Horse Hero

"Horse Hero is a video website that shows you how top professionals look after their horses at home and during competition. We get a rare glimpse into their lives, meet many of our ‘horse heroes’ and do some fascinating yard tours."



http://www.horsehero.com/

10 Great Sites for GIMP Tutorials and Guides

"If you are unfamiliar with GIMP, it is the open source version of PhotoShop and other high priced image editing software. It really is a great program to have, the GIMP community is fantastic and at a price of $0.00 its worth a look"



http://creatingdrew.com/2008/06/10-great-sites-for-gimp-tutorials-and-guides/

Rage against the machines

As in many modern online games, co-operation is the only way to progress, with the most challenging encounters manageable only with the collaboration of other experienced players. Hence the need for leaders, guilds—in-game collectives, sometimes containing hundreds of players—and online friendships measured in years. "When I started, I didn't care about the other people. Now they are the only reason I continue."

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10209

Mozilla Weave 0.2 puts Firefox in the cloud

"All of the user data that is synchronized by Weave is stored in an encrypted JSON format on Mozilla's servers via the WebDAV protocol. The synchronization and encryption logic is handled entirely client-side and the server does very little besides registration, authentication, and storage. This will make it easy for other providers to offer Weave storage services. "



http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080702-first-look-mozilla-weave-0-2-puts-firefox-in-the-cloud.html

Medieval Monastery Book Helpdesk

"One IT manager sent me this videoclip. She said "it will give you some insight as to what IT managers face when trying to bring new technology to an organization". "

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zQgEqDdvuo

One Year Cell Phone Vampire Power = Six Minutes Driving = One Bath

"With millions of small steps available for people to green their daily lives, it's pretty easy to go burn-out. Should I stop flying? Unplug my cell phone charger? Or buy a Prius? Or a clothesline? Comparing the trade-offs between decisions takes considerable time and effort; you could end up a crispy little mass mumbling on your bamboo rug. But a professor at the University of Cambridge was written a little something to assist us in our decision-making process, destroying a few 'Mythconceptions' in the process.



David MacKay, a professor at the University of Cambridge, to the rescue. Dr. MacKay has published an online tome "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" (free PDF download here) which relies on Kilowatt-Hours to quantify these decisions. It's incredibly comprehensive - 409 pages - and provides the apples-to-apples that points you in the right direction."



http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/one_year_cell_p.php



http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/cft.pdf

500 Square Miles of Montana Wilderness Bought Up, Protected From Development

"The lands bought are considering especially important because most abut parcels which the US Forest Service already owns: With this purchase the contiguous areas under protection can be increased. This in turn will allow animals, such as Grizzly bear, to travel over greater distances without having to cross developed areas. It also has positive implications for the protection of biodiversity in the region."



http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/500-square-miles-bought-from-loggers-montana.php

Mayor wants Python film ban ended

"She's not the messiah, she's the mayor of Aberystwyth and she has a plan.



Sue Jones-Davies is trying to overturn a near 30-year ban imposed by the town on Monty Python's Life of Brian - the film in which she played a role."



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/7514423.stm

Scythe Revival Grows in the UK Too

“Haymaking is not the only purpose for which we use our scythes, and most people nowadays, like David Tresemer, buy a scythe for clearing weeds. We have three and a half acres of orchard-cum-grazing, which has been weed infested ever since we first bought it, and which requires topping three or four times a year. Topping three acres of weeds by hand is a fair task, and here too the lightness of the Austrian scythes has improved matters vastly.



In addition, there are all the areas around gardens, greenhouses, paths etc which require weed clearance, and again the nimbleness of the Austrian scythes makes it the tool of choice. When you see people in their gardens or paddocks waddling about, strimmer in hand, dressed as if they were off to fight for Uncle Sam, spewing out noise and fumes, and doing the job about half as fast as they could with a little scythe, you wonder whether the world hasn't gone totally mad.”



http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/scythe-revival-uk.php

Database Performance: The Web Layer

"A database application is a like a convoy of ships, it is only as fast as the the slowest ship. The three "ships" in a web-based database application are the database itself, the web layer, and the browser. Today we will continue our series on performance by examining how the web layer can efficiently retrieve data from the database."

http://database-programmer.blogspot.com/2008/06/database-performance-web-layer.html

Unintended consequences of the smoking ban

"More pubs are serving food than a year ago, says John Porter, food editor of trade newspaper The Publican, as they try and offer more than a "pint and fag". And that's good news for trained chefs.



"The general view of the chef trade is that offers are better than this time last year, although there was some upward pressure already as pubs geared up for the ban. "



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7483057.stm

Ashes to ashes: Smoking ban one year on

"Chaos was predicted when the smoking ban was first introduced on 1 July last year. But apart from a drop in nicotine-addicted regulars down the pub, it seems there was smoke without fire in the majority of workplaces. Louise Druce looks at the law a year on."



http://www.hrzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=185514&d=1063

Heart attacks down in wake of smoking ban

"Across the nation as a whole there was a 12.5% fall in the number of patients admitted to hospital with a heart attack between October and December last year, compared to the same period in 2006, before the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces was introduced in Wales."


http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/06/30/heart-attacks-down-in-wake-of-smoking-ban-91466-21171023/

Big Buck Bunny builds a better Blender

"Big Buck Bunny is the colorful product of the Peach open movie project: an animated short released online and on DVD. But in addition to the 'toon itself, Peach has produced an altogether different yield: improvements to the Blender 3-D modeling application."


http://www.linux.com/feature/139454


http://www.blendernation.com/2008/06/06/an-animation-using-a-big-buck-bunny-character/

XP is dead; long live XP

"Monday is the last day on which Windows XP will be sold as a boxed product or licensed to PC manufacturers.

However, 30 June is not the end of the road for the venerable operating system, which was introduced back in 2001. Although Microsoft is keen for users to switch to XP's successor, Windows Vista, that operating system has not been the success that was hoped for by Redmond.

XP will, therefore, continue to be made available in certain circuitous ways. Here is the sequence of events that led to the dilution of Microsoft's XP-killing strategy."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39440953,00.htm

10 Things You Need to Know About the End of Windows XP

"... Microsoft will supply patches (mostly for security) until 2014 and offer per-call support (once you're past your two-free-call limit--and not counting unlimited installation support) for $59 a call, also until 2014. ..."





http://www.appscout.com/2008/06/10_things_you_need_to_know_abo.php

Find your user guide, user guide, instruction manual

"So much time wasted looking all over the place for the instruction manual to tune the tv-set, find the printer cartridge replacement how-to, the meaning of the blinking led on the dashboard. How many user manuals available only on cd-rom, on the internet ?"

http://safemanuals.com/