This bank holiday weekend I went to the first wedding of the year.  It was the wedding of Lesley and Matt, and the service was in Bamford, near Rochdale.  The day was excellent and reminded both myself and my wife of our wedding day.

There is something about this sort of celebration that gives you a kind of buzz in your stomach.  It is  the excitement that you used to get as a kid when you were opening presents for your birthday and Christmas.  This time this feeling was also filled with nerves as I was doing a reading at the ceremony.  The reading was a very popular reading - 1 Corinthians 13 called Love.

I am no stranger to speaking in front of a crowd as being a teacher you do this everyday without even thinking about it.  But there is something different about standing in front of your peers and speaking, especially when you know many of them.  Nervous I was but it seemed to go OK.  Once my hand had stopped shaking enough for me to read the word the reading went well - so my wife tells me!

Once the ceremony was over it was time for the reception and it meant that I could well and truly relax. I remember it was the same at my wedding.  I was not quite at ease until the speeches were out of the way.  I wasn’t nervous about the event, the number of people there or anything like that, it was the fact that I was standing in front of a number of people and it was causing some nerves.  At this wedding I remember thinking “poor Matt” he won’t be relaxed until his speech is over.  I have to say that it was far better than my speech and it was delivered with what seemed like no nerves at all.  In fact all the speeches were good.

Then it was the evening entertainment.  It is so good to get together with all friends and family.  It is something that you never tend to do unless there is a family celebration or even bereavement.  If fact when saying goodbye to some family that were leaving for Scotland we said “probably see you at the next wedding or funeral” and we both laughed.  It is a shame though how the pace of the modern day life means that you only ever see far away people when it comes to events like these.  I suppose that we all need to make a bigger effort!

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Photographs from the Wedding
[Video] Father of the Bride Speech
My Wedding Photographs

Delivered the other day, I received the latest version of the WWF (Word Wildlife Fund) catalogue of Environmentally Friendly Products. Not sure why I got a copy but I have to say that there are some jolly good ideas in there.

The first that caught my eye was something that I have thought is a fine idea for a long time now, and that is the wind up radio. What a fantastic idea for producing communications without the need for power. A radio needs very little power and therefore to have it wind up is a great idea. Just 30 seconds of winding on the handle to provide a ‘charge’ will give you 30 minutes of radio to listen to. Now that is cool.

I have to confess that I looked at the gadgets section straight away and another of the items that caught my eye was the torch that doesn’t need batteries. I thought “eh!, how on earth does that work then?” Well apparently it works using motion. As you move the torch around the motion charges the batteries that are in the torch. It is the kinetic energy that creates the charge, probably similar to a dynamo creating electricity as you peddle a bike. The product claims that just a two minute shake of the torch will give up to 1 hour of light. This could work so well with other things too. I often use my iPod at the gym when running and cycling and therefore why not create an iPod that uses the motion of me running in order to power the device? Come on Apple keep up!

Next was a kettle. We all know that in order to save energy we should only be boiling the right amount of water that we need instead of boiling the whole kettle for one cup. Well in the catalogue there is kettle which you can fill to the top but you then tell it how many cups you want to boil. The desired amount of water is then passed to another chamber and only that amount is actually boiled, and therefore this is saving energy. Neat idea.

There were allsorts of other gifts and ideas throughout the catalogue that I thought would be really good to buy and good to purchase as presents and gifts for other people e.g. at Christmas. You can also shop online too, which is an added bonus. And as all the products are not harmful to the environment then you are good to go!

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WWF Website
WWF Shop

Going out into the garden this morning we were greeted with the following sight. In most other households you would have been asking what has been into the garden to cause this. In our house the answer was more simple.

Anyone would think that George and Jeremy were not fed with all the savaging of foliage that they get up to in the garden. All the plants that we have, must be lifted on the ground in some way in order to avoid destruction.

I think that on this occasion it was Jeremy that was the offender. When entering the garage to see them this morning he had an incredibly guilty look on his face and George sat there as if to say “look I told you they would realise what you have done”. And yes we had realised. We will have to rethink the way in which we lift the plants off the ground in order for the rabbits not to eat them. I suppose for a vegetarian the urge is irresistible.

We currently have all the plants lifted off the ground were the rabbits have access to them. We have used hanging baskets and wall brackets as well as those rather nice pots that look metal but are plastic. The plant in question here was simply on top of another pot. Now the rabbits are bigger they can obviously get high enough to eat it up to the point were there are still small leaves.

Early this week we took a day out to the lakes. We were holding on all last week for the weather, and today seemed OK and so we set out on our travels up the M6. How wrong could we have been about the weather?

We arrived in the lakes to see some relatives about 1100 and the weather was steadily getting worse, even though there was blue skies back at home. Whilst drinking our coffee and cappuccino the heavens opened and the rains came down. However as we left our first port of call the rain stopped and it became a bit brighter.

With new enthusiasm that the weather would remain fine we decided to go over Kirkstone Pass which is a hilly road through the hills to Ullswater. Getting half way up we could see the weather changing. We stopped in a layby and ate our butties whilst the clouds rolled in.

The heavens then opened again and the rain started pouring down. After a quick stop at another relatives for a coffee we decided to call it a day and headed home.

A wrote a few weeks ago about the security problems with social networking sites such as bebo and myspace. Today I watched a Panorama episode about children fighting and then this being uploaded to the web, in what is being called just another form of cyberbullying.

Once again this highlights the lack of education and parental responsibility of many parents these days. The images that where shown on the program were all too common a hearing in today’s schools. Pupils bragging to each other about what they have watched and uploaded to sites such as YouTube.

We have also heard in the news and media about individuals, often youngsters of teenage years being attacked and filmed using a mobile phone and then this being uploaded to YouTube for the [sick] world to watch. This is wrong and is getting out of hand quickly. Being a teacher you get to hear about more and more stories of this sort of thing happening with pupils. The question remain as to what can be done about it.

Many of the teaching unions have called for these websites to be banned, however I believe that once again this is just treating the symptoms and not the cause. It seems at the moment that unfortunately it is fashionable, cool and trendy for many [and I know not all!] young people to behave as bullies and in a violent and abusive way towards others. One of the ways in which this is done is through sites such as YouTube. Twelve months ago were heard incidents of so called ‘happy slapping” and at the time that wasn’t really dealt with by the law. It was passed off to be a minor problem that would phase itself out. How wrong they were as this minor problem has now grown to all out violent attacks in some cases.

For the situation to change it is time to go back to basics in teaching young people the basics of respect and manners. Unfortunately to many parents think that this is the job of teachers. How wrong can they be. Parents should pass along these qualities to their children so that when they reach school the work is already done. As the title describes, teachers teach what they were trained in, whether it was Geography or Maths or whatever subject, but they are never trained to teacher good manners and respect to kids, as that is the job of the parents.

Another step is the websites themselves. However unlike some of the teaching unions, shutting them down is not the answer. Bullying takes place in schools everyday (and probably in many workplaces) but we don’t shut them down. No, we change things in order to reduce the amount of bullying that happens. Well the same is needed for these websites.

Lets take YouTube as an example. At first you think anything can be posted on YouTube and you would be right. So how is policing of the content done. You may think that these website have a large team of people that check videos for inappropriate content. You would be wrong. The number of people that YouTube have checking the content uploaded to their site is zero. The reason is that they expect the users of the site themselves to police the content. This is done through flagging a video as inappropriate using a link below the video itself. YouTube then check the video (which can take a massive 48 hours) and then either remove it or leave it there is they think that it is OK. It was interesting to see what the Google (who own YouTube) spokes person had to say on the video regarding the policing of their site.

“If it is violent assault and if the police come to us and say they would like to prosecute someone because it was violent assault, we will cooperate with them if they’ve gone through the proper procedures.” (Rachel Whetstone, Google UK)

Surely it would make better sense to have the videos screened before they were uploaded. What Google are saying is that they want the police to do the work for them and therefore effectively they do not want to spend their profits policing their own site, they would rather have the tax payers money do it for them.

If people started putting up offensive posters outside the Google buildings, wherever they are, they would be onto the police to have them removed, they would not wait until a member of the public flagged it up with the police?

The policing of videos on sites like YouTube must change in the future. Videos that are uploaded must be policed in a better way than they are now. As I was suggesting in my last article if you knew who exactly was posting these videos then the content wouldn’t be as much as problem, because anything that is a criminal offence could be traced back to the user to press charges, whereas at the moment this cannot happen as you can post under any name you like. Since identity on these sites is unlikely to change the videos must therefore be screened before they go up on the web. Combine this with proper education and upbringing of children and the number of videos that are showing these graphic violent images would reduce by a lot, and maybe change the culture among many (not all) of today’s youth that this sort of behaviour is funny and acceptable.

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[Video] Panorama - Children’s Fight Club (may expire)
Panorama Transcript - Children’s Fight Club
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself
BBC News - Cyberbullying

What an interesting question. I suppose you immediately start thinking of people when asking this question however it is true of so many other things. Many times a week we all say the words “that’s beautiful” but why is it beautiful? Good question.

I started to think about this because of an advert that I heard on TV that asked the same question. I think that it was an insurance advert but I am not entirely sure. It got me thinking is there are rule that an be applied to whether something is beautiful or not? Lets look at some examples.

We will start with the face. Why are some people considered more beautiful than others? Here are two images that I found on the web. Which one do you think is more beautiful?

Most people will probably say the one of the right. We all [probably] know that this image is Kate Beckinsale. So why, on average is she considered more beautiful than the image of the left, who I might add is jolly nice too! Doing some research into this it would appear that the more symmetrical the human face is, then the more attractive it is, according to research. By symmetrical I mean that the left and right hand sides of the face are almost if not the same. So I thought that I would try this with me. If I mirrored my image or make me more symmetrical then would I be more attractive?

Well I have to say that looking at the two images of me above, the theory seems correct in that the symmetrical image of me seems more attractive than the regular image (and my wife agrees!).

So therefore we have created a rule that symmetry makes things more attractive. So what about other things? Many people often look at a landscape and say that it is beautiful. What about the images below? Which do you think is more beautiful?

I bet that most of you came to the conclusion that the image to the right is more beautiful than the one on the left. I thought about this for a while and came to the conclusion that the reasons for this was that the image of the right was a natural scene whereas on the left it was man made buildings etc. So therefore this suggests that man-made objects are not as attractive as natural things. Does this work for people? Which of these are more attractive?

Having thought about all this I can only come to the conclusion that beauty is not scientific and that things are beautiful or ugly to different people. That said it does seem to be that more people than others agree on similar characteristics of beauty.

Whilst surfing around on the net today I came across the governments new carbon footprint website were you can calculate your own carbon footprint and then get ideas on how to reduce it. I though the site was rather good really.

There are three different sections that you go through in order to fill in the information - your home, your appliances and your travel. In each section there are a number of different pieces of information that you are asked for. For example in the home section you are asked about insulation and how you heat your home, in the appliances section you are asked how many and what type of TVs you have and in the travel section you are asked what type of car you drive and the number of miles travelled per year.

If have used carbon calculators before on the internet and often they were very confusing. They asked you to enter exactly how many units you used for gas and electricit, which is information that you just don’t have to hand. However this site was much better. All the questions on the forms I was able to answer without having to look up any information.

Anyway at the end of it all the website informed me that my individual carbon footprint was what sounded a rather large 3.77 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. At the end of the calculations you can analyse your results. You are able to compare them with the national average as a whole and for each section individually. According to the site the national average is around 4.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Therefore I was rather pleased with myself as mine was considerably less than the average. However looking at the travel section my figure was higher than the national average. Work to be done there when I change my car then!

It got me thinking this. If the national average is 4.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and there are approximately 60 million people in the UK then as a country each year we produce a staggering 270,000,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year. You then start to think about other countries. In terms of population we are quite small, however we are very developed and therefore produce more per person than other countries. The global carbon dioxide emissions figure must be massive.

There are clearly two areas that I still need to work on in terms of saving energy to reduce my carbon footprint. The first would have to be my car. Indeed, the next time I change my car I am certainly going to purchase a greener alternative. The second are would be drying the washing. I have to confess that I nearly always use the dryer, even on sunny days, which needs to change. I will do my best!

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Act on CO2 Calculator

As many of you will know I enjoy creating a website, and have created many of my own to date. However my photograph website must have had about 5 versions in 2 years as I have never been able to get it right. Well the next version is now out.

Actually I am still not sure about it. Anyway I have been looking for ages how to create that really cool effect that apple call coverflow. Finally I have managed it. Using a Flash component feature I have managed to create a similar effect, but as I am still getting used to the different parameters it may change in look in the near future. This piece of kit displays the galleries and then double clicking on a photo displays the gallery.

Another nice feature that I have managed to create is an RSS feed to the site. This can be used to view the latest additions to the gallery in a reade, such as Google Reader or even Firefox.

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Mark Wilkinson Photos

Well finally the patio is [almost] finished. The flags are laid down and it is ready to walk on. Laying the last few got very frustrating.

In total we have laid over 70 flags. That is quite a weight to be lifting around, not to mention all the digging that took place as well. In fact the digging is worse than the laying, as it is more tiring.

Anyway we look forward to many a night sat on the patio with a beer or glass of wine and possibly a bbq.

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View all the Photos here

Whilst working on the patio down the road today we got talking about utility companies and how annoying the world of providing homes with the basics can be.

Many of the utilities that are provided to our homes here in the UK such as gas, water, and electricity were privatised in the late 80s and early 90s by the conservative government. I suppose the idea being that if you have more than one company providing the services and utilities then the prices will come down due to competition.

The theory sounds great, but in practice does it really work? When moving into a new house the first thing that is needed is that you find out who is providing you with your services. This could be a number of companies, such as one for gas and a different one for electricity or it could be the same for all. This is often more tricky than you would think, with companies not seeming to know whether they are providing you with your utilities or not.

Once you have found your preferred utility company they then start asking you which tariff you want to be on. Surely the answer here is the same for everyone? “The cheapest please”. They all seem to have different rates for when you use the utility. What is wrong with x amount of gas costs x amount of pounds and you just pay for what you use - simple. This would also encourage everyone to use less which is good for the environment. Some of these tariffs give you free (or reduced prices) energy at certain times. You are hardly going to go round the house in the middle of the night switching on lights because you are not paying for it. This is also encouraging sloppy use of power and this will effect the environment.

Surely these services would be better provided by non-profit making organisations where everybody gets the service from the same provider. This is because everybody needs these utilities. It is not that you choose not to have gas or electricity. Also as the organisation would be non-profit making then surely they would be cheaper.

It is the same with things like the railways. Have you tried to book an rail ticket recently? You get halfway through the booking procedure and then you have to choose which company you want to book with. You then start thinking does my choice effect the times that I can travel? What is the difference? If I miss this train can I catch the next as it may not be the same company. It is all just too confusing.

Whether or not privatisation is the answer, I don’t. Maybe it isn’t but what I do know is that the situation at the moment is utterly confusing and something needs to be done in order to help people out.