.

I visited the channel four website and find that they do not support anything other than windows. Helpful, when my desktop doesn’t ‘do’ windows.

I fire up my laptop, connect it to the internet and begin downloading the executable from the 4OD website. Partway through the download my hard drive decides that it is full, so I delete a load of files that I don’t need. I really must get myself a bigger drive.

After successfully downloading the 4OD executable, I run it. It decides I need the .net framework, and proceeds to download that (not a small download at nearly 200MB). After taking an age to install the .net framework which I never asked for, I get told that I need to update windows. Something to do with needing the latest media player to play the 4OD stuff. In order to download the latest media player, I needed to install Windows Genuine Advantage (don’t get me started about this, I hate the way micro$oft assume everyone guilty until proven innocent, and can get away with putting spyware on machines under the guise of ‘genunine advantage’).
With all this software installed, my computer decided It needed a reboot, because clearly updating a media player is such an integral part of the system that it needs to reboot. (Another one of the many reasons why I don’t like windoze: “A flea on the other side of the world has just farted, please reboot”)

After the reboot, I was informed that I needed to download some more spyware – DRM software. The dilogue box gave me no explaination of what DRM was, but I decided to let it anyway as I guessed 4OD would not work without such big brother tactics.

Eventually after another reboot, the 4OD service was working, and I could click on the icon and get a full screen of a channel 4 website, with the option to download films. I searched for “The great climate change swindle” and was greeted with a ‘rent for 99p’. After spending 4 hours trying to install the silly software, I think I deserved it free. However, by the time I had installed 4OD I had already managed to find the same film on youtube, and watched it.

So was the effort worth it? No. I now have a computer that is installed with lots of spyware, and software that does not want to remove itself. When I install a bigger hard drive in my laptop (hopefully very soon) 4OD is not on my to-install list – in fact, I will steer well clear of it. Bill Gates will be lucky if I even bother to put windoze on it, even when I have a legal licence!

Today we went on a uni trip to Hockerton Housing Project. It was organised by Colin, who in lectures has always seemed very enthusiastic about this housing development. After visiting for myself I can see why!

“The Hockerton Housing Project is the UK’s first earth sheltered, self-sufficient ecological housing development. Project members live a holistic way of life in harmony with the environment, in which all ecological impacts have been considered and accounted for. The residents of the five houses generate their own clean energy, harvest their own water and recycle waste materials causing no pollution or carbon dioxide emissions. The houses are amongst the most energy efficient, purpose built dwellings in Europe.” [link to their website]

Before I arrived, I had mixed feelings about this place. I assumed that anyone that lives underground must be a hippy who lives an ethical but boring life, and needs regular large spliff of ganja to maintain the illusion that all is well.

On arrival, apart from the coach almost getting stuck in the lane we were greeted by a three fairly normal looking people (they were normal when you were expecting hobbits) and one other person which I am reliably informed was the infamous Colin himself. We were split into four groups and led on a tour around the few acres that the settlement owned.

The land looked well tended, and the few sheep that they had seemed well looked after. In places there were quite a few weeds, but I guess they are not keen on the monoculture that we are so accustomed too.

They grow 80% of the veg they eat themselves, and a decent proportion of their own fruit. They produce pretty much all of the electricity they use, and eat their own reared meat. If all the world stopped, I am not sure they would really notice!

What surprised me most about the place is how normal it all was. Yes, there was grass on the roof, and the insides of the homes were quite quaint but they certainly were not dark, damp caves I might have been expecting. They were large, light and airy – and plenty warm enough too.

Inside were telephones, toasters, computers, even broadband wireless routers! These cave dwellers seemed to have taken our western lifestyle, made a couple of excellent changes to the construction of their house, learnt how to grow a few herbs and live happily ever after.

I was very impressed. The guy who took us on our tour told us that when they were built, they only cost about £60k. Ok, that was 8 years ago now and they did do much labour themselves, but seriously that is very little when you consider the intelligent design that has gone into these buildings and the fact that they cost peanuts to run.

After the tour there was a short presentation, which was quite informal but certainly interesting. I very nearly bought a book on green design, but refrained after I realised that I spend enough of my time procrastinating, let alone designing again the house I want to self build.

All in all it was a very interesting trip, and one which has really made me think about how the construction of houses has to improve – perhaps not though legislation and the dreaded part L but through people wanting to change the way they live by embracing new technology and materials in a traditional and sensible energy efficient setting.

My only concern is for my good friend Steve the plumber, who installs central heating. This house (and my house when I build it) has none!

Most people that live in and around Manchester will be aware that the council is considering tackling congestion in Manchester city center by charging anyone within 30 miles of the centre for leaving their front doors.

There is an e-petition asking the govenment to stop the Manchester congestion charging happening, but being realistic I think something is needed, and for a congestion charge to be levied within the inner ring road might be sensible. For this reason I have not signed the petition.

I have no doubt that this extreme plan will reduce the number of cars on the road, and make them nice and clear for the polluting 4×4 tractors driven by those that can afford the charges. All the worthless poor people will be crowded onto cattle trucks and bussed around. Job done. The few peasant cars that remain will be forced to use the cobbled back streets, and cover their big brother radio tags in tin foil to stop them transmitting.

What is more likely is that this is a scare tactic, which goes something like this:

1. Create a very exagerated idea, and publish it, making it look serious.
2. Back down and make lots of concessions, introducting a much more ‘mild’ plan
3. Everyone accepts and even welcomes the ‘mild’ plan.

However, if you look back though the times when spin like this has happened in the past, you will find that this is only neccesary when the ‘mild’ plan would not be accepted initially. Therefore I suspect that whatever the Government/Local Council have in mind is a fairly ambitious and controversial, but slightly less so than the current plan.

What worries me therefore is not the current plan, but what the agenda lurking behind it is.