I was listening to a More or Less podcast today via BBC World Service. More or Less is a rather fine programme which has been on BBC Radio 4 for a while now but while it's off the air they're doing a rather shorter 10 minutes version on World Service.

This week's edition had a feature in about search engine search results and whether the number of hits was accurate and one of the things that came out was how little of the Web is actually searchable. One estimate, although rather elderly, suggested it was less than 20%. I was thinking this was probably less of an issue now than it once was: surely everyone knew about the need to get inward links ...

And then only a few hours later I got an email from a friend. One of her friends has a web site for the Silverbridge Connemara Pony Stud and was concerned it didn't come up in a Google search. I had a look at the site: very simple, only a few pages, the HTML validates, so that's OK. But a quick Google search for inward links to the site confirmed my suspicion: no one's linking to it so Google has never heard of it.

I suggested she get her friend to get onto her friends with web sites and get some links in (assuming they're appropriate of course).

... and hey, I've made a start with this post as I know Google does index these postings occasionally ;-)

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2012-02-05_10-03-55_529.3gp Watch on Posterous

And really quite a lot of it for the soft South. I reckon we had 3-4". Anyway, here's Milton Country Park with its coat on.

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A nice pre-lunch walk.

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I got a Veho VCC-003 Muvi Micro DV Camcorder from Beth for Christmas. It's a tiny little camera which films 640x480 at 25fps AVI onto a micro SD card. Battery life is quoted as "up to three hours", but for that you invest in a 4GB card (it comes with a 2GB card). Anyway here's the first two clips I've taken with it, the first on Christmas Day, the second today.

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PICT0002.AVI Watch on Posterous

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Finally I've managed to catch Jack in the act: normally by the time I get to a camera he's got bored.

(Photo from my Nokia 6760 in poor light so not great.)

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20122010.mp4 Watch on Posterous

Deep Pool in Milton Country Park is not just completely covered with ice but it's topped off with snow too. Lovely. (Shame about the A14 noise mind you, ho hum).

(Filmed with my Nokia 6760 so not great quality.)

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I heard this on the "More or Less" podcast this week (which I recommend by the way) and it cheered me up no end. They're talking about the increase in earning you can expect over a lifetime from getting a degree.

Paul Oldham MA(Cantab)
BA Maths and Computer Science

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As this has caused me some grief and the solution is less than obvious I thought I'd put a brief note here so Google can pick it up.

The issue is that Thunderbird 3.x has a new archive feature which you can't turn off. It allows you to archive a highlighted email by pressing a single key, which appears to default to "A". When you press "A" the highlighted email is moved to a folder "Archives/YYYY" where YYYY is the current year.

Now the problem with this, and you'll see people complaining about it all over the Web so it's not just me, is that if you don't use this feature but you accidentally press "A" your email disappears and you're left scratching your head wondering where it went.

There is a solution however and it comes in two parts:

1. Install the add on Message Archive Options and then in the preferences for the add on set Granuality (sic) to "Single Folder". This removes the "YYYY" feature, so when you press "A" mail is now moved to the folder "Archives". Also check one of the Key Modifiers for Archive Option: 'A' +
2. Go to "Edit|Preferences" and in "Advanced" under the "General" tab click on "Config Editor..." and search for "archive_folder" using the filter. You should find you get one or more entries for "mail.identity.idN.archive_folder" with N being a number starting with 1. Modify each of them to remove the "/Archives" from the end of the string value.

The consequence of the above is that you haven't actually disabled the archives feature, instead you've told Thunderbird that you have to do something you're rather less likely to press than "A" on its own but if you do manage to press "Ctrl-A" or whatever modifier you selected it should archive the email ... back to your inbox. So essentially it becomes a no-op most of the time and at worst it at least moves it to a folder where you're likely to find it.

It's a horrible cludge, but it does seem to work.

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It's a standing joke in our house that I'm not the world's biggest fan of broccoli and today I heard it mentioned on "Old Harry's Game" on BBC 7 so I did this edit. The setting is Hell and main speaker is Mordecai, who was one of the writers of the Old Testament. This is a somewhat edited version of a much longer original, which you can find on iPlayer for the next week or so.

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The greylags are back at Milton Country Park. According to the RSPB they're not meant to be seasonal in the south but they definitely are here. Lots of them too. If this lot are looking a bit frantic that because there's a guy off shot to the left feeding them large chunks of sliced white.

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I have been working for some time on typing into the village web site the text of "The Story of Milton, or Middleton, Cambridgeshire, From Early Times" by KP Humphries which he wrote in 1962 and sold to villagers for two shilling and sixpence (12.5p).

I finished last night (it's now online here) and needed to proof read it for transcription errors. I was going to get Beth to help me, but then I had inspiration and installed espeak on my PC. It took only a few seconds to convert the 24KB of text to speech and then I just played it back to myself while I read the original. And yes, I'd made some errors which I've fixed.

But I thought you might like to hear what espeak produces. This is with its "English RP" voice and it's converted from the original WAV to MP3 with lame. You'll notice it occasionally speaks numbers out of context e.g. "was published two a full length work", that's because there are footnotes in the original text i.e. "was published²: a full length work".

history_of_milton.mp3 Listen on Posterous

I don't think it's too bad, certainly acceptable for what I was using it for. And you can alter the speed of speaking, the pitch and the accent (in theory at least, although in truth "West Midlands", "Scottish", "West Indian" et al all sound like Stephen Hawkins). But for something which can churn through that much text (nine full pages of typescript) in under ten seconds on my PC that's pretty impressive.

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Meanwhile here in first I'm in a two with no one opposite me and the four
across the aisle is also empty as the people who booked the seats appear
to have failed to turn up.

So it's lovely here. Countryside flying past at 125mph, the odd bit of
blue sky among the grey, free WiFi and a tummy full of cornish pasty. Yum.
And while in standard class they've suspended the trolley service due to
the congestion in the aisle every so often here in first they come around
with free tea and coffee and the odd biscuit if you smile at them sweetly.

It's a hard life.

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Cygnets in Milton Country Park viewed from the single bridge over Dickerson's

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Second of two little videos taken with my phone at Portrush. More on an experiment in posting via posterous really (this one should cross post to facebook)

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01082010_002.mp4 Watch on Posterous

Today I broke my journey back from Derry to Belfast with a quick detour up the branch line to Portrush, which seems to be the Hunstanton of NI. So a chance to try posterous and give you a flavour of it.

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28072010.mp4 Watch on Posterous

This is hot off my phone. Not bad really, although it was a 1.8MB upload so not something to be done without 3G.

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