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Tony Blair losing it rapidly May 17, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , add a comment

First, he signs a pro-vivisection petition.  A PM signing a petition of any sort seems a bit bizarre, but this one seems guaranteed to alienate many of his middle-class constituents.  Given a choice between using a life saving medicine that’s been tested on animals, and not, I doubt I’d take the noble route either, and the animal extremists  probably do their cause more harm than good.   Vivisection may be a necessary evil, but it is surely an evil.  It seems very odd to sign up to it.  As a small aside, I just had a look at the website, and can’t find a copy of the petition itself, without pressing the ’sign me up’ button.  You can apparently sign up anonymously.  Definitely democracy in action.

Next, he’s all for overriding the judiciary on the Human Rights Act.  It’s called the rule of law, Tony and while you may get to participate in making them, you are not above them.  A few Afghanis who hijacked a plane out of desperation and brought it here cause me a lot less fear than the notion that, having gone through the courts to get a ruling on a human rights matter, Tony and his mates could just turn around and veto that ruling. 

Then, he comes out guns blazing for nuclear power pre-empting the energy review.  That will be a good legacy, and ensure that Tony’s remembered for aeons to come.

And now, because a department managed by one of his cronies has proved utterly incompetent in applying the law we already have, he’s going to change the law. 

These look like the last days of a tired, stressed and finished man.  He’ll be gone by 17 June, for sure.

Here endeth the rant.

How to use Flickr for photos on your WordPress.com blog May 16, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Blogging , 1 comment so far

A friend asked for instructions on how to do this, so here they are. They’re detailed so that even the most untechnical blogger can do it. She’s using IE, rather than Firefox, and has only just started using a digital camera. She’s been having a lot of problem with WordPress’ upload facility and because she’s on the other side of the planet, on a dialup modem, I can’t figure out why. It could be that dialup modem?

I use Flickr for all my photos now, because its so easy and you don’t have to worry about resizing or anything. Now that Flickr’s been bought out by Yahoo, it’s not likely to disappear any time soon either.

To do this, you need to:

  1. Get a Flickr account
  2. Upload your photos
  3. Put them into your blog

1. Get a Flickr account.
Go to www.flickr.com
Select ‘Sign up!’ from the menu at the top right.

That will take you to a Yahoo signon screen. If you don’t have a Yahoo id, select Sign up again.



Go through, fill out the form, and you will be able to use Flickr.

2. Upload your photos into Flickr.
Go back to www.flickr.com, and sign in with your new Yahoo id
Select ‘Upload Photos’ on the right hand side

Use the Browse buttons to select the photos you want to upload
If you want to give the group of photos a tag, enter one
Make sure the privacy settings are set to ‘Public’
Press Upload

Flickr will take a few minutes to upload your files. If you’re on broadband, a few seconds, if you’re on an old modem, quite a few minutes. There are tools for multiple file upload, which you can try later.

3. Now you’re ready to put the photos into your blog. There are a few ways to do this. One is to register your blog in Flickr, by selecting ‘You’ from the flickr menu, then Your account, then Your blogs. For the moment, we’ll do this the straight WordPress way. Also, its probably easier to do this using Firefox browser and Performancing, but because my friend is using IE, these instructions are for that.

Open two IE windows, and go to your flickr.com account in one, and your wordpress.com account in the other.

In the WordPress account, start a new post.

In Flickr, find the picture you want to display in your blog
In Flickr, right mouse click over the picture you want to display, and select properties. Then select the url for the picture (this will end in .jpg), and copy that (using ctrl-c, or right mouseclick again)

In WordPress, start typing your post. When you want to put a picture in, select the little ‘picture’ icon in the editing tool bar. This is the toolbar just below the post title. Don’t even think about the area you normally use to upload pictures.

In the window that appears (see picture above) paste the url for the picture that you copied before into the ‘Image URL’ filed, and select the Insert button. Your picture should now appear.

This will be a bit slow if you’re on dialup, and you might find it easier to type out all your words, and then put your photos in at the end (or go and get broadband!)

Good luck. If you run into serious trouble, email your photos to me and I’ll upload them (this is not a general offer – just for the person who asked for the instructions!!).

Anyone using this, please comment if you find any flaws in the instructions.

Suz blog May 14, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden,Green in the City , add a comment

Another interesting local blog, from Suz Lamido over in Islington.  She’s a Lib Dem, interested in green issues, and well worth a read.

Back Up My Blog

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Blogging , add a comment

Techcrunch mentions a useful new service, which allows automatic backups of blogs.  The problem is that you’ve got to run a php script on your server, and I don’t think the nice people at WordPress are quite ready for that.

It is a worry, given that WordPress.com is a free, beta service and I’ve now got over 100 scintillating masterpieces sitting on their servers with no easy way of backing them up myself.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve taken to using Performancing, the Firefox plugin that lets you compose your post locally and then publish it to the blog of your choice, and I’m holding all my posts on that now. 

It would be nice to have a ‘download my blog’ or some sort of export feature, even if it was a manual one, that would allow me to easily copy down my blog and save it somewhere.  Alternatively, when and if WordPress.com starts offering new, chargeable services, this would be a good one.

Somers Town 100 years ago May 13, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden , add a comment

The Booth Poverty Map was drawn up at the end of the 19th century, with typically Victorian attitudes towards describing groups of people which would not pass in todays PC world. 
The Londonist pointed out that its now online, and you can view it side by side with the modern map.  Its interesting to see how the roads have changed, and also perhaps to think about how the demographics may have changed as well. 
This is the old view of Somers Town but you can point the map to anywhere in London.  I suspect Johnson St (now Cranleigh St) is more mixed now than it was 100 years ago, but I doubt Phoenix St would be described as well to do.  Somers Town has changed a lot, particularly in the last 60 years since WWII bombings took at heavy toll on the area.

Little Green Portfolio Little Bit Down

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Investing,Little Green Portfolio,Miscellany , add a comment

The Little Green Portfolio is down this week, having had a rather bumpy ride since I last blogged on it. 

Novera Energy is holding up well, with plans for a new windfarm at Lissett Airfield in Yorshire currently undergoing public consultation.  Local reaction is reported to be mixed, and there is clearly a risk that planning permission will be turned down.  However, that’s the way it is with wind energy, and Novera seem to be doing as good a job as any of getting public opinion on side.

Renewable Energy Holdings continues to do very little, sliding back to 45p.  There seems to be some sort of barrier to it falling below that, though next week may prove me wrong.  Peter Temple, in III this week, commented that the lack of news is not unusual for small companies.  The company has some positive cashflow, some interesting potential and, like Mr Temple, I’m holding on.

Some profit taking in Straight Plc, including the sale of a 1.77% stake by founder Jonathan Straight, saw this company come down off the precipitous high of 300p to 270p.  That looked dramatic, but considering it still leaves me with a 31% improvement since I bought on the low at the beginning of March, that’s good performance.  I had put in a limit order at 300p, in the hope of taking the profits and using them to round up some money that’s going into a very low-risk fund for overall portfolio balancing purposes, and it briefly touched that, but not for long enough. 

Letsrecycle.com is carrying a story that TEG Environmental has secured planning permission to build a new composting plant in Somerset.  The plant will be used to treat organic waste from a poultry farm, requiring high-temperature composting to make sure that the potentially toxic material is harmless.  This is a good example of reducing waste in a manufacturing process, as the resulting compost will be used for fertiliser, though it would also be interesting to know more about the partner company, Halberton Poultry Ltd, who are not listed and don’t seem to have a website.  This will be TEGs 6th composting site, and I’m surprised it doesn’t seem to have helped the price yet.

Company Price at Buy Price Now Change %
NVE Novera Energy Ltd 60p 65p 6.98%
REH Renewable Energy Holdings 60.9p 45p -27.04%
STT Straight Plc 204.8p 270p 31.18%
TEG TEG Environmental 79.75p 75p -7.72%
  Total Portfolio 1.09%

nb. Change % in value of my holding since purchase

More animals, a bit wierder May 11, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , add a comment

And hows this for rather strange? Found in the oddly interesting popbitch.

Another cute liddle pud

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , add a comment

Cos I like stuffonmycat.com

Companies for the Little Green Portfolio May 8, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Investing,Little Green Portfolio , add a comment

Over the last few weeks, a lot of my blogging has been about the way I'm investing my pension fund, and particularly about the Little Green Portfolio, which is the part of my fund (about half) devoted to small, green, aim-listed shares. It's a risky investment, but so far has done well, and it appeals to my green ideals. It also gives me the chance to have a look at some extremely interesting small companies who are combining technological knowhow, green ideas with, I hope, business acumen.

I currently own shares in four companies, and will add to that as I have more money available, with the aim of getting up to 10 companies over the next year or so. I'm also keeping an eye on another 15 or so that I may consider buying.

The difficulty with this type of investment is the real lack of information about many of these companies. There are occasional updates in Investors Chronicle, and of course market updates. I'm setting up news alerts on them all, and may try to attend AGMs or other events run by the companies.

These are the companies I've got on the watchlist at the moment. Over the coming weeks, I'll be posting my analyses of them. If you're interested in this type of investment, I'd really appreciate a comment or email.

>Company   Business
AGCERT Intl AGC Creates 'Certified Emission Reductions' which can be traded. This is done by reducing carbon emmissions from agriculture by capturing biogas from farm effulent and use it for co-generation.
BIOFUELS Corp Plc BFC Large scale production and exploitation of biodiesel and glycerine
CERAMIC FUEL CFU Developing fuel cells for use in micro-CHP devices (micro combined heat and power) which could be used in home or business to generate power locally.
CERES POWER CWR Similar business to Ceramic Fuel, with backing by Centrica, and rights to technology developed at Imperial College
CLIMATE EXCH CLE Invests in emission related exchanges and businesses, particularly the European Climate Exchange and the Chicago Climate Exchange. No obvious website for the company itself
CLIPPER WIND CWP This American company specialises in wind power, particularly larger projects over 1000MW
CMR FUEL CELLS Ltd CMF Another fuel cell company, with technology for portable and small fuel cells.
D1 OILS DOO Biodiesel producer. This company has a strong presence in India, a country which has very little fossil fuel resource of its own, and is trying to become a major player in biofuels.
HYDRO INTL HYD This company produces storm and wastewater treatment systems.
ITM POWER ITM More fuel cells, and some good advances in reducing costs and size.
OCEAN POWER TECHNOLOGIES INC. OPT An American company specialising in generating power from ocean waves.
PURE WAFER PUR Has technology to allow the reclaim of test silicon wafers used in the manufacture of semiconductors
TANFIELD TAN Manufactures electric commercial vehicles.

Reader Survey May 7, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Blogging , add a comment

Tomorrow, this blog is five months old. Today, for the first time, it had over 100 reads, not including the 20 or so taking RSS feeds. It feels like this blog is well and truly underway.

I’ve met a few interesting people through blogging, and you can see their blogs on the bar to the right, but I’m very aware that the majority of readers never comment and so I’ve no idea who you are.

Please, if you’ve a minute or two, would you mind taking a quick survey to tell me a little bit more about who you are, why you read Camden Lady and what interests you? I’ll leave the survey open for a few days, and see what results come through. If there’s anything I can do to improve the blog, I’ll certainly try.

You can find the survey here