Gary Paxton's Internet Journal

Motor Sport Is Dangerous

Gary — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 22:05:07 +0000

This is for my nephew Todd.

Hi Todd, I thought I’d post a video clip from our last race at Le Mans just to prove the crash wasn’t my fault. The video shows you losing control of your Lotus before the corner.

When you recovered from the slide and moved back toward the inside of the bend I had nowhere to go in the Ferrari except to keep to the racing line. The video’s recorded in slow motion at 50% of real-time speed.

Loading the player…

Photo Album – Customised Home Page And Folders

Gary — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:12:32 +0000

I thought I’d publish screen dumps of the customised homepage and folders on my iPad in case anyone is struggling to organise their own. I spent hours arranging and re-arranging the ‘App’ icons so that I could find the ones I wanted without wading through page upon page of the unorganised, multi-coloured tiles that form the user interface.

[View Slideshow]

Job Search Links

Gary — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:22:19 +0000

I thought I’d publish links to the main sites I’ve used whilst searching for a job. If you have any suggestions for other sites you think I should consider, then please send them via my contact form.

You might find that the same vacancies are advertised on multiple sites but the more you check the better, just in case there are vacancies that are not duplicated. However, its probably not worthwhile checking both the Scotsman and Jobsite UK as the Scotsman’s site is powered by Jobsite UK database.

Jobcentre Plus

Don’t think that the Jobcentre Plus site will be good because it’s a government site… less than 30% of jobs that are advertised, are on Jobcentre Plus at DirectGov (many jobs are never advertised at all).

The search function on the Jobcentre Plus site is particularly bad because it truncates (or extends) the results of searches to 100 vacancies no matter how wide or narrow the search. Whether you search for vacancies in Tobermory or London, there are always exactly 100 vacancies and they’re not neccessarily in the location you searched for.

Jobcentre Plus often get the specifics of the job description wrong too, a recently advertised vacancy by the company Balfour Beatty used the term “generous package” to describe the salary offered on their Website, whilst on the Jobcentre Plus site, it described the same position’s salary as “meets statutory minimum wage”.

Photo Album – Jean Michel Jarre Glasgow 2010

Gary — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 11:42:58 +0000

Taken at Braehead Arena, Glasgow 2010.



	
	
		
			[View Slideshow]

Photo Album – United States 1992

Gary — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 20:51:38 +0000

Photos of my trip to the west coast of the United States in 1992. This album is being updated as I scan in the photos (from 35mm negatives).



	
	
		
			[View Slideshow]

Christmas Lovin’ By Looceedee (Lucy Dalton)

Gary — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:09:28 +0000

Lucy Dalton

Here’s an original Christmas song for all my friends. It’s by a young lady I met whilst I was doing some wedding photography for the sister of another friend. Lucy was in a band called Teasing Lulu with the bride (Louisa Carr-Murtaugh)…

Anyway, she’s a really good singer/songwriter and you can hear more of her music on Youtube.com.

Promo Video

Loading the player…

Acoustic Version

Loading the player…

Star Wars – The Force Unleashed II

Gary — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:46:28 +0000

I bought Star Wars – The Force Unleashed II (TFU2) the day it came out, 3 days later I traded it for Fallout – New Vegas. It wasn’t that TFU2 was bad, it was just that it was increadibly short. The end-of-level bosses took some time to defeat but the only challenge was fighting-off the RSI from repeating the same button moves over and over.

I think the game will appeal to younger players but for the seasoned gamer there’s just not enough depth. As well as being short and relatively easy to complete, I did it on day one, the gameplay is very linear. There is little to tax the mind except wondering where all the Jedi holocrons are (power-up packages) incidently, you don’t need them to complete the game.

In summary, 7 out of 10, and that’s because of the very good graphics. The detail in the environment is amazing and the way the objects deform and break is so realistic (if there really was a Force and Jedi).

In stark contrast to TFU2, Fallout – New Vegas is a truely great game (9.5/10) which I’ll review next. (That’ll be a wee while yet because I’m busy renovating an out-house.)

Catalunya 2009

Gary — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 01:11:20 +0000

In Catalunya in June 2009 two team-mates were both fighting for the Moto GP championship title. This was the final lap of what was an epic battle between Jorge Lorenzo (the young pretender) and Valentino Rossi (old master) but who would be victorious ? This post is for you Todd, enjoy !

Loading the player…

Video Size: 10Mb

Journal Videos

Gary — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:23:48 +0000

I’m pleased to announce that I’m now able to stream videos directly from my Internet journal. I’ll still be using Youtube.com (especially for large videos) but, the smaller videos included in my post will be held here on my Website. This means no more intrusive adverts from embedded Youtube feeds. The player the site is using is a Flash-based player so you’ll have to have Adobe’s Flash Player installed and sorry iPad users.

Scottish Borders Council’s Website

Gary — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 22:53:17 +0000

From 2005 to 2010 I maintained Technical Services’ pages on the council’s Website. Many of the pages that I created/maintained needed to convey complicated, technical information to the reader in a concise and understandable way which was a challenge at times (like this example on food hygiene inspections).

Occasionally I was able to stretch my creative side on something more aesthetically pleasing like this scenic driving route page .

Because the content management system the council used was quite old, I had to use external resources at times to compensate for a lack of functionality. A good example of this was having to use Google maps to show the route for the scenic driving page and having to use Panaramio to show photographs of the views someone would expect to see when making the trip (and where they were taken). Our GIS was never good enough to do this.

As a Web publisher for the council I was part of a small team of people who were responsible for the council being given the Plain English Campaign Web Award in 2005. I hope that the standard of the council’s Website and the content don’t suffer when the coming local government cut-backs start to take effect.