We are all aware that the firefox users out there are the chosen children who will one day inherit the Earth.

However, from lookin at the webserver access logs for this site (and its “parent” at www.whydontyou.org.uk) it seems that nearly 65% of the firefox users hitting this page are still on version 1.0 of the program.

Currently Firefox is doing well in version 1.5 – I can see NO reason not to upgrade. You will get a better (IMHO) browsing experience and nearly all the extensions and themes work.

For those who still dont want to upgrade, please make sure you are applying all the security patches / fixes as they come out.

For some mad reason word press is inserting a random

tag in the posts from Flickr. I have checked the HTML source (doing an edit post) and there is nothing there, unless it is being inserted by Flickr somehow.

Anyone have any ideas what can be done?

Just for information’s sake. The reason why there has been a sudden rush of posts with nice little pictures on the left is two fold.

First off, as we now have the history section, I thought it would be good to get some things in there, and there are some amazing photos available on Flickr.

Secondly, as Etrusia now has a flickr account and is uploading images, I thought it would be worth taking the chance to check how blogging from flickr works. For example, we are supposed to be able to “auto-blog” our pictures as they are emailed to flickr – this has not yet worked even once 🙁

Still the rest of the functions seem to be working fine.

As history is such an important subject I have broadened the categories here to include it. We already have a few posts that fit the description and over time I will go back and ammend them to reflect the new situation.

In anticipation of the Celts programme on Channel 4 tonight, you may want to check out some of the updated sites on Etrusia. The Normans Site has undergone a bit of an overhaul and there is quite a bit of new content there now. You can see more at http://normans.etrusia.co.uk/. On a similar vein, the Celtic Website is always worth checking out – look for the articles link to see what has been added recently.

If you are looking for all manner of “history” related articles then check out the Etrusia Articles archive at http://www.etrusia.co.uk/articles.php.

I must confess to having my online roots in an older wolrd (FTP/NNTP etc) so, for me,  using images in webpages is always a bit of an arcane art.

Often “usability” gurus will espouse how important it is for web pages to have text and very few people would argue against content being king. If you have ever visited a site where they use images to display blocks of text you will know exactly what I mean (I blame MS Publisher myself).

The end result of all this, is a tendency for me to create elegant websites, with really nice layouts etc – but which are totally devoid of images. I am sure it is great for people using screen readers or lynx but what about every one else on the web. Have I gone too far in the direction of accessibility?

I have tried looking at my own browsing habits, and I notice I have a tendency to prefer sites with fewer images and less flashy content. Is this indicative of other people’s habits or is it simply a quirk of mine? Does a lack of images on a site (all other things being equal) mean the site looks boring? Should I start getting more images on sites? Are they important?

Reading the recent post here (http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/02/16/presenting-both-sides/) reminded me of a guy on tv who was spouting nonsense this morning.

One of the guests on the “Wright Stuff” on Channel 5 this morning (I was off work so had nothing better to watch) was talking about confidence.

As part of his raison d’être he claimed that studies showed children with high self esteem / self confidence did better academically and as a result of this, raising a childs self confidence will impove his or her academic performance. Now, if you find no problem with this then I suspect you really should stop reading now. (note, this is something often repeated – http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/5263.html for example)
Before I go on, I am not trying to say people shouldnt raise children’s self confidence or that having a high self confidence is a bad thing. I am also not (at the moment) trying to disparage studies which use blatantly self-assessed values (like “happiness,” “self-confidence,” etc.)

My issue revolves almost totally around the causal effects here.

The man (never bothered to find out who he was) has assumed that A causes B and therefore doing more of A will mean more of B. In reality there is (based on his evidence) no way of knowing that.

Self confidence and self esteem are products of a persons sucess. If you are good at something, and praised for it, there is the tendency to become confident about doing it. Logic screams out that children who are academically sucessfull will be more self confident when questioned (as the questions are in an academic context and relate to academic type work) which in effect implies A does not cause B but is caused by B. The claims that improving a childs self confidence will mean they “do better in life” does not really hold true based on the evidence. If anything, improving self confidence without basing this on actual sucess is more likely to create a situation where the person will fall down spectacularly.

Sadly I no longer have the back issue and cant find it on the online search, but New Scientist did an article on this last year (or 2004) detailing research that had in fact identified improved self confidence was not a causal agent for sucess, and more often lead to bulying and arrogance.

As I am sure we are all aware, the internet is “getting old” now and it seems like its time to move on.

I remember when I first tried to design a website, all you needed to know was plain old HTML with a few netscape extras for the design. As time progressed (and MS become “internet-interested”) the IE extensions were added and pretty much every site on the web had a “best viewed with…” logo or a browser detection routine. Then, towards the end of the last century all manner of “new” things were developed. PHP became mainstream, java was everywhere and things that had previously only been done by arcane perl scripts were almost the required standard on web pages. Continue reading →

Very interesting PDF from two people at Cornel university, titled “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”

You can download the PDF from http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

Well, as always Dr Ben Goldacre continues his column in a witty and informative manner. You can find his column in print every Saturday in the Guardian newspaper but the website often has more information and is updated more often (somewhat irregular intervals though so you have to keep checking).

If you havent been there for a while there may be some new areas – for example the forum which at my last visit (1232hrs today) was full of “interesting” lines of debate and more than the requisite amount of cranks.

For those fighting the eternal crusade against the madness of “alternative medicine” there is a good article at http://www.badscience.net/?p=211

For those of you who are interested, the Linux convert has fought its way into the 21st century and now boasts an XML (RSS) feed for you to extract the information and any new articles into your own scripts or feedreaders.

The feed is available at http://linux.sci-tech.co.uk/rss/linuxconvert.xml and follows the RSS 2.0 specification. It is realeased under a relaxed creative commons licence and you may use the information as you wish – although you must attribute the original source.

If you do come up with any cool applications let us know and we can showcase them here.

Out of curiousity can you let me know what your prefered method for getting information from blogs and the like is?

Do you visit the blog pages themselves (or use technorati et al) or do you prefer something like Atom / Feedreader to extract the XML?

Well, if you cant guess this is something that has annoyed me.

http://www.no2id.net/

Everyone make your opinions known.

If you support ID cards then can you explain why to me please? Despite my strong opinions on the matter, I realise one freedom which we should be trying to defend is peoples freedom to speak so I am willing to listen to any rational discussion on the matter.

If you can explain to me why or how ID cards are good for people in the UK and dont destroy some of our basic “rights” then PLEASE do so!

(edited to add)

I promise there will be no flame wars as a result of any comments on this subject.

The BBC have an interesting collection of comments in the “have your say” section – This is well worth looking at.
Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dems) sums up the “non compulsory measures” of the ID Card Scheme quite nicely – “The only way in which people will be able to opt out of the system is by giving up their right to travel abroad” – but interestingly this keeps it in the same boat as passports meaning (to me at least) UK ID cards are pretty pointless beasts.

While I realise it isnt representative of the population as a whole, the fact 75% of people are against ID cards seems telling…

The NO2ID Site may be of interest to some of you – http://www.no2id.net/

Well, if you cant guess, this whole deal annoys the **** out of me.

The three main failings with the ID card system that spring immediately to mind are (and given time I am sure I can come up with more!): Continue reading →