New look for CSamuel.org

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After a few years of the old theme (a slightly tweaked Postnuke standard) I’ve decided to change the theme of this website for a bit of a face lift and because I was geting a bit bored with the old one. It wasn’t quite "clean" enough, if you know what I mean ?

So, after some looking around & testing on myself I’ve gone for the xSanctuary theme by Dynawerx which has a nice clean, elegant feel to it and is all done in CSS. I really like what it’s done for the layout of the side blocks (the RSS feeds from other sites in particular), it feels a lot less cluttered and Donna reckons it’s a lot easier to navigate.

Now I just need to figure out where the ability to comment has gone! 🙂

ESA Finds Surface Water Ice on Mars!

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The European Space Agency has released an amazing photo (below) of a large lake of water ice in a crater on Vastitas Borealis in the northern hemisphere.

There is more info/news at:

You can also browse the ESA’s Mars Express photos, at the time of writing the ice crater were the latest ones there.

Perspective view of crater with water ice - looking east (c) ESA 2005

This photo is linked from the Planetary Society.

Donna’s new CD on CDBaby

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Donna’s new CD Mutation is now available from those good folks at CDBaby!

Cover of Donna Williams album &Mutation&

CDBaby specialise in making it easy for Independant Artists to sell CD’s to the masses (over 1 million CD’s sold so far, over $US16 million paid to artists).
Even better, they use free software for all this – their website says:

  • Our servers are running FreeBSD, Apache, PHP, and MySQL.
  • No Microsoft products were used in the creation of this website.

That’s their emphasis.. Bravo to Derek and the gang!

The IRA says “All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms”

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The BBC is reporting that the IRA has called an end to its armed campaign in Northern Ireland.

A statement says:

“All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms. All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.

Hopefully this order is sincere and the IRA members will heed it!

BBC reports 4 new attacks in London – detonators only, 1 injured

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The BBC has this news report saying that:

Minor explosions using detonators only have sparked the evacuation of three Tube stations and the closure of three lines, a BBC correspondent has said.
Police cordoned off large areas around Warren Street, Oval and Shepherd’s Bush Tube stations.
A route 26 bus in Hackney Road in Bethnal Green had its windows blown out by a blast. There were no injuries.

[…]


One person was injured at Warren Street, although the person’s condition is unknown.

Who needs tact, diplomacy or common sense when you’re an American politician ?

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I just can’t believe that someone in political office can say something like this and believe that it could actually do anything than turn any civilised people against them, regardless of their religion (or lack of it), should they carry out the threat.

To quote the ABC News report:


In a radio interview last week about Muslims and the war on terror, Mr Tancredo said US bombs could “take out their holy sites”.
When asked if he was “talking about bombing Mecca,” Mr Tancredo reportedly replied, “Yeah.”

I don’t really know what to say about that, it demonstrates an appalling lack of understanding of what’s actually going on, and how what he said could be used against the people he purports to represent (not to mention their allies).