Having grown up in Norwich, I was interested to hear that there's a scaled-down replica of the Catholic Cathedral near Lettefrack, Ireland. It looks a bit different as obviously not everything could be scaled down, but it's a pretty good effort - made in the local green Connemara stone:
And for comparison, here's the real deal - with a bit of wikipedia info added in as it's fair to say the Catholic Cathedral is the lesser-known of Norwich's seats of worship:
Its cathedral-based fame is surpassed by the Church of England Cathedral, a Norman Gothic masterpiece, built from 1096-1145 and the second tallest cathedral in the England, at 315 feet. It's a good job no-one tried scaling it down though, as the famous cloisters would lose some of their charm if you had to crawl through them:
OK, so there's been a fair amount of buzz about spotify in the last few weeks - for those who don't know, it's a new (free) service allowing you to stream music from a downloadable player. There's a huge range available and it includes very recent releases.
The catch is that you occasionally have to listen to an advert before a song starts - but right now, they seem incredibly rare and I personally doubt the current business model can be profitable [click picture below to visit site].
My advice would be to use it as much as possible before it disappears or alters considerably. Obviously, I don't know the ins and outs of the online music business, but I've been a beta tester with spotify and I never understood how it could be profitable throughout its production.
In fact, it's still in beta - so watch out for more adverts upon release. You can pay for an advert free account, but right now, there really isn't any incentive. So log on, download and get streaming!
It's really fast too and doesn't seem to impact too much on your general browsing - all the songs I've tried to play have started instantly and needed no buffering. I hope I'm wrong, but I'll be impressed if it stays in its current for for long!
Spotify Website
Loads of people now use the Firefox browser and since Firefox 3 was launched, a number of useful features have emerged and are already a key part of how we browse (the "awesome bar" being particularly useful). But there are also a number of things that make browsing that much easier that are hidden in the documentation or secretly hidden for fun ("Easter Eggs").
This post is really just a 'best of' for these things - there are plenty of lists of such features but they often mix the useful with the mundane (see bottom of post for more info). These aren't all Firefox-specific and most apply to all versions of Firefox. The following are shortcuts I regularly use and tips I've recently read about that seem to have potential:
Automatically fill in the boring part of a web address I use this all the time - just type in the name of the website you're going to - say 'Google' - and then press Ctrl+Enter. As if by magic, the whole address is filled in (www.NAME-YOU-ENTERED.com). There are shortcuts for other addresses but they're a bit fiddly to use.
about: pages in Firefox A lot of these are well documented - just type in the following into the Firefox address bar and you'll get access to some useful features (and some stupid ones).
about:cache?device=disk - Brings up a list of all items in your disk cache, with links to downloaded files - As close as you'll get to the "Temporary Internet Files" folder that IE uses.
about:config - Brings up the interface to change numerous settings within Firefox, including lots that aren't available through the Options menu.
about:credits - An "easter egg" showing the names of those who contributed to Firefox.
about:logo - Brings up a hi-res version of the Firefox logo.
about:mozilla - Another "easter egg" showing a verse from the Book of Mozilla.
about:plugins - Shows a list of all plugins currently installed.
about:robots - Third "easter egg" showing a message from the robots to the humans.
Delete items from address bar history. Make your awesome bar more awesome by removing unwanted search results. Go to the address bar, start typing an address and a list of results will appear. To delete one, move down using the down key and press the delete key - hey presto!
Use keywords for your bookmarks Right-click any bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.
Use smart keywords This is probably my favourite feature but few people know about it. Whenever you have a search box on any website, you can right-click on it and select 'Add a keyword for this search'. Type in a word that you'll remember for it and then you can type this word into the address bar, followed by your search term and it will automatically bring results from that search box (see below for example).
It's a while since I've posted about some of my more recent work. I tend to post about internal projects more than external work, but it's always good to create a fanfare when a new site is launched! [click either of the pictures to go to the site]
Well...this fanfare is a bit late, but it's better than never. In December 2008, the new RSGS (Royal Scottish Geographical Society) website was launched and has been successfully active for two months now.
RSGS previously had a functional, but sparsely designed site that didn't give off the professional image they were intending. It was important that the new site was both stylish to look at and functional - with easy-to-edit pages.
A few of the main features are listed below:
- The top banner fades through a number of images from the RSGS archives, adding some dynamism to static pages.
- On the homepage, 3 'adverts' highlight some of the work of RSGS. These are randomly selected from a pool of 6, changing the homepage each time it is visited.
- A template was designed for each regional centre, allowing contact info, a programme of events and a Google map to be shown on each centre's page (see below).
So there we have it - a new site launched and definitely worth a look. RSGS are a fantastic organisation and run many events all throughout Scotland and I can personally vouch for the quality of these! :)
I've been a user of Twitter for a while now, but never quite got into it like some. As far as I can tell, it is essentially the same as a Facebook status (yep, I use Facebook too). It can be a more powerful tool if used frequently and with a large 'fanbase' or social network behind it, but that takes a bit more effort and commitment.
It is commonly talked about in reference to the many celebrities who use it, allowing them to communicate directly (and more personally) with their fans. But the feature that has always impressed me the most is the ability to update your status with your mobile phone. Once registered, you just add the Twitter number to your phonebook and then whatever you text to this number added as a tweet (a twitter post).
An example of a Twitter page - Often though, the RSS feed is more useful.
This is useful but not revolutionary, however it nicely links the web and mobile arenas, something that phone companies still haven't really managed (well, not in a wide-ranging way anyway). Twitter also automatically creates an RSS feed and I already manipulate this by importing my recent statuses into my homepage - using Perl to process and format it all (you could use x-path but it's HORRIBLE.)
This got me thinking - what if I set up a system where my website could actually be managed via this mobile phone / twitter combo? This would allow some pre-set admin tasks to be performed from anywhere in the world and at a moment's notice. And as my site automatically checks twitter with every page load - the results would be instantaneous. So I set up the following system to put this into practise:
A diagram of the loop set up to control my site by mobile phone.
Now all I have to do is to text Twitter using my mobile with the message "website off _____", giving a reason for the downtime and my homepage stops displaying its normal content and instead shows the following message - with the reason displayed in blue.
The message displayed as a result of sending a "website off" message.
Of course, these days you can get phones that have good web browsers and you could log in and make all these changes directly - but mobile coverage is significantly better than mobile broadband coverage (in the UK anyway) so this route gives a simple, no-nonsense approach to mobile web management!
I woke up to a considerable dusting of snow this morning and at around 8am, the heaven's opened with a sizeable blizzard. 2 inches fell in 5 minutes and now there's a carpet of snow for miles around.
It's not just up here in Scotland either - 15 inches of snow were predicted for parts of south England. I thought I'd browse the UK Webcam Map for some early morning pictures of snow and see how much of the UK has been affected.
I've collated some of the images below, just to show how white the UK is today - snow isn't uncommon here, but considerable snowfall across the whole country is a rare event these days:
It's not set to stop here either, with the Met Office issuing the following prediction and weather map for Monday:
Many schools, roads and transport systems across the country have been closed with more closures likely - I'm now worried I'm not going to be able to travel myself. It still amazes me how totally inept Britons become when we get slightly unusual weather. "Snow? In winter? - what should we do?". Oh well, the panic will be over shortly, I'm sure :)
I'd seen a few blog posts on 'crazy bridges' but they often seemed to focus on the same structures and were of the big-money, hugely publicised type. I was hoping to do a little post on some interesting bridges that were much less known but I could a big distracted on the way and it morphed into this post.
Now, I'll start the post with a few of the bridges I found and then move on to some bridge building games - they might even make good reference material (or not) - click to go to more info (external):
Duluth Aerial Bridge, Minnesota, USA.
Unknown Bridge in China - "Bridge to Heaven"
Juscelino Kubitschek Bridge, Brazil
Langwaki Sky Bridge, Malaysia
You see, whilst researching I found a link to a game called Bridge Builder - a free download that pitted your engineering wits against a watery span and some money to buy steel. It's a relatively simple game, but is good fun - and would also make a great teaching tool!
Once you've designed your bridge, you can test it without any additional stress and then follow it up with the big test - running a train across it...often ending in disaster:
Feel free to grab the game for yourself and visit their website. As I say, it's free, so go crazy!
It seems a fair few people have played this game at length, with many online help pages available and a large number of youtube videos as well. Often these are showing off slightly crazy bridge designs, so I thought I'd share one here:
Finally, this youtubing guided me to a couple more Bridge Building games with considerably better graphics: Bridge It and Pontifex - both made by Chronic Logic Games. Here's a little video showing what can be done (in this case using Bridge It):
The Cathedral, located on Earlham Road, was constructed between 1882 and 1910 to designs by George Gilbert Scott, Jr. as a parish church dedicated to John the Baptist. The funds for its construction were provided by Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk. In 1976 it was consecrated as the cathedral church for the newly erected Diocese of East Anglia and the seat of the Bishop of East Anglia. 
