I can’t describe Avebury megalithic landscape without sounding like a lame sap. So before I take issue with the patently bizarre statement on the National Trust website (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ main/w-vh/w-visits /w-findaplace/w-avebury/) I will have to admit to being a complete Avebury devotee. Avebury is a collection of megalithic sites covering a few square miles in Wiltshire. The outer Avebury stone circle itself is the biggest in the world or one of the biggest in Europe according to which site you consult, with a diameter of 427 metres. That’s 1,017 feet for Americans and people who prefer to think in old money. I can’t picture either, to be honest.

There are ditches around the circles that cover a much bigger area and an incomplete “avenue” of huge stones leading to Silbury Hill ( a miraculous thing in itself) and West Kennet Long Barrow. One amazing thing about Avebury is that there is a village with lots of thatched cottages and wierd Victorian buildings and shops and working farms in the middle of it. The complex is about twenty miles from Stonehenge and Woodhenge and Durrington Walls – which are only the most obvious named prehistoric sites – because you can barely put foot in a field for about many miles around without seeing an embarrassment of tumuli, log barrows, round barrows and iron age hillforts. Avebury is a World Heritage site and actually deserves the ranking. Bits of it are about to undergo the dreaded restoration (but that’s probably just my pessimism about archaeologists and restoration and history cash cows See earlier over-long rant on TV archaeology and the heritage industry) Go there if you possibly can.

The National Trust web page on Avebury says that it was “Voted the country’s third most spiritual place.” Voted for by whom? Which place won anyway? What does spiritual mean?

I find it silly that there should be a “most spiritual sites in the country” competition and incomprehensible that the National Trust would regard a vote like that as a good advertising point. It’s gooey New Agey stuff – like advertising conditioner as having some exotic “natural” ‘erbal ingredient. It gives the impression that Avebury is so uninteresting that visitors have to be enticed by a phoney vote. Are there really people who go to places and rank them for “spirituality”? In these sort of contexts, the word seems synonymous with “gullibility”. You may indeed feel moved by Avebury for any number of reasons but its ranking in a spiritual league table is probably not one of them.

(Etrusia’s own advertising. See the second page of the Megalithic sites article http://www.etrusia.co.uk/megal_2.php. This introduces a handful of the pre-historic sites in Wiltshire) send an email postcard photo of it from http://medieval.etrusia.co.uk/postcard.php.)

 

Just when you thought I would never be happy with Ajax, I see there is an article about using ColdFusion with Ajax to produce websites. It seems finding Ajaxian.com was a major step forwards for me. Now, this CFML idea has (at last) fired a few brain cells and provided some inspiration. The article (thanks to Ajaxian.com where I found the link) has the following extract:

This is for ColdFusion aficionados who want to use Ajax. Ajax is implemented in such a way that ColdFusion method calls on the server gets executed using JavaScript a la Ajax. This tutorial shows you where to get the code and how to implement it on your local server.

As you would expect, I will also describe an (extremely simple) to show how the code works. After this the reader may experiment with other samples provided by the CFAjax site. Some of the examples may not work immediately unless the virtual directory for testing is set up in a certain way.

(from http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/ColdFusion/CFAjax-What-it-is-and-How-to-Use-it/)

Now, things are looking up a bit on the Ajax front and hopefully I will be able to dedicate some time to learning / exploring all these new ideas. Shame I have an environmental science essay to hand in soon 🙁

Well, following on from the (very) recent entry about Ajax tutorials I found some one else has gone a long way towards doing all the groundwork for me. The blog at Ajaxian.com (aptly named :-)) has a round up of Ajax Tutorials (from Max Kiesler) which I am going to spend the weekend looking over.

I know it is early on, but initial impressions are good. While it seems that this site is, pretty much, a reshash of the list at Max Kiesler’s site (http://www.maxkiesler.com/index.php/ weblog/comments/round_ up_of_30_ajax_tutorials/) the Ajaxian one is “easier” on the eyes. I dont mean to be rude about he Max Kiesler site but it is a lot harder to use, so unless the Ajaxian one lets me down, that will be my main source.

I intend to keep this blog updated with my progress (if any). If you have any questions or tips, please let me know 🙂

Well, my on going quest to find the holy grail of AJAX tutorials has not improved much in the last week. I have tried working my way through Pragmatic Ajax and I have tried an array of online examples. All to no avail. I would be great if I was looking to re-invent Google Earth or if I was running a stock control package but (at least, at the moment ) I am not so they are all pretty much pointless leads.

Is it honestly too much to ask for a sensible tutorial which will explain in human readable terms what is actually so good about this all singing, all dancing web 2.0 we keep hearing about? Apparently so. Using the wonders of the internet, I did a technorati search on “AJAX Tutorial” (http://technorati.com/search/AJAX%20tutorial) and the results were enlightening.

Sadly, they were not all that good for producing inspiring, educational, tutorials.

One of the “better” ones there was http://www.symfony-project.com/content/book/page/sortable.html – which, like most Ajax tutorials presents a reall world example of what you can do with the technology. Now, this is a good tutorial. It is well written and as interesting & engaging as any of the others out there.

Sadly, where it all falls down for me is the time:benefit scenario. As you can see, this tutorial shows you how to use Ajax to create a cool list that you can re-order as you see fit. Wow. Visit the site, it is good, and check out the amount of code required to achieve this goal.

Now it is wonderful that you can do this sort of thing with Ajax. It looks cool. It is “high tech” and will impress people in meetings. However, what is its actual purpose? Does it have a reason? Why on Earth would you justify the amount of coding time to get this into a webpage when, all it does is reorder a list. I am amazed. Flash has done this in half the time for an eternity.

Am I missing something or is “Web 2.0” genuinely smoke and mirrors without even having mirrors? Is there any reason to spend the time and effort getting to grips with the techniques involved? Why do job advertisments and contracts already specify understanding and skill of “Web 2.0” as a requirement?

Has the world gone mad?

This doesn’t apply to queens sadly (because there’s only a record of one)  but the AngloSaxon kings’ names were pretty good. Better, there were lots of small kingdoms with excellent opportunities for nominal experimentation.   Here’s a handful, that I collected from http://www.britannia.com/history/h6f.html

From Wessex

• Eadwig (Edwy), All-Fair
• Edgar, the Peaceable
• Aethelred, the Unready

Danish line

• Svein Forkbeard
• Harald Harefoot

Anglia

• Wehha
• Wuffa
• Tyttla
• Raedwald
• Eni
• Eorpwald

No sorry, the Vikings win hands down…. but these names have a nice sound.

If you are looking for a name for Dungeons and Dragons Online or off, or any roleplaying fantasy game don’t bother trying to invent a name for a barbarian. Genuine Viking names are amazing. Try Thorfinn Skullsplitter , Eric Bloodaxe or Harald Finehair (Eric’s dad) for a start.

Wow. there’s a Viking name converter on http://gorm.com/name/ Bah. it just gives you a description based on what you choose from a few character traits, none of which sound comically bloodthirsty enough to be interesting.

I just found a list of real Viking first names on http://www.angelfire.com/wy/svenskildbiter/Viking/viknams3.html. Some are good enough to have as real names. All would sound better with a Bluetooth or something as the descriptive bit.

The first real nano-computer has been built on a single carbon fibre according to the BBC science and technology site – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4839088.stm.  The circuit is made of palladium and aluminium and is 18 millionths of a metre across.

This is a proof of concept rather than a commercial model, but still shows impressive promise for the future of tech.