The answer to this is unquestionably yes. I’ve been walking in the Scottish mountains regularly since 1993 and in that time I have noticed a definite change in the mountain environment, specifically the conditions in the winter months. Since about the year 2000, the number of trips during the winter months where I have needed… Read more »
Posts By: Eddie
The global warming debate, the scientific method, fortean philosophy and the paranormal, and the Iraq war
My previous posting, ‘Is global warming really caused by human activity‘ caused some debate, notably on the Scran Scribble discussion forum. The television documentary that prompted my posting has also generated a lot of discussion, and the blog of the science journalist Ben Goldacre (who writes for the Guardian) contains a good sampling of the… Read more »
Amsterdam
I’ve just returned from a 4-day trip to Amsterdam with my girlfriend Lesley. It was the first time I’ve been there, and it definitely lives up to its reputation as a purveyor of all sorts of temptation, but Lesley and I were really there for the beer and food. We ate falafel and flemish-style chips… Read more »
Is global warming really caused by human activity?
Last night there was a documentary on Channel 4 (one of the main broadcasters on UK television), that essentially asked the question above. It was shocking and startling. There seems to be a very good chance that the answer to the question is no. Many atmospheric, oceanographic and biological scientists were interviewed, and they were… Read more »
The curse of metadata
For the last seven years of my professional life, one issue has dominated above all others, and that is metadata. Metadata is a simple notion really, that of describing things in a summarised fashion so that they can discovered by searching catalogues and then used in a practical way. A library book index is an… Read more »
What ‘mashups’ are exactly, and why I hate the term ‘web 2.0?
Following on from my post ‘Why I love Google Maps‘, the data from the Google Maps service is also very commonly used to create ‘mashups‘. This is becoming a fashionable term for commentators to bandy about when talking about interesting new websites, in much the same way as the label ‘web 2.0′. Unlike ‘web 2.0… Read more »
Cheltenham moon
Last weekend I spent a couple of days in Cheltenham visiting an old school friend, John. I had a great tour of most of the pubs and clubs and can confirm that yes, the place is small and peaceful, and just a bit upmarket (maybe too much for an unsophisticate like me), whilst at the… Read more »
Making websites accessible is very inaccessible
One of the issues a software engineer who develops HTTP interfaces (i.e. websites) as part of their code has to consider is ‘accessibility’. This catch-all term covers many things but essentially means that a website must be implemented in such a way that no-one is excluded from using it. It’s often thought of as purely… Read more »
My schizoid workplace
In the organisation where I am employed there is a dual, almost schizophrenic, nature to the work that I (and the other software engineers in my team) do there. Our funding comes from several sources, but a large portion comes from academic research councils. The nature of this funding is that it involves short-term projects… Read more »
Why I love Google Maps
I spend a lot of my time working with and developing Geographic Information software, especially graphical mapping applications. Recently I have been working a lot with the mapping data and JavaScript API provided by the Google Maps service, and I am very impressed with it. It’s very simple to use, and makes adding mapping capabilities… Read more »
I am a software engineer / database administrator / web developer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. In my spare time I like to travel and take photographs (especially of mountains). See my main website here: Eddie's Photo Archive