25/09/2008 by Eddie.

There are some wonderful programs, utilities and applications on the Internet that people program and make available for free - much to the delight of freebie-lovers like me.
The latest I have come across is lightbox - a novel way of displaying photos on a website so that it appears to float above the page while dimming the main page. To see it in action, go to The Elms page on the website.

My thanks to Lokesh Dhakar for creating this little beauty.

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25/09/2008 by Eddie.

I have to say that I feel in a bit of a dichotomy about writing about The Elms.
It’s a significant development in the villages and I’m sure people want to know about it, but I don’t want to appear to be advertising the place. Judging by the takeup, even if people see it as advertising, it’s not working !

If you have any thoughts about my problem, by all means email me at eddie@houghtonandwyton.co.uk

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20/05/2008 by Eddie.

Well, I noticed that the swans were a-laying on the eggs the weekend before last then midweek - nothing!! A couple of broken eggs and one abandoned egg, but no sign of the swans or swanlets.

I have never experienced quite such a hasty retreat, unless I just wasn’t paying attention

If anyone knows what happened, and especially if you have any photos you can email me, I’d really like to know (as would all our loyal readers)

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12/05/2008 by Eddie.

In my copious amounts of spare time, I have started narrating audiobooks for a website called librivox.org.

In case you’re interested, go there and see what’s on offer. Basically, they provide audio versions of out-of-copyright books, poems etc. It is entirely maintained and supported by volunteers and so none of the audiobooks, which are supplied in MP3 or Ogg Vorbis format, cost a bean - they’re totally free!! (but if anyone wants to donate to keep the thing going, they can - please!)

It’s a great cause and anyone with a partially sighted relative who likes a good “read” would do well to go on over and see what’s there. All of the books are out of copyright and can be found in Project Gutenberg - which is a similarly volunteer-maintained resource which has been going for about 30 years.

If you decide to become a reader for the cause, just volunteer, pick a book or poem, get some free software and you’ll be surprised how good you get at it. It didn’t work for me, but I’m doing it anyway :o)

If you have any problems, email me and I’ll see if I can help. However, the good folk at librivox will always help any volunteer - new ones are especially welcome.

So get over to librivox.org, download a book, bung it on your MP3 player and get literatured-up

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08/05/2008 by Eddie.

For those not from around here, England is experiencing an amazing amount of sunshine - yes, we have had more than three days of successive Summer. If that doesn’t bode badly for the actual Summer, I don’t know what does.
Anyway, suffice it to say that the people who picked last week and this week for their H&W break, must be counting their blessings.

If this is you and you have photos, Email me amd I will publish them for all the world to see.

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29/04/2008 by Eddie.

Welcome to my Blog!
I haven’t used a Blog before so I may take a little while to get up to speed on it - please be patient :o)

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