My Broadband Revolution

Thanks to Three

2011-05-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

How lucky I was to win the IPhone at the end of the 6th National Digital Conference at Old Billingsgate last Thursday! Last year I tweeted and attended the conference virtually on the web. As a Race Online Digital Champion, this year I attended the conference in Real Life. My next posts will be about my experiences in starting to use a new Iphone4.

I have never used any Apple products, I do not "do" mobiles and I try to use one platform for each of my web applications. The IPhone has changed all that. It has been a steep learning curve. The first challenge was to get started and to get used to the new interface,"my fingers".

Even the Sim Card was a challenge as the little drawer where you put the Sim Card is now on the right hand side of the Iphone. More trouble because I have a 64-bit Windows computer and Apple users normally use 32-bit machines. I had to find a special version of ITunes which is the driver for my Iphone.

Every day now, I can plug the Iphone into the computer so that the Iphone is sychronised with my computer by using ITunes. So I have made a good start and Kenny from 3 has helped me to set up the free One-Plan that I won with the computer.

I can now use the telephone, I can use Skype and I have added another VoiceMail application called Viber. I ought to be OK but unfortunately, there is no 3G reception in my home. The Iphone will be fine when I am travelling but at home I will be using Wifi with Skype or Viber. I have made a good start and I look forward to many happy hours. I will blog about my further progress As Iphone4 says "IT HAS CHANGED EVERYTHING"!!"

Do I work at home?

2010-11-30T15:03:00.000-08:00

As a consultant, I am involved in several projects, where social media are used within an online community. One of these is Begrand, a website, supported by the government for grandparents, where I am on the Advisory Board. In the picture, I had just met the Green Goddess, Diana Moran on the Begrand stand at the Retirement Show. She invited me to join one of her exercise classes.

Begrand use their own website building tools and so they are quickly able to respond to my suggestions to adapt their website. This is rewarding work. Recently, I suggested that grandparents need more help to know the meanings of the headings on the Main Menu. Now when you hover over the icons with your mouse, there is help for you to decide whether to click or not. I find this rewarding work. For some of this work, I can manage with the broadband speeds that I get at home but there are no chat rooms, no video conferencing and no videos to help members to use the site. Begrand are unable expect that their users to get a speed that is sufficient for such applications and they are reluctant to add goodies that cannot be used by most of their members.

Broadband in West Sussex

2010-11-29T15:46:00.000-08:00

I have been invited to comment on a questionnaire from the West Sussex County Council on the ways in which I personally use Broadband and why I need a faster service. They have provided 13 possible uses and so I will examine these in my next posts.

My Broadband Revolution

2010-11-28T11:10:00.000-08:00

The title of my blog has been changed from The Broadband Revolution to My Broadband Revolution. My blog has always been about the ways in which Broadband has changed my life. Now, I also publish a daily paper about Broadband which contains articles from all over the world about Broadband and so The Broadband Revolution is now the story of changes in the rest of the world.

Why I want Next Generation Access (NGA) Broadband?

2010-11-27T01:52:00.000-08:00

I attended the Penrith & the Border Broadband Conference two months ago and I now understand why we also need faster (NGA) here in West Sussex. I have a speed of 2-3 MB (download) and I thought that I was doing quite well. This may be OK for an enthusiast like me but it is not good enough to convince others in my community; for them it must be easier and even more exciting before they understand why we need speeds up to 100Mb (NGA) now. My reasons for NGA are as follows:

For the Family. Did you see the BBC video about the launch of Virgin Media? My 13 year old neighbour tells me that it is OK when he is on line alone but no use when the rest of the family are on line and want to multitask.

For Consultations. Telemedicine is developing fast in rural areas and in most medical consultation you are not touched. But why not other sorts of consultation on line?

For Video Conferencing Many of us are excited about Skype because you can see who you are talking to. I want to look around the room, share photos and videos as we talk and invite other members of the family to join in. Video Conferencing will also transform talks and lectures in all sorts of ways.

For my Old Age. As I watch people get older, they do less. I really can look forward to doing as much as before as long as I can keep up with the each new opportunity.

But there is a Fifth Reason and I don't know what this is. Some people call this the Killer App and others suggest that this is just Social Media. All the time there are new opportunities. Did I ever imagine a month ago that I would be publishing a Newsletter called the Broadband Revolution every day with hundreds of the latest articles about Broadband? And you can just click and read it!! Or that in one click you can find My Favourite NGA Websites to find out about Next Generation Broadband (tagged "nov910" in Delicious)

The Jumping Frogs Problem

2009-11-20T14:14:00.000-08:00

The Jumping Frogs problem is an old pub favourite and someone asked about it on Twitter recently. I cannot remember whether I have ever seen this solution anywhere!

The Jumping Frogs

How many moves does it take for the red frogs (R) and the yellow (Y) frogs to change places?

There is always one empty lily pad. At any time, there is only one frog of each colour that can move to the empty lily pad. If you call out the colour of the frog that is to move, then you will get a sequence of letters R and Y. Now write down the sequence of numbers that shows many times you should call each colour.

Thus 1233321 gives the sequence RYYRRRYYYRRRYYR and this is the sequence for the three frogs problem. The answer is 15 moves. For the two frogs problem the sequence is 12221 which gives RYYRRYYR (8 moves)

For the n frogs problem, by adding the numbers 1,2,3...n...n..3,2,1 and so the number of moves is (n+1) squared -1.

Twitter in 25 Tweets

2009-10-08T08:24:00.001-07:00

EXPLAINING TWITTER IN 25 TWEETS

WHAT IS TWITTER?

You see the faces of people you know with notes of what they are writing.
You are declaring an emotion and expecting a human response
Twitter is the most effective marketing tool on the planet.
Twitter has become something unexpectedly important—a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now
Twitter to get in touch and blogs to get to know -the best networking tool in the world

MY BASIC RULES OF TWITTER

Think hard about your thumbnail and biography link.
Start following people judiciously with no obligation to follow all who follow you.
Start tweeting, aim at at least 5 tweets a day, a good experience, a question, something about me and two replies or retweets.
Learn to use @, RT, DM and #

WHAT YOU GET WITH TWITTER

A flow of tweets with no inbox problem and no need to reply
You dip into notes from people you care about
Twitter allows you to 'rewind' conversations had by others. It is a stream you can dip your toe into.
You have your personal individual flow of tweets
An asymmetric connection - you can follow celebs without drowning them
People behave civilly; if they don't like it they go away

WHAT POLITICIANS ARE SAYING ABOUT TWITTER

Politicians can be liberated from traditional media and the culture of spin It gives them their voice again. It could be a chaotic election (The Labour Twitter Czar)
Don't twitter if you are not prepared to go places that you don't expect (Ed Balls)
The trouble with Twitter, the instantness of it – too many twits might make a twat. (David Cameron on Absolute Radio)

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT TWITTER

Adults are just catching up to what teens have been doing for years
A Twanker is an egocentric individual who twitters only for one-way broadcasting about their greatness.
A Twidiot is an individual who uses Twitter only to talk about insignificant things that noone cares about.

AND TO SUM UP

Twitter is all about the coffee: when you have coffee you are communicating with people: think about who you drink coffee with and in what context. (James Clay)
If a tenth of what you say is repeatable or retweeted, you must be doing it right.
In a remote part of the Twitter network, very weak signals that are good, get picked up like the tweet about the air crash on the Hudson River
Twitter is a secret beach for web surfers, Follow the twitterers and they will show you where the best surf is.

Silverwaver

October 9th 2009

Sussex in Bygone Days

2009-03-04T14:42:00.000-08:00

My great great grandfather was just 26 when he invited five of his friends to bring oxen to Brighton. With a team of 80 oxen, they were able to drag the postmill a distance of two miles and later they undertook some longer journeys. Mills had to be moved when houses were being built in Brighton and no longer was there sufficent wind.

The event is recorded in this extract for Sussex in Bygone Days (1906) Reminiscences of Dr Nathaniel Blaker (1835-1921) about the oxen in Sussex c1845. "Ox-Teams in my younger days were considered essential and most important indeed on the South Downs, at all events, almost as much agricultural work was done by oxen as by horses......."

John Betjeman at St Pancras Station

2009-02-19T04:12:00.000-08:00

As I was standing on St Pancras Station I was approached by a train driver who offered to show me the new statues that have been recently placed there. It was John Betjeman who led the campaign against pulling the Victorian station down. I have used this as the cover picture for one of my albums on Picasaweb. Picasa 3 now enables you to add text to your photos which is a great improvement

New Year's Day

2009-01-01T15:08:00.000-08:00

In Greek mythology, Janus is the God of beginnings and endings and so Janus, after whom January was named, has two faces, looking forward and looking back. My posts have not been very regular during the last few weeks and my New Year's resolution is to blog more regularly.
I have been given a wonderful Christmas present. My first video camera is a little gadget like a mobile telephone called a Flip video. The new version of Picasa, Picasa 3, has a new feature that enables you to store your videos with your other pictures and to edit them.

Whale watching - Sharing videos

2008-11-28T01:13:00.001-08:00

I do not often get excited about videos but this video is awesome. I had forgotten that when I signed up to UTube, I had also recorded a few of my favourite videos and so I was pleased to see a message from UTube this morning in order to say that one of my favourites had been updated. I was also sent some text so that I could embed it in this posting and share it with you easily.

Puzzles - Sharing my problems

2008-11-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

I am a compulsive puzzle and problem solver and the Books part of the Times on Saturday keeps me going for a long time. Today I got stuck on the last clue of the simple crossword. Eventually, being unable to solve "ornamental knots", I googled "list of knots" and found the Turk's Head, which is illustrated here.

A reader has recommended the following two sites for solving crossword puzzles.

The Crossword Solver lets you search for words where you know some of the letters and I use if also for the Codeword, where numbers represent letters. OneLook's Reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. I have just found a site called Crossword Bebop that will keep me interested for a long while. It includes a good video on Twitter.

Social Web Sites - A pause for comment

2008-11-06T04:48:00.000-08:00

This is my fortieth post and it is time to draw breath. My last fourteen posts have all been about social web sites. When I began writing about social web sites, I did not know where I was going. I was being buffeted along by all the web providers, Google, Microsoft, BT etc, who all want to sell us their services.

Now I am a bit clearer. Social web sites are all sites for sharing things. We all have to make decisions about what we may want to share. There are some cautionary tales about Facebook and other social web sites where people have begun to share more than they intended.

My ideas are evolving as I talk to people on and off the web. One friend of mine asks "Why should I want to share any information on the web" What you share will be a personal decision but it is worth looking at some of the new opportunities. You might begin by considering if you would like to share your rubbish as in Freecycle.

No.14 Twitter - Sharing texting

2008-11-05T07:45:00.000-08:00

They say that Twitter will replace Blogging and Blogging will be a passing phase.

Twittering is new to me. I have been getting my first Tweet from Radio 4, but I only have one friend to send my tweets to. When I get a tweet from Radio 4 is good, I am alerted to a recent item in a Radio 4 programme and I receive a link so that I can play the repeat.

I am not generally keen on texting and mobile telephones, but twittering gives me more control. No more bleeps from my mobile. You do not even need to sign in to the Twitter site in the usual way to get your tweets. Just sit at your computer and you will see the Tweets arriving in a long stream in your Favourites folder.

No.13 Slideshare - Sharing presentations

2008-11-04T15:32:00.000-08:00

Slideshare , a social website for sharing presentations, is a unfortunate name at a time of a falling stock market. A prize is currently being offered for the best 30-slide Powerpoint presentation about the Credit Crisis.
Slideshare gives me a chance to make a collection of the best Powerpoint presentations that I have found, recommend them to others and to develop my own presentations and share them. I hasten to add that I do not post the presentations of others on the web without permission. As for many other social web sites, you can store all your favourite presentations on line and then you can choose which to share with other groups of people. As with the videos on YouTube, the quality of the presentations found on this web is very variable. It is therefore useful to store them with comments and recommendations. Again this is on my To Do list

No. 12 Google Docs - Sharing Documents

2008-11-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

Here l have changed my choice of my favourite site for the sharing of documents. I have been trying to choose between Google Docs, which seems to be designed for managing your documents and Office Live, which seems to be designed for Work Groups. As elsewhere, Google is competing with Microsoft for the market in social sites and I think that Google are in the lead at present. I have also considered a site called Zoho, which I had found useful to share the draft of a book and emphases the advantages for businesses of working on line.
I have chosen Google Docs because it is easier to use and it shares features with my other Google sites. It is no disadvantage that at present you have to upload your documents one at a time and sort them out into folders. It is great that you can work off line and then your online document is automatically updated. It is great that you can insert hotlinks to other web pages and elsewhere as well as email links.
The Google Documents are in a special Google format but wordprocessing documents, spreadsheets and PDFs can all be loaded in and saved again. I also am looking forward to exploring the use of "google forms".
You can see this document loaded on line in my Google Docs and you can move in and out of it using the hotlinks. I set new pages to "open in a new window" so that you can get back to the original document more easily. Hotlinks are not popular in the business world because all the web sites are designed to make sure that you stay on the original site. It is good if you browse and wander into other sites as long as you return to mine. As well as using Google Docs in order to share my documents with "the world", I want to use Google Docs in my small workgroups and to store my private collection of presentations that I do not want to share with everyone.

No.11 Google Reader - Sharing Information

2008-11-04T14:37:00.000-08:00

Many websites publish lists of updates—called "feeds"—that indicate when they've posted new content. When you subscribe to a feed, Google Reader monitors that feed and keeps track of all updates.

Google Reader therefore enables you to organise your Blogs and other information and your contacts have posted. I

No.10 Library Things - Sharing Books

2008-10-11T15:31:00.000-07:00

I found this site several years ago. I thought that I might want to record all the books in my library there. However the work involved was much too great. However it is great to record the books that you are reading at present. I like reading all the reviews but I usually save them until I have read the book.

No.9 Tribal Pages - Sharing Family History

2008-10-10T15:30:00.000-07:00

There are many family history sites where you can post information for others to share. I found this site from a new friend on Vancouver Island whom I had met on the web. I like this site particularly because I can add new stories about the family and pictures and it easy for other members of the family to share this information.

No.8 Freecycle - Sharing Rubbish

2008-10-09T15:30:00.001-07:00

The Freecycle Network is made up of more than 4000 groups with nearly six million members across the globe. It is described as a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It was a surprise to find that there are more than 4000 subscribers in the group in Chichester and more than 2500 in the group in Havant. I discovered the network in a Sunday newspaper and although there are so usersliving near me, many of whom I know, none of them had mentioned it to me. Perhaps they do not want to tell their friends what they do with their rubbish!! I am very pleased to find the site and I am now getting rid of objects for which I would like to find a new home there as well as finding some things that I would like.

No.7 Delicious - Sharing Websites

2008-10-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

Delicious is a social web site for sharing web sites and web pages.
Like many surfers, unless I can find the web page that I want in two or three clicks I often do not bother. I have tried to make it as easier to find web pages on my home computer. Many computers use the Google site as their home page and this gives good access to many web pages. Even better, Google Desktop helps you to find the pages that you have visited before. I will try to demonstrate this on the club computer, although it is not as friendly as my home computer.
I use a three-pronged approach . Firstly I have a home page with six tabs, The home page of the Betaplus Club site is my first tab. I keep an eye on my mail on line as I need to look at the Spam there on most days in case I have missed any messages and so I have tabs for BT Yahoo Mail and Google Mail I have my three web sites which I also advertise as a signature in my emails. They are pictures on Picasaweb, my blogs on Blogger and my family history research at Tribal Pages. I am often multitasking so that when I am on line, I move between these six sites, sometimes cutting and pasting between them as they are all sites where I will be putting in some information.
Secondly I have a Favourites Bar on Internet Explorer. On Internet Explorer 8 the Links bar in Favourites has been renamed and it is now easier to control. You will see that I have ten folders there, but I have also added a folder for today’s lecture called Social Websites and a folder called Home. This means that I can export my Favourites so that they can be used as Bookmarks on another computer.
Bookmarks are favourite sites that can be held on line and so can be used when you are travelling around or can be shared with other people. Thirdly I am using the Delicious site to hold bookmarks. The advantage of using Delicious are that you can use Tags to help you find my favourite sites more easily. For example, if I use my favourites bar to find a crossword site, I need to look in my folder Games and I sometimes forget which folder to search. On Delicious, I can search Geoffrey’s Bookmarks using a search box, but I can also use one of the 60 or so tags to get there more quickly.
You may be wondering if you have the energy or interest to set up your tags. You would be able to share my bookmarks and so they will all have tags. They will enable you to find all the Betaplus links, tagged as betaplus, tagged with the headings on the Betaplus links page and tagged in other ways as well. Let us see if we can find my talk today using Delicious.

No.6 Facebook- Sharing Everything

2008-10-07T04:29:00.000-07:00

I think that the success of Facebook seems to depend upon its viral effect. You can invite your friends to see you inforkation of all kinds, you pictures, your interests. There are many gadgets to enable you to do this and they are increasing all the while. Almost all the things that can be shared on my other thirteen sits can be shared on Facebook

There are many sites like Plaxo, Linkedin and MySpace that enable you to link up with people all over the world. If you are looking for a job, put your cv on Linkedin will help you. For professionals the site called Plaxo may be better. If you are looking for a partner then try Adult Friendfinder.

In Facebook you can share everything but it has come rather low down in my list of top sites, because it caters mainly for younger people, I am also rather shy about sharing everything. It has recently been revamped. You can be clearer about how you are meant to be in control and what risks you may be taking.

No.5 YouTube - Sharing Videos

2008-10-06T04:28:00.000-07:00

Mark Pesce describes YouTube as a “sort of repository for all sorts of information, some of it delightful, some of it infuriating and some of it very very informative”.

Ariana Huffington claims that YouTube has dominated the recent US election and yet in 2004, YouTube had not even been invented.

No.4 Blogger - Sharing thoughts

2008-10-05T04:27:00.000-07:00

Blog sites provide a personal space for people to write. My own blog has been a sort of note book for web surfers rather than a personal diary. As you know, I have been using my blogs, My First Blog and the Broadband Revolution in order to help me plan talks and this talk is also being recorded in my blog. Sometimes I change my earlier posts in order to keep them up to date. I was very pleased to find that you can find my blog by typing “thebroadbandrevolution” (all one word) into Google and then my blog will open up when you click on I’m feeling lucky. Blogger is linked to other Google sites and so I can sign in to them all in the same way. A blog is a social web site because anyone in the world can access a blog and add comments.
Reading the Lady, the other day, (I’ll read that again) I was especially impressed by Blaugustine, the blog of Augustine, the alter ego of the writer Natalie d’Arbeloff, which she now publishes on her own web site. She gets many comments from readers. She says that she did not begin her cyber journey until 2001 and now includes satirical comic strips, paintings, photos, video and an ongoing illustrated autobiography in her blog which has won a national competition. Perhaps it is the most notable feature of a good computer application that it brings together in one parcel all sorts of different things that you didn’t realise were related. Sometimes this is called “convergence”.

No.3 Wikipedia

2008-10-04T04:26:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia, my No. 3 site, is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I described in an earlier post how I had signed into the site in order to edit some of the posted articles, including one on Chichester Cross. Wikipedia is a social site where people can share information. There was some concern about the reliability of this information but is almost as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica. I seach it many times each day, adding"wiki" to my Google search request. Sections on living people are improving rapidly and are a most useful source for questions about the media. Today I wanted to know more about Itshak Perlmann, the virtuoso violinist, who contracted polio when he was four. I often have a Wikipedia page open as I listen to the radio or the television.

No.2 Picasaweb

2008-10-03T01:45:00.000-07:00

No.2 in my list of top social web sites must be Picasaweb, where you can see my albums. Half of the albums in my online collection are private family photos while the public albums enable me to share photos with friends and acquaintances. Albums can be plotted on the world map and captions can be added. Picasa is easy to use and does two jobs in one, the organisation and the simple manipulation of pictures. I can now update my web albums automatically by using Picasa 3. Picasaweb has completely changed the way in which I take photos and my enthusiasm for photography at home and on holiday.

No.1 Genes Reunited

2008-10-02T01:35:00.000-07:00

It was quite hard to decide which would be my No.1 Social web site. However Genes Reunited has had the greatest influence upon my activities. Some four years ago I posted my family tree file and every few days my names are matched to the other family trees on the Genes Reunited web site. I receive an email that alerts me to people who have possible matches on their tree and we start a correspondence on line. At first, we send messages without revealing our email addresses. As we become more confident, we use emails and sometimes postal addresses and telephone calls. It is weird that I often cannot remember if we have spoken before when we first talk on the telephone. I have met many new distant relatives all over the world in the this way.
Let me tell you about ne of my new friends, Pat. lives on the western coast of Vancouver Island overlooking the Pacific. I met Pat through Genes Runited and Pat has gathered together a group of people from different part of the world, John in Australia, and Julie in Rainham in Essex as well as Adam in Newcastle and Tony in Sheffield whom I knew a bit already. We are interested in the history of several interconnected families as we are all distantly related. We are a mixed company, housewives, university lecturers, civil servants, some whose work I know nothing of and me.
When I first met Pat, I was not sure whether it was he-Pat or she-Pat. She did not let me know. I am now getting to know Pat socially. I know that she and her husband have been married for forty years and they are just about to take off in a mobile home, but she has promised to continue her efforts in family history and to keep in touch while she is travelling the world.

Accelerators

2008-10-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

I have recently installed the Beta version of Internet Explorer 8. There are some wonderful new features and there are videos to help you how to understand them. The new browser is said to be faster, safer and more reliable. I particularly like the new "accelerators" which are little arrows that appear when you select things. When you select a place name you can get very quickly to a map using Livemaps. I love the Aerial View.

Easier tagging

2008-06-24T02:00:00.000-07:00

The Blogger program is better than it was last year. Editing pages is easy with Blogger and I have edited some of my earlier posts as they were in some way out of date. Blogger now makes it easier to insert tags so you can select the posts for each tag. Having reached my 25th posting on this and so I need to improve my tagging.

Restorative Justice

2008-06-23T02:00:00.000-07:00

Two recent items on Radio Four reminded me how little I know about prisons and ex-prisoners. Peter Woolf, a former prisoner, has written a book about his experiences. The government is adopting a scheme called Circles of Support which was started by Quakers in order to help convicted paedophiles to return to society.
After Googling "Circles of Support, I found this interesting web site on Restorative Justice and the ten minute video made by Peter Woolf and Will Riley is worth watching. http://www.restorativejustice.org.uk/?Welcome

Google is watching me

2008-06-22T02:00:00.000-07:00

I was wondering how long it would be before Google found that I had begun blogging again. I posted a blog about Wimbledon last night and Google found it the next day. I use a Google alert for "Geoffrey Boys" so that I get an email to tell a page has been loaded to the web mentioning "Geoffrey Boys". I have just received an EMail to notify me about the Wimbledon page.

Wimbledon 2008

2008-06-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

I have been lucky enough to get some tickets for Court No 1 on Monday, which is the first day of the Championships. I reflected that I first went to Wimbledon nearly 60 years ago. It is easy now to look at the draws before the competition. I was able to look at the draw for the first round of the Gentleman's Singles and to read about the players that we may see.

The Sussex Barn

2008-06-20T15:35:00.000-07:00

We were planning to walk on the Sussex Downs yesterday. We often go to West Dean College in order to visit the exhibition at the Sussex Barn and to have some refreshments in the restaurant. Unfortunately I found there is no exhibition at present as they are preparing to exhibit some work from students.

St Kilda

2008-06-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

I have been watching a television programme about the island of St Kilda, probably the most remote island in the British Isles. New research suggests that the island became less fertile because of the farming methods. Noone has lived there since the 1930s.
St Kilda has a very good web site. I have this site open at present and so I can hear a recording of the waves crashing on the shore there.

The Snowdrop Trust

2008-06-18T15:11:00.000-07:00

Today I wanted to make a small donation to the Snowdrop Trust.
The Snowdrop Trust cares for children in their own homes who have a life threatening or terminal illness.
I was pleased to see that the Snowdrop Trust are listed on Just Giving as I have an account on this web site. My credit card is registered there and so I can make a donation with one click and certify that I am a tax payer who is using his own money.

Buying drink at Tesco

2008-06-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

It has been proposed that the legal age for buying drink in a supermarket should be increased. I went to Tesco's yesterday and I was surprised that there were no notices about the current legal age of 18 for buying drink there. I was moved to post a message on the Tesco blog about drinking You can click on the link to see this blog.

Back Blogging

2008-06-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

It is more than a year since my last post. I use the Internet every day and on some days I visit many different web sites. This time, I will make my blog posts much shorter and continue to post regularly. On Monday I had an email message reminding me to read the Oldie. If you click on the arrow in this link, you will find one of William Hague's more inspired moments at the despatch box.

Social Web Sites

2008-02-08T15:39:00.000-08:00

As I am giving a talk on Social Web sites, I have been reflecting on sites that I have used during the last five years. Social web sites are those where you can communicate with other people and share information with them. The growth of web sites like Facebook and UTube has been truly astonishing. Utube allows anyone anywhere to share videos with anyone else. Facebook used to be for college students but now has nearly 75000000 members and allows you to personalize your own profile, upload photos, and write messages to friends. My next posts will each be about the social web sites that I have visited and I will label them all as "social".

Please add your comments on your own experience of Social Web Sites so that I can include them in my talk.

A Cross Word

2007-04-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

Most days, I try to do the Times 2 Easy Crossword. I can usually do most of it but I usually have to turn to Google to complete the puzzle.
Yesterday I had problems though. I am not a film buff and I have had very few chemistry lessons and so I needed help with 5 across and with 3 down.
I clicked on my home page and typed "dark cinema genre" and the first two hits were from Amazon. The second one was a US site about the American Film Noir. I tried again and clicked on "I'm Feeling Lucky" and this time I read " Strictly speaking, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film." Nevertheless I wrote "Film Noir" in 5 across as it seemed to fit.
Then my difficulties began because when I typed in "metallic element with atomic number 88" , a click on I'm Feeling Lucky gave me a Free Dictionary with a page for Atomic Number 88 and I learned that metalllic element with atomic number 88 was "Radium"
This didn't fit with Film Noir and I had failed to complete the puzzle.
This morning I discovered the answer should have been Erbium whose Atomic Number is 68. Never mind, even the Times gets some things wrong!! Perhaps I should join the Times Crossword Club at £9.99 per year.

The Geffrye Museum

2007-04-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

I keep an eye on a few other blogs and so I have a list of Feeds among my favourites. When I click on my Feeds, I can see the latest posts for these other blogs.
Richard Mascall started blogging at about the same time as I did. We have a friendly rivalry and so we have been comparing notes. Richard uses Typepad for which he pays an annual subscription but I am using Blogger which is free.
He writes about many of his outings and recently he has been to the Geffrye Museum and so I was particularly interested. Here is Richard's Blog.

Chichester Cross

2007-03-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

What an extraordinary phenomenon is Wikipedia! It is an encyclopedia, created by web users, which can be altered by anyone who signs in to the site! One might imagine that it would contain a lot of inaccurate information but it is suggested that in some respects the information is more accurate than that in a published encyclopedia, being more up to date. Wikipedia is the biggest "multilingual free-content encyclopedia" with over two million articles.
I have been trying to find out about some buildings in Chichester, Chichester Cathedral and Chichester Cross. Not surprisingly there is a very good web site for Chichester Cathedral including its history, its present and information for visitors. One way find a relevant web site is to click on "I'm Feeling Lucky" using the Google Search Engine. For Chichester Cathedral, I'm Feeling Lucky gives you the Official Website, for Chichester you get The Chichester Web but for Chichester Cross, you get the Chichester Cross entry in Wikipedia.
I have signed into Wikipedia and made some changes to the entry for Chichester Cross. I wonder whether they will be altered further by the moderator and other authors. I have added something about an earlier wooden cross, the Caen stone and the reason for building the Cross, using information from recent books by Roy Morgan and Philip MacDougall.
The use of many hotlinks is one of the best features of Wikipedia but one of the hotlinks in the Chichester Cross site was to a potentially pornographic site. I have deleted it.
A more difficult problem was the misspelling of Bishop Storey. There is a separate entry in Wikipedia for Edward Story(sic) and so that spelling will have to be changed as well.
I can understand the fascination of writing for Wikipedia. I have found some most helpful entries, providing information that I could not find elsewhere.I can't imagine writing for Wikipedia without the speed of Broadband though. Where will it all end?

The Valley Diary

2007-03-29T02:34:00.000-07:00

Broadband has enabled me to make contact with people in different parts of the world. However it was a surprise to make contact with a local newsletter through this blog.
The printed Valley Diary is published monthly in the villages of Singleton, East Dean, West Dean, Charlton & Chilgrove but new items are often added to The Online Valley Diary on a daily basis. I live only a few a miles away and I had not heard about these interesting publications.
My post about Arcimboldi following my visit to West Dean House was "noticed" up the valley and was reproduced in the April 2007 diary. I hope that I will be able to include further items of interest for readers of the Valley Diary in my blog.
I have been following up my interest in the history of the house and its previous owners.
William James, an American millionaire and the father of Edward James bought the West Dean Estate c1893 and built the unique Monkton House in 1902. Some of its contents were on view in the recent exhibition at the barn. The architect was Edward Lutyens.

In 1905 he bought another Lutyens house called Greywalls, Gullane about 15 miles east of Edinburgh. This house was built as a holiday home in 1901 for Alfred Lyttelton, the first sportsman to play both cricket and football for England. It is next to the Muirfield golf course and Alfred was also a keen golfer. The house and gardens were designed by the "dream team" of Edward Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.
Mrs William James was born in the Scottish highlands. It is said that she was the natural daughter King Edward VII. Edward James was born at Greywalls in 1907. He inherited West Dean House when his father died in 1912 and Greywalls was sold to the Horlick family in 1924, who have created one of the best hotels in Scotland there.
I have happy memories of the Greywalls Hotel as I stayed there for a "holiday job" as private tutor to one of the Horlick family in 1958. Much of my time was spent playing golf and tennis and listening to a 78" record of My Fair Lady which had been brought from America and was not yet available in England. Another visitor was Dorothy Sayers who used to come there to write.

The Abolition of the Slave Trade

2007-03-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

This is the first page of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. The image is subject to Parliamentary Copyright but it may be reproduced without formal permission for the purposes of non-commercial research or news reporting provided that it is appropriately attributed.

The Act of Parliament to abolish the British Slave Trade, passed on 25 March 1807, was the culmination of one of the first and most successful public campaigns in history. To mark the bicentenary the Parliamentary Archives has digitised a wealth of archival material which provides evidence of the issues, processes and people at the heart of Parliament's relationship with the slave trade.

Soon you will be able to click on the link "wealth of archival material" in order to study this story in detail. You may have already seen TV and Radio programmes. It would have been difficult to follow up an interest of this sort before the Broadband Revolution.

The abolition took place over a long period time, but we can look back to the revolutionary times in which our ancestors lived. Many British merchants gained their living from the trade and there were several sugar plantations in Jamaica with close connections with my home city.

We can also look back at the efforts of the Anti-Slavery Committee, many of whom were Quakers. I have a special admiration for the work of John Barton, the economist, who lived in Chichester, Stoughton and Leigh Park, Havant and followed his father in the fight against slavery. Without the help of my broadband connection, I would not have discovered a link in my family history with John Barton. I think that this explains why my family moved from Brighton to Chichester about 150 years ago.

The Chiff Chaff

2007-03-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

Someone mentioned the Chiff Chaff the other day. Was this really the proper name for an English bird? I found out that the Chiff Chaff is a kind of Leaf Warbler which breeds throughout the temperate parts of Europe and Asia.

And then yesterday as I was looking at the BBC web site, I found a most interesting page about the Dawn Chorus. I have never been able to recognise a bird by its song. This is one of those subjects where I do not feel that I have a starting point and so I began to learn how to do it. "Want to identify a dawn chorus bird? Hear the songs of eight of our most common, and listen to naturalist Brett Westwood explain how to identify them by their looks, songs and behaviour"

The best thing about this web site is that you can do three things at once. You listen to the bird singing, you can listen to an interview about the bird and at the same time you can read a fact file about each bird. This would be impossible without Broadband.
Now I have a starting point to build on. And by the way, Chiffchaffs are active birds and constantly flick their tails and wings while feeding. They are one of the earliest migrants to arrive in the UK, appearing in mid-March and often staying into October. And you can hear the Chiff Chaff sing and read more about it if it has not yet arrived in your part of the country.

The Falklands War

2007-03-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

I was not able to visit the Falkland Islands on my trip to Antarctica. We were several hundred miles away. After 25 years I had forgotten much of what we saw on television during the Falklands war. I was therefore very interested when I received a telephone call this evening. My friend thought that I would be interested in the
The Archive Hour on Radio 4 at 8 o'clock as it would be about the Falklands War. Unfortunately we were having our supper at 8 and so after supper I went to the Radio 4 site and the Listen Again for the Archive Hour
This programme is most interesting as you can hear the original radio broadcasts to the Falkland islanders as the war was happening, Rex Hunt, the Governor who had to leave the islands and the radio presenter Patrick Watts.
"Michael Nicholson recalls the night of the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982 with the help of some astonishing radio archive from the Falkland Island Broadcasting Service. When radio station manager Patrick Watts turned up to present his weekly 60-minute music request show, the programme turned into a marathon 16-hour broadcast as islanders phoned in with their sightings of the invading army."
You can listen again to The Archive Hour for the whole of next week. I hope that you will find that by clicking on this link, you can open up your radio player.

Arcimboldi

2007-03-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to an exhibition at the Sussex Barn at West Dean College. I saw a picture from the Edward James Collection of a figure by Arcimboldi. The figure was made up of fruit and vegetables and I was amazed to discover that Arcimboldi was a Milanese artist of the 16th century.

He painted animals, flowers, fruit, and objects composed to form a human likeness and his witty allegorical compositions foreshadowed the 20th-century Surrealist Art.
As I had never heard of him, I had to "google" him on my return home but unfortunately I had forgotten his name. "Milanese artist surrealist" found him quite easily.

One of Arcimboldi's pictures is shown on the Italian stamp above.

A Video from Antarctica

2007-03-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

I was able to experiment with the video setting on my digital camera. With a memory card of only 256Mb the videos that I could take were very short. We crossed the Antarctic Circle at 66 degrees south and here is my first video of our party at 69 degrees 32 minutes south, a record for the ship that was made possible because there was less pack ice in the sea in King George VI Sound this year.
Inside the Antarctic circle there is 24-hour daylight at some time during the year. As we were only just inside the circle after the summer solstice, we missed the 24-hour daylight but the pack ice was still melting a bit. We were able to travel further south than the party which was there a fortnight previously.

You can click on Antarctica Video to see and hear my first efforts on Google Video.

Sally's Antarctic Blog

2007-03-06T14:05:00.000-08:00

As we travelled down the Antarctic Peninsula, we heard that there was a BBC South crew on a ship in the Antarctic. They had joined a Royal Naval ice survey ship, HMS Endurance. We had been watching a film about what was perhaps the greatest survival story of all time, the 1915 story of the British explorer Ernest Shackleton who managed to escape in a lifeboat, when his ship also called the Endurance broke up in the ice. We had been sailing near Elephant Island in the north of the peninsula.

I did not make any posts on my blog site while we were in the Antarctic as we had very limited Internet facilities. However it was very interesting to find Sally's Antarctic Blog and to see what can be done with the support of the BBC. Sally had to make her broadcasts. There was a personal touch in her blog as she wrote "Another successful live broadcast into South Today … what a relief!"

Sally had to land on an iceberg with her cameraman to take her pictures. In the picture above it is just possible to see them on the iceberg. In Sally's Antarctic Blog, you will be able to see more pictures including an enlarged one, which shows how enormous the iceberg was. You will also find some 60 pictures on the BBC South site.

I have managed to post some 20 pictures on my site and I hope that I will be able to add some further pictures from others on the Professor Molchanov with our party. The BBC blog provides a good model to aim at. In the Professor Molchanov we travelled further south and crossed the Antarctic Circle and of course we saw a Ross Seal. (as it jumped off the icefloe)

A rare event in the Antarctic Peninsula

2007-03-05T15:03:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long break but I have just returned from an expedition to Antarctica.

I will now try to make regular posts during the next month.

One of the most exciting moments of the trip was the sighting of a Ross seal in St Marguerite's Bay near the Antarctic Circle. Ross seals normally live in parts of the continent where ships are unable to penetrate the ice and so they are seldom seem. In any case they do not live on the western side of the peninsula.

What was this seal doing miles away from home across the peninsula? The master of the ship was so excited that he called another ship on the radio and told the master that he was unable to explain to his passengers how rare the sighting was. Here is my picture of the Ross seal and you can see my first selection of pictures from the Antarctic on line Picasaweb or at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/geoffrey.boys

Broadband and Taking Photos

2007-01-20T14:12:00.000-08:00

I have been taking photos for most of my life, firstly with a box camera, then with coloured slides and some four years ago I began to use a digital camera.

I will never attain the skills and understanding of some of my friends in the local camera club. I do not have the patience to use Adobe Elements in order to manipulate my digital photos pixel by pixel.

However I have made some exciting progress this year using Broadband and I am now able to share my photos with friends and relatives. You can see my albums on line on Picasaweb at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/geoffrey.boys.

I use the free progam Picasa so that I can rearrange and manipulate all my pictures at the same time. Picasa (Picture House!!) is a wonderful program. I have talked to noone who is disappointed with it, although it only manipulates the picture as a whole cropping, brightening, tinting etc but not changing any individual pixels. All my pictures are saved as JPEGS and those that I have changed in any way are accompanied by a file which remembers how they have been changed.

But my most exciting achievement is that I have now loaded my best pictures on Picasaweb. This is completely free and there is enormous capacity for photos but the best thing is that if you have an up to date version of Windows you can view all my albums as full screen slide shows. On Picasaweb my pictures have been reduced so that there is only the information needed to fill a screen of 1024 by 768.

I have also loaded pictures on the Kodak Easyshare Gallery. Here my pictures retain all the information that I have recorded and are therefore ready for printing. Pictures can easily be printed as a 4" by 6" print and some that can also be enlarged if necessary. Prints usually arrive the next day and cost less than 15p each. My pictures can also be shared with my relatives.

Even the Consumer Magazine Which does not yet seem to have caught up with the wonders of Google. I am still exploring this wonderful new world. I would be pleased to hear about any other systems that my readers are using.

Broadband and Memory

2007-01-19T04:30:00.000-08:00

Only recently have I realised the power of Google Desktop. You can download it in a few seconds to your computer.

I used to have a very good memory but my memory seems to have become more and more selective.

Google Desktop is revolutionising my working practices. Often I forget quite important things in my every day life.

I was invited last week to go to the Royal Opera House to a performance of the Nutcracker.

Unfortunately a few days before we went, I was very embarrassed because when I was asked what I was going to see. I could not remember!.

Google Desktop served me very well and is changing my life.

I got 23 hits for Nutcracker, not on the web but hits for information stored on my computer !! There were five sorts of hit.

The receipt for the tickets when we went to the Nutcracker in 2004 with the prices of the tickets.
A review of the Matthew Bourne production that we saw on that occasion.
An invitation to go the Nutcracker this year
A podcast to enable us to go through the story so that we could understand what was going on
A Jacqui Lawson Birthday Card with the music from the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker

Google has seriously changed my life. We can all use Google Desktop in order to enhance our memories as our original memories grow old. When I first told this story to my friends, one of them suggested that Google might be spying on all the files in my computer. I do not think that this is so as long as I have my popup blocker on!!

Welcome to my Second Blog.

2007-01-18T22:00:00.000-08:00

In my first Blog I reflected upon how I learned to Blog.
In my Second Blog, I will be reflecting upon ways in which using Broadband has changed my activities and indeed my approach to life, how it has helped me to keep in communication with many friends and relatives, how it revived my interests in photography and family history, how it has changed my working practices....
I hope that my readers will be able to share their own reflections upon Broadband with me. I would like to hear about your frustrations, your hopes, your problems as well as your successes.