You may have noticed the theming of this site has been changing nearly every day. That is because I am trying to find a good theme for my blog. Leave a comment if you have a preference.

This theme is called 'Garamond', the previous one is called 'Glossy Blue' and I will probably try customising a theme called 'Garland'.

Over the last few days I have started to play with MisterHouse. It's a home automation program (really it's a collection of perl scripts) whereby you can automate your house mainly using X10 technology. I installed it a couple of days ago (not that straightforward) and so far I have the sitting room light coming on at sunrise and then off at 8am. Then it goes on again at 2 hours before sunset. Obviously the sunset time will change throughout the year so the software needs your longitude and latitude to calculate this. MisterHouse has got a cool web interface and has spurred me on to learning how to program in perl. All this home automation is controlled by the computer. If I get hold of a couple of motion sensors I can make the lights come on when someone enters the room. I also have the sounds of Big Ben sounding on the quarter hour - luckily though you can mute it! It also makes extensive use of a text to speech program called festival. This means that you can get it to say what it is doing, eg "It is now sunset so the sitting room lights have been turned on."This morning we all went to the library and I came away with two perl programming books. It looks fairly simple, because there are a lot of existing examples within MisterHouse.

Go here to read the full story, which is pretty funny.

The other week I gave a presentation at the MediaShed. Here is a report of the event and picture of me. Go there by clicking here.

SS Richard Montgomery

I was just surfing the internet and I found some information about what lies off the shore of Southend. It's all pretty worrying especially when you read that it may contain weapons such as mustard gas.

Background Information

Video

World War II Caisson (Mulberry Harbour)

This is a ‘Phoenix’ caisson, its back broken, lying on the West Knock sandbank about 1.8 km off Thorpe Bay. The caisson is a section of temporary ‘Mulberry Harbour’ intended to be used in the Normandy landings following D Day, for the rapid re-supply of troops. The Mulberry Harbours were planned to extend 3.5 km along the coast and extend 1.75 km out to sea. The Mulberry Harbour formed at Arromanches played a crucial role in on the success of the landings. This caisson was being towed from Immingham, on the Humber, to Southsea in the run up to D Day, when it sprang a leak and was brought into the Thames estuary and allowed to sink.

The Mulberry Harbour also gives its name to the Mulberry Restaurant, Roslin Hotel in Thorpe Bay.