I’ll probably try to work it directly into this blog (or somewhere else on the website) at some point, but that will have to wait for a little while.

Oh, and a Merry Christmas to the Christians out there.

I’m thinking of three words: one means “a mythical being”, the second is “the name of a building material”, and the third is “a unit of time”, What words do I have in mind?

It’s not difficult to think of three words that fit the descriptions, but it is unlikely you’ll pick the three I had in mind. Now try a second task:

This time I’m looking for rhyming words. I’m thinking of three words: one rhymes with “post”, the second with “eel” and the third with “ear”. What words am I thinking of?

Again, you can think of three words which match the descriptions easily, but which ones did I have in mind, last but not least:

Suppose I tell you the words I seek are the same in both tasks: What is a word that means a mythical being and rhymes with “post”? What word is the name of a building material and rhymes with “eel”? And what word is a unit of time and rhymes with “ear”?

Now the task is easy, the combination of just two constraints reduces the selection until there are only three words which fit… “ghost”, “steel” and “year”!

This was taken from a book I’m rather enjoying called “The Design of Everyday Things” by Donald A. Norman which is a bit of an engineers book to be honest, but is good bed time reading all the same (or whisky supping reading at least!)

(and no this isn’t one of those horrible pay per post things, if you want to read it try a library )

This is the largest site I’ve ever attempted and hopefully it won’t all come crashing down around my ears. The site consists of a single framework integrating a calendar (based on a heavily hacked WebCalendar), forum (using PunBB) and a custom built photo gallery. Working with WebCalendar has been a painful process, it is a very poorly written and required substantial hacking. PunBB on the other hand has been almost trouble free, the website user system is based on the PunBB database and despite this the only customisation I’ve done has been entirely superficial.

Although as it stands the site is not complete or fully polished, I’ve just come across some real work so some features I was hoping to implement are going to have to wait, or just be forgotten.

Statistics

Update This is no longer available

This grew out of my insatiable curiosity which has meant I have sought to record visitors to my website for some time now. I forced myself around to doing so, managing to get it started by combining it with a new fascination for Google Maps. There are quite a few features I would like to try to work into it, but I think the basics are there. You are being watched! (But only if you visit the index page).

Polyliner

A tool for drawing routes onto Google Maps, and associating information with it. This is very much in development at the moment, and there are lot of things I’m not particularly happy with. This came from a need to display migration routes of my ancestors to be place on the family website my dad was is developing.

The cake is very sweet, and it will certainly pile the pounds on… using less sugar would probably be wise, I have included the original amount for the sake of integrity.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb butter
• 13 oz caster sugar
• 5 eggs
• 1/2 lb sifted plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• 3 tsp caraway seeds

Oven: 160°C (G.M. 3).
Tin: 2lb loaf tin, lined, greased and floured.

Method:

1. Cream the butter;
2. Add sugar gradually, beating until light and soft
3. Add eggs one at a time, beating throughly between each one
4. Fold in flour and salt
5. Fold in the caraway seeds
6. Put mixture into the tin, then smooth, and tap
7. Bake for 1½ to 2 hours.

Allow the cake to cool for 30mins afterwards, before turning it out and placing it on a cooling rack (or if you’re a student like me, use the rack from your grill pan).

The flavour of the caraway will strengthen if the cake is left for a day or two.

To come:

• A proper index with links, snippets of buried content…
• Application of my old blog theme, and its further improvement
• Try to get my google indexing/sitemapping sorted so that people can have a chance of finding me.