Owner: Henry Cleaver URL:http://henrycleaver.co.uk Join Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 11:47:47 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Personal blog about my life and interests. Site statistics:Click here
No More Fedora Core 2007-01-09 17:43:45 Just seen an announcement on the Fedora
devel list (no, I don’t subscribe to it, I saw it on Slashdot) that there will be no more Fedora Core. Starting with Fedora 7, there will be no distinction between Fedora Core and Extras, all packages will be managed in one single repository. Fedora 7 is currently scheduled for general release on 26th April 2007. Doesn’t seem long ago I updated to Core 6.
Beer A Day 2007-01-08 21:12:44 Digg has just directed me to the blog of a guy who’s new year’s resolution is to drink 365 different beers in the year, and provide a short review of each one. Quite interesting.
Final Semester Timetable 2007-01-08 12:57:48 Just found my timetable for next semester on Webct. It looks just as I expected - Monday 9-2, Tuesday 12-2, Thursday 2-5, so thats an average of 10 hours a week lectures. Not bad! Also means I officially get Wednesdays off this time round aswell as Fridays. I start back next Monday, so I’ve got this week to try to get all the work finished. I have five assorted things to do for next Wednesday!
Read more:Final
, Semester
, Timetable
Happy New Year 2007-01-01 14:28:24 Happy New Year to all. I hope 2007 brings you much prosperity and luck. If anyone has any good memories from 2006, post them below.
Read more:Happy
, Happy New Year
TNT Crash at Birmingham Airport 2006-12-31 13:55:15 Just seen an interesting video on YouTube of the TNT 737 crash at Birmingham
Airport in June. For those who aren’t aware of the details, a TNT cargo 737 departed from Belgium to Stansted, and due to undercarriage problems made an emergency landing at East Midlands, but had to go around after landing, leaving its right main landing gear on the grass beside the runway, eventually ending up landing on runway 33 at Birmingham. There is also an article from the BBC.
The video is from the West Midlands Police helicopter which is based at Birmingham.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry48fSFPX4Y
It’s slightly alarming to see the aircraft touching down with only the left main undercarriage, then having to lower itself onto the right engine. Look out for the sparks! Good bit of piloting to get down safely.
Unfortunately the aircraft sustained irreparable damage and was written off. It now sits parked on runway 06/24 waiting to be dismantled for scrap.
New Permalinks 2006-12-27 20:56:57 After much fiddling I’ve just updated the permalinks for my blog. They are now in the form /blog/year/month/post-name which I thought makes it look better and maybe easier to find posts for all visitors, whether human or search engine. I hope the search engines manage to update quickly, Google is usually pretty quick at finding new stuff because of the sitemap.
Read more:Permalinks
Wordpress SEO 2006-12-27 19:54:12 In my quest for good Google ratings and an effective permalink structure, I have come across some good SEO
tips specific to Wordpress
. They are all pretty easy to implement, but could potentially be quite effective. I have also found a post about general blog search engine optimisation. Most of them focus around using effective post titles, permalink structures and good content.
Permalinks 2006-12-23 16:40:00 Been trying a bit today to update the permalinks for my blog. Instead of each post being linked to by something like index.php/?p=200 I want it to look like /blog/year/month/day so it is a bit friendlier. I’ve just recompiled apache to enable mod_rewrite but haven’t managed to work out how to put the rewrite rules into the .htaccess file yet, never having used it before. I’ll have to leave it till sometime after Christmas when I’ve got more time to read through the Wordpress manuals.
Read more:Permalinks
Christmas Time 2006-12-23 14:25:18 Just a short note to say Happy Christmas
to all. Hope you have good fun, drink plenty booze and eat loads of yummy food.
Here’s a Christmas song to get you in the mood, recorded by my brother and his friends.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRRz9OvBKG0
Read more:Christmas Time
Concorde Tribute 2007-01-21 15:11:16 “Men of vision designed this wonderful machine, men of passion built her, and, I hope that it will be said, men of skill and daring flew her” (Capt. Adrian Thompson, Concorde
Pilot Last Heathrow - New York Flight)
Very moving video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_uW5sLug_0
What are these keys for? 2007-01-22 20:10:22 What are these strange keys on my keyboard for, I hear you ask. Keys such as the Pause / Break key, Scroll Lock and `? They all have roots in the history of computing, most even have some obscure use today. There is an interesing article which explains the origin of these keys.
Wordpress 2.1 2007-01-24 20:19:47 Just finished upgrading my blog to the latest version of Wordpress
, which was released two days ago. Some notable features include spell checking for posts, updated spam catcher and much more efficient database code. Hopefully you should notice the whole site loads a lot quicker now due to these database optimisations, it seems to from my end anyway.
I’ve also updated the feed URL due to some fixes and also I think it looks better. My new feed URL is http://henrycleaver.co.uk/feed/
Proposed UK Time Zone Change 2007-01-26 12:40:48 There is an article on the BBC at the moment about moving our times in line with Europe, moving them forward an hour. According to the article, “the UK would cut crime, boost tourism, improve health and reduce accidents, according to House of Commons research.”
I would just like to register my disgust at this awful suggestion. There is no way I can believe having an ‘extra hour’ of light a day will stop 450 deaths a year. I don’t know about everyone else, but I have headlights on my car for night driving.
The whole world bases its times on UTC. UTC is the world standard time. If Europe wants to be on the same time as Britain, they can change!
Another big argument is the costs of doing business between Britain and Europe because of the time differences. I personally don’t see how +1 hour is going to make much difference. What about those who do business between Britain and USA or the far east? Do they want the them to change their time systems aswell? Read more:Change
, Time Zone
Birthday Calculator 2007-01-27 17:30:52 Just found an interesting site that tells you some fun facts about the day you were born. According to it, I was born on a Sunday 7,545 days ago in the Chinese year of the tiger and the Egyptian month of Mesore. I share my birthday with Marilyn Monroe, Alanis Morissette and Bob Monkhouse (never heard of the other apparently famous people). Want to know useless stuff about your birthday? Of course you do, check it out. Read more:Birthday
, Calculator
Centenary of Scouting 2007-01-31 13:55:54 2007 is the centenary of the Scout Movement. 100 years ago in 1907, Scouting
started with an experimental camp held on Brownsea Island in Dorset led by war veteran Lord Robert Baden-Powell. Prompted by his famous book “Scouting for Boys” published in 1908, Scout groups were set up throughout the country, and quickly expanded to other parts of the British Empire.
In 1920 the first World Scout Jamboree was held in 1920 at Olympia in London and was an inside exhibition of Scouting. The second, held four years later held in Copenhagen was the first international Scout camp which set the tradition of Scout Jamborees.
Today Scouting has twenty-five million members world-wide (not counting Guides) and is still growing. Approximately four million of those are from the United States, the largest single Scout Association. There are 155 countries with internationally recognised National Scout Organisations. There are more than 28 million Scouts, youth and adults, boys and girls in 216 Read more:Centenary
What I Dugg 2007-02-11 00:12:56 I’ve just added a new page to the left side menu - What I Dugg. Hopefully you will find it interesting to see what stories I have “dugg” on digg.com. If you haven’t discovered Digg yet, see how it works. I hope you will find it interesting to see what news stories I have been reading.
All the articles come from a neat little feed provided by Digg. It involves simpy adding a line of javascript to fetch the data, and adding three css classes to style the list. If you would like to have a similar thing on your website, take a look at the digg tool. Its quite customisable.
The Oscars as it should be 2007-02-12 19:49:18 OscarTorrents invites you to download all the movies nominated for Oscars
this year and then rate them, giving a view of what the Internet thinks is the best movie of the year. Contains links to hard-to-find Oscars nominations on existing trackers.
“OscarTorrents is the Oscars as it should be — everyone can download the year’s nominations using the popular BitTorrent service, watch the movies, then use our rating system to choose their favourites. To download any film up for an Oscar this year, you’ll need three things: an internet connection, a computer, and a BitTorrent client.”
Houses of Parliament visit 2007-02-24 15:25:19 Went on a trip to London yesterday with KOSSMIC for a tour round the Houses of Parliament
. We left at 8.30 and got there by about 11.30. We went on a tour round the Cabinet War Rooms first of all as our visit
wasn’t scheduled until 3.30. This is the secret bunker where the Cabinet spent a lot of time during World War II under Whitehall. They had all sorts of offices and rooms for the Prime Minister and his staff to work during air raids. It is also the home of the Churchill Museum which was opened in 2005. Both a very interesting visit if you are ever in that part of London.
At 3.30 we went over to the Sovereign’s Entrance to the Houses of Parliament and had our bags checked and started the tour. After walking through the door, there is a huge hall on the left which is the oldest remaining part of the Palace of Westminster. Don’t think its used much any more. Then we went down a corridor to the Main Lobby, which is the part you see on TV when they do interviews etc.
Chip Pan Fire Demonstration 2008-03-06 09:30:37 I’m currently doing a young firefighter course with WYAT at Wombourne Fire Station. We’re just over half way through the course, and have done things such as hose running, spraying large amounts of water under high pressures, hydrants and learnt some things about how fire spreads. Last week we used the hydraulic cutting equipment [...] Read more:Demonstration
Warwickshire Firefighter Funerals 2007-12-07 08:38:17 Today I played my bagpipes at the final funeral for the Warwickshire Firefighter
s who were tragically killed a few weeks ago. The whole thing was very moving. It started off marching the family from their house the short distance to the fire station, where the hydraulic platform was waiting with the coffin, flanked by Firefighters [...] Read more:Funerals
Birmingham Remembrance Parade 2007-11-13 06:52:05 Last weekends I played at the Remembrance
parade in Birmingham
with my pipe band. Here is a video of me playing the Lord Mayor of Birmingham onto the parade ground..
Read more:Parade
737 Simulator Ride 2007-10-22 12:15:18 Today I finally got my hands on my 21st Birthday present - an hour in a full-motion 737 simulator in Yorkshire.
I arrived at the flight centre at about 2.15, my flight starting at 2.30. I filled in a form with my details and was taken into the simulator. On first impressions, it seemed very small [...] Read more:Simulator
General Update 2007-09-19 10:28:34 Just noticed I haven’t posted an awful lot over the last month of so. Probably due to the fact that I haven’t done an awful lot either. When I got back from the Jamboree I helped out with KOSSMIC for the last two weeks of the summer holiday which was good. Since then I have [...] Read more:General
, Update
Jamboree Photos 2007-08-12 11:30:45 I’ve just uploaded some photos I took at the Jamboree into the gallery. I took over 200 so it was a bit of a job selecting the best ones, but I think I’ve picked a few of the most interesting.
Jamboree Closing 2007-08-07 09:22:39 This is my last message from the 21st World Scout Jamboree! The closing ceremony is this evening, starting at 2100. I am supposed to be leaving tomorrow morning at 1100, so hopefully should be home sometime not too late tomorrow.
I’ve had a great time, got loads of photos which I will put up as soon [...]
Gilwell Park 2007-08-02 15:01:37 Went on a day trip to Gilwell Park today. It was my day off from work so I decided I would go and see whats there. It is basically a huge campsite, with a bit of a museum and giftshop. There are also loads of activities that the jamboree participants are doing as well, such [...]
Centenary of Scouting 2007-08-01 14:48:00 Yesterday was the 100th Birthday of Scouting
- a Century of the most popular youth organisation in the world!
To celebrate this scouts from all over the world gathered at 8am to renew their promise. This involved me getting up at 5 and making my way to the main arena as I had volunteered to help [...] Read more:Centenary
Opening Ceremony 2007-07-29 13:50:25 Yesterday was the opening ceremony of the 21st World Scout Jamboree. All 8000 members of the International Service Team left the adult sub-camp at 11am to join the queue of 40,000 other people on their way to the main arena. On the way people carried flags, danced and sang songs from their countries. I managed to find [...] Read more:Ceremony
, Opening Ceremony
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