This morning Clare ran the Race for Life in Derby, for Cancer Research UK. She is aiming to raise £50 for this fantastic charity. If you are in a charitable mood, sponsor her online. You don’t even have to go anywhere, you can donate as much or as little as you like and it takes less than five minutes .No excuses!
2007 is the centenary of the Scout Movement. 100 years ago in 1907, Scouting started with an experimental camp held on Brownsea Island in Dorset led by war veteran Lord Robert Baden-Powell. Prompted by his famous book “Scouting for Boys” published in 1908, Scout groups were set up throughout the country, and quickly expanded to other parts of the British Empire.
In 1920 the first World Scout Jamboree was held in 1920 at Olympia in London and was an inside exhibition of Scouting. The second, held four years later held in Copenhagen was the first international Scout camp which set the tradition of Scout Jamborees.
Today Scouting has twenty-five million members world-wide (not counting Guides) and is still growing. Approximately four million of those are from the United States, the largest single Scout Association. There are 155 countries with internationally recognised National Scout Organisations. There are more than 28 million Scouts, youth and adults, boys and girls in 216 countries and territories. More information on the history of Scouting can be found on Scoutbase UK.
This year, being the centenary of Scouting there are numerous events being held worldwide to celebrate the largest organisation for young people in the world. The largest event will be the 21st World Jamboree held in Chelmsford, Essex, UK. The World Scout Jamboree will be a gathering of Scouts from around the world for 12 days from 27 July to 8 August.
Please sign this petition to the UK Government to increase the awareness of the centenary of Scouting.
There is an article on the BBC at the moment about moving our times in line with Europe, moving them forward an hour. According to the article, “the UK would cut crime, boost tourism, improve health and reduce accidents, according to House of Commons research.”
I would just like to register my disgust at this awful suggestion. There is no way I can believe having an ‘extra hour’ of light a day will stop 450 deaths a year. I don’t know about everyone else, but I have headlights on my car for night driving.
The whole world bases its times on UTC. UTC is the world standard time. If Europe wants to be on the same time as Britain, they can change!
Another big argument is the costs of doing business between Britain and Europe because of the time differences. I personally don’t see how +1 hour is going to make much difference. What about those who do business between Britain and USA or the far east? Do they want the them to change their time systems aswell?
Stop wasting your time Government and come up with some useful suggestions for once!
Just seen an announcement on the Fedora devel list (no, I don’t subscribe to it, I saw it on Slashdot) that there will be no more Fedora Core. Starting with Fedora 7, there will be no distinction between Fedora Core and Extras, all packages will be managed in one single repository. Fedora 7 is currently scheduled for general release on 26th April 2007. Doesn’t seem long ago I updated to Core 6.
Happy New Year to all. I hope 2007 brings you much prosperity and luck. If anyone has any good memories from 2006, post them below.
Just seen an interesting video on YouTube of the TNT 737 crash at Birmingham Airport in June. For those who aren’t aware of the details, a TNT cargo 737 departed from Belgium to Stansted, and due to undercarriage problems made an emergency landing at East Midlands, but had to go around after landing, leaving its right main landing gear on the grass beside the runway, eventually ending up landing on runway 33 at Birmingham. There is also an article from the BBC.
The video is from the West Midlands Police helicopter which is based at Birmingham.
It’s slightly alarming to see the aircraft touching down with only the left main undercarriage, then having to lower itself onto the right engine. Look out for the sparks! Good bit of piloting to get down safely.
Unfortunately the aircraft sustained irreparable damage and was written off. It now sits parked on runway 06/24 waiting to be dismantled for scrap.
In my quest for good Google ratings and an effective permalink structure, I have come across some good SEO tips specific to Wordpress. They are all pretty easy to implement, but could potentially be quite effective. I have also found a post about general blog search engine optimisation. Most of them focus around using effective post titles, permalink structures and good content.
Just a short note to say Happy Christmas to all. Hope you have good fun, drink plenty booze and eat loads of yummy food.
Here’s a Christmas song to get you in the mood, recorded by my brother and his friends.
Just thought I’d alert everyone to the fact that the latest version of openSUSE is due to be released this Thursday for download. SUSE is my favourite linux distribution for desktops, and I’m finding myself using it more and more because of the numerous advantages it offers over Windows.
From the OpenSUSE website: The openSUSE project is a worldwide community program sponsored by Novell that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. The program provides free and easy access to openSUSE. Here you will find a community of users and developers, who all have the same goal in mind - to create and distribute the world’s most usable Linux.
According to the BBC, smoking in enclosed public places will be banned in England from 1 July next year. In my opinion, this is excellent news. Why it couldn’t have been implemented earlier, I don’t know. How well it will be enforced is yet to be seen. I imagine there will still be the occasional few people who flout the rules and light up in public, hopefully these will be a minimum.