• Heartstart Thatcham

    Heartstart Thatcham

    I heard on Moday 13th May 2013 that the Heartstart scheme that I have been trying to get established has been officially accepted for affiliation to the British Heart Foundation (BHF).  What this means is that the scheme is independent from the BHF but has an affiliation.  The BHF supply...

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  • Adventures with an Arduino

    Arduino UNO

    I got an Arduino to play with Christmas 2011, but barely played with it. During 2012 I have become more interested in medical research, well health generally, especially after watching some of the research shown at TEDMED. So I decided last summer to put the two together, buy a Pulse Sensor and do...

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  • Thatcham Then and Now Launch

    Thatcham Then and Now

    Many people now know about my book, “Thatcham Then and Now.” It is set to launch later this week at an event on 26th July 2012, 7pm at Frank Hutchings Community Hall in Thatcham. I am giving a short talk at the launch, presenting a few of the books to certain people and then Thatcham Family...

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  • Family Tree Charts (part 1)

    The Mount's of Thatcham

    Family history is, and has been, a growing hobby for a long time for a great many people. For the Peter Allen Memorial Lectures this year, 2012, we decided to focus one talk on Family History, although almost every talk notes various well known locals. As such I thought rather than producing the...

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  • Nick's guide to photography

    Mark and Laura's Wedding, Cornwall, 2011. Photograph by Nick Young

    This is the first of what I hope to be an ongoing series on photography. The aim is to provide a series targeted to all, beginners and the advanced based on what I have learnt and the techneques I use. Before we start, let me give you a short background about myself. Ignoring photography for a...

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  • Honoured with a Gold Civic Award

    Photograph by Paul Young

    In February/March 2011 I got a letter from Thatcham Town Council saying I was to be awarded a Gold Civic Award for my work in promoting the town. To say this came as a suprise would be an understatement. There are few things like this that I get that I feel I deserve. Anyway, it is something I am...

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Book Review: Drupal 6 JavaScript and jQuery

Drupal 6 JavaScript and jQuery

I was recently sent a review copy of "Drupal 6 JavaScript and jQuery" by Matt Butcher. Having recently started to use jQuery with Drupal it was a shame I had not discovered it earlier. Anyway, unlike the previous book I reviewed on Drupal, which did not cover the basics required to use the book,...

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Nov 3, 2009

TV/Film Review: Dark Crystal

Dark Crystal DVD cover

Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal is another one of those classic films from the 1980', 1982 to be exact. This film tells the story of a Gelfling called Jen and his quest to repair the Dark Crystal.  The Dark Crystal was broke over 1,000 years ago and a prophecy tells of how a Gelfling will fix...

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Oct 9, 2009

Book Review: Drupal 6 Site Blueprints

Drupal 6 Site Blueprints

Anyone who knows me knows I love to use the Drupal Content Management System (CMS). In my opinion Drupal is relatively easy to use, although it can be daunting knowing how to configure the system to accomplish the desired working website. For example, setting up a blog with Drupal is easy, but how...

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Sep 29, 2009

Useful: Theme Forest

Theme Forest

For those of you who know me I am an excellent web developer, can work well with XHTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, etc. However, when it comes to designing a layout, especially anything with artistic touches ir when I have little time, I use other sources. One of these is ThemeForest. A fantastic website...

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Sep 14, 2009

Book Review: Long Way Down

Long Way Down

Okay so you have probably seen "Long Way Down" on TV and could buy the DVD, but the book is fantastic. Charley and Ewan put over their story with such enthusiasm it is so easy to think you are involved in the journey yourself.

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Sep 14, 2009

Bits and bytes

I am getting more and more amazed that people, especially those in the computer industry and even teachers and academics, do not know the difference between Megabits (Mb) and MegaBytes (MB). I keep seeing things like "This computer has a 120Gb hard disk" when it should be 120GB. There is...

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Sep 10, 2009