Feeds..why not blame the US and the UK?
A state-run newspaper in Zimbabwe has suggested the UK and US are to blame for droughts in southern Africa.
The Herald said climate change has been artificially induced “in a bid to arm-twist the region to capitulate to the whims of the world’s superpowers”.
It said weather was being manipulated for political gain using unspecified “unconventional” chemical weapons.
from BBC News
I work in a restaurant with broken air conditioning. The average kitchen temperature today was 41°C. In places it reached 46°C. I was more than than a little happy when my shift ended!
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand it’s a great piece of work – especially the lyrics. On the other hand, some topics just shouldn’t be treated in such a lighthearted way.
I’ve recently been thinking about putting together my C.V. – and a large part of any C.V. is the things you’ve done to distinguish yourself from the crowd.
The biggest extra-curricular thing I ever did at school was working on the annual student-produced (teacher-supervised) school magazine. I was ‘editor’. I say ‘editor’ because the teachers in charge of the magazine announced at the first magazine meeting, that there would be no editor that year – because students always resented whoever they picked. When it became time to write the introduction to the magazine – a task the editors performed in previous years, I was told I had become the de-facto editor over the course of the previous week and it was therefore my job. (it’s traditional that the entire magazine is produced in the last week of the school year)
On the magazine team were plenty of people skilled at writing. I wasn’t one of them (still aren’t), and I had about 30 mins to write half of a page. This is what I came up with.
Welcome to the KEGS Chelmsfordian Magazine 2001. This year sees the celebration of KEGS 450th anniversary, and consequently a slightly themed magazine. As ever, articles of an excellent quality have been submitted throughout the year, by pupils from all areas of the school, as well as members of staff. The usual end of term chaos has ensued with Year 12 students running around like highly journalistic hyperactive ants, doing the will of the King and Queen ants – Mr Allinson (proof-reading), Ms Wiltshire (artistic skill), Mrs Tatersall (more proof-reading), Douglas Wright (layout, technical aid and general person in charge – although an unwanted duty), and Darren Khodaverdi (crisis manager), all of whom have been instrumental in making sure that the right work was done by the right person (and no-one else!) This was done by sending the hive enforcer – the one and only Mr P D Luke.
Joking aside, everyone who wrote articles for the magazine (whether willingly or coerced) deserves (and receives) our thanks, since they made the magazine possible. These people are split into three categories – those who hand-wrote articles, meaning that we needed to type them, those who typed them, but we had to re-type and the superb people who handed in articles on a disk – saving us both time and effort.
Many senior staff have also taken time to contribute articles so special thanks goes to them, as well as Mr Gravestock and Mrs Rockcliffe for computer help.
As ever, there have been last-minute hitches – the network crashed several times on the last day, and house reports couldn’t be written until the championship had been decided – the last day of term. These have obviously been overcome allowing you to…
Enjoy the Magazine!
Doug Wright on behalf of
The Magazine Team
…highly journalistic hyperactive ants…
I really don’t remember what inspired me to made me write that. And do ants even live in hives??
I’m going to hide in a corner now…
The site went online March 2004. In just 15 months, it’s had 5 updates to the design. Because I’m someone lacking artistic vision, creating a design from nothing is actually very hard work for me. Throughout each update, I’ve always felt something was missing – I’ve never quite been happy with what I’ve produced. Especially styling links – I’ve tried many different things. I’ve now learnt a valuable lesson.
Let’s take a quick pass through the hall of shame! Right-click and ‘View Image’, ‘Show Image’ or equivilant for a larger picture if they appear too small
Design #1 was very bad indeed. I knew this at the time, but having just paid for a domain name, I wanted to get something on it as soon as possible. The quickest way of changing black text on a white background is to reverse the colours. And that’s exactly what I did.
Design #2 – the next design change introduced the now familiar blue background, and white headers. Comic Sans and that logo vanished in favour of the easier-on-the-eyes Verdana. I kept the layout of the menu.
Design #3 – this was my first attempt at revamping the menu. Somehow I don’t think the 3D-button look worked that well. This update also introduced the borders around different parts of pages. The footer got introduced as part of this design (but wasn’t part of the initial update)
Design #4 – the current design. I moved headers on top of the borders, redid the menu so it matched the footer, and also removed those orange link underlines in favour of double-black. I’m not sure which is better to be honest.
Design #5 – going live later this month (I’m still tweaking it). The menu and the buttons from the footer have moved to a new sidebar. The contents of the sidebar are only semi-opaque until you hover over them, which is an effect that works surprisingly well. The footer also remains fixed in place when you scroll. Although the available screen space for the ‘content’ is reduced, everything still fits nicely in resolutions of 1024×768 and up (currently 96% of visitors). Link styling has reverted back to the default of a single solid underline – I’ve decided that defaults are there for a reason…
This design also introduces MiniMe!
Comments welcome on the designs – both old and new…