A New Header For My Data Recovery Website

As usual, when I was writing some new content for my work website, I thought I’d also add a bit of colour with a new header. It gives me a break from writing, and also helps quickly show the relevance of a page. Some of my favourite headers are actually quite obscure, so I’ve been replacing them with something a bit clearer.

For example, I wrote a blog post about migrating data to a Mac from a backup, and made a header with migrating geese. It’s a bit obscure, but migrating geese are something local to us here in Portsmouth, and also they add some interest to an otherwise text-heavy site.

Mac Migration
Mac Migration

So when I updated the Portsmouth Data Recovery page, I wanted to make sure it also had a header that would do it justice, without being too obscure. I went for a night skyline, with a few local landmarks, and a prominent star & crescent design.

Portsmouth Data Recovery
Portsmouth Data Recovery

I’m really happy with the way it turned out, and it’s given me the motivation to make a few more for other pages.

The other notable thing about these header images is they are SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) files. They look great on modern high-resolution screens like the 5K iMac, iPhones, iPads, and any other decent screen. They also work at any size without looking rough or blurry, so I don’t need to serve different images to mobile & desktop browsers.

I’ll leave you with another of my favourites…

Coffee Spill
Coffee Spill

First Day In Bangkok

Day 2 – Bangkok – Thursday March 3rd 2011

As I lay in bed, trying and failing to sleep, I could sense that the others were doing the same. We had a four-bed dorm to ourselves. Nobody spoke, and only Frank was asleep. Suddenly he woke up and sat bolt upright in his bunk. “Shit, what time is it!” he blurted out. “It’s about 2 o’clock mate.” I said. “Oh no, we’ve wasted half the day!” he shouted as he jumped out of bed, scrabbling around for his things.

“No, Frank. It’s 2am. You’ve only been asleep a couple of hours…”

The look on his face was brilliant. Almost made up for the sleepless night. He still managed to get back to sleep while the rest of us just lay awake until morning.

When morning did finally arrive I was exhausted, and glad to get out of the room. I had a tiny bowl of freebie Cornflakes for breakfast and then we headed for Lumphini Park.

We decided to walk to the park. It was only a couple of centimetres on the map… It turned out to be a few miles away but a good walk, as we got to see some street food stalls and experience the endless lanes of traffic and congestion. An initiation of sorts.

The park was an oasis surrounded by high rise office blocks. There were pretty pagodas and small buildings throughout the park, and a large lake with some sort of Komodo Dragon sentries patrolling the waters edge. The pagodas provided a handy resting stop when an impromptu thunderstorm stopped us walking for an hour.

After the park we stopped for lunch at a Chinese cafe and then bough Ice lollies from Tesco Lotus. We needed some fuel for our walk to the train station.

At the train station a kindly lady with official looking name badge helped us with train times, and ushered us towards a T.A.T (or TAT, I can’t remember) tour office. We thought we would see what they had to offer, and ended up going for a package to get us up to Chiang Mai by train via Ayutthaya and Lop Buri (Monkey Town). The trip also included accommodation in Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai, and a jungle trek for 3 days at the end. We had the next 10 days all planned out and sorted for £100.

Maybe we were naive, but this seemed like a great deal.

Referring back to our map, we saw that our hostel was only round the corner, so off we walked again.

—–

3 hours later, we took a short cut and were wading through a flooded back street, trying desperately to find the canal to get our bearings. Then a thunderstorm started again. Nic nearly lost a flip flop as it floated off down the road. We found the canal eventually and followed it through tiny alleyways and houses on the edge of the water. Occasionally a local would pop their head out and point us in the right direction. Helpful happy Thai people.

As we crossed a bridge, Chick slipped and ended up on one knee proposing to Frank. She cut her leg a bit.

We did eventually find the hostel, and although exhausted, we were glad to have seen such a hidden side of Bangkok. If we hadn’t got lost, we would have never met those locals, and never known about their little houses along the canal.

Save The Planet – Scrap Green Traffic Lights

Why not remove the green light from our traffic lights?

Scrap Green Traffic Lights
Scrap Green Traffic Lights

A quick search suggests there are around 25,000 sets of traffic lights in the UK, with each set containing multiple lights. One estimate says 420,000 lights in total.

If we were to scrap the green light from all these junctions, we could cut the number of bulbs by 33%. Also, as it is the green light that stays on when idle, the energy saved would potentially be much more than 33%. The red and amber lights would only be illuminated when required.

There is the potential problem that you would have less time to react to a traffic signal if you hadn’t seen the green light, but we could just make the amber display slightly longer to compensate for this.

The energy savings could be massive, and it could also help contribute to darker skies at night, and reduced light pollution.

Maybe I have missed something glaringly obvious with my logic here so hit me up with some comments if you don’t agree.