June 14, 2008

IN MEMORIAM

Rest in peace, fly free, Major John Philip Beswetherick. We know you’re up there navigating your Tiger Moth somewhere through that sky. We shall miss you. Mr. B.

J.P. Beswetherick — 1926-2008. British war orphan, dear father, airforce pilot, good friend, respected pharmacist, the best darn braai vleis (BBQ) chef out there … and so very much more … we shall raise a beer –or whiskey – in your honor. Mr. B.

May 11, 2008

FOR THE LOVE OF MOTHERS …

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY.

This would be mum, me and baby brother (little sister still just a gleam in the parental eye) circa 1968, Natal south coast, Africa.

We’ve come a long way, and it’s been a good ride. Thanks mom. You remain my earthly judge, a guiding star.

Here’s to mothers.

April 13, 2008

RARIN’ TO GO

Seems my blog is back in working order — yay — things finally back on track. I’ve had a busy working weekend, but I did get my runs in! And I have a couple of new writing projects in the pipe … and am rarin’ to go …

April 6, 2008

SNOW

We still have it. Lots and lots of it. Especially in the Callaghan. DD loves snow. Me? I’m kinda fond of spring. And summer. And sunshine.

Let’s see if this post actually makes it … I’ve been having trouble with some WordPress functions since my website was migrated to a new server. Hopefully I’m back up and fully functional now ..

November 16, 2007

A BLACK GOOGLE

Want to save energy this winter? Have you tried Blackle?

This is their bumf:

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. “Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.” Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.