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Showing posts from August, 2009

Opium

Amid the extensive concerns of the British East-india Company, it is well known that growth and manufacture of Opium has for many years been considered as a great source of public revenue and of private wealth; whole districts have for these purposes been devoted to the culture of the poppy; the superintendence and collection of the taxes have been the employments of officers or high rank in the company's service; and the privilege of the commodity for a season, one of the most lucrative gifts which the Governors of the East could bestow on their nearest connections. China was the grand mart for this article, and so strong was the attachment of the Chinese to its use, that any quantity sent to Canton was sure to be purchased at a high price. It appears, however, that this valuable traffic will now be lost to the Company, the Chinese Government having discovered that great evils result from the abuse of Opium, the particulars of which have been detailed in instructions from the Foo

My jouney of bypassing the Great firewall of China

Because of the strict censorship China imposes on the Internet, many domain names are censored in china and people in China cannot view these websites. I didn't realise the restrictions until I had a 3-week trip to China. I heard the term 'Bypassing the Wall' from my father, an old man in his 70s who is very interested in all sorts of news, esp. censored news, though he doesn't know how to surf the Internet. 'The Wall' obviously means the Great firewall of China. 'Bypassing the Wall' is using proxy servers outside the firewall to browse blocked sites. It is not difficult to bypass the Wall for those determined to do so. The websites that I use frequently in UK such as blogspot and youtube are blocked. I was very annoyed when I tried to show my baby's album on google picasa to my friend I found that it was blocked too. My friend ran a program called 'Freegate' to bypass the Wall and finally saw the album. He told me that Freegate was somehow

The Baker's Cat

Once there was an old lady, Mrs Jones, who lived with her cat, Mog. Mrs Jones kept a baker's shop. Every morning, Mrs Jones got up early, and made dough, out of flour and water and sugar and yeast. Then she put the dough into pans and set it in front of the fire to rise. Mog got up early, too, to catch mice. When he had chased all the mice out of the bakery, he wanted to sit in front of the warm fire. But Mrs Jones wouldn't let him, because of the loaves and buns there rising in their pans. Then Mog went to play in the sink. He liked to sit by the tap, hitting the drops with his paw as they fell, and getting water all over his whisker! Mrs. Jones said, 'You are shaking water all over my pans of buns, just when they are getting nice and big. Run along and play outside.' Mog was affronted, he put his ears and tail down (When cats are pleased they put their ears and tails up) and went out. It was raining hard. Mog sat in the water by the rushing rocky river and looked

Community allotment

The Mackworth Community allotment Association, with the support of Derby Homes, have successfully gone through the first stage on an application to Community Spaces BIG Lottery funding to return the land off Greenwich Drive South to an allotment. Derby Homes will match fund the lottery grant. An information day will be held on Saturday 5 September 2009, 10am - 2pm at Prince Charles Avenue shopping precinct, in Macworth. If you have any chance to get an allotment, what will you use it for? Gardening Low cost fresh food Getting/keeping fit Community spirit Promoting healthy, affordable diets An opportunity to maintain and develop your skills?

Ponies

A foal can stand up on his long wobbly legs only a few hours since he was born. In a day or two , he may feel brave enough to meet the rest of the foals and join in the game they are playing, but he when he is about four years old, he can be trained to take a rider on his back. Ponies come in all kinds of colours, each with its own name: Bay - Brown coat with a black mane and tail Black - Black coat and a black mane and tail Chestnut - Red-brown colour all over Polomino - Golden coat with a pale mane tail Dun - Pale brown coat with a black mane tail Piebald - Large patches of black and white Grey - White or grey coat. A dark grey coat with light grey rings is called dapple grey Skewbald - Large patches of brown and white All horeses are measured in 'hands', which are units of 4 inches (10 centimeres). Ponies measure 14 hands and 2 inches or less. The parts of a pony are called 'points'. They each have a different name. forelock Poll crest mane withers hinderquarte

New charity shop opening

Mackworth Estate Community Association Limited (MECA) have with the support of the local Councillors negotiated an extremely favourable lease with the City Councils Estates Department to takeover 6 Draton Avenue (next door to the Opticians) for use as a Charity Shop. All of the profits will be put back into the Community of Mackworth Estate for such things as the sports activities and to help some of the other voluntary groups that exist on the Estate. The shop will accept any decent items of clothing or brick-a-brac donated, but cannot accept underwear or electrical goods because of Health & Safety issues. No bags are to be left outside of the shop due to Health and Safety issues with Derby City Council.

Mackworth Library Opening Soon

The super new Big Lottery funded library in Mackworth is due to open in March next year. It's free to join, free to borrow books and magazines and it's free to use a computer. Beatthe credit crunch, join the library! Books will always be at the heart of a library and Mackworth's fabulous new library will have around 10,000, everything from Jamie Oliver to Oliver Twist. There will be large print books and books on tape or CD, ideal for when you've got your hands full! You can avoid charges by renewing your library books by phone or online. Modern libraries are much more than just books, Mackworth Library will have computers where you will be able to surf the net, use any of the Microsoft packages and email your friends and if you aren't confident with using computers we'll even train you. DVDs will be available to hire for a small charge and you can keep them for three nights and not just current films but also box sets and foreign films. You're never t

NEWARK ANTIQUE FAIR

New wark antique fair has in excess of 4,000 stalls at any given show, that is, over 4000 dealers in antiques and collectibles offering a huge variety of furniture, architectural pieces, porcelain, pottery, silver, jewelery, paintings, books, maps, prints, toys, and you name it. The showgrounds are located just 10 minutes from the historic market town of Newark in north central England, and 40 minutes from the city of Nottingham. The fair is sponsored by DMG World Media, and while they also sponsor antique and collectible fairs throughout Britain and the U.S. After a brief experiment expanding to three days of trading, the Newark Fair has reverted to a two day, trade-only format, with the fair open Thursday and Friday. Thursday is reserved for professional trade, Friday for general trade. The Newark show opens on Thursday at 9:00 AM, and the admission fee covers entry for both days. The show opens at 8 AM on Friday and admission for the second day only is discounted. 2009 Dates:

BNP festival takes place on 14-16 August

According to the Socialist party website , the Midland TUC has called a protest on 15 August against the racist BNP's Red White and Blue 'festival' that takes place on 14-16 August near Denby Village, Derbyshire. Police in Derbyshire have imposed restrictions on protest planned against this weekend's BNP festival. Using the Public Order Act, police and Amber Valley Borough Council have put in place designated times and locations for Saturday's protest march. Last year, around 500 people protested against the event and two new groups (Amber Valley Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and Derby Campaign Against Racism and Fascism) were formed with the support of the Notts Stop the BNP (NSBNP) which played a key role in organising last year. Police arrested more than 30 protesters at the site in Denby, near Ripley, but no one was charged.

Open access journals and publication fees

Traditional subscription-based journals recover the costs of peer review and editing by charging for access to their products. But Open Access (OA) journals often use an 'author pays' business model which shifts the payment burden from users to publishers, i.e. costs are recovered by charging authors, their funding bodies or employers, and papers are made available free of charge to the readers. 10-15% of the 20–25,000 peer-reviewed journals are OA journals. Some open access publishers, such as Public Library of Science (PLoS), publish only open access material; others, such as BioMed Central , publish open access journals as well as subscription-based material. No all OA journals charge publication fees. Roughly half the OA publications have author fees to cover the cost of publishing (e.g. PLoS fees vary from $1,300 to $2,850) instead of reader subscription fees. Some of the no-fee OA journals have institutional subsidies and donations. Advertising revenue and funding from

The largest professional bodies for computer science

IEEE is a non-profit, technical professional international association of more than 377,000 individual members in 150 countries. The full name is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., although the organization is most popularly known and referred to by the letters IEEE. Through its technical publishing, conferences and consensus-based standards activities, the IEEE produces 30 percent of the world's published literature in electrical engineering, computers and control technology, and holds annually more than 300 major conferences and has nearly 900 active standards with 700 under development Through its members, the IEEE is a leading authority in technical areas ranging from computer engineering, biomedical technology and telecommunications, to electric power, aerospace and consumer electronics, among others. IEEE Computer Society (IEEE CS), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (relating to AI), and IEEE Systems, Man & Cybernetics Society are three