Top heavy advertising

Banner advertising is one thing, but the size of the ads on Hotmail are getting ridiculous, especially since there's no scroll option. How long until I can't see my e-mails at all??

New travel website online

My brand new travel website is now online. Yes, this is the reason why the blog has been quiet of late, but now it's open for business (in a personal, non-commercial sort of way of course)

NORTHFACING.COM celebrates the northern countries of the world. Tired of hot, humid and noisy countries I've decided it's high time to focus on those countries I love the best, and that's just what the North Facing website is all about.

Please drop by and tell me what you think.

Ginger spam salad

While using my gmail e-mail account this evening I noticed for the first time a text advert at the top of the e-mail pane. It read "Ginger Spam Salad - Serves 1, refrigerate overnight". I'm rather perplexed as the site doesn't immediately look commercial or try to sell you anything. Have google tracked my online movement and thus got me down on their files as a habitual spam eater, or is this some bizarre content related link that picked up the fact I was browsing my 'spam folder'. The internet never ceases to amaze and baffle.

Yorkshire Dales history

While tracking down a book on google I was presented a link to the 'Out of Oblivion' website, which as the electronic version of the 'Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority Historic Environment Record' charts all facets of the area's history.

Some random browsing reveals all manner of historical nuggets. I never knew for instance that the Sedbergh Trust Turnpike was set up in 1761 to establish toll roads in the area. I suppose back in those days constructing a road would have required some considerable effort for which a financial return was sought.

KL is just off the edge of the map but as we venture into the Dales quite often it's good to discover what factors has lead to the area taking on its current form.

ee-bay-gum!

After very occasion forays into buying largely low value items on ebay, today has seen a turn up for the books and I made both my first big purchase and have started selling items to boot.

Although at first I reckoned I'm cobbled together a few items worthy of flogging, on looking around what's on offer there's invariably other people trying to rid their attics of the same old tat and expecting much less than I would otherwise like to receive for it. It's perhaps the fate of many of us in this age of mass manufacturing that the collection of old games, annuals and the like aren't so individual at all but something shared by many thousands extending even in having the same clutter gather dust for twenty years or more.

Exactly how far this adventure into on-line auctioneering goes is still to be seen. I suspect if some money is made on something it might prove inspiration enough to continue the trawl for owt sellable. But oh how I lament the car booting of all those Star Wars toys many years ago...

The danger of Firefox

Returning to my PC after several months means that inevitably half the software on it will be out of date and insisting on being updated on pain of death or incessant pop-ups (it's a toss up as to which is worse).

One of the updates has been the latest version of Firefox which supports even better tabbing than previously. However for the likes of me who likes to have loads of windows open it's dangerous. With other browsers everything starts to get clumsy after a certain number of windows are open, such as the old IE making windows tabs group together which I always loathed but Firefox can show ten tabs and has a handy scroller to accommodate more. As a result I've now got no less than 30 tabs open in Firefox alone! It works well for the way I work but in some ways I could do with some limitations to keep my jumping browsing habits in check!

Catching up with the times

Being largely out of touch with the movements of the online world for seven months leaving a good deal of catching up to do on return. One of the major names to have dominated 2006 has been Youtube. This is a site I'd heard of prior to my trip but only briefly glanced upon. Throughout the year the media have continually giving mention to Youtube in relation to content, the buy-out by Google and legal issues regarding content; all great promotion of course.

I seem to lack the type of friends who forever forward interesting, bizarre or hilarious Youtube video links (most I suspect are working too industriously these days) but during my trip and much more so since my return I've been exploring what this massive collection of video clips has to offer. It's impressive; more or less any music video you fancy, a good many concert recordings and even relatively little known bands are up there, such as 'Show of Hands' (see above).

There are clips of seemingly anything and everything. Teenagers singing into webcams or sharing their angst, a group of lads doing a spoof white-water rafting video on the river in my home town, favourite football goals (sigh), creative reworking of movie trailers turning The Shining into a family movie and Mary Poppins into a horror, the list goes on and on into the far distance. As with everything on the internet the quality is very variable, ranging from a finely crafted piece of work to someone droning on and inflicting their face upon us while doing so but it's no worse for that; if anything it harks back to the earlier days of the internet and gives it an interesting multimedia spin.

Youtube is a fine use of broadband internet speeds which most people now enjoy, adding an extra dimension to the online content which the normal man on the street can upload. Digital camcorders in one form or another are pretty much the standard these days making content creation within the grasp of seemingly anyone who has the time and inclination. It remains to be seen what will become of Youtube under its new ownership as some copyrighted content has already been removed in response to complaints by musicians and their solicitors. However for now it's pretty much all out there and worth exploring.

The best wi-fied fields in the land

My return to the green and pleasant land has necessitated a shake up of the internet connection in the house. Having just the one PC connected to a fixed connection wasn't going to cut it, so following the delivery of a rather fine Netgear router yesterday we're now a fully wireless household.

I have yet to test the full range of the router, which intelligently uses a number of antennae to provide the best reception for wherever the connected PCs are located. It seemed to do the trick as taking my laptop downstairs I still receive a full 5-bar signal. As and when the wind and rain subsides I'll go for a wander with the PDA to see just how far the signal can reach. I suspect the coverage won't extend much beyond the garden but some signal will undoubtedly reach the adjacent fields meaning that we've perhaps the first sheep with wi-fi internet coverage in Cumbria.

Having wireless internet is a great help especially if I'm in the search for my muse and have to find a good spot in the house for some inspiration to get the jottings and compositions under way. Although I thought my laptop battery was about knackered when I left for my trip it seems to have been rejuvenated meaning I could work entirely wireless for a couple of hours if I feel like it. It's fair to say the garden's not really going to be an option for the foreseeable future with the weather how it is. Even if I did wrap up for the cold there's still the force 10 gales whipping through here to contend with and the sort of rainfall the drought-stricken Aussies would give up the Ashes for.