Scargill

After MANY months of hard graft, our new holiday rental in Bellingham – Hollyberry Cottage – will be open for business from the beginning of October. Apologies to friends who might already know this but getting hooks into Google on a new site is MUCH harder than with existing sites- so I figured I’d give us a head start here.

Hollyberry has been a labour of love and we’re all ready to go, with private car parking, WIFI, UK phone calls and a whole range of facilities all included. For more information go to the Hollyberry Cottage website.

I’ve been hunting this down for ages – those of you who are old enough will remember the age of the cassette tape… this is brilliant…

Funny though how your memory changes over the years… I was convinced it was part of the Memorex “is it live or is it Memorex” campaign – according to this – it’s Maxell. I also thought it was “get up in the morning, same thing for breakfast”…. ah, well

Not as simple as it might seem, creating Panoramas and embedding them in a website – but I think I’ve cracked it.. been playing with this idea for years and finally have a working solution.

Firstly – you need something to make panoramas with.
On the iPhone there is 360 Panorama which is very good and so far, the best of the lot – but beware it’s not that clever in poor lighting. An alternative is to take several overlapping photos preferably with a decent camera and “stitch” them together. The problem with that is that there’s lots of software out there to do this but most of it is absolute rubbish, utterly failing to match light levels between pictures. An exception would be Serif’s PanoramaPlus – which is superb. I user version 3 but I see they’ve just brought out a new version. It works in Windows 7 and below, it works exceptionally well and it’s cheap. It really is very, very good. Sadly when it comes to playback – they only support Quicktime – which is hardly universal – but read on.

Secondly – you need to display the panorama
Ok, so you now have your panorama… what are you going to do with it – much of the software out there is jerky or otherwise rubbishy – other stuff costs a lot of money just to put a panorama on your website. Flickr and Google Web Albums are a godsend for images – and so CLEVR seems to be the same for panoramas. Simply upload your spiffy new panorama to the CLEVR site – embed the code in your website – and BOBS YOUR UNCLE!

Pompous Papal adviser Cardinal Walter Kasper thinks landing at Heathrow Airport is like “landing in a third world” country. Well compared to the Vatican’s money, most places are “third world”, really. Well, don’t worry Mr Kasper, I doubt you’ll ever be invited again and if you do – I hope and trust we taxpayers won’t have to cough up a SINGLE PENNY towards it.

Just to make matters worse, he then apparently told a German magazine that the UK was market by a “new and aggressive Atheism”.  YOU BET. We’ve now had at least 2 generations who’s daily TV for those who can see past Coronation Street has included the likes of David Attenborough and other real luminaries showing us how the world REALLY works and how life REALLY came about instead of peddling a bunch of lies to those who don’t know any better. Many of us in the UK have moved well beyond the Vatican and their imaginary world and we’re all the better for it.

We’re paying (apparently $18 dollars – why Sky quoted dollars I’ll never know) for the Pope’s visit and yet less than on in 10 of UK citizens are catholic despite the popes views on contraception – shows how much notice people take of him – but think about it – are you religious just because you’re a Catholic? No of course not – British Catholics have had the same TV as the rest of us and I’d put good money on less than 1 in 20 of them actually being religious… so WHY ARE WE TAXPAYERS PAYING FOR THIS TRIP – I won’t WANT my money going on rubbish like this.

A word to the wise in the Vatican…. If you don’t like Britain and it’s ways – DON’T COME HERE – and as for the Vatican saying Kasper didn’t mean “any slight” – PULL THE OTHER ONE.

It’s been a productive weekend up to now… my article in Computing Magazine went through, which was nice of them and I spent the day working quietly on the FSB’s mass emailing system, having finally figured out how to track links. I wasted half the morning trying to find a decent article on cross-browser rounded corners to tidy the visuals up a bit – but even that works now.

We then went out last night with friends to a local restaurant just off the military road (see photo – experimenting with my new HDR camera software, this was taken just before sunset amazingly) and had a very nice time indeed. Today, having promised we’ll open up Hollyberry Cottage for business at the start of October, we’re off to do some grafting. BT are delivering the broadband line next week so I’ll finally get a change to sign up to the FON network and give that a go – I’ve an APP on the iPhone to tell me where the hotspots are and apparently there are several in the village of Wark! In case you have BT Total Broadband and are not benefitting from this amazing free service, here’s the link, not that I’m pushing BT by any means – I used them because in the back end of Bellingham there are not that many alternatives.

Do you live near or pass by Nunwick, Simonburn? Have you been travelling to and from Hexham and noticed that HORRENDOUS STINK? Have you complained to Tynedale Council about it yet? If not, why not? The stuff is called AGRIVERT. If you look it up on the web the company have been clever enough to ensure they have all the initial entries – however it IS recycled human waste and it absolutely HONKS. If anything is guaranteed to make you want to PUKE rather than enjoy the countryside – this is it. Complain to Tynedale council at 01434-652121. The British countryside should be preserved for all, not poisoned with this stuff. I’ll be onto them first thing in the morning…

Never heard of it? Check out these links.. you’ll be horrified.

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/Stench-incurs-villagers39-wrath.6102941.jp

http://www.alanbeith.org.uk/news/000593/residents_raise_agrivert_concerns_at_embleton_meeting.html

http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/sport/rugby/1.409321

http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/northern-echo/mi_8047/is_20061110/residents-kick-stink-field-human/ai_n48553685/

Peter Scargill

Another trip to London and more travel misery. It’s be coming a habit. I arrived at Newcastle station to find Starbucks closed, part of the car-park out of commission for no apparent reason, the ticket machines displaying their guts as workmen looked inside and other services out of order. There’s always SOMETHING bust at that station. Alighting the train we started the usual barrage of reasons why the service was late, ending up leaving Peterborough a full half hour late.

Of course there is more to come as the London underground is in turmoil, not that you’d get me inside that terrorist target without a fight but that means less availability of taxis!

The ONLY reason I don’t take the car is the length of journey… 3 hours or so tends to be my limit before feeling the urge to doze off. Even taking a plane would not entirely solve the problem as you still need taxi/train at the other end.

It’s back to rain in the Northeast, down here past Peterborough it’s still sunny… maybe a couple of says more sun before we descend into winter. 5 weeks and counting to clear off again. Quite looking forward to my day in London tomorrow – myself and a small group of volunteers are going to learn about legal aspects of running forums.

Oh, “Have I got news for you” – Episode 28 Series 6 according to the iPlayer – if you’ve not seen it – it’s a must – funniest thing I’ve watched for months. they have the non-too-sharp-looking leader of the transport workers union on and Ian Heslop walks all over him – very funny.

I have to say, I’ve feared the worst, coming back from wonderful weather in Spain to the rubbish everyone had told me to expect in the UK. Well, I don’t know what happened but the weather’s been just fine since we returned. I got one day in the Northeast and it was off to Holmes Chapel – Cranage Hall to be exact – and if you ever want a nice stopover down that way it’s well worth looking into – lovely grounds – nice LARGE hotel. I’ve just come back this afternoon from there – and all the time we were in Holmes Chapel the weather was excellent (for the UK) and now I’m back home it STILL looks OK.

The forecast says it’s likely to be sunny and warm(ish) again tomorrow – which is nice as I have a spot of work to do on our properly in Bellingham and then a meeting at home later on. Nice to know it’s not going to pour down – though the forecast again does not look that good for later in the week.

I should say I am pleasantly surprised, I was thoroughly expecting rain and snow – and it’s been sunny all day (Wednesday), sunny enough, in fact to continue wearing shorts as I’ve been doing for the last 5 weeks – but only just… and of course typical of the Northeast, as the sun goes down, the chill sets in.

Tomorrow begins another series of time-consuming meetings which stop me from actually doing the job… but at least they’re all over in one 4-day batch. My very expensive car after 5 weeks of sitting in the driveway was only one step removed from a brick this morning. Had to borrow friend Chris’s jump-leads to give it enough power to turn the starter. Second and last Merc for me, next time it’s a Volvo. I’ve extended my October stay in Spain to 2 weeks – I know it’ll not be super warm but at least there’s a good chance it’ll be sunny for more than a day. I know where I’d rather be but for now it’s back to life “as normal”. Bought a video lead for the iPhone from Tesco – and guess what – it doesn’t work with the iPad. I did think of asking the assistant in Tescos for one brief second, then sensibly dismissed the thought. That’s it really, nothing special to say…

I’ve just realised I’ve not been maintaining my Google photos properly – by default you needed a link to see most of them – so for those of you who want to see more photos – or better quality etc… head on over to http://picasaweb.google.com/peterscargill and they should all be there sorted into albums.

I’m feeling a little guilty as I’ve not been updating this blog since we headed off to Spain. All’s well, we have folk looking after our house in the UK though we understand that the weather up North has been atrocious and I do miss my kitten who’s probably forgotten all about me now – meanwhile in Andalucía we had a couple of days of heavy rain… in a month – otherwise it’s been 35 degrees perhaps every afternoon – not a lot of fun unless you can escape and of course that’s exactly what we can do… our cave rarely gets over 25C. I’m really getting into this idea of working mornings and evenings – and doing SOD ALL in between – it really does have it’s merits.

Maureen and I have been trying our best to have a holiday but between her backlog of schoolwork and my constant emails which apparently only I can resolve (nice ego trip but not too good for holidaying).. it’s been a relaxing but not entirely isolated break!

It’s amazing how we as human beings just simply cannot grasp the big picture – it’s as if we’re programmed like machines to only think within our comfort zones. Here I am worrying about work – and the issues others are having as if it is my ultimate role in life to solve problems for others… Maureen is determined to get her work done – even though some of that work means missing out on sunshine – abundant over here but so scarce back in the UK. At 56 the chances are that we’ll only be here for 10-20 years – and that’s not a long time after which everything is utterly and completely irrelevant FOREVER…. such a short time to take in the wonders of the world we’ve yet to discover and yet here we are writing blogs, doing schoolwork, solving other people’s problems… we HAVE been taking the time to watch on the EDEN channel, later at night the EXCELLENT heritage of nature programs that Attenborough has left us…. they’ve been having an Attenborough week and some of the stuff on there is amazing. Personally I’d scrap ALL religious education worldwide and replace it with Attenborough lessons – we’d all be a LOT better off.

Still, I suppose it beats getting bored. In the next couple of days we’ve a trip WAY up in the mountains where despite the tremendous heat here in Spain, there is STILL snow at the top… I’ll have my camera and if you look in I’ll do my best to document!

Hot sun, cool water, chocolate Ice-Cream and stunning imagery shared with your partner – THAT’S what it’s all about…

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