I have a BT internet account (aka a btinternet) which, I have been long told, provides me with some default web space.

Mostly, my web site exists on my home machine: I have a dedicated server running a later version of linux which not only provides me with a voice on the web, but also with the copyright of output. While it is relatively cheap to run off my home broadband connection, it is, of course, subject to power outages (I do have a battery smoothing out short power cuts for both the computer and the router, but that’s really to ensure I don’t have to keep checking everything).

The server does some other work for me too, mostly file serving and backups. The library is pretty cool, but otherwise samjwatkins.com is very self contained.

So, I am wasting the opportunity of the web space provided by my internet service provider. If you have a btinternet account, I suspect you are too.

Thankfully, you can access this space.  It’s not overly straightforward, so here is a simple breakdown.

1. Access the space for your web site files

The content on the btinternet site is managed by a system called FTP and you need a programme to allow you to transfer your files up to the website.

Windows 7 does this fairly neatly as per these instructions.  In this case, you need your email address (without the “@btinternet.com” at the end and your mail password.

Having made this connection, I would recommend naming the connection “my website” but that’s up to you 🙂

2. Make your page

btinternet allows you to publish simple html pages.  These are essentially text files (as produced by notepad) although if you’re a beginner, Microsoft word, will allow you to save any page as a html page.

Your first page (aka your home page) is called index.html.

If we go to word, we can type “Hi there, this is my first web page” and save it to a “HTML” file called index.html – keep an eye on which folder this file exists.

3. Publish your file

At this point, I simply drag the file named “index.html” to the website directory/folder.  For a small file, with a good internet connection, this takes seconds.

4. Updating the site

Because the site uses FTP to manage the files, you can’t edit a file off the server.  All your editing will need to be done “off-line” and then copied up.

But you have a website

this site is web addressable, mine is available from here.  Only you have the password and the whole world can then see your output.  There is a lot of advice out there on how to run your website including using publishing tools such as Front page and CSS.  The world is your oyster, enjoy.

I love the system of politics in the UK. Living in a small suffolk village, it is a real reminder that despite having a great job, influencing many council departments and being an ambassedor for science and technology, I am a woman and therefore do not count on the canvassing list.

Five minutes ago, Terry Wilson, Labour council candidate for Claydon knocked on our door and my husband answered it.  As it happens, my husband is away on the night and I will carry his proxy.  Thus my husband informed Terry that he would be away and thus departed Terry.

You’d think in a Liberal stronghold, Labour would canvas all the votes, not just the male ones.

The One Show often has stories which don’t make the main news streams.  As a keen web 2 advocate, the one story about people helping find their missing dogs, Dog Lost, caught my eye.

Once finding their treasured pet is missing, an owner can upload pictures, a description and contact details to the site.  These details are quickly published on to the site.  The dog is then listed and comments can be made on sitings.

Emails are also sent to “helpers” in the area.  This is backed up with entries on Facebook.

The site has enjoyed a lot of success in reuniting dogs with their owners and sucuring prosecution of dog thieves.

but what is the cost?

The modern world is wonderful.  Washing my clothes takes just 20 minutes of my time and all in the comfort of my own home.  The modern washing machine has more computing power than the first super computers and more powerful motors than the first cars.  The average washing machine, with proper maintenance and care, last a good 15-20 years.

Fixing a washing machine is a skilled job and mostly done by replacing failed parts.  Even the most complete rebuild barely takes a day.  Just like the economy, there are no quick fixes.

Electric washing machines have evolved greatly since the first ones appeared in the early 20th Century and have enabled not only our cleanliness to be greatly improved but also a high standard of living to be enjoyed by all for relatively little money.

Why the talk of washing machines?

However complex a modern washing machine is, it can be fix for very little.  If you lack the practice, it is time consuming, but not difficult to get one of the most ignored machines in the house going again.

Mammals, not just humans, are infinitely more complex.  Yet many expect our doctors to be adept mechanics able to fix anything.

Using a wide range of chemicals, not to mention the basic fact we are all now well fed and clean.  This makes our survival to old age extremely likely, even if we do have an infection.

Ah, but that’s thanks to penicillin, surely.  Well, yes, but if you’re body isn’t healthy, antibiotics don’t work that well.  Very basically, they work by infecting your body with a second infection which combats the first.  You have to be strong for that to work well!

Resistance is futile

Then there are the super bugs: those that can fight antibiotics and their kin.  I am not a pharmacologist but I wonder if bugs like MRSA and VRSA were always waiting to evolve.  Maybe widespread antibiotic use helped to speed that process along, but what was the likely hood of that existing at some point any way?

So what?  You’re pointing out the obvious….

I ramble, apologies!  Life evolves even machines and systems evolve.  Since 18th Century, the world has seen enormous changes in the way we live and even the quality of air we breathe (and since the clean air act, 1956, in the UK preventing soot and noxious gases being produced in huge quantities, our air is pretty good), the food we eat, the water we drink.

The way we do business also needs to evolve.  My concern, during the on-going recession is that we chuck out the baby with the water in terms of education, medicine (and I mean that as opposed to health – research is risky and time consuming, being able to have a safety net to ensure research can thrive is important) and social welfare.

We are realising that people still die of old age, regardless of when that is and that, all bar a few conditions, old age is relatively short in the article Can the power of thought keep you young?, Dr Ellen Langer shows that basic health means you can do more, including work, as you age.  The pace may need to slow down, but there’s no reason not to have a 2nd, 3rd, 4th or even 10th career as you get older.

Old age, and our perceptions of it, need to evolve along with everything else.  But if that’s the case, do we need to examine our reproductive strategies and consumption, from everything from food and land as well as fuel consumption, at the same time.  The Earth has limited resources.

I enjoy learning new facts as often as possible and here is one thing I learnt today which I thought I should share!

Since 1989, my mum favoured a turbo vacuum brush for her hover – to be honest it came with her new one of the time and it seemed to make a huge difference.  On examination it appeared to provide better cleaning by rotating along with the sucking action of the vacuum.  You need to bear in mind the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Or so I thought.  Today our replacement turbo head for our Vax arrived (thanks Amazon), a turbo brush with a transparent plastic case.  After a week on leave, I was looking forward to seeing it in action.  I attached it and started the motor: as expected, the brushes allowed the turbine to rotate as the air was sucked into the vacuum’s dust cavity.

So, I tested it out on a piece of carpet.  At which point I found the rotor stopped – the carpet fibres were catching on the brush and exerting enough pressure that the rotation ceased!

I pushed the brush forward and lo, the brushes were allowed to move freely.  Maybe that was how the turbo heads made the sucking better; gentle aggravation of the carpet and a slight increase in efficiency of vacuum.

So I pulled the vaccum head back to redo an area of carpet and the brush was completely stationary again!  Intriged, I switched the motor off and tried pushing the head without the motor going.  This moved very freely, both forwards and backwards!  So the air was moving the brushes: just needed some help to get going and going backwards the air pressure was enough to hold the brush stationary, while going forwards gave it enough inertia to overcome the friction of the carpet.

The turbo head is much better for vacuuming.  Just works in a subtly different way to the expected.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and has a happy new year awaiting them.

I really enjoyed catching up with friends and family but find myself in an interesting place.  I have long had a presence in what is being termed the cloud and indeed have used the cloud to catalogue both my experience (here) and some of my interests (such as my reading habit via the Library).

A Kindle in the wild!

I was very fortunate to receive a Kindle DX for Christmas (thanks Jon) and have added 23 books to my reading collection.  I can use many mediums to read these volumes including the Kindle itself.

So, what is the problem?

Well, I hate to say this, but the Kindle is not my only foray into electronic ink and Amazon is not the only place from which I have obtained documents.  Kindle is great, as from any internet device I can see what I have obtained for the Kindle from Amazon.  But what about the Gutenburg project information?  What about the items on the Sony eReader?  At least most of the physical material can be viewed from my existing software but then that doesn’t cover what’s in the eReader,

The only real answer seems to be to link the clouds…  I’ll let you know how I get on 😉

OK, the real cheat here is not to use brandy – the one I’ve had the most success with is Amaretto.  This keeps really well in a fridge – I use an old Stilton pot to keep it for a week.  A serving for Christmas pudding or mince pies would be approx 30ml.

Ingredients

• 100g low or no salt butter
• 180g icing sugar
• 45ml (3x15ml spoons) Amaretto

Directions

First, cream a third of the sugar with the butter (leaving butter out of fridge for 20 minutes means you can do this by hand pretty easily).

Add 15ml of the liquor and beat until all combined then add another third of the sugar and when beaten together repeat until all combined.  Because of the lack of sugar this is a lot more relaxed than a traditional brandy butter, but leaving in the fridge for an hour means that doesn’t matter.  The taste is wonderful and a much smaller percentage of sugar and alcohol per serving.

Here’s wishing you a great Christmas 2010!

I qualified as a Computer Scientist 13 years ago although I had been coding tools to make my and my friends’ and family’s life easier since I was 12.  But as you gain maturity you begin to realise that the simple usability tests software coders are prescribed to use are not followed else where.

I remember my mum commenting on the way the local supermarkets were not particularly easy to use, which at the age of 13 surprised me.  How could the layout of a supermarket be subject to design and if so, how could it be wrong?

Back in 1989, the Ipswich area finally gained two “hypermarkets”, ASDA and Tescos.  Both were laid out in very similar ways: one entered the store to the fruit and vegetable aisles, both were large spaces, fairly prettily arranged, like an expanded green grocer’s.  You proceeded through to the diary and meat then chilled meals and desert sections then the dried goods: pastas and rice, tins, bread, crisps, cereals and finally biscuits before reaching the household products.  Standard stuff obviously.

If you’re vegetarian, this probably is reasonably convenient as you tend to miss out the meat aisles.  If you do eat meat though, that tends to be the focus of your meal and you then plan your meals round that focus – chicken breast with spicy sauce or stir fir or potatoes and greens with bread coated schnitzels.

So we have a dichotomy: the vegetarians can focus on their meal and the meat eaters walk past the fruit and veg to the meat and then walk back, then walk back to get the rest of the meal. If you have nothing better to do on the day, this is mildly annoying but if you’ve queued in traffic after a bad day in the office, this does not help you spend more money.

This is where the on-line versions should help but low, the on-line supermarkets are laid out in a similar way.

Strange…

I had this weird dream, as a child, of things lost being found centuries later and I have just had the same thing flash now. All in a strange bullet time but things surviving in one piece despite the odds.

Two completely different scenes which then reoccur in the dream in brilliant technicolor.

Apparently the effect is called time fraction memory.  Different bits being highlighted then the rest coming into focus – the moment I saw the second dream started, I realised what it was.  I’d first head the term from my granddad who was a pilot in world war 2.

I’m going back to enjoy. Sweet dreams.

Twitter has easily replaced RSS as the communication channel of choice.

Only 5 years ago, RSS was seen as the most effective way to allow web viewers to receive federated content.

Two things changed this.

First: Firefox 2 and IE 7, launched within days of each other in October 2006, both chose to only render RSS (along with other XML) as XML. This meant you could no longer present RSS as formatted HTML so content providers were stuck with having to write and verify two types of page even if the content were the same.  For automated generation, this was no issue, but for smaller news channels such as school journals this meant changing how you were reporting the news.

Second: people, groups and organisations started to tweet either through twitter, launched June 2006, or via Facebook, 2004.

Twitter is an easier way to reach an audience in that you can make all of the content public whereas only fellow Facebookers can view a Facebook tweet (I appreciate that many, like me use Twitter to update their FB accounts).

This public portal allows your audience to pull of the information they are interested in either by searching in Twitter or in Google.

That short tweet can be made in a variety of ways from separate apps on a smart phone to text messages and Facebook trackers.

Short links allow you to feature longer pieces of information in a properly branded way but the short tweet is the real hook.

After all, who has time to read a 150 word hook via a newsreader?