Fantastic London

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Last night the BBC aired the first part of Peter Ackroyd’s London – a totally fascinating history of London. Yesterday’s episode was Fire and Destiny which according to BBC Two’s site went ‘From Boadicea’s torching of the city to recent bombings’. In the programme Peter Ackroyd traces London’s extraordinary ability to survive and grow stronger every time it burns.

Actors re-created historical figures talking about their time in London; Charlotte Bronte, Samuel Pepys and a Roman historian were among the characters featured last night.

Of course the main features of the programme were September 1666’s Great Fire (officially only 4 people died) and the German bombings of World War II (6000 people killed in the first 30 days of the bombing) but it seems that London has burnt many times since its founding in 50AD.

It was a thoroughly fascinating programme and well made. It was not your typical history programme for Peter Ackroyd gives London a real personality. I wholeheartedly recommend the other couple of programmes in the series. I’m quite interested in taking one of the walks have been designed to work with the programme.

On this day…

2003: A Bit Ratty

PMOS Says Nothing At All

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One of the sites I most visit is ‘Downing Street Says‘, an unofficial site recording the official opinions of Downing Street and, I assume, The Prime Minister. One of the real benefits of reading the transcripts of the briefings rather than a journalist’s interpretation is seeing how the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman tries not to express opinions. It’s no wonder people have a disregard for the political process in the country when you read,

Asked to explain why the Prime Minister was willing to express a view about the pictures relating to alleged US mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners when their investigations had not yet concluded either, the PMS pointed out that the Government’s view had been set out very clearly by General Sir Mike Jackson last Friday night when the pictures had first emerged.

[source]

What I think most right-thinking people won’t understand (and I am sure the civil servants can explain it away very well) is why disgust can not be expressed every time the question is asked. If the British pictures are real then the such treatment should be strongly condemned. If the pictures are fake then the actions of those who made them should be discussed in the same terms. Why do they have to hide behind the diplomatic speak?

Really, there doesn’t seem to me much point in having a ‘Big Conversation‘ with the people if you don’t understand what one half of the room is saying.

On this day…

2003: Downsize This!

It’s May

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I had a really relaxing holiday weekend. To the extent I don’t want to be back at work (but we all have to try to make a living) and I didn’t want to be in front of a computer. So I haven’t written anything for a few days.

I had a nice email from somebody in Poland thanks to my entry welcoming the new countries to the ‘New Europe’ (can I trademark that?) which was welcoming and Marek, I will reply (reasons for not as above).

Just when I thought I had nothing to say but to moan about the rather strange weather we are having here in London I read ‘Booked in 60 seconds‘ from London’s Evening Standard newspaper (by way of thisislondon.co.uk) and became all irate with the AA staying that ‘there should be leeway’ when it comes to parking fines. It appears – and here’s where I go all Victor Meldrew – that I am the only soul in London who believes that parking rules are here to serve us and should be enforced. If you’re time is up, it’s up. Give up the space you selfish moron. No leeway for parking. Rules are rules.

Anyway, I was going to compose a nice long rant about it but then I found Ab Mania and felt – instantly – better by laughing.

The moral of this tale is that laughing is good for you (and the weather is still very strange in London).

On this day…

2005: Vote 2005

On Browsers

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I have always been pretty loyal when it comes to web-browsers. I own, somewhere, a fully licensed version of Netscape 0.9 (or was it 1.0) on floppy disc. Since that day I have been a Netscape user and turned to Mozilla when that became the non-AOL enabled version. Netscape/Mozilla has also been my mail program of choice for most of the time – although I did use Eudora for quite a while until multiple accounts became available in a Mozilla release.

Over the years I have had to use Internet Explorer. Primarily I use it for work where the software we develop has an interface optimised for IE.

I had a brief spell as an Opera user (and licenced a copy) but I never grew accustomed to the interface. Yesterday I received an email from Opera announcing the beta release of Opera 7.5. So, I downloaded it and two things struck me about it. Firstly, it’s fast. Despite the claims on Mozilla’s site about 1.7 Opera won (I haven’t run Firefox yet to compare that code). Secondly, Opera’s full-screen mode really is full-screen. No address bars. No scroll bars. Just full-screen browsing. I really must remember that because at times it’ll be very, very useful. And, what’s more, I still like Opera’s small-screen rendering option!

On this day…

No other posts on this day.

Mayor Of London

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The race to be the Mayor of London is on again and it appears that some big names are trying to run the Capital for next few years. Ken Livingstone is, of course, the current Mayor and – I think – stands a good chance of getting in again. For the first few years people wondered what he had actually done (apart from give us bendy busses) but it all seems to have come good for him recently. The Liberal Democrats are fielding Simon Hughes and Steve Norris is standing as Conservative. The Green’s candidate (Darren Johnson) is gay and my financial advisor – Iavn Massow – is standing for some reason. The UK Independence Party cops up every now and then and their candidate is Frank Maloney who, according to this story at The Gay Vote, won’t campaign to areas where there are too many gays. Maybe London isn’t the city for him then.

Honestly I am a torn between a couple of the candidates. Of the three main players, I think they all represent the best bits of their respective parties which is interesting. Still some time to go until I have to make up my mind. Vote for the London Mayor on 10th June.

On this day…

2004: What Version Control?
2003: Music Industry Hysteria?

What Version Control?

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So, I have finally done it and had another re-design of this site. The grey is the new green (sorry Jase) but green may become the flavour of the day again as I am not *sure*. I’ve tried to reduce the amount of effort Movable Type needs to make this site happen and I think I have succeeded in that bit. All the same stuff is here for now but I want to add some new ‘features’ by playing around with Movable Type so now is the right time to do it. Although I have not updated the templates for Justin, Andrew, Dermot etc. in the Man of the Moment section. That will come too.

While working through the final stages I discovered that this wasn’t the third version of Listen to Musak as I had thought but it was about the fifth. If you use Mozilla on the main page of the site go to ‘View’ –> ‘Use Style’ where you can apply the older style sheets. As I have tweaked the templates a little bit they do not render exactly as they used to but it was interesting to see anyway. I have decided that you can not have too many IDs or classes in style sheets and re-using elements where it isn’t the same content is a very, very bad idea.

One downside of this look is that the individual entries really do look better if they are of the lengthier format. Ah well, I really wish I was a designer!

On this day…

2004: Mayor Of London
2003: Music Industry Hysteria?

Can You Say Verulamium?

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sign at the roman theatre in st albansLast Saturday, PY and I went to St Albans to meet some friends. While we were there we went to the Roman theatre of Verulamium (which, I am reliably told was found in 1847).

Built in about 140AD it is the only example of its kind in Britain, being a theatre with a stage rather than an Amphitheatre. Initially, the arena would have been used for anything from religious processions and dancing, to wrestling, armed combat and wild beast shows. From about 180AD the stage came into greater use and the auditorium extended. By about 300AD, after some redevelopment work, the Theatre could seat 2000 spectators. [Source]

The sign amused me – I got to imagining lots of chariots rushing past with urgent messages from the Emperor at some distant end of the road until I was reminded it was a thoroughly modern sign aimed at us!

On this day…

2004: Web Mail