I notice that the famous London home of our Supreme Leader has a new website, oddly referred to as a “Beta” - software speak for “not finished yet”. In these days of financial hardship maybe the reported £100,000 price tag wasn’t sufficient to test it properly before going live. It certainly still needs some attention because their HTML code currently fails the W3C validation test and the site doesn’t yet contain the most basic hidden <META> description and keyword tags.

I wonder if the developers New Media Maze were asked to read Guidelines for UK Government websites - an excellent series of documents published 8 years ago. Sadly (especially given the deluge of money wasted on other IT projects) they are no longer maintained but the “best practice” they contain is still as relevant today.

At the time the guidelines were being put together I was maintaining the website for the Welsh European Funding Office and I remember attending a meeting with a very informed and focussed Neil Pawley, an “E-Envoy” from Westminster who was putting together the guidelines. Neil stressed the importance of government websites setting quality and accessibility standards. What has happened in the intervening years which has made it acceptable to release this Number 10 “Beta” live to the public?

One missing feature of the site could save tens of thousands of sheets of paper and loads of ink and energy. A print style sheet allows a rendering of a web page specifically for printing purposes. It can be designed easily to exclude unwanted navigation and shrink images and fonts. Go to File > Print Preview on this page and see how it can be printed on 2 sheets of A4. Think of the ink and paper you would use to print this page, yet using a print style sheet it uses a single page of A4. The Home Page of Number 10 uses 5 pages of A4!

Despite the many shortcomings of this site I am excited by the fact that www.number10.gov.uk is using my favourite Content Management / Blogging platform - WordPress. WordPress is Open Source, which means that the software powering is free, which should make Gordon Brown’s ‘Prudence’ very happy. The developers have even based their layout on a free template “theme” - “Networker” by Anthony Baggett of www.antbag.com. How do I know this? Well just look at Number 10’s CSS style sheet and all is revealed. - www.number10.gov.uk/wp-content/themes/networker-10/style.css

Confirmation of the WordPress theme’s origins can be found by looking at its screenshot file. I wouldn’t call this a rip-off as some commentators have done. All the developers have done is to base their screen layout on someone else’s CSS code. Had they used AntBag’s graphics and colour scheme that would be different. With all such adaptations, there comes a point when so little of the original code and design remains, that it becomes in effect a new theme. Should Anthony Bagett have been given credit for the theme? I’m not sure. At least New Media Maze haven’t tried to hide the origins of their theme, which you could either regard as honest or foolish, given the attention it has received. NMM certainly can’t be unaware of the protocol on these matters, as they have used WordPress for their own website for at least a couple of years.

I have been a WordPress enthusiast since 2005 after a long search for the ideal Content Management System for the small businesses and organisations I work for in West Wales. WordPress makes it simple for the owner maintain their own content and is flexible and customizable for the web developer. It is updated regularly and there are hundreds of “plugins” to extend its functionality.

I’m delighted that our Supreme Leader agrees that WordPress rocks, However I can’t help but be disappointed by the way he has allowed it to go live prematurely. It gives the impression that WordPress is difficult to do correctly, when it isn’t. But then again, I suppose if I were getting £100,000 for a website and using free software, maybe I would need to give the impression that it’s harder work than it really is ;-)

I think the increase in oil price over the last year is a really good thing. A long overdue dose of oil reality which will do more to shape our thinking about energy conservation than any number of timid increases in Car Tax, green marches and magazine articles by worthy environmentalists.

Even better for the environment and the future of the UK economy would be for petrol to reach £1.50 a litre this year and £2.50 by the end of 2009. I should be careful what I wish for. If the US and Israel decide to attack Iran, this could really happen.

In oil we are moving from a buyers market to a sellers market. We have reached, or we are very close to “Peak Oil” - “The Big Roll Over“. The point at which, no matter how hard we pump, output will decline because the geology of oil dictates it. In an age where demand is increasing that means only one thing - much higher prices, and higher prices means if you don’t get more mpg from your car, you will pay much more.

Sales of gas guzzling cars have taken a nose-dive over the past few months. People are driving more slowly, making fewer journeys and lift sharing. How to save fuel has become the main topic of conversation in pubs around the land. Parting with £60-£100 when filling up has really brought the message home that oil is a finite and precious commodity. Yippee!

Peak Oil. 1 Barrel = 35 Imperial Gallons = 159 litres

In order that I wouldn’t be left out in the pub conversations, I decided to try some “hypermiling” in my 1996 1.9 diesel Volkswagen Polo with a mere 190,000 miles on the clock. Do I need to buy a new or young second-hand car in order to get economical driving?

All the reading I have done would indicate that the least environmentally damaging thing I can do is to keep my Polo going for as long as possible, rather than buying a new, if more fuel efficient car. The reason is simple. Building a car uses loads of fossil fuel. Even that beacon of “green” motoring the Toyota Prius has consumed the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of petrol in its manufacture. That has to be “paid back” in saved fuel in order to justify the initial fossil fuel expenditure.

My 1996 1.9D VW Polo

I decided to visit my mum in Leicester, a 215 mile journey from south-west Wales through mid-Wales to Shrewsbury then on to the M54, the M6 and the M69. I filled up right to the brim as you should do with these tests and set the trip-meter to zero. I’d read up a bit on how I should be driving for maximum fuel efficiency and used various techniques to increase my MPG. I don’t have any fancy MPG readout on my odometer, so I couldn’t monitor my techniques as I went along for efficiency. I just had to do them and hope they worked.

• I pumped up my tyres to a the maximum recommended for speed driving or heavy loads
• I used 5th gear as much as possible
• I kept a very light foot on the accelerator
• I kept below 60mph on motorways and below 50mph on other roads
• I used the brakes as little as possible
• I maintained a good distance from the vehicle in front and watched their brake lights so I could coast to a stop rather than brake
• On long down hill runs where I could maintain a speed of 50-60mph for a mile or more (very few in reality), I went into neutral and free-wheeled
• I followed high-sided lorries on the motorway to reduced wind resistance, but I always stayed outside the minimum stopping distance for a given speed and therefore within the law
• Because starting the engine uses the same fuel as 6 seconds ticking over, I turned off the engine if I was likely to be waiting in a queue or at lights for more than that period.

More detail on these hypermiling techniques can be found here and here

So I travelled the 215 miles to Leicester, did 20 miles during my stay, then drove the 215 miles back again. Then I used the car until I’d nearly run out of diesel and had done 571 miles in total. I filled up again with 39.9 litres (8.79 Imperial gallons). I achieved 65mpg, an improvement on the 62mpg I achieved using the same techniques a fortnight ago on the same journey. So I’m getting better at it! Without hypermiling I get less than 50 mpg, depending on how badly and fast I drive.

So I have my answer. There’s hypermiling life in the old car yet, so no need to get rid of it. My aim is to reach 70mpg, but to do that I’ll maybe have to stick exclusively to motorways, be more aggressive in applying the techniques and perhaps add a couple of less conventional ones (getting out and pushing?). I wonder if anyone has managed better from a Polo of the same vintage as mine?

Do let me know.

I’m fortunate in being represented in Parliament by Adam Price, who not only is pincipled and articulate, but also has a well developed sense of humour and irony. He certainly needs it when dealing with some of the blinkered crazyness which passes for policy in Westminster.

The piece below appeared in the Times Online yesterday.

Taken for a ride over Olympic mountain biking in Essex

Ever wondered why the 2012 Olympics is costing so much? A clue was revealed in the Commons last week when MP Adam Price wondered why the mountain bike event was being held in Essex.

Essex is a grand county with many great qualities, but you can’t help noticing what is almost its defining characteristic – the complete lack of mountains.

Olympic officials have already complained that the area is too flat, so a special course will have to be built.

“Why is public money being used to create a new track in Essex which lacks one of the key essential requirements for mountain biking – mountains?” demanded Price, the Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East. “There are international standard cross-country mountain bike tracks in Wales, Scotland and the north and the west,” he said.

Sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe replied limply: “I understand there are a few hills in Essex.”

At the last count the Olympic budget was £9.3 billion, but at least the small bore shooting event shouldn’t prove too expensive. Westminster would seem the obvious location.

See also UCI reject Essex’s Olympic mountain bike venue

A biker descending from an Essex Mountain?

Late in 2006 I met a young Zimbabwean student here in Wales. He was on masters degreee course in creative writing. As well as studying hard, he worked in the college library and sent the money home to support his parents, brother and sister, who, like most Zimbabweans, despite being qualified and willing, had no jobs, becasue the Zimbabwean economy is in ruins.

Despite being a talented and published writer, completing his masters degree and getting accepted for a PhD at more than one British University, he was unable to get the funding to do the course and stay in the UK legally. When his 12 month visa ran out in October 2007, he chose the least worst option of returning to Zimbabwe.

With daily reports of the violence and intimidation of opposition supporters in the days leading up to the re-run of the Presidential election, and with communication becoming increasingly difficult (1 minute on the Internet costs Z$30 million), I’m publishing this account of his homecoming to Zimbabwe airport.

October 2007

I dreaded coming back home, ekhaya. There were only two choices available to me – to overstay my visa and disappear in London’s underbelly or come dance to Robert Mugabe’s paranoia. I chose the latter, not because I am a brave hero, but that was the only choice plausible at the time. No organization was prepared to slice their budget for my PhD studies. Even personal referrals to former Labour leader, Lord Neil Kinnock and his office staff, yielded nothing. A year in Wales had fizzled into a blur. So I came back.

The Harare International Airport is now a big white elephant. A bird’s eye view of the airport is of a grand architectural design, but once inside you realize how underutilized the place is. It is a big empty space, understaffed, though milling security operatives’ swarm around when a plane touches down. As you walk towards the Returning Residents desk, you’re faced with the Hitlerite grin of Robert Mugabe’s image pasted in every government complex.

What is surprising is that I never told anyone of my imminent arrival in Zimbabwe except my immediate family members; because

1) I had premonitions of harassment because of my contributions to The Zimbabwean

2) I had already been forewarned to expect an extra welcoming party in the form of Mugabe’s henchmen. Zimbabwe is mine as much as it is Mugabe’s. Though I checked in without incidence it was only the calm before the storm. We had to wait half an hour for bags. There was no electricity in the airport building to power the conveyer belt.

Just as I walked out to my father’s waiting embrace, a coal Black Hand tapped on my right shoulder as I pushed my luggage trolley out and demanded I reproduce my passport. I was asked to walk back into the airport building and led to a room, misleadingly labeled ‘BUGGAGE ENQUIRIES’. It was a small toilet, possibly the same toilet/room, in which opposition MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa was bashed by ‘unknown assailants’ earlier in the year. The faces were not friendly. The other face belonging to a woman took my passport and disappeared for a few too many minutes while the other face, the guy, did the macho thing – grill me. He asked questions and I had to answer all of them.

He insisted on taking my laptop, notebooks and diary. ‘For what?’ I asked. Macho face said, ‘iwe hauzivi here kuti uri security matter.’ Why do you pretend as if you don’t know you’re not a security matter? They wanted to know if in my possession I was carrying any British sterling, what kinds of investments I had made in Zimbabwe, why I was coming back to Zimbabwe, if ‘my bosses’ had sent me. They even wanted to know why I was carrying in my possession books like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Ngugi’s Wizard of Crow, which incidentally is a scathing attack on dictatorship in twentieth century Africa. After more than two hours of questions, of being passed from one nameless superior to another, I was left to go. When my father asked why they had taken me for this long, he was told it was just ‘another random security check.’

My father does not own a car so the only alternative to get into town was to bargain for a taxi but after being told the frightening figure of $10,000 000 we decided to hitch-hike into Harare’s CBD. We lugged my heavy bags and flagged down a battered kombi from Manyame to Fourth Street Bus Terminus but just a few meters from the airport, the kombi was parked on the roadside as it had run out of fuel. Commuters shouted, ‘asi mota haichina network.’ The bus has no network as if it were a phone, this is commuter talk, this is Harare talk, people trying to make light the challenges they’re facing. The long airport road is bordered by an untidy tangle of grass and shrubs and, further down still, by dusty buildings that look exhausted

Harare does not look the same anymore. The buildings have a sickening off-colour look. Harare is now dull and tired. The people truly zonked. Most Harare faces show stunned smiles. There are some who do not smile at all, who seem indeed, as if they will never smile again. They are goners. No, it’s not the hunger and poverty that has sapped the life in them. Something essential is gone. The stuffing has been knocked out of the people.

But there’s still hope too. I saw people carrying, on their shoulders, packets of maize seed in anticipation for the sowing season. Though the blazing sun may suggest we may have to wait for Charles Mungoshi’s rain for a long while to come.

The panoramic drive to Gweru from Harare was enough overview of Zimbabwe in a day. The three hour drive left me in tears. Our country is now like a big concentration camp, people being asphyxiated by a thuggish political regime but striding on with ounces of sheer will power in their hearts and minds. Along the long stretch of the Bulawayo Road, stranded commuters jostled for the little transport there was. Talk in the bus was that there was no fuel and hence few buses on the highway. We arrived in Gweru after 10pm. There was a blackout in the city, another of the daily power cuts.

I am convinced Zimbabwe will not remain this hell. When something is permanent you learn to live with it, to accept its ominous presence. This is not a permanent condition. This is a human orchestrated famine of the flesh and spirit. The spirit of humanity will triumph, and Mugabe’s reign will lead him into eternal banishment.

Comments

13 June 2008 - Emile de Ravin, Johannesburg.

As a South African, I am stunned by the attitude of my government, in particular Robert Mugabe’s foreign minister Thabo Mbeki’s attitude toward the vampire regime to our north. Walking hand in hand with one of the greatest tyrants of the modern age is indeed not cool, contrary to what the South African president may think.

Down here, our feeling is that Mbeki’s quite diplomacy toward Zim has been a dismal failure, as have his policies regarding AIDS and the power crisis of late. We all fear a full out war after June 27 if Tsvangirai wins the election - but even if he doesn’t Zimbabwe will go down in flames in much the same way as Nazi Germany did, and this entire region will suffer.

And in much the same way as the conflict ended in Europe with the death of the Fuhrer, the ONLY way to avoid conflict and “rivers of blood”, as Tendai Bhiti put it, is the death of the Vampire of Harare. But that’s all wishful thinking. Other than that, we can only hold our breath and wait for Mbeki’s buddy to bury the rest of his people alive for even thinking of voting for the MDC.

But when Bob finally goes to meet his maker Satan, I will personally fly to Harare and piss on his grave!

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. Often explained as “seeing more like the human eye”, HDR imaging combines several shots of a single subject (usually static ones for obvious reasons) in order to overcome the exposure range limitations of traditional single-shot photography. The resulting images have much more detail from shadows to highlights, and everywhere in between.

Take the second shot below - Sycamore Street, Newcastle Emlyn. When standing in the street, with the sun from the left casting a shadow across the street, My “high dynamic range” eyes could see into the shadow while also seeing the sun-drenched right-hand side, however every attempt at a single shot of the scene was either too dark in the shadow or too light in the sunshine. So I set my Lumix L1 to autobracket two shots “under exposed”, two shots “over exposed” and one in the middle. I put the camera on a tripod and risked life and limb standing in the road.

Back at my computer I would normally import my RAW images into Adobe Lightroom, choose the best one or two then adjust the exposure, fill light etc etc in an attempt to create an image as close as possible to what I had seen. To create my HDR image, I imported the RAW files directly into Photomatix HDR, which automatically aligns them and combines the multiple shots (some people take as many as 12 of single scene) into a single HDR file or “HDR negative”.

This file looks aweful on your monitor and would print badly too, because nether can deal with the huge 32 bit colour depth (a JPG file is 8 bit) of the HDR image. Enter the “tone mapping” tool in Photomatix. Remember our HDR negative contains all the information from 5 shots at different exposures. Each shot will contain optimal infomation about a particular part of the subject. The tone mapping tool allows me to adjust how that information is combined and get the best Low Dynamic Range (LDR) image for screen or print.

Whan I’ve finished moving the 20 or so sliders and controls and over-worked my computer’s cooling system (processing 32 bit images takes a lot of oomph!), I click the button for Photomatix to produce the finished image which I can then save in PSD, TIFF or JPG format.

My aim with HDR is to create an image as close as possible to what I saw when taking the photo. Many people create “super realistic” photos with grossly exaggerated colours and effects. I personally don’t like them, but then I don’t like figs, beef or margarine, but somebody must….

The images below are 1,500 pixels wide. Too see them full size, click on them thumbnail, then click “full size” at the bottom. Your browser might then shrink the pic to fit your screen, so you may need to do another click to overcome this.

I’ll be adding more to this collection as I create them, so come back again!

I get increasingly dissatisfied with the mainstream TV and Radio in the UK. So much of the coverage now is personality driven rather than issue driven, and there is so little in depth coverage of foreign news stories. Repressive regimes such as Burma’s get scant coverage until a humanitarian disaster such as the Myanmar cyclone forces the country into the media spotlight.

• The BBC constantly runs scared of sticking its neck out in case it gets chopped off as it did over the Iraq “Dodgy Dossier” - even though all the facts it reported subsequently turned out to be true. Even News 24 is parochial and has at least one eye on entertainment rather than information.
• All TV paid for by advertising is constantly looking over its shoulder to check that the advertisers approve and is concerned primarily with audience figures. Keep it light and happy seems to be the guiding principle here.
• American stations like ABC, CNN and Fox - the “mainstream media” in the States - are under the thumbs of the advertisers and the the Government. Witness the uncritical acceptance of US Government Propaganda on WMD in the run up to the attack on Iraq. They have failed again to cover real issues in the Presidential race, focussing instead on out of context quotes from controversial associates of Democratic candidates, rather than substantive issues such poverty, healthcare and foreign policy.

How refreshing it has been to find the Real News Network run by “Independent World Television”. Funded entirely by donations it has informative items running for up to 10 minutes. Articles can either be streamed or downloaded as podcasts. I download the podcasts onto my laptop as they become available from the afternoon onwards GMT and watch them in Miro later in the day when the soaps take over the nation.

Here’s a an interview with Paul Jay, the founder of The Real News about what e is trying to achieve.

Break free of the mainstream media and get informed!

Like many other HSBC bank customers, I get phoned periodically from 0800 7838422 and sweet-talked by someone in HSBC telesales. Of course they won’t come straight out with it and say “I’m from telesales and I’m phoning to try and flog you an HSBC financial product”. No, they say they are phoning to see if you are happy with the HSBC service - just a courtesy call - very chatty and friendly, but you know the way it’s going. They are going to offer you something. Personal loan, insurance, the usual “financial products” stuff. I imagine they have your bank account details on one side of their screen and a list of HSBC products and services on the other. The job of this friendly caller is to find an opportunity, close a sale and secure a bonus.

Well I can be very chatty and friendly too if you catch me at the right phase of the moon. I got into a very interesting conversation a few months ago with a Scottish lad who was about to go on holiday to some exotic Island in the Caribbean. What he didn’t realize was that I was up for some sport, so the tasty bonus he was expecting to take with him as a result of his half hour endeavours selling me a short term personal loan to cover my overdraft was never going to materialize. I had no intention of signing the paper documents to confirm the deal a couple of days later. I just wanted to see what the real rate of interest would be after they added an arrangement fee plus loan protection insurance, and compare it with the interest I was already paying on my overdraft. When the contract arrived I did the sums. The real rate of interest (including the extras) on the personal loan I was being offered was 50% higher than on the overdraft it was meant to replace.

HSBC like other banks are probably not allowed to “cold call” non-customers, so they call their own customers and pretend to be customer services. Sell the suckers another product, no matter how inappropriate and expensive it might be. Providing the new product has one identifiable advantage, the three disadvantages are ignored.

I have no intention of moving to another bank as a result of my annoyance as I have a fantastic branch manager and I love HSBC’s Internet Banking. Also HSBC aren’t unique in this practice, so I’d probably be simply changing one call centre for another. I just wish they would stop wasting their time on me, because nowadays I never answer when the 0800 7838422 number appears on caller display, and when the answer phone cuts in, they never leave a message.

ABC - Always Be Closing …

I can only speculate on how these telesales operatives are trained and motivated. David Mamet had some experience and wrote it into his play “Glengarry Glen Ross” later made into a brilliant film. Here’s a little pep-talk from super real-estate salesman Alec Baldwin to the struggling sales staff - Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin and Ed Harris - with Kevin Spacey the office manager hanging around in the background. For “real-estate” simply substitute “financial product” and kiss your money goodbye.

No cameras allowed? Weren’t we standing in a shopping mall bristling with CCTV cameras, surrounded by shoppers with mobile phone cameras? I could only conclude this was a vain attempt by their marketing department to prevent the wider world from viewing the stark awfulness of this cloistered hanger. Almost as a act of desperation, a large banner outside the building shouts “Welcome to the Shires“, as if we need to be reminded that they are pleased to see us.

The sterile interior of the Shires

A few yards across the road from the Shires, and a pleasant contrast in every respect, is Leicester Market, the largest covered market in Europe. Full of colour and life. So that’s my second interesting fact…

2. Leicester Market is fantastic - 300 stalls selling vegetables, fish, meat, clothing and cloth. The quality is excellent and the prices reasonable. Three mangoes for £1 - amazing! Apparently the market has been on the same site for 700 years.

My third interesting fact continues this vegetable theme…

3. The best vegetarian Indian food in Leicester can be found at Bobby’s at 154-156 Belgrave Road. Bobby’s had been recommended by my cousin. We arrived for a take-away at 6pm on a Saturday evening when it was very busy. I needed some help ordering so asked the guy behind the counter for advice. He left his post and ushered us to a seating area where he explained the family history of the business, the issue of ‘hotness’ and how Bobby’s focusses on bringing out the natural flavours of the vegetables rather than masking them with fried onion and garlic. He was right. The food was delicious and very reasonably priced. We’ll be back! - www.eatatbobbys.com

4. There is a great Big Issue seller in Market Street. This gentleman allowed me to photograph him. “A good face” one of my family commented when I got home. I thank him and wish him well.

The walk began at the Bedd Morris car park 1,000 feet above sea level and descended to the sea at Aberrhigian Bay through a network of ancient drovers tracks called green lanes. Some are sunken and flanked by dry stone walls. Many are gloriously muddy and contain streams! From the pebble beach of Aberrhigian Bay the route went along the cliffs half a mile to Aberfforest and then inland for the long climb back to the car

This 4 hour walk was taken from the book Bluestone Country - the Carningli Walks edited by Brian John [ISBN: 0 9524071 0 8].

Photos © Webs Wonder Design. For usage terms please contact me.