John the Geologist

A few interesting online articles today, expressing hope that 2005 will be the year when the world moves closer to achieving the Millennium Development Goals:

• Bono and Bill Gates(!!) argue for a better deal for the poor of the world.
• Gordon Brown argues for a new Marshall Plan for Africa.

30,000 people die every day, just because they are poor. That means the equivalent of an Asian Tsunami disaster every five days.

It is possible to get involved: visit makepovertyhistory.org to find out how…

Driving out of Belfast City Airport the other day, I noticed two interesting overhead signs on the M3 motorway. They need to be said aloud, in an Ian Paisley accent for full effect:

Does this mean the DUP now run Northern Irish Motorways?

I’ve been playing around with a few blog engines over the past few months, trying to decide which one to use for my own blog. I’ve been spurred on by my sister-in-law Ruth, who has just started her own blog.

Blogger is one of the best – it is free, and can be deployed as a hosted (on blogspot.com) or ftp’d to my (own site. Nice UI too. I gave it 7/10.

TypePad is a hosted version of MovableType. It is highly flexible, but can only be used as a paid for hosted service. That means that I can’t integrate it closely with my site, using the same CSS and templates. 5/10

MovableType would provide a version on my own hosting service, but the free version (it is not truly Open Source, but a commercial offering by Six Apart) has some significant limitations. Only 4/10.

I therefore chose to use WordPress, a standards-compliant, flexible publishing system, based on PHP and MySQL. The documentation is excellent. A clear 8/10.

I’m still trying to get the system set up correctly, particularly to integrate the look and feel in with the rest of my site, so bear with me over the next few weeks as I get it sorted out.

If you’re interested, some further discussion on the relative merits of blogging engines can be found at unbounded.org.
Chris Davis has some good tutorials on integrating WordPress with existing PHP-based sites.

We’ve has a lovely Christmas day (including an icing-sugar dusting of snow here in Glasgow) with some gorgeous food:

09:00 Breakfast:

• Scrambled egg with wild smoked salmon, on Rankins soda bread toast.

15:00 Lunch:

• Roast pheasant (from Heritage Meat and Game, Kilbarchan – regulars at the Partick and QP Farmers’ Markets), with a chestnut, raisin and cream stuffing and sauce.
• Roast potatoes (Maris Piper).
• Creamed parsnips and brussels sprouts – boil the veg, the whizz with creme fraiche.

16:00 Afterwards:

• Breaking into the chocolates and truffles from l’Artisan du Chocolat. My personal favourite are the liquid salted caramels.

20:00 Snacks:

• Cheeses (Spenwood, Durrus and Blue Stilton) from Iain Mellis, Gt. Western Road.
• Brindisi cocktail chorizo sausages.
• Gorgonzola and red wine kettle crisps.

21:30 Pudding:

• Christmas pudding, made by Rene, accompanied by home-made brandy butter and double cream.

A satisfactory day!

I had a check-up at the docs a few weeks ago, and had my cholesterol checked.

6.0 – not a good rating (it’s meant to be between 3.5 and 5).

So I went on a low-fat kick – I cut out cheese (the main culprit), limited myself to one semi-skimmed cappuccino a day, no buns or pastries, and only a few treats at weekends. I also bought a pedometer and average about 8000 steps/day.

A few days ago, my cholesterol reading was down to 4.1. Within 4 weeks.

It works. I’ve also lost a few pounds (my trousers are a little loser) and feel much fitter.