British troops in Germany

July 27, 2008 By Leave a Comment

You don’t encounter that many British troops in Germany these days, at least not in my part of the country.

This week I read an article about troops in northern Germany leaving after 63 years, and it brought back memories of the life in the 1980s, when there were many more of them here.

I remember…

– cars with number plates with red borders, showing that they had been registered overseas

– listening to BFBS during visits to Germany

– encountering members of the British forces on the ferries between Dover and Zeebrugge, returning to their basis after time in the UK

– it being perfectly normal to meet members of the British forces when out and about in German towns

Can you imagine that happening today?  In today’s security climate I can’t image troops travelling in uniform in specially-marked cars and going shopping without putting on civilian clothes first!

Germany was close enough to home to go on holiday to, and thus troops were not so far away from home, a situation that the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq unfortunately can’t enjoy.

Filed Under: Cymeradwyo, General Tagged With: ,

Au revoir, Spam Karma

July 27, 2008 By 1 Comment

It’s always a shame when a great piece of software is discontinued, and this week whilst installation a new WordPress site I was shocked by a message on the Spam Karma screen – the “major announcement” was that development of the plug-in was being discontinued and the software would pass over to a GPL project.

I first discovered Spam Karma through a post on the Notes from Spain forum around the time I first started using WordPress. It’s a plug-in that really belongs in the software by default, as a popular blog gets spammed on a daily basis. Unfortunately, it’s not.

Spam Karma uses a clever set of rules to decide if a comment or trackback is spam, and I don’t think that any spam has ever got through on the installations that I support. There have have been some false positives – about 1 or 2 per year!

But I can understand the problem – the software is non-profit, so however passionately you develop it the time eventually comes where you decide to call time and move on to other projects.

The author’s blog gives one of the reasons as the current development of WordPress. I think WordPress is a great piece of software as well, but I do agree that the frequency at which the upgrades appear has recently become a little bit overwhelming. There have been times where I seem to be in a cycle of upgrading installations, and before I have finished the next version is released.

Let’s hope that this is not the end of the story for Spam Karma, and that some good programmers take over the project and keep the blogosphere free of spam.

Filed Under: Cymeradwyo, Internet Tagged With: ,

Low-energy housing – a thing of the past?

July 7, 2008 By 1 Comment

I was thinking the other day about how many electrical appliances run, even when they are not “directly” in use.
I don’t mean simple things like a television on standby, but things that in a sense need power, such as a video recorder or radio-alarm clock.
However much I attempt to reduce my power consumption (or “carbon footprint”), eg. by using bio-fuels or switching to renewable power sources, things still run on electricity.
Take the humble telephone.  In the old days they used power from the phone line.  These days I use a telephone exchange and cordless phones – all of which require power to run that is not supplied down the phone line.  And I can’t turn them off, in case someone rings!
Thinking back to my childhood in the 1970s, I worked out that our house used almost no energy at night whatsoever.  There was no video recorder waiting to record, no answerphone waiting for a call.  Heating was provided for by a coal-burning boiler, which went out at night and had to be re-lit in the morning.  My alarm clock had to be wound up before I went to sleep!
I am pretty sure that the only thing in the house consuming any power at night was the fridge!
Why can things not be so simple today?  Our modern society is so reliant on electricity, that instead of finding ways to consume less, we seem to be looking for better ways of producing it.
How about looking into ways of saving it instead?

Filed Under: Cymeradwyo, Environment Tagged With: , , , , ,

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