…mostly.

I’ve moved over to Windows hosting because I wanted a hosting package where I could play with ASP.NET as well as PHP.

Unfortunately there isn’t anything for blogging out there that’s as good as WordPress but coded in ASP.NET so I’ve been working around the problems of transferring my WP blog over to the new server instead of transitioning to a new platform. Unfortunately WordPress makes use of a Linux only command to serve up pages with nicely formatted URLs and I haven’t been able to get any of the Windows workarounds to work on my server so I’ve decided sticking with WP is worth having search engine unfriendly URLs for now. Any inbound links to posts pre-move will now be broken unfortunately. Ah well, at least I managed to upgrade to the latest version of WP during the changeover.

The world’s wind turbines have come under attack by aliens. Maybe they have shares in oil companies.

After owning a digital SLR for about a year and a half, I’m finally starting to feel like I know how to make it take the photo I want it to. In celebration of this and the fact that the UK had turned temporarily arctic, here’s a photo of some hoar frost that I took on 28th December…

Click it to go large and see all the frosty detail!

It’s becoming harder to justify eating meat these days. Three of the major challenges we face as a world at the moment – clean drinking water, feeding everybody and stopping climate change are all linked to livestock farming. Here are some interesting statistics I hadn’t heard before:

• Agriculture is the largest user of fresh water (~70% in the developed world and more in developing countries). It takes somewhere between 10 and 100 times more fresh water to produce a kilogram of meat than a kilogram of wheat/vegetables (depending on the meat/vegetable).
• A piece of land the size of 5 football pitches can produce enough meat to feed 2 people. That same piece of land could feed 10 people if planted with maize, 24 people with grain or 61 people with soya.
• The UN say that the livestock industry is responsible for 18% of harmful greenhouse emissions. To put that into perspective, the entire world transport system only contributes 13.5%.

I think I’ve probably eaten significantly less meat this year. Living with vegetarians has probably helped subliminally but it’s been more because meat is more expensive and when cooking for one, even the small packs of mince or chicken are more than one meals-worth and I found that the other half of the pack would go off before I get round to eating it. Unfortunately, like many people, I do really enjoy a good steak / sunday roast / bacon sandwich / quality burger and was very happy on Christmas day that my lunch did not look like this…

… but maybe this year I’ll try to cut my meat consumption again. It’s probably healthier anyway.

(Cow photo by mnmlbeats)

Happy New Year!

Here’s a non-comprehensive list of things that made me happy in 2008:

Canada:

A (very) white Christmas and New Year in Canada and the discovery that I “kind of” like skiing (it’s part fun and freedom and part near-death experience).

Regaining full feeling in my big toe about a month after we got back to the UK made me happy.
Top Tip: Don’t go out skiing all morning with ski boots that are too small when it’s -20°C!

New York & Washington:

There were a lot of things from our trip to New York and Washington that made me happy. It was probably one of my favourite holidays ever. These are some:

• The opening sequence of the Lion King on Broadway – putting the “show” in “Broadway show”!
• Eating authentic (and historic) New York cheesecake in New York.
• Ridiculously over-filled deli sandwiches. Deli-cious!
• Brooklyn Bridge
• Watching the Mets (until the storm set in)
• Taking the Staten Island ferry at just the right time to watch the sun setting behind the Statue of Liberty as we passed by. We sat out on the terrace of the ferry terminal eating our sushi dinner watching the sky go dark and Manhattan light up and then took a ferry back to a sparkly night-time NYC. (Note: This was one of the cheapest and best things we did in New York. If you go there, do it!)
• Chilling in Central Park
• Seeing the city from a-top the Rock

A “Relaxing” Stay in the Peak District:
Not queueing at Alton Towers made me happy! Probably my least mature use of a day of holiday but it was worth it. It turns out though that maybe queueing is not so bad though – being accelerated from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds, getting off and then going round and getting straight on again was possibly a bit too intense!
I still can’t choose a favourite between the sensory overload of riding in the front seats of Nemesis and that moment of panic just after Oblivion starts to drop when your body tells you you’re in free fall but there’s nothing to grab on to and no way to stop it.

One Bumper Weekend of Fun:
Seeing my favourite stand-up and my favourite piano-playing song-writer live (on separate stages) in one extended weekend, then topping it all off with some Christmassy ice-skating at Somerset House with my favourite girl! Discovering the sneaky side seats in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire which gave us an excellent view for Ben Folds made it a double win!

Christmas at home with the family
Having missed out on the family Christmas last year by being in Canada, I enjoyed this one all the more. The traditional jigsaw was missing 2 pieces though! I’m sure we returned one from the same manufacturer 2 years ago because it was missing a piece. I’ve never had a jigsaw with extra pieces – where do the missing pieces go?

Weddings: 4

• Steve and Laura
• Dave and Liz
• Matt and Becs
• Nick and Rhiannon

Celebrities spotted: 2 (not including Eddie and Ben)

• Lily Cole – coming out of a bookshop in “trendy” Greenwich Village, NYC, wearing a controversial kaftan! The paparazzi caught her the same day.
• Justin Lee Collins – In Caffe Nero, Sevendials, Covent Garden making some plans with a film crew. He high-fives when he’s not on TV too.

Films I’ve Liked:

• There Will Be Blood
• Be Kind Rewind
• The Dark Knight (Points deducted for Christian Bale’s ridiculously low voice when Batman and the fact that the film seemed to almost end about 3 times before it actually did but Heath Ledger really was excellent.) Special treat: an article on game theory as applied to the (excellent) opening sequence!