For some while now I have been studying the issue if climate change. Early on I decided that the changes I was seeing were random and thoroughly consistent throughout my life so far. Consistent in its randomness that is.

Our country sits between cold northerly countries and warmer southern European countries. To the east a cold North sea and to the west a warmer Atlantic with a variable Gulf stream coming in from the south west. A procession of cyclones and anticyclones come in from the west but their tracks vary greatly. The result is virtually unpredictable until the track of a weather system has been accurately determined.

A city of bricks and concrete and a high population density will typically be 2 or 3 degrees above rural surroundings due to fuel consumption but also rural areas are typically covered in greenery and run colder. Photosynthesis takes CO2, H2O and sunshine to synthesise carbohydrates so this sunshine does not reach the ground.

Many years ago there was a tremendous network of small weather stations but when running costs became a problem many were shut down. The first to go were the distant rural ones and the process continued until most are in urban areas where the operators live. This had the effect of distorting averaged measured temperatures upwards. Because this happened relatively quickly it produced the so-called hockey-stick at its extremes.

Large scale variables to the UK are then to be taken account of El Nino and La Nina, plus sunspot activity

We started this web-site with a very simple package called NetObjects Fusion, version 2 of which was given away free with a magazine. I was behind that because I had successfully used the package to build my own business site. Janet Hogger did all the original work but had to stop just before it was ready due to a house move. We uploaded what she had to BT and then set about transferring the whole lot onto my computer. This done I took over the work of completing the site’s internal linking and adding many more pages. Both Janet and I had digital cameras using “smart media cards” and USB downloaders so this is what we used to move all the data, Janet had no other bulk media facility.

Along the way we hit a snag in that although BT gave a lot of web space, it could only have one web-site per account. The solution was to ask the Parish Council to finance a second account. When it came down to actually doing it however a better solution turned out to be to buy a “hosting” package this is space on a professional server using proper “domain names”. When I went after what seemed to be the best buy (Nominet) I found that they had a special offer running on .co.uk domain names and I managed to get the domain “elsenhamvillage”. and a forwarding service thrown in for around £3 per year!

With the Hosting package came a bundle of free software amongst which was also NetObjects Fusion but version 6.2 MX. Sadly our old free package had been left so far behind it was not compatible. A whole new site was then built by me with the new package and the old work pasted into it. Fusion is now up to version 8 in its free form 9 if you can afford to buy it. It is like a desktop publisher but is organised around an HTML compiler and an FTP uploader. I then work with an almost WYSIWYG display which I then verify with most of the top browsers (there are differences). I can import whole documents or simply paste a document’s text into a standardised page. This latter is preferred as the user then sees it quickly, otherwise there is a pause while “Word” or some other format’s application loads. (assuming the user has it!) Where I get the choice I use Adobe Acrobat because should a user not have it, it can be downloaded free and I usually place the free source link nearby.

My own site is now on the host server and brings useful business go have a look at the way I work.
 www.woodturningworkshop.co.uk